The ubiquity of multilingual interaction: Self- and other-categorization in openings of service encounters as displayed through language and embodied conduct

This thesis, supervised by Elwys De Stefani (KU Leuven) and Lorenza Mondada (U. Basel), is part of the research project The first five words: Multilingual cities in Switzerland and Belgium and the grammar of language choice in public space, funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Based on a 16 hours audio and video corpus of natural encounters recorded in various service settings in Belgium (e.g., tourism offices), where unacquainted individuals engage in interaction with each other, my thesis studies how language selection relates to issues of self- and other-categorisation. These interactions occur in different languages and language varieties (e.g., Dutch, English, French) and are transcribed using the Jeffersonian (2004) and Mondadian (2018a) conventions for verbal and embodied behaviour, respectively. The method of investigation is Conversation Analysis (Sacks, 1992).

This thesis examines how self- and other-categorisation is achieved in the openings of (potentially multilingual) encounters through verbal and embodied practices. Conversational openings are a classical topic within conversation analysis (Schegloff, 1967, 1968, 1986). However, openings occurring between strangers have rarely been studied (De Stefani & Mondada 2010, 2018), especially in settings where the interactants cannot take for granted their respective language competences (Heller, 1982). In this respect, greetings are a powerful adjacency pair (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973) through which co-present individuals become participants in an interaction. They also allow interactants to provide a first language sample, consequently proposing a language for the ensuing conversation (Mondada, 2018b), which interlocutors can (dis)align with. Since participants can use greeting sequences to (re)negotiate the language(s) of the interaction, they are one of the focal points of this thesis. Although several studies have covered greetings, both in the openings of telephone (Schegloff, 1967) and face-to-face interactions (Kendon & Ferber, 1973; Duranti, 1997; Pillet-Shore, 2008), they have only rarely been examined in multilingual settings (Mondada, 2018b). Through multimodal analyses of interactional openings in service settings, I examine the reflexive relationship between the various verbal and embodied practices used by participants in these openings (e.g., single versus multiple greeting sequences; Licoppe, 2017) and participants’ categorisation of themselves and others.

Membership categorisation is another key issue of my thesis, both of oneself and of the other. Ever since Sacks’ (1992) work on the membership categorisation device, numerous conversation analysts have had a keen interest in the different categorisation practices accomplished by participants in interactions. Of considerable importance here is whether the category ascribed to an individual (e.g., gender, nationality, language group) actually matters to the participant themselves and their interactional partners (Sacks, 1992).

In addressing these questions, my thesis examines not only how unacquainted individuals negotiate the language(s) of their encounter, but also the ways in which interactants (and hence researchers) deal with language varieties (e.g., of Flemish/Dutch). Do speakers categorise differently persons speaking with a specific accent, and how is it visible in their own language practices? To what extent should researchers render (e.g., in transcriptions) differences of pronunciation, etc. pointing to regional varieties? By attending to these questions, my thesis also reflects on the epistemological dilemma of having to offer an ‘emic’ (language) description as made relevant by the participants, while having to rely on ‘etic’ descriptions of languages and their varieties.