Report on the Dispatch to Australia: Participation and Presentation at ICCA2023
Kyoto University
Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies
Professor Akira Takada
From June 27 to July 2, 2023, I visited the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia (Photo 1) to participate in The International Conference on Conversation Analysis (ICCA2023) held at the university. I also exchanged views with the participants of ICCA2023 on the ecological future making of childrearing in contact zones between hunter-gatherers and agro-pastoralists in Africa.
ICCA is an international conference that brings together researchers in conversation analysis from around the world. For the presenters and their collaborators who studied at UCLA, the Mecca of conversation analysis, it is a valuable opportunity to engage in in-depth dialogue about the issues that are of most interest to them without having to explain each and every prerequisite technical knowledge, as well as an opportunity to warm up exchanges with old friends and acquaintances. This is also the first time for ICCA to hold such a meeting in the Southern Hemisphere and the Asia-Pacific region.
I participated in a panel titled “Exploring Social Norms across Languages”, organized by Dr. Tanya Stivers (UCLA), current president of The International Society for Conversation Analysis, the parent organization of ICCA, and her colleague, Dr. Giovanni Rossi (UCLA). The purpose of the panel was to report and share the latest findings on cross-language social norms and culture-specific norms regarding conversation openings and participant recruitment into conversations. The panel consisted of an introduction and the following four presentations (presenters are in parentheses).
1. Introduction to Exploring Social Norms across Languages (Tanya Stivers)
2. Recruitment systems around the world: A quantitative analysis (Giovanni Rossi, Jörg Zinken, Julija Baranova, Joe Blythe, Mark Dingemanse, Simeon Floyd, Kobin Kendrick, and N. J. Enfield)
3. Norms and practices that enrich storytelling among the G|ui/Gǁana of the Central Kalahari (Akira Takada)
4. Departures: the relationship between norms and preferences (Tanya Stivers, Andrew Chalfoun, and Giovanni Rossi)
5. Shifting Responsibility onto Coparticipants: Disaffiliative Accounts as an Interactional Practice (Andrew Chalfoun)
The presenters (and their collaborators) consisted of researchers from institutions around the world, including the U.S., Japan, Germany, and Australia, and the fields covered included the U.S., Italy, G|ui/G||ana in Southern Africa, Murrinhpstha in Northern Australia, Siwu in Ghana, Cha’palaa in Ecuador, and Lao in Laos. Lively discussions were held in line with the purpose of the panel. Further collaborative research related to the presentations of this panel is underway.
ICCA2023 also offered a variety of workshop opportunities, including tutorials for beginners in conversation analysis and lively discussions on new analytical methods.
In addition, Brisbane offers a variety of excellent restaurants that combine different culinary cultures from around the world, a diverse nightlife and music scene, and urban art spaces (Photos 2 and 3). Water transportation is also well developed, and I was surprised to find that I could take a water bus directly to the campus of the University of Queensland from the hotel where I stayed (Photo 4). As an anthropologist, I was very interested in this city, and it was well received by the participants who came from various parts of the world.
Unlike in Japan, where many people still wore masks, there were only a few people wearing masks in Australia, both at the conference venue and in the city. However, coronaviruses themselves seemed to be present, and the event made us think about countermeasures against infectious diseases.
The next ICCA will be held in three years. Together with the panel participants and fellow researchers who accompanied us, we pledged to work harder in our research activities and to return to this festive event to present our research.