Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

ScienceDirect
Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57
www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Subversive questions for classroom turn-taking traffic

management
Mika Ishino
Graduate School of Language and Culture, Osaka University, 1-8 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka City, Osaka 560-0043, Japan
Received 3 May 2016; received in revised form 27 May 2017; accepted 27 May 2017

Abstract
This paper uses conversation analysis to document countering actions taken by a teacher for turn-taking traffic management in the
classroom institutional settings. Adopting the notions of ‘‘parallel activity’’ and ‘‘subversion,’’ I introduce a particular teacher's accounting
practice that was used to curtail potentially disruptive activity among students. The data for the study come from 20 h of video recordings
collected from a Japanese public junior high school classroom. Analysis of the videotaped classroom interactions revealed the use of a
specific interactional practice, viz., the teacher's use of subversive questions to put an end to parallel activity among students without
forcefully asking them to desist. Since subversive questions are designed to reflect the sequential environment of the central activity and
take different forms depending on it, students who can answer teacher's subversive questions thereby evidence their previous
participation in the central activity, and hence the teacher closes the sequence with positive feedback. In contrast, students who
are not able to answer the subversive questions evidence their lack of participation in the central activity and receive reprimand. These
findings contribute to the literature on classroom interaction from the turn-taking traffic management point of view.
© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Conversation analysis; Classroom interaction; Central activity; Parallel activity; Subversive question; Accountability

1. Introduction

Up to the present, much classroom interaction research has adopted conversation analysis (CA) for understanding and
explicating various aspects of interactional phenomena in the classroom (e.g., McHoul, 1978; Mehan, 1979; Macbeth,
2000, 2002; Mushin et al., 2013). Especially in the field of second or foreign language classroom research, there have been
growing numbers of studies from a CA perspective (e.g., Lee, 2007; Mori, 2004; Seedhouse, 2004; Sert, 2013; Waring,
2008, 2009). From this perspective, talk in interaction in classroom settings is defined as institutional talk, since it is ‘‘goal-
oriented talk’’ (Drew and Heritage, 1992). The goal of classroom interaction for the teacher is to provide students with an
opportunity to learn. This learning opportunity, in the case of language learners, is the opportunity to be exposed to the
target language as much as possible and to use it as much as possible (Ellis, 1994; Krashen, 1985; Swain, 1985). Foreign
language teachers are thus required to assume responsibility for controlling classroom interaction in order to distribute such
a learning opportunity to each student. To conceptualize such a distributional structure, talk in language classroom
interaction has been the focus of many CA studies (Lerner, 1993, 1995; Markee, 2004, 2005, 2008; Waring, 2008, 2009).
The structure conceptualized in the literature has assumed a common feature a single interactional teacher-student activity
(e.g., McHoul, 1978; Mehan, 1979). This is what Schegloff (1987) called a two-party speech exchange system. In a classroom
setting, such exchange system must have the teacher as a party in an unequal power relationship where turn-taking is
concerned. In this unequal power relationship, the teacher has a greater right to initiate turn-taking, to close sequences, and
thus to organize entire sequences in the classroom (e.g., Gardner, 2012; Lerner, 1993; Macbeth, 2004). Much of the literature

E-mail address: u766729i@ecs.osaka-u.ac.jp.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.05.011
0378-2166/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
42 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57

has focused on how teachers and students participate in this single interactional activity, as if the classroom setting itself were
equipped with the two-party speech exchange system (Lerner, 1993, 1995; Mori, 2004; Waring, 2008, 2009).
Recent studies, however, have viewed the structure of the two-party speech exchange system not as the inevitable
interactional structure that will be found in the classroom institutional setting but rather as a contingent structure
maintained by seamless interactional effort among participants (Hall and Smotrova, 2013; Waring and Hruska, 2011;
Waring et al., 2016). The system is often under threat of breakage by students (Koole, 2007; Markee, 2004). Markee
(2005), for example, reported that students are capable of engaging in a co-occurring speech exchange system while
engaging in the two-party speech exchange system involving the teacher. Similarly, Koole (2007) reported that students
often engage in their own activity and the two-party speech exchange system simultaneously.
Some studies have indicated that such students’ departures from the teacher-initiated two-party speech exchange
system actually create learning opportunities (e.g., Jacknick, 2011; Waring, 2009, 2011). For example, Jacknick (2011)
highlights students’ ability to control their turn taking at activity transition points. She found that such student initiation
creates a further interactional space for learning opportunities. Waring (2009) analyzed how such student initiation is
organized with co-participants and promotes their learning. She found that student initiation was organized by the
student's self-selected turn immediately after a teacher-initiated sequence (Waring, 2011). One common feature of the
student initiation for learning in these studies is that the student initiative must be accomplished with the involvement of the
teachers. For example, both Jacknick (2011) and Waring (2011) observed that such a student initiative turn occurs at a
transition point in the teacher-initiated two-party speech exchange system. Therefore, the student initiation must be
attentive to the teacher's involvement. With the involvement of their teachers, student initiation comes to be treated as a
learning-oriented activity furthering the institutional goals of the classroom (Jacknick, 2011; Waring, 2011).
However, without the involvement of teachers, such students’ departures from the teacher-initiated two-party speech
exchange system tend not to be treated as learning-oriented activities, and thus these activities can even be defined as
disruptive to the institutional classroom goal. For example, if student X starts to chat with student Y, overlapping with their
teacher's talk, X and Y's departure from the teacher-initiated two-party speech exchange system observably fails to
involve their teacher as a party. In such a case, X and Y miss information provided by the teacher in the simultaneous talk,
and hence, they can be disrupting their learning opportunities. Furthermore, in the foreign language classroom, such
student--student talk tends to be organized in the students’ first language (Broner, 2000; Tarone and Swain, 1995). In such
a case, the students momentarily lose their opportunity to be exposed to the target language, given that language learning
theory claims that learners must be exposed to the target language as much as possible (Ellis, 1994; Krashen, 1985;
Swain, 1985). Therefore, such student departures from the teacher-oriented two-party-speech exchange system have the
potential to disrupt their learning opportunity. As teachers are in charge of creating students’ learning opportunities
(Macbeth, 2000, 2004), they are obliged to put an end to such students’ departures from the two-party speech exchange
system because of its potential disruptiveness of the institutional goal.
The problem is that teachers cannot always identify whether the students’ departure from the two-party speech
exchange system is oriented toward disruption or toward the creation of learning opportunities. If the teacher simply puts
an end to all uniquely student--student talk, that teacher could possibly disrupt learning opportunities for those students.
As many classroom management studies have pointed out (e.g., Doyle, 1986, 1990; Manke, 1997), such asymmetric
power use by the teacher fails to establish a positive social relationship between the teacher and the students. In the
absence of accountability, unilateral intervention on the part of the teacher would create an undesirable distance between
the teacher and the students. This kind of issue needs to be further examined as one of the challenging practices of
‘classroom turn-taking traffic’ management (Lauzon and Berger, 2015).
Therefore, in this paper, I examine a particular teacher's accounting practice for putting an end to students’ potentially
disruptive activity. The data for this study come from 20 classroom hours of video recordings collected in a Japanese
public junior high school. Adopting the notions of ‘‘parallel activity’’ (Koole, 2007) and ‘‘subversion’’ (Edwards, 1995;
Sacks, 1992), I will introduce recurrent interactional phenomena that can be identified as teacher's accounting practice
used to put an end to students’ potentially disruptive activities. The study aims to contribute to the literature on classroom
interaction and teacher education from the viewpoint of classroom turn-taking traffic management.

