Greek Talk-in-interaction and Conversation Analysis

Project director:
Th.-S. Pavlidou, professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Project team:
Dr. E. Gialabouki, Researcher
Dr. A. Alvanoudi, Associate

Greek Talk-in-interaction and Conversation Analysis is a research project that aims at:
a) the study of the Greek language from the perspective of Conversation Analysis,
b) the compilation and continuous development of the Corpus of Spoken Greek,
c) the training of researchers in the theory and practice of Conversation Analysis.

Conversation Analysis

Conversation Analysis, whose roots lie in ethnomethodology, focuses on everyday conversation as the locus of the construction of social reality and seeks to capture the 'methods' with which interlocutors themselves produce, utterance by utterance, the systematics of talk in interaction.

The recording of conversational interaction (tape-recording, video-recording) and the detailed representation of sound into writing (transcription) constitute a prerequisite for the study of conversation, and, more generally, of talk-in-interaction. In this way, researchers have at their disposal exactly the same data for analysis that interlocutors have in the production and interpretation of speech. Moreover, the findings of analysis are accessible to the entire scientific community for scrutiny.

For Conversation Analysis, transcription is not a mechanistic procedure (see related software in the market) nor is it restricted to the presentation of content (see print news interviews). On the contrary, the ‘translation’ of sound into writing presupposes theoretical processing and analysis as well as relevant training, and requires multiple 'corrections' by different individuals.

The Corpus of Spoken Greek

The Institute's Corpus of Spoken Greek is part of the Greek Talk-in-interaction and Conversation Analysis research project, directed by professor Th.-S. Pavlidou. It was originally designed for the qualitative analysis of language and linguistic communication, especially from the perspective of Conversation Analysis, which gives it its special features. Part of the Corpus, though, is available online and can be used for quantitative analysis.

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Events and activities organized within the research project
Greek Talk-in-Interaction and Conversation Analysis

Conferences

  • Greek language and spoken communication, September 18th-19th 2014 
  • Questions-answers in Greek talk-in-interaction, October 13th-14th, 2016
  • Pragmatic particles in (Greek) talk-in-interaction, June 24th-25th, 2019

Visits of experts for cooperation in Thessaloniki 

  • Prof. Gene Lerner (UC at Santa Barbara), May 6th-12th, 2012
  • Prof. Geoffrey Raymond (UC at Santa Barbara), May 14th-17th, 2017

Doctoral theses completed within the research program 
Greek Talk-in-interaction and Conversation Analysis
(main supervisor: Th.-S. Pavlidou)

Alvanoudi, A. 2013. The Social and Cognitive Dimensions of Grammatical Gender. [in Greek]. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Kapellidi, Ch. 2011. Subjectivity and Self-presentation in Linguistic Interaction. [in Greek]. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Karafoti, E. 2014. Politeness, Impoliteness, and the Face of the Speaker. [in Greek]. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.