Democracy under threat via the "empirically observable breakdown in the interactional practices that constitute democratic accountability between media and state power."
Wayne Martin Mellinger on Steve Clayman's decades of #EMCA research 👇
doingmodernity.blogspot.com/2025/11/demo...
When we ask for something big—time, effort, money—do we hedge against rejection or assume success? With @gio-rossi.bsky.social & Tanya Stivers, we find that people are incurably optimistic, even though big requests often meet resistance. Published open access in @socquarterly.bsky.social. #EMCA
Recruiting PhD students!
Join my new lab @Dartmouth Psychology! Looking for students who want to decode the science of conversation together. We'll study conversational dynamics, impression formation, and face-to-face interaction.
Feel free to reach out with questions!
Due Dec 1
bit.ly/4mSutgM
🚨 Now available in print worldwide 🌍 If access is a challenge, don't hesitate to reach out 💫 doi.org/10.1093/oso/...
🚨 new #emca paper klaxon 🚨
on-duty police regularly have to deal with recording bystanders. if they decide to open interaction, how do they do so? Uwe and I investigate 🕵🏻 in Language in Society
🔓 OA: www.cambridge.org/core/service...
Very excited to announce this faculty search at Rutgers! Looking for a wonderful new colleague to join us in Communication #EMCA #LSI @ica-lsi.bsky.social @lansi2024.bsky.social
jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/258...
I have one more presentation during #ASA2025! On Monday at 2pm come listen to me talk about how conflict between Christian Right activists and Southern Baptist missionary executives led to bureaucratic centralization that no one wanted: tinyurl.com/29czdf2q
ASR Panel Session: A5: Religion in and against the State Room: Lakeshore Ballroom West Coevolution of Religion and the State: Metaphors of God and Legitimate Domination Andrew McKinnon, University of Aberdeen Learning to Lie: Southern Baptist Missionaries Working with and against the Chinese State, 1979-1992 Andrew Chalfoun, University of California, Los Angeles Aristocratic Political Spirituality in the Islamic Republic of Iran (The Luxury Mausoleum of Khomeini: Reasons and Representations) Zahra Khoshk Jan, University of Chicago A Comparative Analysis of Sacred Stories and Their Impact in the Iranian and Nicaraguan Revolutions Jean-Pierre Reed, Southern Illinois Univ; Babak Rahimi, Univ of California San Diego; Soodeh Mansouri, Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Religion and Local Government Officials’ Attitudes toward Transgender Rights Policies in the United States Jonathan Coley, Oklahoma State Univ; Gary Adler, Penn State Univ; Eric Plutzer, Penn State Univ; Damon Mayrl, Colby College; Rebecca Sager, Loyola Marymount Univ; Gabby Gomez, Macalester College
Calling all early birds! Check out this great session at the Association for the Sociology of Religion on Sunday at 8:30. I'll be presenting a piece of my book project on covert evangelism and international missions. Hope to see you there!
If you're going to be in Chicago tomorrow (August 6) come to the Voco hotel at 11am to catch my presentation, "Typical Expectations and the Moral Order: Talcott Parsons, Harold Garfinkel, and the Sticky Problem of Meaning" at the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction @sijournal.bsky.social!
*Print publication date is July 24 in the US 🇺🇸 and October 9 elsewhere 🌍 (due to overseas stock and distribution), but the e-book 💻 is already available everywhere!
7/ Based on an extensive study of real-life interactions among speakers of Italian 🇮🇹🤌, I show that requesting is more than just asking 🙏 — it’s a nuanced form of social influence that shapes and maintains relationships 🫂
6/ Instead, how people make everyday requests reflects the dynamic and situational needs of social interaction: distinguishing individual vs shared goals 🎯, seeking help amid resistance 😤, navigating conditions for object exchange 🎁, and orchestrating collective agency 🧑🤝🧑
5/ I show that the use of request practices in informal settings 🏡 isn’t determined by sociodemographic characteristics of individuals 👥 such as age or gender, nor by the structural distance ↔️ or power dynamics ⚖️ associated with those characteristics
4/ Request practices range from directives like “Bring me a knife!” 🗣️ to questions like “Can you take over for me?” 🙏 to nonverbal cues like pointing to 👉 or reaching out for 🫱 an object 🧂
3/ The book argues that everyday cooperation relies on a system of social action ⚙️ This means the communicative tools 🛠️ a culture provides to get others to do things are woven into a coherent array of interdependent practices 🕸️
2/ Too long a history and too many people to thank, so I’ll leave the social part to the Acknowledgments and keep it academic here (emojis aside)
1/ 📘 Book alert! 🚨 After a long gestation, extensive rewriting, a complex production process, and life getting in the way, it’s finally out* ➡️ doi.org/10.1093/oso/...