Any Questions? : Identity Construction in Academic Conference Discussions.

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Academics go to conferences for two main reasons: first, to discuss their research; second, and just as importantly, to negotiate their own standing in the scientific community. This book shows how academics in the humanities use conference discussions as a forum to co-construct both their own and each other's professional identities. While at first sight the researchers seem to be simply asking and answering questions, the detailed sequential analyses reveal many subtle underlying strategies adopted to display and negotiate claims of expertise, seniority and competence.

Chapter 1. Introduction; Chapter 2. Researching talk-in-interaction; 2.1 Looking through the participants'eyes; 2.2 Doing CA; 2.3 Investigating institutional talk; Chapter 3. The dynamic discursive nature of identity; 3.1 Identity as a social construct; 3.1.1 Symbolic interactionism; 3.1.2 Impression management theory; 3.2 Identity as a members'category; 3.2.1 Indexicality and members'construction of reality; 3.2.2 Membership categorization; 3.2.3 Doing being X; 3.3 Identity, self, and, face; 3.3.1 Goffman's notions of face and facework; 3.3.2 Face in Watts' social theory of politeness.

3.3.3 Integrating the concept of face in a CA approach3.4 Identity construction as a means to an end; 3.4.1 Social positioning; 3.4.2 Stylization of self and other; Chapter 4. Ethnographic background; 4.1 Structure of conferences; 4.2 Types of contributions in conference discussions; 4.3 Discursive roles in discussions; 4.3.1 What questioners do; 4.3.2 What answerers do; 4.3.3 What chairpersons do; 4.4 Asking questions; 4.4.1 What is a question?; 4.4.2 Yes/No interrogatives; 4.4.3 Constructing questions to achieve agreement; 4.4.4 Contrasting academic question-answer sessions with interviews.

4.5 Self-presentation -- a key feature of conference participation4.5.1 Members' reasons for organising and participating in conferences; 4.5.2 Self-presenting in the community; Chapter 5. The data; 5.1 Data collection; 5.2 Corpus structure; 5.3 Transcription conventions; Chapter 6. The mechanics of discussions at academic conferences; 6.1 TCU completion and assessment; 6.2 Speaker selection; 6.3 Sequential organisation; 6.3.1 Side-sequences; 6.3.2 Pre-sequences; 6.4 Formulations; 6.5 Preference; Chapter 7. Results of the data analyses; 7.1 Doing being expert.

7.1.1 Having the overview: doing formulations7.1.1.1 Doing formulations to prepare the ground; 7.1.1.2 Responding to formulations by referring to data; 7.1.1.3 An ambivalent face strategy: si j'ai bien compris; 7.1.1.4 Achieving co-agreement in formulations; 7.1.1.5 SUMMARY of 7.1.1. (Doing formulations); 7.1.2 Displaying alternative access to an idea; 7.1.2.1 moi je vois juxtaposing own research and presenter's ideas; 7.1.2.2 have you done X?; 7.1.2.3 is it not X?; 7.1.2.4 Putting an additional interpretation up for inspection.

7.1.2.5 SUMMARY of 7.1.2. (Displaying alternative access to an idea)7.1.3 Granting the presenter a claim of expertise: requesting information; 7.1.3.1 I'm thinking of other types of data: requesting confirmation of informed guesses; 7.1.3.2 c'est juste une toute petite question: pure information questions; 7.1.3.3 have you seen this in language X?; 7.1.3.4 parce que c'est important: information questions with an agenda; 7.1.3.5 SUMMARY of 7.1.3 (Granting expert status to the presenter); 7.1.4 SUMMARY of 7.1 (Doing being expert); 7.2 Doing being a (good) researcher.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 397-411) and index.

English.

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