Research on office hours, and academic talk in general, tends to focus on one component of institutional talk, such as advice giving, identity construction, openings, or closings. This monograph adds to this growing body of research by providing a detailed analysis of the progressive stages of an office hour consultation. It differs from most previous studies by analyzing the entire speech event and thereby makes an important contribution to the study of institutional talk and talk-in-interaction. Likewise the analysis serves as a model for how a speech event, such as office hours, can be analyzed in its entirety using conversation analysis, demonstrating the effect that each segment has on the segments that follow.
Office hours are defined as academic speech events in which students meet with their instructors or professors and consult with them on a particular course or project. Limberg distinguishes office hour consultations from advising or counseling sessions, stressing that despite their similarities, they differ in terms of their interactional framework. Advising sessions focus on resolving an academic problem or concern, whereas office hour consultations may not involve any requests for advice nor provide any advice.
Forty-seven office hour interactions were video recorded in their entirety in English departments from two German universities. The six faculty members who conducted the office hours differed in terms of native language and status: The three professors were native speakers of German and the three instructors were native speakers of English. Office hour consultations were conducted almost exclusively in the native language of the faculty member. The 53 students who participated in these office hours were English majors pursuing either a Bachelor of Arts or an advanced degree roughly equivalent to a Master of Arts (Lehramt or Magister).
Limberg justifies his inclusion of office hour conversations in German and English by demonstrating how they all share a universal framework. Four discourse phases occur in all office hour interactions: opening, presentation of academic concern, body of the consultation, and closing. The book, consequently, provides detailed chapters outlining each of these discourse phases and also includes other units of talk that can optionally occur at different points of the consultation. These include the occurrence of preinteraction talk before the opening sequence, the reopening of a topic, wrapping-up talk before the closing, and postinteraction talk after the closing has occurred. Identity construction is included in the chapter on opening sequences, focusing on how students identify themselves and how coparticipants establish an academic working relationship. Requests are analyzed during the discussion of how students present their concerns. A variety of concerns are treated in the body of the consultation (i.e., organizational and administrative concerns, course- and exam-related matters, counseling). Consequently, advice giving is treated in a separate chapter, which focuses on how advice is requested, how students respond to advice, and how the interaction is managed when no advice can be given.
Although Limberg demonstrates that office hour consultations in English and German share a similar overall structure, he does not consider a faculty member’s status or the language of interaction at any point during the analysis. Although these considerations may have been beyond the scope of his study, it seems to be a serious oversight in that both the status of the faculty member at the institution and the language of interaction could have a marked effect on interaction between the coparticipants, especially in terms of the individual strategies used to accomplish different segments of talk. Limberg also fails to analyze how status affects the topics that are discussed. The table presented on page 25 clearly shows that students consult professors and instructors for markedly different reasons: Professors provide more feedback on academic concerns such as exams and term papers, whereas instructors are consulted more for information on studying abroad, issues regarding the student’s course of study, administrative concerns, and questions about internships. Additionally, Limberg does not analyze whether the student’s status at the university as a graduate or undergraduate student affects the interaction. The student’s status could be particularly relevant in terms of the communication strategies used or the willingness of the faculty member to provide the information or assistance requested.
Despite these weaknesses, Limberg provides an excellent discussion of how the interaction during an office hour consultation unfolds, and this book serves as a useful example of how to perform such an analysis.
