Einav Argaman’s research while affiliated with Levinsky College of Education and other places

This article discusses the ways in which “walking” in a place that exhibits institutional heritage (albeit is not set as a separate gallery) discloses individuality within institutional/hegemonic intent. Examining photographs taken in a place that, among other activities , comprises institutional heritage, the article adds to the literature by specifying a new mode of walking in heritage “sites.” Walking is regarded a semiotic resource; hence, the article’s insights relate to: (a) arguments in the institution, (b) definitions of “center,” (c) “attractors” in retailing and museums (as places which present heritage), and (d) the architecture of paths. The final section of the article considers heritage in educational institutions (the specific environment that the article discusses). It relates to the characteristics of classroom talk and offers recommendations for incorporating them in exhibitions dedicated to the heritage of education institutions, as a means to establish teachers’ professional identity.

This paper studies the public display of horizontal hierarchies. Drawing on a naturalistic paradigm, audio- and videotaped presentations of college students were investigated. The students presented in class before their peers. Excerpts that comprise disagreement between equals were selected for analysis. The primary assumption was that disagreements can serve as a potential risk to horizontal hierarchies. Hence, they serve as an interesting source for exploring if and how colleagueship is sustained. The analysis shows the use of various verbal and nonverbal semiotic resources (including humor), which display the shift students make between assuming power and signaling equality. The sequential organization of disagreements (detailed in the paper) pertains to the building blocks (i.e., a contest and a retreat from confrontational positions) that comprise horizontal hierarchy. These building blocks are exhibited in different turns and within turn-constructional components.

This article studies hand gestures and specifies four different possible uses: (1) one-handed gestures; (2) symmetrical two-handed gestures; (3) symmetrical two-handed gestures in which the hands alternately perform the same movement; (4) asymmetrical two-handed gestures. The paper shows how a speaker employs various hand gestures to explain her teaching experiences and views the concurrence of gestures with speech, body posture, shrugs, gaze, and facial expressions as reciprocal actions to an interlocutor's responses. The final section of the paper discusses the flexibility of hand gestures and the different ways in which it is revealed.

This article studies an argument that took place in an institutional setting and specifies six functions of talk and embodied practices employed in an argument between a superior and her subordinate. The article shows how certain argumentative conducts and their subsequent responses preserve the institutional hierarchical relationship. The article’s final section considers three resultant issues: 1) argumentative practices and their relation to various institutional hierarchies; 2) argumentative practices between people holding different versus similar hierarchical positions; and 3) the extent to which verbal defiance accompanied by embodied practices can be maintained.

This paper probes into the discursive aspect of educational change. Drawing on the rhetorical perspective that talk is never without an end, the paper shows how two conversing parties use the deixis ‘it’ as a referent to their emotional standpoint regarding the context of a school change. After reviewing theories of ‘emotions’ and ‘deixis’, I will analyze three conversational events in which ‘it’ functions as an empathetic deixis. The paper's main argument is that in the context of educational change, ‘it’, as ‘this’ and ‘that’, may have an operative role in signifying the speaker's emotional detachment from or proximity to the above-mentioned change.

This paper discusses the notion of metaphor variation, and argues that it may play a significant role as a linguistic tool for positioning the subjects in a given organizational change. More specifically, it is argued that metaphor variation enables the subject to corroborate the organization's centripetal forces on the one hand, and to express the centrifugal forces that make room for individuality and divergence from the organization's official voice, on the other. This thesis is theoretically developed and illustrated by examples drawn from the context of organizational change in education.

This paper presents the notion that a metaphor is one of the discursive tools whereby people position themselves with regard to a change process. Based on Sebeok and Danesi's theory, I analyze two 'root' metaphors (articulated by an interviewee) to illustrate the assumption of positions and counter-positions and the way metaphors mediate this positioning. The paper suggests that in the specific context of organizational change, positioning plays the social role of denoting for people (who are considered members of this new social experience) the expected modes of behavior.