2. Parallel activity

In order to define students’ potentially disruptive activity in this study, I will further elaborate on Koole's (2007) definition of
‘‘parallel activity’’ versus ‘‘central activity’’ and contrast it with Markee's (2005) definition of ‘‘off-task talk’’ versus ‘‘on-task talk.’’
Markee (2005:197) characterizes activities between students in classroom interaction as ‘‘on-task’’ and ‘‘off-task’’ talk.
He defines on-task talk as interaction related to whatever topic(s) teachers designate as the current class agenda. Off-task
talk, in contrast, is any interaction that is not on-task, leading naturally to the question of what on-task talk is in the first place.
Koole (2007) also characterizes two types of students’ classroom activities as ‘‘central activity’’ and ‘‘parallel activity.’’
The central activity is, in principle, organized by a teacher with one or more students and is observed by all participants in
 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57 43

the classroom. Koole (2007:497) states, ‘‘the unifying activity to which all students and the teacher orient, and in which
they can therefore be said to be participants in whatever participant role, is the activity in which the teacher is involved.
This is why this activity can be correctly called the central activity of classroom interaction.’’ As opposed to the central
activity, the organization of a parallel activity is basically initiated by one or more students without the teacher. Students
working on their own activity such as sleeping or talking to themselves are examples of parallel activities. Since they occur
simultaneously with the central activity, such activities are defined as ‘‘parallel activity’’ and, as the teacher is engaged in
the central activity, cannot include the teacher as a participant.
Although both Markee (2005) and Koole (2007) carefully highlight students’ ability to draw on multiple participant
frameworks concurrently, Koole's (2007) definition of parallel activity is a more relevant concept for understanding student
disruptiveness of the classroom institutional goal. While ‘‘off-task talk’’ (Markee, 2005) does not have to be organized
simultaneously with the teacher's talk, ‘‘parallel activity’’ (Koole, 2007) is by definition simultaneous to the teacher-initiated-
two-party speech exchange system (the central activity). This implies that whenever parallel activity occurs, it conflicts with
the teacher's talk. Since it is the teachers’ responsibility to create learning opportunities for students, they need to make sure
that the students are paying attention. Even if students’ parallel activity orients to a topic also being covered in the teachers’
instruction (that is, if it is on-task talk), it can still be disruptive, as it inevitably overlaps with the teacher's turn at the moment
of interaction. Therefore, the teacher should treat students’ parallel activity as something to be curtailed in order to secure
the classroom institutional goal, regardless of whether it is an instance of on-task or off-task talk.
Therefore, the current study adopts Koole's (2007) definition of parallel activity as referring to any students’ activity
organized simultaneously with a teacher-initiated two-party speech exchange system and hence prone to being treated
as disruptive by the teacher even if it is actually on-task talk. In accordance with this definition of parallel activity, the study
also adopts a definition of central activity to refer to any activity that features a teacher-initiated two-party speech
exchange system.
Excerpt 1-1 below illustrates an explicit example of an activity in which a student is working for himself, which this paper
classifies as a parallel activity.

Excerpt 1-1: What we are going to do next

[TD$INLE]
44 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57

[TD$INLE]

Line 1 in Excerpt 1 depicts the ending of the lesson, and the teacher is making a short announcement about what they
are going to do in the next lesson. From line 1 to line 4 the school bell rings, marking the end of the lesson period. In line 2,
student K starts to wave his right hand toward the camera, and the teacher eventually turns his head and glances at K in
line 3. Simultaneously, K quickly puts his right hand down. When the teacher takes his eyes off K in line 4, K again starts
waving his right hand toward the camera.
K's activity from lines 2 to 4 can be identified as an activity in which he is working for himself, since there is no human party
that K is interacting with. As it appears most likely a ‘‘bye-bye’’ gesture to the camera, K's action of waving his hand is oriented to
the central activity, which is the teacher's announcement of the closing of the lesson. This activity of K's working for himself co-
occurs with the central activity. Therefore, the activity of K's working for himself in Excerpt 1 can be defined as a parallel activity.
I argue that such a student's parallel activity can potentially become a disruption of the institutional goal. For example,
in the case of Excerpt 1 above, as K was engaging in his parallel activity, he was possibly missing what the teacher was
announcing in the central activity. In addition, K's parallel activity might have drawn the other students’ attention rather
than the teacher's announcement in the central activity. In such a case, other students might also have missed information
coming from the teacher. For these reasons, K's parallel activity has the potential to disrupt the other students’ learning
opportunities as well as his own. Therefore, teachers might want to put an end to potentially disruptive activity like K's for
the sake of maintaining the classroom institutional goal.

