2024 Call for Awards

Nomination Deadline: June 15, 2024

Dissertation of the Year Award

The Language and Social Interaction Division of the National Communication Association will recognize an outstanding doctoral dissertation in the field of Language and Social Interaction. Nominations should reflect the division’s focus on situated language usage and social interaction. Analyses of institutional and everyday interaction, interaction in face-to-face and mediated contexts, and interaction within and across diverse linguistic and cultural groups are welcome. Previous awards have gone to studies in discourse and conversation analysis, speech act theory, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, ethnomethodology, and the ethnography of communication. To be eligible for the award, a dissertation must have been officially completed (i.e., filed and defended) during 2023.

Nominations should be made by the dissertation advisor or a member of the Language and Social Interaction Division of NCA. Please email nominations with the following materials:

1. A nomination letter outlining the justification for the award (may be submitted under separate cover).
2. A 500-word (maximum) abstract of the dissertation.
3. A PDF copy of the full dissertation.

Send all nomination materials to the Vice Chair Elect, Stephen DiDomenico (sdidomenico@wcupa.edu). Please include “NCA LSI Dissertation Award” in the subject line of your email. The award will be presented at NCA’s Language and Social Interaction Division Virtual Business Meeting in November 2024.



Outstanding Publication Award for LSI Scholarship Within 5 years (a.k.a., “The Recent Scholarship Award”)

This award is presented to the author(s) of an article, chapter, or monograph in the area of language and social interaction. Any member of the LSI Division may nominate a published work; the senior author must be a member of the LSI Division during the year in which the award is made. Selection criteria shall include scholarly merit, contribution to knowledge in language and social interaction, and current impact on the discipline. Studies of an analytical, critical, empirical, philosophical, or theoretical nature that make a contribution to LSI are eligible for consideration. Only actually published works will be considered.

To submit a nomination for this award, please include a 1-page letter explaining the significance of the work and the impact it has on our field, and (if available) include a PDF copy of the work along with the complete citation. Direct your nominations to LSI Immediate Past Chair, Cynthia Gordon (gordonc@georgetown.edu). Deadline for submission is June 15, 2024. The award will be presented at NCA’s Language and Social Interaction Division Virtual Business Meeting in November 2024.

Here is a list of some previous recipients of this award:

  • 2022: Robert Craig and Dr. Karen Tracy, Grounded Practical Theory: Investigating Communication Problems.
  • 2020: Michelle Scollo and Trudy Milburn (Eds.) Engaging and transforming global communication through cultural discourse analysis: A tribute to Donal Carbaugh
  • 2016: Jeffrey Robinson, “What ‘What’ Tells Us about How Conversationalists Manage Intersubjectivity” published in Research in Language and Social Interaction 47(2).
  • 2014: Gene H. Lerner, “On the place of hesitating in delicate formulations: A turn-constructional infrastructure for collaborative indiscretion.” In J. Sidnell, M. Hayashi & G. Raymond (Eds.), Conversational Repair and Human Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • 2012: Michelle Scollo, “Cultural approaches to discourse analysis: A theoretical and methodological conversation with special focus on Donal Carbaugh’s Cultural Discourse Theory,” Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 6.