Contribution with Hand-Raising in Graduate Student Self-Selection: Bringing Legitimacy to the Focal Shift of Talk

Hand-raising is an extremely useful device for classroom self-selection. There are instances, however, where hand-raising is concurrently employed with the self-selector's onset of speaking, while teacher invitation or nomination is absent. Although it appears to be one way for would-be self-selectors to successfully seize the floor, the hand-raising in such cases may transcend its basic function to exhibit the student's willingness to participate. In this short analysis, the author demonstrates the precise role(s) that hand-raising plays in "contribution with hand-raising." The data for this study are extracted from an extensive video recording of graduate-level courses at a university in the United States. The transcription of the video data followed Jefferson's symbols and conventions. This study employs conversation analysis (CA) to conduct empirically based investigations of the social organization of conversation, or talk-in-interaction. The analysis shows that the act of hand-raising in "contribution with hand-raising" exhibits two main accomplishments: (1) securing a turn with an agentive shift of talk; and (2) mitigating such a shift itself. The combination of hand-raising and speaking overall appears to be a very powerful device for acquiring a turn. Even in cases of uninvited participation, and despite the strong impact on turn acquisition, hand-raising plays a significant role of signaling the agentive shift while mitigating such a shift itself.