3. Accountability for putting an end to a parallel activity

As mentioned earlier, where accountability is concerned, putting an end to a parallel activity is not an easy action for
teachers in classroom settings (Heritage, 1988; Mondada, 2011; Seedhouse, 2004). As Heritage (1988) has stated, the
members of the social world treat one another as morally and socially accountable for their actions; in the same way, when
teachers need to put an end to a parallel activity, their actions need to be socially accountable to the students, including those
who are engaging in the parallel activity. Since the parallel activity is often organized with an orientation toward the central
activity, the activity itself does not totally lack an orientation to the teacher's agenda, and thus any explicit harm that their
activity does to the goal of the ongoing lesson is invisible. If a parallel activity is not visibly disruptive to the institutional
classroom goal, it is difficult for teachers to put an end to that activity accountable to the students.
 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57 45

For example, in Excerpt 1 above, K's hand waving toward the camera (e.g., his goodbye gesture in line 2) is indeed
oriented to the teacher's lesson closing announcement. In this case, it would be difficult for the teacher to forcefully stop K's
parallel activity unless the activity were proven harmful for K's learning opportunity, since K could be capable of fully engaging
in both activities. In fact, Markee (2005) reported that two undergraduate students in an ESL classroom skillfully engaged in
their off-task talk at the same time as their teacher and other students’ on-task talk. In the same way, student K in Excerpt 1
might not miss any information that the teacher was announcing, as he might be capable of fully engaging in both activities. In
this case, if the teacher forcefully put an end to the K's parallel activity, the teacher might fail to establish accountability for his
unilateral intervention, as K's parallel activity is not yet an explicit breach of their shared institutional goal. Therefore, where
accountability is concerned, teachers need tactics to counter parallel activity that is potentially disruptive.
To the best of my knowledge, however, how teachers counter students’ parallel activity with their orientation to
accountability has not yet been reported in the literature. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to the literature on
classroom interaction by reporting a particular teacher practice that makes the teacher's intervention of students’ parallel
activity socially accountable at the time of classroom interaction. Taking on the notion of ‘‘subversion’’ (Sacks, 1992;
Edwards, 1995), I have defined my analytic findings of the teacher's accounting practice as ‘‘teacher's subversive
question.’’ In the next section, I will briefly discuss the background of the data used in this study.

4. Data

The data consist of 20 lesson hours of video recordings in EFL classrooms in a public junior high school in Japan. The
school is located in a suburban area in a large city in western Japan. The lesson was taught by a male with 30 years of
experience. Japanese was the first language of the teacher and his students. At the time of the recordings, the teacher was
teaching four different classes. All the recorded classes were for the third-grade students’ English language lesson; the
students were between 14 and 15 years of age. Each class consisted of 35 to 40 students, and each lesson lasted 50 min.
In reviewing the videos and transcripts, I identified instances in the instruction of the whole class in which there were
observable parallel activities on the part of students and, on the part of the teacher, subversive questions (see section 5) to
counter the students’ potentially disruptive activity. The 37 observed instances in the data were analyzed from the
perspective of CA (Sacks et al., 1974) and transcribed using a notation system developed by Jefferson (2004), with
modifications to accommodate two languages, English and Japanese, and non-verbal information.

5. Subversive questions

Detailed analysis of the data revealed a particular type of teacher-initiated sequence organization that counters parallel
activity on the part of students. This practice has the feature of a ‘‘subversion’’ (Edwards, 1995; Sacks, 1992) and a
question initiation format (e.g. Heritage, 1984; Waring, 2008). Subversion is the invisible violation of people's expectations
based on social norms (Sacks, 1992:254). These social norms are shaped by a pair of ‘‘role-related actions’’ (Sacks,
1992), such as ‘‘the baby cried and the mommy picked it up’’, which are related by a certain conventional understanding.
As Sacks (1992:254) stated, ‘‘we do not have to know in the first instance where the mommy was when the baby cried,
how it happened to come on the scene or anything else,’’ since because of the social norms, people are able to
understand each other's actions without such detailed reasoning. Subversion, then, refers to an action that invisibly
violates such a norm. As Sacks (1992:254) explained, ‘‘when mommies are actually not picking up their babies or when a
woman walks away from a supermarket with the baby carriage filled with a baby that's not hers, that's the sort of thing I’m
talking about with ‘subversion’. It's not seeable.’’
In my data, I found that the teacher subversively performs the role-related action of asking an ‘‘exam question’’
(Heritage, 1984) accompanied by ‘‘teacher nomination’’ (Waring, 2008), that is, targeting of the particular student who is
engaging in the parallel activity. Responding to the teacher's exam question, the student accordingly stops engaging in
the parallel activity. The result is that by initiating the exam question with the student who is engaging in the parallel
activity, the teacher actually puts an end to that student's parallel activity. I have defined this type of teacher-initiated exam
question as a ‘‘subversive question,’’ as it enables the teacher to stop students’ parallel activity without forcefully asking
them to do so, given insufficient evidence of the disruptiveness of the activity. Since the subversive question is designed to
reflect and depend on the sequential environment of the central activity, students who are able to answer the teacher's
subversive questions thereby prove their previous participation in the central activity, and hence the teacher closes the
sequence with positive feedback. In contrast, students who are not able to answer the subversive questions are not able to
prove their previous engagement in the central activity; accordingly, the teacher's punishment or reprimand follows.
I will demonstrate this particular type of teacher's practice with three explicit cases. The first two cases are the
examples in which subversive questions get answers from the students, and positive feedback follows. The last case is an
example in which the subversive question does not get the answer from the student, and punishment follows.
46 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57

