Frames are for talking: Modeling interactants’ co-constructed semantic and pragmatic structures

Abstract

This paper explores the rich potential for collaboration between conversation analysis and frame semantics. It illustrates this potential by repeatedly analyzing a conversation fragment and the meaning co-constructed by its two participants. The investigation begins with a conventional sequential conversation analysis and gradually expands to include the taxonomies, categories, and frames that are established and made relevant within the interaction. This leads to the development of a framework termed interactional frame semantics. The paper argues that frame semantics and conversation analysis are highly compatible because they share central methodological concerns. Their integration addresses two major research gaps in both fields: the often implicit yet necessary reliance on semantic knowledge and cognitive processes in conversation analysis, and the neglect of interactional data and phenomena in frame semantics. Sequential analysis benefits from a rigorous frame-semantic formalization of the meanings co-constructed in conversation in at least three ways: first, it helps identify the specific semantic cues that both participants and analysts rely on to interpret interaction. Second, it reveals the local pragmatic affordances through which participants can renegotiate meaning. Third, it enables a quantitative reconstruction of the knowledge, both shared and contested, that emerges through conversational negotiation.