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Piera MARGUTTI

Professore Associato
Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Culturali

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Pubblicazioni

2022 - The multiple constraints of addressed questions in whole-class interaction: Responses from unaddressed pupils [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, P
abstract

This article explores pupils' responses to addressed questions in two third-year primary school classes, organized as plenary interaction and based on the next-speaker selection. In this context, unaddressed pupils often produce responses of various kinds spontaneously, showing that the next-speaker selection per se does not exclude unaddressed pupils from participating. Analysis of the design and position of these responses show their orderly nature as mainly depending on the following dimensions: the position of the address term in the question and who has primary access to answers. Pupils' responses display a high level of awareness of the next-speaker selection rule operating in this setting, and more globally, of the turn-taking system. This competence enables pupils to understand and navigate the other-selection rule, often gaining their right to speakership. In line with prior studies on multiparty interactions, the article shows that teachers' questions pose multiple constraints on responses.

2021 - Challenging the triadic dialogue format: Pupils’ interactional work in answering questions in whole-class interactions [Capitolo/Saggio]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Building on previous work focusing on teachers’ questions in whole-class activities in an Italian primary school, this study focuses on pupils’ responses in interactions organised according to the ‘triadic dialogue’ format (Lemke 1990), also known as the Initiation-Response-Evaluation (Sinclair and Coulthard 1975; McHoul 1978; Mehan 1979). The results show that the second position is a place where pupils perform many different actions. Using Conversation Analysis, it is argued that pupils follow two main and conflicting principles, associated with the institutional nature of interactions: being first to answer and being respectful of the classroom turn-taking system. By examining the features of turn design and the overlapping onset of answers, an interactional account of answering as a social, public, and conjoined activity is provided.

2018 - Act in different languages: Reflections on the binomial 'form and action' in comparative practices [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, P.
abstract

Understanding how speakers recognize actions in talk is fundamental both for theories of intercultural communication and for practices involving cross-linguistic analysis (translation, interpreting and mediation). Drawing from Conversation Analysis, recent studies have shown that interactants manage to understand and respond to their interlocutors with precision, speed and no apparent effort, relying on interactional mechanisms that are universal and contextually-based. Since the notion of action first appeared in Austin's lectures, scholars from different trends and traditions have adopted alternative positions on the relationship between form and context, as well as on the relevance of each in performing and recognizing social actions in talk. The contribution argues for a major role of the second and reflects on possible outcomes for comparative practices.

2018 - Agire in lingue diverse: riflessioni sul binomio ‘forma e azione’ nelle pratiche comparative [Capitolo/Saggio]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Understanding how speakers recognize actions in talk is fundamental both for theories on intercultural communication and for practices involving cross-linguistic analysis (translation, interpreting and mediation). Drawing from Conversation Analysis, recent studies have shown that interactants manage to understand and respond to their interlocutors with precision, speed and no apparent effort, relaying on interactional mechanisms that are universal and contextually-based. Since when the notion action first appeared in Austin’s lectures, scholars from different trends and traditions adopted alternative positions about the relationship between form and context, as well as on the relevance of each in performing and recognizing social actions in talk. The contribution argues for a major role of the second and reflects on possible outcomes for comparative practices.

2018 - Insegnare l’italiano a bambini bilingui nella scuola elementare: alcune proposte [Capitolo/Saggio]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Saggio in Volume

2018 - Invitations and responses across different languages: Observations on the feasibility and relevance of a cross-linguistic comparative perspective on the study of actions [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, Piera; Tainio, Liisa; Drew, Paul; Traverso, Véronique
abstract

