Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm is professor of applied linguistics and German. Her research centers on the use of language in social and cultural settings.

In her research, she uses methods from Conversation analysis and Interactional Linguistics to examine how speakers formulate utterances (grammatical construction) to accomplish social actions (such as making a request, inviting someone to come over) in everyday interaction.  Much of Dr. Taleghani-Nikazm’s research is comparative in nature. 

In addition to exploring the structure of social interaction in L1 settings (German and Persian), she has also conducted research on how speakers and learners “get things done” in a L2 and in multilingual settings.  Whenever possible, Dr. Taleghani-Nikazm applies research from spoken interaction to second language pedagogy (interactional competence), instructional materials development and graduate teacher training.  

She is also the Director of Undergraduate German Language Instruction and is responsible for overseeing the lower-division German language courses and mentoring Graduate Teaching Associates.

Selected publications:

Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2019). “Ohja. ja. ja.(‘Ohyes. yes. yes.’): Providing the appropriate next relevant action in L2 interaction.” In S. Kunitz & R. Salaberry (Eds.), Teaching and testing interactional competence: Bridging theory and practice.  Routledge Series Advances in Second Language Studies (Series editors: S. Eskildsen & J. Hellermann).

Huth, T., Betz, E., & Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2019) “Rethinking teacher training: Steps for making talk-in-interaction research accessible to practitioners.” Classroom Discourse, 10:1, 99-122.

Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2018). “Invitations in Farsi: An analysis of their turn formats and sequential organizations.”  In Margutti, P. Tainio, L. Traverso, V. Drew, P. (Eds.), Invitations and responses: the formation of actions across languages. Journal of Pragmatics Special Issue, vol. 125.

Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2016). “achJA, dann kenn ich das auch!” – The “little words” Germans use to manage information and knowledge in everyday conversation. Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, 49(2): 94-208 (refereed).

Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2015). On reference work and issues related to the management of knowledge: An analysis of the Farsi particle dige in turn final position. (Special Issue on Reference in Interaction from a Cross-Cultural Perspective). Journal of Pragmatics, 87: 267-281 (refereed).

Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2015). Multimodality and Coordinated Participation in L2 Interaction.  In D. Koike & C. Blyth (Eds.), Dialogue in Multilingual and Multimodal Communities. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (invited, peer reviewed).

Betz, E., Taleghani-Nikazm, C, Drake, V, Golato, A. (2013). Third position repeats in German: The Case of Repair-and Request-for-Information Sequences. Gesprächsforschung – Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion [Research on conversation-Online journal on verbal interaction], 14: 133-166 (refereed).

Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2011).  Requests and orders: A cross-linguistic study of their organization in the broader social and cultural context. In K. Aijmer & G. Anderson (Eds.), Pragmatics of society, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter (invited, refereed).

Taleghani-Nikazm, C. & Huth, T. (2010). L2 requests: An empirical study of L2 learners’ orientation to preference structure in talk-in-interaction. Multilingua, 29(2): 185-202 (refereed).

Huth, T. & Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2006). How can insights from conversation analysis be directly applied to teaching L2 pragmatics?  Language Teaching Research, 10 (1): 1-27 (refereed).

Taleghani-Nikazm, C. (2006).  Request sequences: The intersection of grammar, interaction and social context (Studies in Discourse and Grammar). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins (214 pages research monograph).

Major courses taught:

Introduction to teaching and learning German at the college level; Conversation analytic approaches to second language acquisition; L2 pragmatics and interactional competence; Introduction to conversation analysis; the structure of spoken German; German sociolinguistics