Naming an activity: Arriving at recognitionals in team-teacher planning talk

Based on a video-recorded corpus of pre-class planning sessions, this study focuses on how team-teachers from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds accomplish the interactional task of identifying and explaining pedagogical activities they will later teach together during an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) lesson. Since a basic issue for these teachers is arriving at a recognizable name for the proposed task that can be understood by both parties, we analyze the interactional practices involved in naming an activity. We draw on Conversation Analytic (CA) research on word choice to show how sequential, categorical, epistemic and bilingual practices are brought to bear on the joint accomplishment of a recognitional formulation of an activity. We identify several interactional practices in which recognitionals play a key role in planning talk between language teachers. Speakers can treat the activity name as potentially unrecognizable through post-formulation explanations or initiating epistemic questions, or use a known recognitional to explain a new activity. Additionally, after a speaker lists the sub-steps involved in a proposed task, a recipient can proffer a name for the activity. These generic interactional practices are put to use in this intercultural workplace to make the plan accessible to all parties. The data are in English and Japanese. •CA is used to analyze the interactional practices involved in naming an activity.•Speakers use epistemic questions to treat an activity name as non-recognized.•Explaining the name after its formulation tacitly treats it as non-recognizable.•Interactants can co-formulate the name subsequent to a description of the activity.•Recognitionals can be the basis for explaining a modified version of the activity.