This special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics concerns the activity of inviting and responding to invitations in authentic telephone calls in six different languages. Using Conversational Analysis to investigate telephone calls that were audiorecorded in family homes, and in one case, in a bank office, the papers here included focus on invitations to friends, family members, acquaintances and other casual recipients in ordinary and institutional conversations. We have two main goals in this special issue. First, owing to the number and size of the corpora analyzed, we aim to gain a deeper understanding of the action of inviting as an interactional task; we hope to discover a clearer picture of what speakers actually do when they invite others to participate in social events beyond our vernacular understanding of the activity. We aim to examine in close detail speakers' linguistic and communicative conduct, both when they are engaged in extending an invitation, and when they receive, recognize and respond to it. Our second general aim bears on the uniformity of the corpora and of the settings in which the interactions took place. In all but the paper on the invitation by a bank employee to clients, calls were almost exclusively addressed to relatives, friends and acquaintances. The uniformity of the settings across the corpora, combined with the different languages in which talk was produced, provides an opportunity to draw some observations on the feasibility and relevance of comparative analysis of actions across languages. In this introduction we outline the project behind this collection, as related to the two dimensions, highlighting how these connect with the results of prior research on inviting from other approaches, perspectives and traditions. In Section 1, we provide a provisional characterization of the specific action of inviting. Section 2 focuses on the data and the method of Conversation Analysis (CA), which was adopted in all papers. In Section 3, we review prior relevant research on invitations from other perspectives and traditions in pragmatics and in cross-language studies. In Section 4, we return to the characterization of inviting, in the light of our prior explication of CA's view on language and social actions. Finally, in Section 5 we outline the major dimensions and analytic categories of the action of inviting that constitute a common thread among the papers, before illustrating each article.

2018 - Reason-for-calling invitations in Italian telephone calls: Action design and recipient commitment [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, Piera; Galatolo, Renata
abstract

This paper investigates three main formats for reason-for-calling invitations in Italian telephone calls and shows that these invitation formats are designed to include an informing/descriptive component and a requesting component. These two elements are encoded and foregrounded differently in the design of each format, constructing diverse ways to name, refer to or describe the social occasion that recipients are invited to attend and different ways of requesting the invitees to state their commitment to participate. Our findings provide evidence that, by using one of the three formats, speakers are able to tailor the invitation to the different contextual conditions in which they and their recipients may be when the invitation is made, as well as to the circumstances of the social event, with the inviters often displaying caution in extending the invitation. This paper also investigates the types of constraints on the degree of commitment from the invitation recipient that each format entails, offering a contribution to study preference organisation in first actions.

2016 - I'm sorry "about that": Apologies, Indexicals, and (Unnamed) Offenses [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, Piera; Traverso, Véronique; Pugliese, Rosa
abstract

We investigate an apology format, "I'm sorry about it/that", where indexical terms (pronouns) refer to the offense rather than naming it. We identified two subsets in our collection of indexical apologies. In one, indexicals are subsequent either to the offense formulation or to an apology-relevant event; in the second, indexicals are used without any prior named offense. We found these two uses are associated to distinct contextual features. In the first set, apologizers also initiate the course of action, making relevant the apology; in the second, would-be apologizers find themselves at fault during/because of the call and apologize in response to a course of action initiated by the virtual offended person. Here indexicals draw their meaning from prior talk, serving speakers' interactional needs, when apologizing is problematic. More specifically, speakers manage to apologize without specifying the offense, often rejecting their responsibility for the virtual or actual offense.

2016 - Introduction to the Special Issue on Apologies in Discourse [Articolo su rivista]
Drew, Paul; Hepburn, Alexa; Margutti, Piera; Galatolo, Renata
abstract

Editorial to the special issue

2016 - L’organizzazione tripartita delle attività didattiche: oltre la sequenza IRE [Capitolo/Saggio]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Contributo in volume

2016 - Territories of knowledge, professional identities and patients' participation in specialized visits with a team of practitioners [Articolo su rivista]
Galatolo, Renata; Margutti, Piera
abstract

Objective: In specialized healthcare visits with a team of practitioners, the examination phase is a collaborative work where multiple professional competences are indexed and activated, contributing to a complex ecology of knowledge. The doctors' need to consult their colleagues might take over and collide with patients' understanding and willingness to participate. We describe the practices through which practitioners accomplish teamwork and how these impact on patients' participation. Methods: Using conversation analysis we investigate 30 video-recorded visits where patients with an injured upper limb meet a team of practitioners in an Italian centre for prosthesis construction and application. Results: Analysis shows the collaborative practices and division of labour through which practitioners activate their territories of knowledge in the service of the joint activity of evaluating the patient limbs' conditions. Whereas professionals orient to their different competences, patients keep their body available for inspection, monitor the ongoing activity, draw assumptions about their own conditions and tentatively claim their epistemic rights. Conclusions: Doctors' orientation to teamwork involves the enactment of tacit communicative practices and the use of technical language, which might prevent or mislead patients' participation. Practice implications: Doctors should employ communicative practices to ensure patients' understanding and participation in the unfolding examination activities.

