iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

And I think Jefferson (1980) deals with something like this.

I’m sure Manny Schegloff has worked this out somewhere or there must be stuff in Sacks’ lectures. One thing it can do is short circuit the ‘reason for the call’ - if you don’t get ‘fine’.

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For HAYs in this place, you can then ask what does it do there. What is the sequence doing there and then what can the various responses accomplish.

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First ask, ‘where does this small sequence occur?’ There are, perhaps, several places, but there is (or was, ’in the olde days’) one structurally locate-able place: in opening sections.

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

I’m not sure that’s the question to starting with, and perhaps not the place to begin the analysis.

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"Those were choices they made." "That's a thing you can wear." "That was an action he took." These appear to be responses. It could be helpful if you’d post an actual instance including the thing that your target response is addressing.

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

FYI: The Personal Names article is now available on the Pragmatics website.

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

I wonder if work on ‘online commentary’ in medical interactions might be useful. Heritage (2016). Online Commentary in Primary Care and Emergency Room Settings. Acute Medicine & Surgery. Heritage & Stivers (1999 ). Online Commentary in Acute Medical Visits. Soc. Sci. Med.

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Kevin Whitehead & I have something coming out in Pragmatics on this topic: Whitehead, K. A. & Lerner, G. H. (2026). When Personal Names Are Mentioned in Conversations: Presumed Known, Perhaps Known and Presumed Unknown. No idea what issue it will appear in.

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Reposted by Gene Lerner

NPR @npr.org · 02/11/2025

The report's claim comes with caveats. Its critics say it does more to reveal issues around collecting and analyzing domestic terrorism data than it does to clarify the current state of the problem.

n.pr

A report claims left-wing terrorism is rising. The data paints a complicated picture

The report's claim comes with caveats. Its critics say it does more to reveal issues around collecting and analyzing domestic terrorism data than it does to clarify the current state of the problem.

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

This olde exchange concerning the place of ‘social-structural’ considerations in descriptions of the organizations of talk-in-interaction was recently brought to mind. (Perhaps the ‘obscurity’ involved was there to shield the suggestion from promiscuous application!) #EMCA

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Yes, it’s important to have CA work available in ASR. AJS is another important leading outlet with a recent CA paper: Whitehead, Raymond & Bowman, (2025), "Cross-Cutting Preferences in Interactional Trajectories Toward Violence", American Journal of Sociology.

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

How about running this again, but increasing the data set by a power of 10 - and not including any data collected before 1984? Also, would it be feasible to introduce the original Pomerantz report, rather than just a summary (and perhaps Sacks’ piece on Agreement & Contiguity)?

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

I would be curious to see the results of another kind of instruction to AI: Reproduce the investigation that resulted in a published CA report and compare/contrast the new results with that of the original/target published report.

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

…asked them to "find a something". The results are less impressive than the conceptual acrobatics in their PhD proposals. —— Perhaps your instruction to AI came in the wrong place (as a starting place). Sacks’ instruction would have come after seeing what he could do/notice in data sessions.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

“I asked five AIs to draft PhD proposals in conversation analysis.” I wonder what would happen if you directed them to (as Sacks did to Pomerantz) “Find a something,” instead of starting by requiring a proposal.”

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Here’s my brief contribution to Manny’s memorial.

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I should make it clear, that when I recommend these readings, it’s NOT to expose the intellectual history of our field, but because I strongly believe they furnish students with a necessary deep backdrop for doing good CA work.

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When I offered my ‘Sacks reading list’ from memory I would have included IA Richards and Parry’s student Alfred Lord.

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And I believe he was connected to a research proposal of Garfunkel’s on ‘Kids’ Culture’ but he told me that his relationship to that stuff was “historical.”

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Sacks was drawn to stuff about children, not because they were children, but because of how people wrote about them. See One Boy's Day: A Specimen Record of Behavior by Roger Barker (& Sacks had Baker’s unpublished records too) or Children's Games in Street and Playground by the Opies.

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Sacks was engaged in self-consciously groundbreaking methodological empirical studies. I believe he was scanning the world of scholarship for investigations that resonated in some way. Each of the readings on the list do that in very different ways.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Over the years, I’ve sometimes given grad students the list of reading - as I then recalled it - that Sacks gave me when we first met. Yesterday, I came across my original list, while rummaging through a file folder of my earliest lecture notes from grad school. Here is the actual list. Enjoy!

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

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I just came across another (apparent) handout: “Some Ways Conversation Analysts Interrogate Talk-in-Interaction” but cannot remember the venue at which it was circulated. Nonetheless, some might find it or bits of it useful… www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/poylj...

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

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Because CA findings are necessarily tied to and grounded in and configured by reference to participants’ situated participation, I was wondering just how broad or general purpose CA findings could be (without becoming untethered). www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/k4f6n...

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

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And when I wrote, “There were reasons for this shift” I was also thinking of something Manny once mentioned about this: That Harvey thought it would just be too easy for people to misuse (i.e. stipulate) membership categories, rather than develop them from data.

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Perhaps I should have made it clear that when I wrote “We didn’t know that these small sequences just kept ‘bipping along’” I was echoing what Harvey said to me, not giving my own opinion.

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

I’ve come across a clipping of Note 1 from “Everyone has to lie” which I haven’t thought about for a long time. So, I thought I’d pass it along. www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kl82h... There were reasons for this shift. Here’s one: We didn’t know that these small sequences just kept ‘bipping along’.

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Here’s an old note from a beginning grad student (requesting some help with a first assignment) and then my reply.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

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Here is an old course assignment I created, but I find it can be a useful way to proceed with the work. www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/v78l1...

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

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I just stumbled across an old course handout. I thought I might share it here.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

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I’ve always wished I could refer to ‘lean’ as ‘tilt’ for the alliterative torque & tilt’ ( I think some physical therapists use ‘hinge’ which may have some technical advantage in the same way ‘torque’ has some advantage over ‘twist’ - but loses its vernacular flavor.

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

This reminds me of a lovely paper written for Sandy Thompson’s and my Language and the Body seminar on “Laugh Leans” (unfortunately, never prepared for publication).

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

“…if on the other hand one figures, or guesses, or decides that …whatever humans can do can be examined to discover some way they do it, and that way would be stably describable. That is, one may alternatively take it that there is order at all points.”

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

I don’t believe, “There is order at all points” is quite right.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

I might like to say, ‘CA grew alongside Ethnomethodology’. Sacks once characterized his relationship ‘to that stuff’ as ‘historical’.

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Congratulations! Sue MA Wilkinson!