Dr Elizabeth Holt
Honorary Visiting Fellow

Profile

Biography

Having gained her D.Phil in Sociology at the University of York in 1991 Elizabeth began her career as a lecturer at Brunel University in Social and Political Sciences. In 1992 she became a Lecturer in Communication Arts at the University of Huddersfield, later becoming a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Literature and then Head of Linguistics and Modern Languages, until she left the
university in 2022. Recently she has undertaken employment transcribing institutional talk.

Her teaching has included conversation analysis, pragmatics and the language of humour. She has supervised research in medical interaction, broadcast talk, English language teaching, and humour and laughter in interaction.

Elizabeth conducts research in conversation analysis often focusing on informal talk, but also investigating institutional communication including call-centre interaction, police/suspect interviews, medical consultations, classroom talk, broadcast interaction and stand-up comedy. She has particular interest in longer sequences such as storytelling, complaining, troubles-talk and topic management, and those involving laughter and non-serious interaction, and has conducted extensive analysis of certain interactional devices such as reported speech and figurative expressions.

Her current research includes analysis of formulations in podcast talk, playful responses in broadcast interaction and troubles-relevant contributions to informal conversation.

Publications

Selected publications

Edited books

Glenn, P. and Holt, E. (2013). Studies of laughter in interaction, London: Bloomsbury.

Holt, E and Clift, R. (2007). Reporting talk: reported speech in interaction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Book chapters

 Holt, E. (2022). A walk on the wild side: Exploring associations across topic transitions in interaction.  In Person, R.F., Jr., Wooffitt, R., & Rae, J.P. (eds.), Bridging the gap between conversation analysis and poetics: Studies in talk-in-interaction and literature twenty-five years after Jefferson. Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9780429328930

 May, A., Holt, E, Al Saeed, N. and Ahmad Sani, N. (2021). Legal talk: Socio-pragmatic aspects of legal questioning: police interviews, prosecutorial discourse, and trial discourse. In A. May, M. Coulthard, and Sousa-Silva, R. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics (2nd edition).

 Holt, E. and O'Driscoll, J. (2021).  Participation and Footing. In Haugh, M, Kadar, D.Z., and Terkourafi, M. (eds.),The Sociopragmatic Handbook. Cambridge University Press.

 Holt, E. (2020). Conversation Analysis and Laughter. In C.A. Chapelle (ed.), The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. VitalCource Bookshelf.

 Holt, E. (2017). "This system's so slow": Negotiating sequences of laughter and laugahbles in call-centre interaction. In N. Bell (ed.), Multiple perspectives on language play, pp. 93-118.

 Holt, E. (2015). Indirect reported speech in interaction. In A. Capone, F. Kiefer and F. Lo Piparo (eds.), Indirect Reports and Pragmatics: Interdisciplinary Studies. Springer,  pp. 167-187.

 Glenn, P. and Holt, E. (2015). Laughter. In K. Tracey (ed.),The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. John Wiley and Sons Inc., pp. 1-6. DOI:10.1002/9781118611463/wbielsi028

 Glenn, P. and Holt, E. Laughter (2015). In J-O Ostman and J. Verschueren (eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1-20.

 Holt, E. (2013). ‘There’s many a true word said in jest’: Seriousness and non-seriousness in interaction. In: Glenn, P. and Holt, E. (eds.), Studies of Laughter in Interaction. London: Bloomsbury pp. 69-90.

 Holt, E. (2012). Conversation Analysis and Laughter. The Encyclopaedia of Applied Linguistics, Wiley-Blackwell. DOI: 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0207

 Johnson, A. and Holt, E. (2010). Socio-pragmatic aspects of legal talk: Police interviews and trial discourse. In: The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics. Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, pp. 21-36, 2010.

 Holt, E. (2009). Reported speech. In: The Pragmatics of Interaction. Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 190-205.

 Drew, P. and Holt, E. (2006). Figures of speech: Idiomatic expressions and the management of topic transition in conversation.  Reprinted in P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds.) Conversation Analysis Volume 3. London: Sage Publications (4 volume set, in the "Sage Benchmarks in Social Research Methods" series): chapter 29, pp. 117-149.

 Drew P. and Holt, E. (1995). The role of idioms in the organisation of topic in conversation. In M. Everaert et al (eds.), Idioms, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 117-131.

Journal articles

Holt, E. (2022). Loosely Portrayed Speech in Interaction: Constructing Multiple Complainable Utterances, in Research on Language and Social Interaction, 55:2, 146-164, DOI: 10.1080/08351813.2022.2067424

 Holt, E. (2017). Indirect Reported Speech in Storytelling: Its Position, Design and Uses. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 50 (2)  171-187.

 Holt, E. (2016). Laughter at last: Laughter and playfulness in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 100:89-102

 Holt, E. (2012). Using laugh responses to defuse complaints. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45 (4) 430-448.

 Holt, E. (2011). On the nature of “laughables”: Laughter as a response to overdone figurative phrases, Pragmatics 21 (3), pp. 393-410.

 Holt, E. (2010). The last laugh: shared laughter and topic termination. Journal of Pragmatics, 42 (6), pp. 1513-1525.

 Holt, E and Drew, P. (2005). Figurative pivots: The use of figurative expressions in pivotal topic transitions, Research on Language and Social Interaction, 38 (1), pp. 35-61.

 Holt, E. (2000). Reporting and reacting: Concurrent responses to reported speech, Research on Language and Social Interaction, 33 (4), pp. 425-454.

Holt, E. (1999). Just Gassing: An analysis of direct reported speech in a conversation between employees of a gas supply company, Text, 19 (4), pp. 505-53.

 Drew, P. and Holt, E. (1998). Figures of speech: Idiomatic expressions and the management of topic transition in conversation, Language in Society, 27 (4), pp. 495-522.

 Holt, E. (1996). Reporting on talk: The use of direct reported speech in conversation, Research on Language and Social Interaction, 29 (3) pp. 219-245.

 Holt, E. (1993). The structure of death announcements: Looking on the bright side of death, Text 13 (2) 189-212.

Drew, P. and Holt, E. (1988). Complainable matters: The use of idiomatic expressions in making complaints, Social Problems, 35, pp. 398-417.