2014 - Positive evaluation of student answers in classroom instruction [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, Piera; Drew, Paul
abstract

Within the context of teacher/whole-class instruction sequences, researchers have associated teacher evaluation of pupils' answers to forms of traditional pedagogic discourse, also referred to as 'triadic dialogue', 'monologic discourse', 'recitation' and 'Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) sequences'. Teacher evaluation has also been associated with pupils' low levels of participation. Explanations and solutions offered by prior research are mainly based on functional categories of actions, characterizing forms and functions of teacher questions and follow-up moves in IRE sequences. Using Conversation Analysis to investigate collections of positive evaluations in video-recorded lessons in two primary school classes, we propose an interactional explanation of the phenomenon and of its predominant use. We show that teachers systematically select the formats of their positive third-turn receipts not only to evaluate pupils' answers for their abstract truth value, but also with respect to the role of each question-answer in the whole activity. We demonstrate that, in this way, teachers convey judgements about the question within the activity; thus, adding a constitutive property to the pedagogic practice and providing students with interpretive resources for a common understanding of pedagogic goals and procedures. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.

2013 - Analisi della Conversazione [Capitolo/Saggio]
Margutti, P.
abstract

capitolo in volume

2013 - Reducing asymmetry in doctor-patient interaction: patients' initiatives in specialised clinical encounters [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, Piera; Galatolo, Renata
abstract

This study identifies and describes a specific multimodal practice that patients use during medical encounters, in which they interact with a team of doctor in an Italian specialized centre for prosthesis construction and application. Focusing on the early stages of these encounters, in which participants are engaged in history-taking and physical examinations, the paper analyses the way in which patients delicately orchestrate their gaze, gesture and verbal behaviour to gain some extra speaking space, beyond that of mere respondents to doctors’ questions. By using the analytic and methodological framework of Conversation Analysis, we show that patients produce this recurrent multimodal pattern, whose features are methodically produced and recognizable. The study shows that, through this specific pattern, patients manage to acquire the interactional role of “action initiators”; thus constraining doctors to respond: for instance, by producing unrequested information about their health status, by correcting implicit assumptions in the doctors’ questions, or by producing independent assessments. Thus, the paper contributes to previous research, which has documented patients’ agency and initiative, revising the notion of asymmetry in medical settings and highlighting the active role of the patient in every stage of these encounters.

2011 - Fenomeni di intensità nell’italiano parlato [Recensione in Rivista]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Recensione

2011 - Judgments concerning the valence of inter-turn silence across speakers of American English, Italian, and Japanese [Articolo su rivista]
Roberts, Felicia; Margutti, Piera; Takano, Shoji
abstract

The fact that people with minimal linguistic skill can manage in unfamiliar or reduced linguistic environments suggests that there are universal mechanisms of meaning construction that operate at a level well beyond the particular structure or semantics of any one language. The authors examine this possibility in the domain of discourse by focusing on how gaps arising at the juncture between 2 persons' turns-at-talk (inter-turn silences) are evaluated by speakers of typologically distinct languages: English, Italian, and Japanese. This cross-linguistic design allows the testing of both universal and relative aspects in orientation to silence. For this study, the effects of inter-turn silence are tested using study participants' ratings of speakers' willingness to comply with requests or agree with assessments that were embedded in conversations. In a 3 × 2 × 3 between-groups design, 3 silence lengths (0 ms, 600 ms, or 1200 ms) were crossed with 2 speech act types (requests and assessments) in manipulations of telephone conversations that were modeled on an actual telephone call between friends. Native-speaking study participants, in their home countries, provided ratings on Likert-type scales. Ratings significantly decreased within each language group at longer inter-turn silences, indicating a generalized response to the gaps; however, means were also significantly different between groups, indicating different expectations for agreement. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

