Madeleine Mathiot

Office: 611 Baldy Hall

Phone: (716) 645-0119

E-mail: mathiotm@buffalo.edu

 

Madeleine Mathiot, Professor emerita, received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the Catholic University of America after receiving her M.S. in Linguistics from Georgetown University. Her work is in three areas:

 

I. The Structure of Conversation.

 

Her study, Talk in Interactive Events, gives an account of the structural elements used by the participants in 12 naturally occurring conversations (see links below). It provides the context within which anyone who is interested can investigate linguistic phenomena, for instance, the syntax of conversation, and aspects of interpersonal dynamics, namely, how the participants utilise the structural elements at their disposal for interactive purpose.

 

Preface: Analytic Apparatus for the investigation of Talk in Interactive Events.

 

INTERATION BETWEEN INTIMATES

Case Study 1: The Golden Girls of Hamburg: Three Women at a Bar.

Case Study 2: Once a Therapist, always a Therapist.

Case Study 3: Man Troubles Talk: Two Housemates Shoot the Breeze.

Case Study 4: Reconciliation.

Case Study 5: Driving to Toronto with the Family.

Case Study 6: Back from the Bridal Shower.

Case Study 7: Dinner with the Family.

Case Study 8: Mother and Son on the Telephone.

INTERACTION BETWEEN CO-WORKERS IN THE WORK PLACE

Case Study 9: A Meeting on Campus.

Case Study 10: A Weekly Staff Meeting of a Home Care Office.

Case Study 11: In the Kitchen of the Koinonia Café.

INTERACTION BETWEEN INTIMATES WHO ARE ALSO CO-WORKERS

Case Study 12: A Productivity Meeting on the Thruway.

 

Appendix: Comparing the present approach to Conversation Analysis.

 

 

II. Meaning conveyed through the linguistic system.

 

(1) Meaning of grammatical categories. See her papers:

-Sex Roles as Revealed through Referential Gender in American English, in: Ethnolinguistics: Boas, Sapir and Whorf Revisited, edited by Madeleine Mathiot, The Hague: Mouton, 1979;

-Noun Classes and Folk Taxonomy in Papago, American Anthropolgist, Vol 64 No 2 pp340-50, 1960.

 

(2) Meaning of lexical items. See her papers:

-Folk Definitions as a Tool for the Analysis of Lexical Meaning, in: Ethnolinguistics (see above);

-Semantics of Sensory Perception Terms, in: Language Invariants and Mental Operations,International Interdisciplinary Conference held at Gummersback/Cologne, Germany, September 18-23, 1983, edited by Hansjakob Seiler and Gunter Brettschneider, Gunter Narr Verla Tubingen.

 

III. The 'O'odham language.

 

She is currently working on:

a) putting on the web the two volumes of A Dicitonary of Papago Usage, first published in 19733, to be renamed Tohono 'O'odham- English Dictionary; and

b) preparing a number of 'O'odham texts (Children's Stories, a War Story, and portions of the Origin Myth) for publication on the web.