ALIS Newsletter - Volume 31 Number 1 (Plain Text Version)

Conversation analysis (CA) (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974) is specially suited to identify and describe interactional practices, contexts in which they are used, and social actions they carry out. CA as a research approach does not make claims about internal mental states, but it is acknowledged that navigating the contingencies of interaction, turn by turn (even within unfolding turns), is an activity that has cognitive as well as social dimensions. (The study of recurrent practices and ways coparticipants respond may not provide access to cognitive processes that are not observable, but the participants themselves in some ways enact their cognition as a social matter and we can observe ways people project a trajectory of unfolding action and are able to respond, for example, to a pre-invitation.)

This study focuses on a single episode (Schegloff 1987) of brainstorming, which is part of a larger study of small-group interaction. Analysis of a student group doing brainstorming in the form of listing adjectives provides insights into a highly structured speech genre with restricted options for ways to participate and highly recurrent practices, so for a small data set it allows a good preliminary description of a particular sequence type (Schegloff 2007), with its initiation and range of relevant responses.

The data for this study were collected in an upper-level reading and writing class in an academic intensive language institute at a U.S. university. The students, from Asia, Europe, and South America, were working on a thematic unit on propaganda and advertising. This small-group advertising project was part of their preparation for a writing assignment.

INITIATION OF BRAINSTORMING

Prior to the brainstorming proper, they defined a problem they needed to solve as part of designing a concept for a perfume product, which was their task: Create an imaginary perfume product, decide on its image and target audience, and then create an advertising strategy and a plan for a television commercial. This brainstorming activity, initiated by the students, worked as a problem solving strategy-it was not suggested as a part of the task, teacher instructions, or worksheet. The students ran into trouble creating a name for the perfume, so they decide to brainstorm for ideas. Here is the decision to focus first on an idea in order to create a name (Extract 1).

 

Brainstorming, which is apparently a part of popular culture worldwide, was popularized in the 1950s by Alex Faickney Osborn (1953), an advertising executive who promoted it as a strategy for creative, spontaneous, group problem solving through the participation of multiple participants who made suggestions and did not judge suggestions. These students understand it as a prewriting strategy, done individually or in groups to spark ideas for writing.

 

 

BRAINSTORMING AS LISTING ADJECTIVES

Even though the speakers seem to understand what is meant by brainstorming, one member feels it is important to define it as one particular kind of brainstorming: listing. They had already been spontaneously listing adjectives before he suggested brainstorming, so he seems to be using that as a model, but in any event he further suggests, "Let's just list adjectives," and they proceed with a listing format brainstorming activity.

 

Here are two examples of the listing sequence, in Extracts 4 and 5. Notice the (arrowed) nomination turns, followed by repeats of the nominated word, yes-type ratifications ("yeah," "yes"), and positive assessments ("okay," "that's a good one") (see Goodwin & Goodwin 1992; Pomerantz 1974).

In Extract 5, student B had an idea that he explained by telling a story, a science fiction scenario set in a future where women feel men are like robots, and then the perfume transforms one man into a unique and attractive man.

 

CLOSING OF BRAINSTORMING―AGREEMENT ON "IDEA"

The brainstorming closes when the group moves to select a choice from the listed ideas, an adjective to stand for the image or concept for their imagined perfume product. This is not yet the perfume's name, but the "idea for the idea." Here is the final agreement sequence:

 

SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS

I have introduced examples of brainstorming as well as examples of the ways the speakers set up and ended a listing-type brainstorming that ended up in the creation of a concept for their perfume: difference. Though the process looks simple, with nominations made by saying a new adjective and responses made with yes-type ratifications and positive assessments, this is a rich activity in which ideas are told through stories at times and repair (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks 1977) and defining words provide rich learning opportunities. This brainstorming involves a special speech exchange system, a listing-type brainstorm, which can be understood as one variation in the broader ecology of listing activities (Jefferson, 1991) and perhaps one of several kinds of brainstorming talk. As part of the description of the many speech exchange systems undertaken in small-group activities in language classrooms, this study provides one more piece and reveals the kinds of interactional resources used by fairly fluent English language learners in this kind of activity.

REFERENCES

Goodwin, C., & Goodwin, M. H. (1992). Assessments and the construction of context. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking context (pp. 147-189). Cambridge, England: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Jefferson, G. (1991). List construction as a task and resource. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Interactional competence (pp. 63-92). New York, NY: Irvington Publishers.

Osborn, A. (1953). Applied imagination: Principles and procedures of creative problem solving. New York, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 57-101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation . Language, 50(4), 696-735.

Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction. Cambridge and New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Analyzing single episodes of conversation: An exercise in conversation analysis. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50(2), 101-114.

Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language, 53, 361-382.