2011 - Teachers' reproaches and managing discipline in the classroom: When teachers tell students what they do 'wrong' [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Drawing from a corpus of video-recorded classes in 6 and 7 grade groups in an Italian secondary school and in two 3 grade groups in a primary school, the article investigates one specific format used by teachers to reproach students for their untoward conduct. The analysis focuses on cases where, in contrast to other less explicit formats, teachers refer to students' ongoing behaviour as 'wrong' with direct descriptions of the misconduct. Reproaches of this type employ a conditional structure in which the event and its negative consequences are described in detail. The paper argues for this specific type of reproach as displaying similarities with repair sequences in that it operates retroactively (Schegloff, 2007) to locate in prior courses of actions the source for the reproach (or the 'reproachable'). Building on a detailed analysis of turn construction, word selection, and sequential deployment, the paper shows that a preference organization is in order in the accomplishment of reproaches. In comparison to prior literature on this topic, and in contrast to other documented way of treating recipients' untoward conduct as caused by their inability, the paper documents the way in which other peoples' conduct can be explicitly constructed as wrong and, as such, reproachable; thus holding the recipient as culpable for not having avoided a course of action that is not amendable. The paper argues for further research in the domain of classroom reproaches, as having implications for the understanding both of action formation mechanisms in ordinary and institutional interaction and of the different activities that contribute to the sense of formality of classroom interaction beyond instruction activities and academic talk. © 2011 Elsevier Inc.

2011 - The interactional management of discipline and morality in the classroom: An introduction [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, Piera; Piirainen-Marsh, Arja
abstract

This special issue of Linguistics and Education deals with a specific domain of activities related to the management of discipline in classrooms. Matters of authority and discipline have been widely discussed in educational research literature. Yet, only a handful of studies have investigated how matters of discipline and the boundaries of acceptable behaviour are managed and negotiated locally in the interactional activities that constitute the social world of the classroom. This volume addresses the issue of how teachers, and sometimes students, actually deal with the problem of addressing, referring to, and evaluating unauthorized or inappropriate conduct. The focus is on activities through which teachers and students manage expectations concerning the social and moral order of classroom conduct. These are investigated through the detailed analytic lens of conversation analysis. In this introduction we offer a necessarily selective overview of previous work on classroom interaction, present the key principles of conversation analysis, and introduce the contributions included in this volume. © 2011 Elsevier Inc.

2010 - On designedly incomplete utterances: What counts as learning for teachers and students in primary classroom interaction [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

The article analyzes a variety of Koshik's (2002) Designedly Incomplete Utterances (DIU) as they are produced in whole-class, teacher-led instruction sequences held in 2 third-year groups in an Italian primary school. This device, one of whose basic pedagogic functions is to solicit displays of knowledge from students in the shape of utterance completion, is a recurrent feature of teacher-student interaction in this setting. The study focuses on one specific and locally managed use of the device, whereby the teacher's orientation to the pedagogic goals of the organization of interaction surfaces in features of talk. I found systematic features in the construction of what I call main-clause DIUs, which teachers recurrently use to cast students as learners, by treating their verbal behavior as providing evidence that some type of learning has occurred in prior talk. The findings provide grounds for a critique of the Initiation-Response-Evaluation model and for a characterization of questioning in instruction sequences, both of which account for the specific institutional relevancies of interaction in this setting. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

2009 - Alcuni usi e caratteristiche della traduzione spontanea in contesti di conversazione multilingue: l’osservabilità dei processi interpretativi. [Capitolo/Saggio]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Saggio in volume

2008 - Margutti P (2008). Frasi interrogative e turni-domande in classe: aspetti grammaticali nell'interazione didattica. In: (a cura di): Cristina Bosisio, Bona Cambiaghi, M. Emanuela Piemontese e Francesca Santulli, Atti del 7° Congresso dell'Associazione Italiana di Linguistica Applicata. p. 431-453, PERUGIA:GUERRA EDIZIONI, ISBN: 978-88-557-0084-9, Milano, 22-23 febbraio 2007 [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Frasi interrogative e turni-domande in classe:

2007 - "Are you human beings?" Order and knowledge construction through questioning in primary classroom interaction [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