5.1. Subversive question followed by student answer

Excerpt 1-2 is the first example of the case in which the student's answer follows the subversive question. This excerpt
is a continuation of Excerpt 1-1.
Excerpt 1-2: What we are going to do next

[TD$INLE]

[TD$INLE]

In Excerpt 1-2, the teacher is about to announce the next lesson's agenda to the whole class, and student K is engaging
in the parallel activity. In line 6, having cut off the announcement, the teacher directs his gaze toward K (see Fig. 5) and then
calls on K. Subsequently, K quits his parallel activity and responds ‘‘hai (yes)’’ in line 8. In line 9, the teacher nominates K
with rephrasing K's name from ‘‘kashimoto-kun (Mr. Kashimoto)’’ to ‘‘te o futteru kashimoto-kun (Mr. Kashimoto who is
waving his hand).’’ After K's short silence in line 10, the teacher asks K in line 11 what they are going to do in the next lesson.
The teacher's initiation of a subversive question is identifiable in lines 6--11. The question can be unanswerable for K,
as the agenda for the next lesson has not yet been announced. However, asking a question itself is a role-related action
and still a relevant action for the teacher to do, as he has the right to ask questions of students in classroom institutional
settings (Gardner, 2012). Accordingly, K stops his parallel activity and looks at the teacher from lines 8 to 10. The teacher's
subversive question to K has thus worked to counter K's parallel activity at this time.
Therefore, what the teacher is doing here with initiating exam question with K can be interpreted as not soliciting
information from K but countering K's parallel activity. The teacher's exam question in line 11 has subversively covered the
 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57 47

fact that he actually countered K's parallel activity and dragged K into the central activity. Thus, the teacher's question in
line 11 is sequentially designed as a subversive question.
In addition, the teacher's subversive question at this point gets an interesting sequential consequence in K's surprising
response. Excerpt 1-3 shows the following sequence.
Excerpt 1-3: What we are going to do next

[TD$INLE]

[TD$INLE]

In line 12, surprisingly, K is somehow able to answer the teacher's exam question without delay. The teacher treated
K's answer as correct information in line13. In line 14, the teacher further expands the sequence by asking an additional
48 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57

exam question in line 14. Again, K answers the question without delay. Finally, the teacher gives K positive feedback ‘‘yoi
desu ne (you are good),’’ showing his right palm (see Fig. 7). After this sequence closing third (Schegloff, 2007) in line 16,
the teacher gets back to the base sequence, which was the announcement of the next lesson's agenda to the entire class.
Excerpt 2 below shows a second example of teacher's subversive questions that are also correctly answered by the
student. In this example, the students in the third grade are working in pairs for the task of reciting 10 English sentences in
their textbooks. The first group of students is reciting a sentence; their partners in the second group are listening to the first
group's recitation carefully. The teacher instructs the students when to switch turns and which sentence they should work on
in each turn.
Excerpt 2. Which number will we do?

[TD$INLE]
 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57 49

[TD$INLE]

From lines 1 to 4, the teacher announces the sentence that students will have to work on at the next role-switch. In line
4, overlapping with the teacher's utterance of ‘‘agari masse: (goes up),’’ student A produces his utterance ‘‘ha:majide:jyu
ban kara ya (wow seriously from number ten):’’ This turn by A invites student Y into the parallel activity. Y responds to A's
utterance by saying ‘‘jyu:ban ka (number ten huh)’’ in line 6. In the same line, the teacher's eye gaze was fixed on student
Y. Subsequently, the teacher nominates Y in line 7, and initiates an exam question to Y by asking which number the
students will have to work on next. The teacher treats Y's utterance ‘‘eh? (what?)’’ in line 9 as an ‘‘open-class repair
initiation’’ (Drew, 1997) as he repairs his previous question format from ‘‘yaru (do)’’ to ‘‘sta:to suru (do start)?’’ in line 11.
Without delay, Y responds to the exam question by answering ‘‘jyuban (number ten)’’ in line 12. Accordingly, the teacher
gives Y positive feedback ‘‘yes’’ in line 13 as a sequence closing third (Schegloff, 2007), and then, after the short pause in
line 14, he gets back to instructing the whole class in line 15.
The teacher's question observed in line 8 is identified as a subversive question. Even though the teacher was in the
middle of instruction in lines 1--4, he suddenly cuts off the instruction and initiates an exam question by nominating Y in line
7. As discussed in the previous section, nominating a student to initiate a question is one of the teacher's role-related
actions, so nominating Y in line 7 and initiating a question with him in line 8 are both role-related actions for the teacher.
Therefore, even though those questions are inserted into the middle of the instruction sequence, the actions are not
completely alien to the two participants. Since Y talks loudly enough to A to be heard in the video recording data and
partially overlaps with the teacher's instruction in line 4, the teacher might treat Y's parallel activity as an obstacle for the
central activity at this moment. However, Y responds correctly to the teacher's exam question in line 12 and hence shows
that he did not miss information from the central activity. Accordingly, the teacher closes this exam question sequence with
minimal feedback and does not initiate expansion as he quickly gets back to the base sequence in line 15. By organizing
this sequence, the teacher makes A and Y's parallel activity stop and ensures that they are fully engaging in the central
activity. As the teacher's exam question in line 8 subversively covers his countering of Y and A's parallel activity, the exam
question in line 8 is characterized as a subversive question.
As the above excerpts show, the teacher uses exam questions tactically as a means to put an end to the students’
parallel activities. Both initiations of exam-question sequences in Excerpt 1-2 and Excerpt 2 are designed in relation to the
previous instruction in the central activity. The exam question related to the immediate instructional topic is quite relevant
to confirming the students’ understanding of the teacher-centered instruction, and again the question is a role-related
action that instructors generally perform in their institutional settings. Therefore, the exam questions in those excerpts
subversively cover the teacher's second action, which is to counter the parallel activity by inviting the students who were
engaging in that activity into the central activity, at the same time accountably.
In this sense, even if the teacher mistakenly interprets the students’ parallel activities as disruptive and forcefully puts
an end to them, the subversive question still serves to make the teacher's action accountable in the classroom community,
as the teacher is able to put an end to the activity without displaying his misinterpretation. As things happened, student Y in
excerpt 2 did not miss the information in the central activity and student K in Excerpt 1 even knew the information that was
not given in the previous central activity. Hence the teacher, by giving the students positive feedback (line 16 in Excerpt 1-
3 for student K and line 13 in Excerpt 2 for student Y), quickly closed the sequence which was opened by his subversive
question. If the teacher had simply put an end to the students’ activity or called them out because of their parallel activity,
then both students K and Y might have resisted the teacher's act or at least felt uncomfortable with the teacher's sanction,
since they were actually orienting to the central activity to some extent.
50 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57

