Linguistic paper in Conversation Analysis wins the 2021 Graduate Student Paper award

Posted on 8 July 2021

LLS PG student’s paper awarded with a prestigious international prize

The Department of Language and Linguistic Science is delighted to announce that the paper ‘Mock Aggression: Navigating Affiliation and Disaffiliation in Interaction’ by Reihaneh Afshari Saleh (in the interdisciplinary programme ‘Language and Communication’, studying language in its natural habitat - interaction among social members) has been awarded the 2021 Graduate Student Paper Award by the The Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EMCA) division of the American Sociological Association.

Reihaneh Afshari Saleh is an interactional linguist who uses conversation analytic (CA) methods to study everyday social interactions. Her main research interests are phonetics/prosody of talk in interaction, gestures and embodiments, multimodality, and emotions in face-to-face interactions. Her PhD project focuses on multimodal practices for managing ‘persistence’ in Persian interactions. The award winning paper is based on one chapter of her PhD thesis where she investigates a previously unexplored phenomenon in CA ‘mock aggression’ - embodiments which, in one way or another, appear aggressive (punching, pinching, slapping, etc.) but are not designed to be, or oriented to as, serious physical threats. Her research shows that mock aggression, when performed between intimate interactants, negatively sanctions social transgressions and at the same time provides systematic opportunities for participants to engage in more affiliative interaction. Despite its aggressive appearance, mock aggression facilitates participants’ exit from a disaffiliative interaction, owing to its detailed design features, and thereby contributes to maintaining their social bonds. In her thesis, Reihaneh argues that a categorical affiliative versus disaffiliative perspective does not work for some interactional practices like mock aggression.

The PhD research project undertaken by Reihaneh Afshari Saleh was supervised by Dr Kobin Kendrick and Prof Richard Ogden.

“It is a privilege to be awarded an internationally recognized prize. This has been especially inspiring since the paper was my first experience of publishing. This would not have been possible without the insightful guidance of my supervisors, Dr. Kobin Kendrick and Professor Richard Ogden. No words can express the deep gratitude that I have for them, for their high quality supervision and dedicated support. I am also so grateful to the University of York CASLC community and Interactional Linguistic Lab members for their encouraging feedback, and of course the Department of Linguistics for sponsoring my PhD. The award is really just the tip of the iceberg; a big part of what lies beneath it is the right guidance and support that I received during my PhD at the University of York.” - Reihaneh Afshari Saleh, Dept. Language and Linguistic Science

"The Centre for Advanced Studies in Language & Communication (CASLC) is immensely proud of Reihaneh Afshari Saleh for her outstanding achievement in being awarded the American Sociological Association's prize for the Best Graduate Student Paper Award in Ethnomethodology/Conversation Analysis. Reihaneh is a highly active and collegial member of the CASLC community, organising regular data sessions, contributing to public engagement events and supporting fellow members - all alongside conducting her path-breaking PhD work. It is a privilege and pleasure to be working with her and we congratulate her on this richly deserved recognition of her work." - Dr Merran Toerien, Director of CASLC, University of York

To read the Reihaneh Afshari Saleh’s paper in full in Research on Language and Social Interaction: Mock Aggression: Navigating Affiliation and Disaffiliation in Interaction