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Gene Lerner

@glerner.bsky.social

200 followers 9 following 32 posts

My research centers on language use, body behavior and very young children insofar as these (together and separately) exhibit the formal structures and local organization of practical sequential action in interaction.

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Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Sep 4

This olde exchange concerning the place of ‘social-structural’ considerations in descriptions of the organizations of talk-in-interaction was recently brought to mind. (Perhaps the ‘obscurity’ involved was there to shield the suggestion from promiscuous application!) #EMCA

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Aug 6

Yes, it’s important to have CA work available in ASR. AJS is another important leading outlet with a recent CA paper:

Whitehead, Raymond & Bowman, (2025), "Cross-Cutting Preferences in Interactional Trajectories Toward Violence", American Journal of Sociology.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Jul 26

How about running this again, but increasing the data set by a power of 10 - and not including any data collected before 1984?
Also, would it be feasible to introduce the original Pomerantz report, rather than just a summary (and perhaps Sacks’ piece on Agreement & Contiguity)?

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Jul 21

I would be curious to see the results of another kind of instruction to AI: Reproduce the investigation that resulted in a published CA report and compare/contrast the new results with that of the original/target published report.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Jul 21

…asked them to "find a something". The results are less impressive than the conceptual acrobatics in their PhD proposals.
——
Perhaps your instruction to AI came in the wrong place (as a starting place). Sacks’ instruction would have come after seeing what he could do/notice in data sessions.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Jul 19

Here’s the whole thing:

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Jul 19

“I asked five AIs to draft PhD proposals in conversation analysis.”

I wonder what would happen if you directed them to (as Sacks did to Pomerantz) “Find a something,” instead of starting by requiring a proposal.”

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · May 20

Here’s my brief contribution to Manny’s memorial.

www.dropbox.com

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Feb 26

I should make it clear, that when I recommend these readings, it’s NOT to expose the intellectual history of our field, but because I strongly believe they furnish students with a necessary deep backdrop for doing good CA work.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Feb 26

When I offered my ‘Sacks reading list’ from memory I would have included IA Richards and Parry’s student Alfred Lord.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Feb 26

And I believe he was connected to a research proposal of Garfunkel’s on ‘Kids’ Culture’ but he told me that his relationship to that stuff was “historical.”

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Feb 26

Sacks was drawn to stuff about children, not because they were children, but because of how people wrote about them. See One Boy's Day: A Specimen Record of Behavior
by Roger Barker (& Sacks had Baker’s unpublished records too) or Children's Games in Street and Playground by the Opies.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Feb 26

Sacks was engaged in self-consciously groundbreaking methodological empirical studies. I believe he was scanning the world of scholarship for investigations that resonated in some way. Each of the readings on the list do that in very different ways.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Feb 25

Over the years, I’ve sometimes given grad students the list of reading - as I then recalled it - that Sacks gave me when we first met. Yesterday, I came across my original list, while rummaging through a file folder of my earliest lecture notes from grad school. Here is the actual list. Enjoy!

www.dropbox.com

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Feb 19

I just came across another (apparent) handout:

“Some Ways Conversation Analysts Interrogate Talk-in-Interaction”

but cannot remember the venue at which it was circulated. Nonetheless, some might find it or bits of it useful…

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/poylj...

www.dropbox.com

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Feb 10

Because CA findings are necessarily tied to and grounded in and configured by reference to participants’ situated participation, I was wondering just how broad or general purpose CA findings could be (without becoming untethered).

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/k4f6n...

www.dropbox.com

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Feb 8

And when I wrote, “There were reasons for this shift” I was also thinking of something Manny once mentioned about this: That Harvey thought it would just be too easy for people to misuse (i.e. stipulate) membership categories, rather than develop them from data.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Feb 8

Perhaps I should have made it clear that when I wrote “We didn’t know that these small sequences just kept ‘bipping along’” I was echoing what Harvey said to me, not giving my own opinion.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Feb 1

I’ve come across a clipping of Note 1 from “Everyone has to lie” which I haven’t thought about for a long time. So, I thought I’d pass it along.

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kl82h...

There were reasons for this shift. Here’s one: We didn’t know that these small sequences just kept ‘bipping along’.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Jan 29

Here’s an old note from a beginning grad student (requesting some help with a first assignment) and then my reply.

www.dropbox.com

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Jan 27

Here is an old course assignment I created, but I find it can be a useful way to proceed with the work.

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/v78l1...

www.dropbox.com

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Jan 25

I just stumbled across an old course handout. I thought I might share it here.

www.dropbox.com

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Dec 20

I’ve always wished I could refer to ‘lean’ as ‘tilt’ for the alliterative torque & tilt’ ( I think some physical therapists use ‘hinge’ which may have some technical advantage in the same way ‘torque’ has some advantage over ‘twist’ - but loses its vernacular flavor.

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Dec 20

This reminds me of a lovely paper written for Sandy Thompson’s and my Language and the Body seminar on “Laugh Leans” (unfortunately, never prepared for publication).

Gene Lerner @glerner.bsky.social · Dec 18

“…if on the other hand one figures, or guesses, or decides that …whatever humans can do can be examined to discover some way they do it, and that way would be stably describable. That is, one may alternatively take it that there is order at all points.”