This article examines how question-answer sequences are constructed in primary school instructional activities. The interaction between teacher and students in two 3rd-year groups is analyzed using a conversation-analytic approach. Four questioning patterns - yes-no, alternative, wh-questions, and a non-interrogative format very frequently used in this setting which I call the Eliciting Completion Device (ECD) - teachers use to address the class as a whole are examined in relation to their sequential uptakes: in-unison answers and bids to answer. The analysis shows that students recognize the conventions of question construction as methodical practices used by teachers to convey expectations as to whether the answer is accessible to students. Choral responses are produced when the question is constructed as eliciting information which is obviously known to students, while bids to answer are deployed when the answer is less transparent. The findings reveal that the practices used to construct collectively assembled knowledge are closely connected to the organization of the classroom social order. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

2007 - Come si dice...’: ruoli discorsivi e identità situate nella ricerca di parole [Capitolo/Saggio]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Contributo in volume

2007 - Formulare una domanda per ottenere "quella" risposta: aspetti linguistici, organizzazione dell'interazione e costruzione di conoscenze in classe. [Capitolo/Saggio]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Contributo in volume

2007 - Genitori italiani, sportivi australiani o cuochi lucani: descrivere sé e gli altri in categorie d’appartenenza [Capitolo/Saggio]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Contributo in volume

2007 - Riprendere uno studente. Comportamento sociale e deissi nell’interazione in classe [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Within the area of teacher/student interaction, this article examines one methodical practice to reproach unprompted conducts of students in the classroom, whereby the teacher addresses a student by name. The aim is to investigate the way in which teachers exercise authority upon students by using this strategy. The indexical character of this format is examined as associated to its sequential deployment and prosodic features in relation to the students’ prior behaviour. The data consist of the first 15-20 minutes of 20 lessons (given to 6 different groups by 10 teachers in the first 8 grades), that have been video-recorded in 3 different Italian schools. The data have been transcribed and analyzed using Conversation Analysis, focussing on both the verbal and non-verbal conducts of the participants. The analysis shows that the treatment of the students’ activities is locally managed by the teachers. Judgements regarding reproachable conducts are interactively occasioned and result from continuous adjustments to the courses of action. These findings argue for ethnomethodological approaches in analyzing the way in which the teachers’ authority is produced and understood in everyday classroom activities, thus detracting from the view of teacher/students interaction as the result of the application of abstract, pre-defined norms.

2007 - Two uses of third-person references in family gatherings displaying family ties: Teasing and clarifications [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

This article examines two uses of third-person references - pronouns such as 'he/she/they' or category terms such as 'mother, father', etc. - as produced during first-visit encounters between formerly unacquainted guests and a family group. Members of the family use this practice to refer to another family member in a locally subsequent position, adjacent to a self-oriented turn by that same referrent. Two main functions are investigated: teasing and clarifications. It is pointed out that, besides employing the same practice and being deployed in a locally subsequent position, both activities have a number of other features in common, whereby teasing gets constructed as if doing clarification. In this way, family members provide alternative versions of the same description of events as the prior adjacent turn, designing the teasing activity as an information-giving activity to the guests' benefit. Thus, family members display a privileged access to the events that have been described and propose themselves as knowledgeable about the group and its life; a type of knowledge grounded in their having family ties. Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications.

2006 - MARGUTTI P (2006). Partecipare alla conversazione in classe: quali competenze per gli alunni. In: (a cura di): Immacolata Tempesta e Maria Maggio, Linguaggio, mente, parole. dall'infanzia all'adolescenza. p. 228-235, Franco Angeli, ISBN: 88-464-7709-X, Lecce, 22-25 aprile 2004 [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Margutti, P.
abstract

Partecipare alla conversazione in classe: quali competenze per gli alunni

2005 - Il conferimento della laurea «honoris causa» a Noam Chomsky all'Università di Bologna [Traduzione in Volume]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Traduzione lezione magistrale Noam Chomsky

2005 - Il conferimento della laurea «honoris causa» a Noam Chomsky all'Università di Bologna [Traduzione in Rivista]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Traduzione lezione magistrale

2005 - L’osservazione dell’interazione nella classe di lingue: uno strumento di (auto) formazione. [Articolo su rivista]
Margutti, P.
abstract

Contributo in rivista

2005 - Strutture di partecipazione e forme di controllo nella classe. [Capitolo/Saggio]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Contributo in volume

2004 - Comunicare in una lingua straniera. Tra teoria e pratica [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Margutti, Piera
abstract

Monografia