Therefore, by employing subversive questions, the teacher was able to put an end to the student's parallel activity
without revealing his misinterpretation to them. The sequence organization practices with the subversive questions in
Excerpts 1-2 and 2 enable the teacher to make his actions accountable in the classroom community.

5.2. Subversive question not followed by student answer

The analysis in this section illustrates how the teacher organizes a sequence when the student does not give an
answer to the subversive question. Before demonstrating this case, I would like to give a brief explanation of the lesson
context in Excerpt 3. The lesson was in the middle of the dictogloss activity. The protocol of this activity is as follows: First,
students watch a short English movie on the screen (see Z in Fig. 11), and stand by their desks. Then the teacher initiates
an exam question sequence with the students. All the questions are related to the movie that the students have just
watched. When the students are ready to answer, they need to raise their hands to be nominated by the teacher as an
answerer of the question. Then, if a student gets positive feedback from the teacher, the student and the student's group
members are allowed to sit down. All the students are told to speak only English during this activity.
Excerpt 3-1 below shows the recurrent sequence patterns of this activity.
Excerpt 3-1: repair means

In line 1, the teacher asks the students for the Japanese translation of ‘‘repair.’’ As student X raises his right hand in line
2, the teacher selects X by saying ‘‘okay’’ while pointing to X in line 3. After X has responded in line 5, the teacher
 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57 51

immediately gives positive feedback to X with a repetition of what X said in line 5. Again in line 8, the teacher uses ‘‘okay’’
to notify student X's group members that they are all allowed to have a seat. Once the teacher lets a student sit down, the
student does not have to answer further questions. Therefore, as the activity goes on, fewer students remain standing.
As shown in line 3, when the teacher selects X as a respondent to the exam question, he only says ‘‘okay’’ and points to
X with his right hand. In most cases in this lesson, the teacher's token of ‘‘okay’’ or ‘‘hai’’ (here conveying ‘‘please’’ in
Japanese) with pointing to a certain student functions as initiating the response to the student.
Now, I will use Excerpt 3-2 to illustrate a case in which the student is not able to answer the question and punishment by
the teacher follows. This excerpt comes a few minutes after Excerpt 3-1.
Excerpt 3-2: who repaired what?

[TD$INLE]
52 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57

[TD$INLE]

[TD$INLE]

In the prior to line 1 in this Excerpt, the teacher initiated an exam question, which was ‘‘Who repaired what?’’ The
correct answer for the question in this context was ‘‘Takeshi's father repaired Takeshi's bike’’. In line 1, the teacher calls on
student H as an answerer, and then H's response begins in line 5. However, before H's response, student F invites student
Y to a parallel activity by saying ‘‘bicycle is ()’’ in line 4. Responding to F's invitation, Y says ‘‘chain ()’’ in line 5. This turn by
Y noticeably overlaps with H's turn in line 5. As soon as Y's turn in line 5 is finished, M joins the parallel activity by saying
‘‘eh (what)?’’ in Japanese in line 6. As we can see from M's turn in line 6 and Y's audible utterance in line 8, the language
serving as the medium of the parallel activity is now their native language (Japanese). In line 12, H finally finishes
producing her answer to the teacher's question as she and the teacher collaboratively produce the English sentence
‘‘Takeshi's father repaired Takeshi's bike’’ from lines 3 to 12. Accordingly, the teacher gives H positive feedback, ‘‘okay,’’
[(Fig._17)TD$IG] M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57 53

Fig. 17. line 8 ‘‘tte ya (it's not)’’.

