Graduate
classes
Jürgen Streeck teaches in the “Rhetoric and Language Studies”
area of the Dept. of Communication Studies; some classes are crosslisted with
Anthropology.
Regularly
taught graduate classes:
| Conversation Analysis | The
class offers a research-focused, hands-on introduction to the theory and
methodology of conversation analysis. Central to the course is empirical
work with conversational data: recording and transcribing data, identifying
and describing formats of talk and their emergence and “doings”
in interactional contexts, and providing interactional “accounts”
for linguistic and communicative phenomena. We pay close attention to linguistic
acts, conversational sequences, and the construction of conversational turns.
There will be several analytic assignments, including one research paper.
We also look at the theories of human interaction and language that are embedded in conversation analysis; study how it has evolved since its inception in the 1960s; and explore its applicability to technologically mediated (on-line) interaction. Finally, we address some popular misconceptions of conversation analysis Syllabus (pdf) |
| Microethnography of Interaction | This class
is an intensive, “hands-on” laboratory for naturalistic research
on human interaction and serves as a core methodology course for students
interested in the study of language, culture, and embodied action in social
life. We study how people orchestrate speech, body motion, and practical
action and what resources they use to make sense together from moment to
moment. Participants will learn the practicalities of producing audiovisual
data and a methodology for analyzing them. The focus of the class is on
situations in which people not only talk, but also conduct practical, collaborative
activites, and where the material world becomes engaged in the exchange.
More specifically, we will examine interaction sequences in which aspects
of the world are explained, the ‘how to’ of actions modeled, the
functioning of objects demonstrated, etc. Syllabus (pdf) |
| Rhetoric and Ordinary Language | This course is about philosophical, linguistic, and anthropological foundations of a practice-oriented approach to language and communication. It gives students in different disciplines who are interested in conducting research on language use and rhetorical action in various arenas of social life, a conceptual and historical knowledge-base to situate their projects within the most relevant intellectual traditions, as well as the needed analytic tools to investigate how conventionalized speech acts and conceptual imagery in natural languages shape the conduct, cognition, and imagination of the members of cultural communities. Syllabus (pdf) |
Classes taught at irregular intervals:
| Gesture | The class combines an appraisal of the history of thought and research on gesture with training in the naturalistic study of gesture and embodied action. In the first half of the course, we review some of the major accounts and debates on gesture prior to the 20th century, as well as the most important current research programs. In the second, we concentrate on the analysis of video-recordings of gesture-rich interactions. Students produce their own ethnographic videotapes and write one literature-based and one research paper. |
Technology, Intelligence, and Interaction |
The objective
of this seminar is to give participants a solid and broad based understanding
of the theories, both old and new, that have informed (or emerged from)
the new paradigm of cognition as practice, and to enable them to
develop research projects on social interaction, work, and language use
that are consistent with them. We will pay particular attention to phenomenology
(Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Berger & Luckmann), interactionism (G.H.
Mead), cognitive linguistics (Johnson), theories of cognitive evolution
(Donald) and of socially shared cognition (Hutchins, Lave). Participants
will write regular short responses to the texts, present relevant literature
in class, and write a research proposal. Syllabus (html) |
| Community, Orality, and Rap | This class
investigates the global Hip-Hop Nation as a paradigmatic speech community:
a community exclusively constituted by particular ways of using language
and other forms of symbolism and growing through the circulation of symbolic
forms through communicative networks. While maintaining a focus on the rhetorical
practices of rap we will also address rap's socio-cultural history; relationships
between language and music; poetics; embodied and indexed identities, among
other topics and relate these to theories of genre, orality, community,
and interaction. syllabus (html) |