as a third-turn evaluation in line 13. Immediately after this feedback, the teacher starts to call on Y in line 14. After receiving
Y's gaze toward him in line 15, the teacher nominates Y by her name and initiates a subversive question by saying ‘‘hai
(please)’’ in line 16. As mentioned earlier with regard to Excerpt 3-1, this teacher's ‘‘hai’’ is a format that is recognizable to
all the students as a question initiation in this context. However, there is a 2-s pause in line 17, and finally Y displays the
unexpected response ‘‘eh?’’ (Hayashi, 2009) in line 18. In line 19, the teacher returns to the previous talk with H and allows
H and her group members to sit down as H has already answered and received positive feedback from the teacher. One of
the members of H's group, student B, thus expresses his gratitude by saying ‘‘yoosha (yay)’’ in the next line. In line 21, the
teacher punishes Y by ordering her to stand up by saying ‘‘tattore (stand up)’’. Until this moment, Y was sitting down
because she had already given her answer in the beginning part of this lesson activity. The teacher's order in line 21 thus
functions as punishment for Y for not being able to respond to the teacher's action initiation ‘‘hai’’’ in line 16. In line 23, as
the teacher produces transitional markers such as ‘‘Yoshi (good in Japanese)’’, ‘‘hai (okay in Japanese)’’ and ‘‘okay’’
(Beach, 1993, 1995) in English, the punishment in line 21 also functions as a sequence-closing third to the exam question
sequence with Y from lines 14 to 21.
Here, the teacher's ‘‘subversive question’’ in line 14 can also be characterized as an action that composes the teacher's
accounting practice of the punishment of Y. As mentioned earlier in this section, the student's name +‘‘hai’’ is the recurring
action initiation format in this context. This open class action initiation format presumes the students’ full engagement in
the previous sequential environment. However, as the video recording has captured, Y did not seem to be fully engaging
in the previous sequential environment of the central activity from lines 3 to 13. The teacher's gaze noticeably shifted from
H to Y in line 8, as shown in Fig. 17.1
Even though Y did not seem to be fully engaging in the previous central activity and the teacher's eye gaze attended to
it, the teacher treated Y as a participant who had been fully engaging in the central activity by perusing a response with
open class format in line 14. In contrast to X in Excerpt 3-1, this teacher's open class question format makes it difficult for Y
to respond with any words, as she was not fully engaging in the previous sequential environment of the central activity.
Consequentially, she maintained a long silence in line 19 and produced her unexpected response in line 18.
On this account, the two types of subversion are layered on the teacher's subversive nomination in line 16.2 The first
one is that the teacher actually put an end to the student's parallel activity by initiating the question to Y. The second
subversion is that the teacher actually induced Y's claims of insufficient knowledge (CIK) (Sert and Walsh, 2013) by
formulating the initiation in an open-class action initiation format. By the CIK from line 17 to line 18, Y displayed her
previous disengagement from the central activity. This evidence of Y's disengagement indicates her disrespect for H's
contribution to the classroom institutional goal, since H previously responded to the teacher's initial question ‘‘Who
repaired what?’’ by her turns from lines 5 to 12. Therefore, the teacher's punishment of Y in line 21 was presented as a
reasonable sanction for the rest of the classroom participants. As the other students’ laughter in line 24 shows, the
punishment of Y in line 21 was presented as accountable for the classroom community. Therefore, the teacher's
subversive question here functioned as a course of action for an accounting of the punishment to Y.

6. Discussion and conclusion

This paper has reported a particular type of teacher-initiated sequence organization practice that contributes to classroom
turn-taking traffic management. As the practice features the specific actions of ‘‘subversion’’ (Edwards, 1995; Sacks, 1992)
and ‘‘exam questions’’ (Heritage, 1984) with ‘‘teacher-nomination’’ (Waring, 2008), I refer to it as the practice of ‘‘subversive

1
Fig. 17 is a processed version of the same picture as Fig. 14.
2
I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this layered subversion.
[(Fig._18)TD$IG]
54 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57

Fig. 18. Turn-taking traffic management practice with the ‘‘subversive questions’’.

question.’’ By deploying subversive questions, the teacher invites students who were engaging in a parallel activity to the
central activity and at the same time to put an end to their parallel activities. The interactional consequences of implementing
subversive questions support the teacher's turn-taking traffic management in the institutional setting of the classroom.
In Fig. 18, I summarize this particular practice of teacher-initiated sequence organization wherein a subversive
question is implemented.
First, observable in the video recordings was the teacher's eye gaze toward the student(s) who engaged in a parallel
activity, as we saw in Fig. 5 for Excerpt 1-2, Fig. 9 for Excerpt 2, and Fig. 17 for Excerpt 3-2. Second, the student(s)
continued to engage in the parallel activity, and the teacher continued initiation of the central activity with other students.
Third, the teacher suddenly called on the student(s) engaged in parallel activity. Fourth, the student(s) acknowledged the
teacher's calling on. Fifth, the teacher initiated an exam question with the nomination of the student. If the student was able
to answer the question, there was minimal positive feedback from the teacher (e.g., Excerpt 2). If not, there was
punishment (e.g., Excerpt 3-2).
As each Excerpt shows, when the teacher initiates a subversive question to a student who is engaging in a parallel
activity, the student has little choice but to abandon the parallel activity in order to be a member of the teacher-initiated two-
party speech exchange system. As the literature points out (Koole, 2007; Markee, 2005), this interactional consequence
evidences that classroom participants normatively orient toward the teacher-initiated two-party speech exchange system
as the central activity.
By implementing the subversive question, the teacher also warrants his negative interpretation of the students’ parallel
activity. As we saw in Excerpts 1-3 and 2, when students give a correct answer to the teacher's subversive question, the
teacher closes the sequence quickly by giving them minimal positive feedback. In such cases, the teacher has countered
the student's parallel activity without displaying his negative interpretation to the students. On the other hand, in the case
of Excerpt 3, the teacher's subversive question is difficult for student Y to answer, and hence Y has to publicly display her
previous disengagement from the central activity. This provides the teacher with a reasonable account for Y's punishment
in the classroom community. In this case, the teacher is able to reduce the potential risk of exploiting the asymmetric
power relationship (e.g., Doyle, 1990; Manke, 1997) by creating a reason for the punishment of Y and in that sense being
accountable.
Demonstrating one implication of this study, I would like to make a comment on the teacher's authority vis-à-vis student
initiation of parallel activities. The teacher in this study is endowed with the authority to define whether the students’
parallel activity is potentially disruptive. This authority is almost dangerously equipped with the teacher.3 That is, since the
teacher's authority over classroom participants is quite comprehensive (Manke, 1997), the teacher can easily judge any
student's parallel activity to be disruptive even if the activity is fully oriented to the learning opportunity. Thus, the exam
question can also be a final defensive opportunity for students to demonstrate that they are paying attention to the teacher.
For example, the students in Excerpts 1-3 and 2 successfully utilized the exam question to demonstrate their previous

3
I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this issue.
 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57 55

engagement in the central activity. By answering the exam question, they dispelled the teacher's negative interpretation of
their previous activity and got positive feedback from the teacher. In contrast, student Y in Excerpt 3-2 could not answer
the teacher's exam question even though her parallel activity was fully oriented to her learning opportunity as she was
exchanging opinions on the teacher's question with her peers. Despite this, the teacher sanctioned Y, since she failed to
demonstrate her engagement in the central activity at the moment of the teacher's subversive question. Thus, by using the
subversive question, the teacher disrupted Y's learning opportunity even though the teacher's institutional responsibility
was to preserve students’ learning opportunities.
However, maintaining learning opportunities for every student is a big challenge for a teacher in a large-classroom
context like those investigated in the present study. Each classroom represented in this data consisted of 35--40 teenage
students, all of whom are participants of the turn-taking system. Although the students’ departure from the teacher-
initiated two-party speech exchange system is arguably essential for them to create their own learning spaces (Jacknick,
2011; Waring, 2009, 2011), respecting such student-initiation sometimes causes disruption to the turn-taking traffic
management.
For example, just like in other language classrooms in the literature (Broner, 2000; Tarone and Swain, 1995), Y
and her peers eventually organized their parallel activity in their native language (e.g., line 6 and following lines in
Excerpt 3-2). Y's utterance noticeably overlapped with H's utterance in the central activity (e.g., lines 5, 8, and 10 in
Excerpt 3-2). Those parallel activities by Y could have been disruptive for other students who wanted to maintain their
exposure to the target language (English) and to listen to H's response to the teacher's question. In such a case, the
teacher was obliged to put an end to Y's parallel activity even though Y was fully oriented to her own learning
opportunity. The teacher's sanction thus aimed to maintain learning opportunities for the majority of the classroom
participants.
Therefore, as in this study, teachers will face the tension between maintaining learning opportunities (Macbeth, 2000,
2004) for classroom members as a whole and respecting learning opportunities for individual students, such as Y and her
peers in Excerpt 3-2. This issue needs to be further investigated in future studies of classroom turn-taking traffic
management.

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science [KAKENHI Grant Number 15J10750].

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this study was presented at the Doctoral student conference on Conversation Analysis 2016 at
Monash University. I am grateful for the insightful comments from all CA researchers who attended the conference. I am
also grateful to the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions and insightful comments, which
truly improve the manuscript and analysis.
Finally, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Yusuke Okada, for his extensive input and aid in developing ideas for
this paper and his generous support throughout my research project.

Appendix A. Transcription conventions and abbreviations

Transcription conventions

(0.0) Time gap in tenths of a second

(.) Brief time gap less than 0.1 s
= ‘‘Latched’’ utterances
[ The beginning of overlapped talk
() Unintelligible stretch or inaudible words
(()) Transcriber's description of non-vocal actions
-- Cut off
: Elongated sound
? Rising intonation
↑ Marked rise of following segment
↓ Marked fall of following segment
>< Increased speed
<> Decreased speed
56 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57

Appendix A (Continued )
£ words £ Smiley or jokey voice
italic words Japanese
bold words English translation
hhh Aspiration (exhalation)
Abbreviations

CP Copula
TP Topic marker
IP Interactional particle
LK Linking particle
OP Direct object particle
FP Final particle
O Object marker
Q Question marker
TL Title

References

Beach, Wayne A., 1993. Transitional regularities for ‘‘casual’’ ‘‘Okay’’ usages. J. Pragmat. 19 (4), 325--352.
Beach, Wayne A., 1995. Preserving and constraining options: ‘‘Okays’’ and ‘‘official’’ priorities in medical interviews. In: The Talk of the Clinic:
Explorations in the Analysis of Medical and Therapeutic Discourse, pp. 259--289.
Broner, Maggie Araoz, 2000. Impact of interlocutor and task on first and second language use in a Spanish immersion program (Ph.D.
dissertation). University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Doyle, Walter, 1986. Classroom organisation and management. In: Wittrock, M.C. (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching. Macmillan, New
York, pp. 392--431.
Doyle, Walter, 1990. Classroom management techniques. In: Moles, O.C. (Ed.), Student Discipline Strategies: Research and Practice. State
University of New York Press, New York, pp. 113--127.
Drew, Paul, 1997. ‘Open’ class repair initiators in response to sequential sources of troubles in conversation. J. Pragmat. 28 (1), 69--101.
Drew, Paul, Heritage, John, 1992. Talk at Work. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Edwards, Derek, 1995. Sacks and psychology. Theory Psychol. 5 (4), 579--596.
Ellis, Rod, 1994. The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Gardner, Rod, 2012. Conversation analysis in the classroom. In: Sidnell, J., Tanya, S. (Eds.), The Handbook of Conversation Analysis. Wiley-
Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 593--611.
Hall, Joan Kelly, Tetyana, Smotrova, 2013. Teacher self-talk: interactional resource for managing instruction and eliciting empathy. J. Pragmat. 47
(1), 75--92.
Hayashi, Makoto, 2009. Marking a noticing of departure in talk: eh-prefaced turns in Japanese conversation. J. Pragmat. 41 (10), 2100--2129.
Heritage, John, 1984. Conversation analysis, garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Polity.
Heritage, John, 1988. Explanations as accounts: a conversation analytic perspective. In: Charles, Antaki (Ed.), Analyzing Lay Explanation:
A Case Book of Methods. Sage, London, pp. 127--144.
Jacknick, C.M., 2011. Breaking in is hard to do: how students negotiate classroom activity shifts. Classr. Discourse 2 (1), 20--38.
Jefferson, Gail, 2004. Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. Pragmat. Beyond New Ser. 125, 13--34.
Koole, Tom, 2007. Parallel activities in the classroom. Lang. Educ. 21 (6), 487--501.
Krashen, Stephen D., 1985. The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications. Longman, London.
Lauzon, Virginie Fasel, Berger, Evelyne, 2015. The multimodal organization of speaker selection in classroom interaction. Linguist. Educ. 31,
14--29.
Lee, Yo-An, 2007. Third turn position in teacher talk: contingency and the work of teaching. J. Pragmat. 39 (6), 1204--1230.
Lerner, Gene H., 1993. Collectivities in action: establishing the relevance of conjoined participation in conversation. Text-Interdiscipl. J. Study
Discourse 13 (2), 213--246.
Lerner, Gene H., 1995. Turn design and the organization of participation in instructional activities. Discourse Process. 19 (1), 111--131.
Macbeth, Douglas, 2000. Classrooms as installations. In: Hester, S., Hughes, J. (Eds.), The Local Education Order. John Benjamins, Amsterdam,
pp. 21--73.
Macbeth, Douglas, 2002. A commentary on instructional design. J. Learn. Sci. 11 (2--3), 373--386.
Macbeth, Douglas, 2004. The relevance of repair for classroom correction. Lang. Soc. 33 (05), 703--736.
Manke, Mary, 1997. Classroom Power Relations: Understanding Student--Teacher Interaction. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ and
London.
Markee, Numa, 2004. Zones of interactional transition in ESL classes. Mod. Lang. J. 88 (4), 583--596.
Markee, Numa, 2005. The organization of off-task talk in second language classrooms. In: Richards, K., Seedhouse, P. (Eds.), Applying
Conversation Analysis. Palgrave-McMillan, London, pp. 197--213.
Markee, Numa, 2008. Toward a learning behavior tracking methodology for CA-for-SLA. Appl. Linguist. 29 (3), 404--427.
McHoul, Alexander, 1978. The organization of turns at formal talk in the classroom. Lang. Soc. 7 (02), 183--213.
Mehan, Hugh, 1979. Learning Lessons. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
 M. Ishino / Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 41--57 57

Mondada, Lorenza, 2011. Understanding as an embodied, situated and sequential achievement in interaction. J. Pragmat. 43 (2), 542--552.
Mori, Junko, 2004. Negotiating sequential boundaries and learning opportunities: a case from a Japanese language classroom. Mod. Lang. J. 88
(4), 536--550.
Mushin, Ilana, Gardner, Rod, Munro, Jennifer M., 2013. Language matters in demonstrations of understanding in early year's mathematics
assessment. Math. Educ. Res. J. 25 (2), 415--433.
Sacks, Harvey, 1992. Lectures on Conversation, vol. 2. Blackwell, Oxford.
Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff, Emanuel A., Jefferson, Gail, 1974. A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation.
Language 50 (4), 696--735.
Schegloff, Emanuel A., 1987. Analyzing single episodes of interaction: an exercise in conversation analysis. Soc. Psychol. Q. 101--114.
Schegloff, Emanuel A., 2007. Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis, vol. 1. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Seedhouse, Paul, 2004. Conversation analysis methodology. Lang. Learn. 54 (S1), 1--54.
Sert, Olcay, 2013. ‘Epistemic status check’ as an interactional phenomenon in instructed learning settings. J. Pragmat. 45 (1), 13--28.
Sert, Olcay, Walsh, Steve, 2013. The interactional management of claims of insufficient knowledge in English language classrooms. Lang. Educ.
27 (6), 542--565.
Swain, Merrill, 1985. Communicative competence: some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development. Input
Second Lang. Acquis. 15, 165--179.
Tarone, Elaine M., Merrill, Swain, 1995. A sociolinguistic perspective on second language use in immersion class-rooms. Mod. Lang. J. 79 (2),
166--177.
Waring, Hansun Zhang, 2008. Using explicit positive assessment in the language classroom: IRF, feedback, and learning opportunities. Mod.
Lang. J. 92 (4), 577--594.
Waring, Hansun Zhang, 2009. Moving out of IRF (Initiation-Response-Feedback): a single case analysis. Lang. Learn. 59 (4), 796--824.
Waring, Hansun Zhang, 2011. Learner initiatives and learning opportunities in the language classroom. Classr. Discourse 2 (2), 201--218.
Waring, Hansun Zhang, Barbara, Hruska L., 2011. Getting and keeping Nora on board: a novice elementary ESOL student teacher's practices for
lesson engagement. Linguist. Educ. 22 (4), 441--455.
Waring, Hansun Zhang, Reddington, Elizabeth, Tadic, Nadja, 2016. Responding artfully to student-initiated departures in the adult ESL
classroom. Linguist. Educ. 33, 28--39.

Mika Ishino is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Language and Culture at Osaka University. She is also a visiting graduate researcher at the
Center for Language, Interaction, and Culture (CLIC) at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a young research fellow of the Japan Society
for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). She earned her M.A. in Foreign Language Education and Research. Her research interests are conversation
analysis in institutional settings and foreign language teacher education.