Memories
Gabriele Kasper
Professor, Second Language Studies
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Jack Bilmes came to the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa as a Visiting Acting Assistant Professor in 1973. The Anth Department at UH remained his institutional home base throughout his academic career. He also served on the graduate faculty of Linguistics and, from 1989 until his retirement in 2011, he was on the faculty of the PhD program in Second Language Studies. He served on many dissertation committees in these programs as well as in Japanese Linguistics.
Jack liked teaching, and he was a tremendous teacher. He introduced generations of PhD students to ethnomethodology and CA, regardless of the students’ disciplinary affiliation. His graduate course on Discursive Practices and his graduate seminars were a must to take for PhD students specializing in CA, and he generously welcomed colleagues from other departments and visitors to UH to sit in. I wish I had taken him up on the open invitation more often.
Discursive Practices partially overlapped with sociolinguistics and discourse analysis courses as they are typically taught in linguistics and applied linguistics, but Jack’s course took a more expansive view and a more targeted focus. For the many students from outside of anthropology and sociology in particular, his own article On The Believability Of Northern Thai Spirit Mediums (1995) and Howard Becker’s classic Becoming A Marijuana User (1953) may have been eye-catching for their exotic appeal at first, but under Bilmes’ guided reading of the texts in class their radical epistemology became more apparent for us and helped us see their implications for studying learning and development, both key topics in applied linguistics and second language studies.
Had it not been for Jack Bilmes’ courses, I suspect that discursive psychology would have remained under the radar of applied linguistic students and faculty at UH. I remember vividly walking back from Jack’s seminar with then PhD student Rue Burch and discussing how entrenched sociopsychological concepts like attitudes and motivation could be respecified from a DP perspective, which is exactly what Rue ended up doing in his dissertation. Matt Prior’s now longstanding research program on emotion in multilingual interaction was originally inspired by reading Edwards and Potter in Jack’s seminar.
Of course Jack’s classes also introduced us to his own research. One of his most important pedagogical achievements, to my mind, was to give students specimen or cases that instructed us how to critically read the CA literature itself, identify problems, and try our hand at solutions, as he did, for instance, in his work on preference. And then, showing us how to develop an original, innovative research approach one step at a time, through patient, serious, sustained, focused engagement with the analytical problems, always grounded in meticulously documented empirical evidence. Students in Discursive Practices and Jack’s seminars have been incredible fortunate to be participant-observers in the development of Occasioned Semantics. Much of what we have learned from Jack’s teaching, writing and mentoring on the topic has made an appearance in dissertations and publications. There is more to come.
When I was on sabbatical in Fall 2019, the entire cohort of my current PhD students took Jack Bilmes’ seminar on Category and Formulation, and he generously took over as their mentor. Little did he or they know that the seminar was going to be his last. During the pandemic he continued to participate in our online data sessions. In September 2020, he gave us a talk on a section of his forthcoming paper Delineating Categories in Verbal Interaction, the article on which his talk for today was going to be based. It was a privilege for his students and colleagues to discuss our teacher’s final paper with him.
(Originally written as an obituary for 2021 IPrA panel)
Eric Hauser
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering
The University of Electro-Communications
I first met Jack when I was a doctoral student in Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi and I took one of his classes. The class was called something like “Ethnographic Methods,” but it was actually about learning to do CA—learning to transcribe and analyze actual data. If I remember correctly, we also read several exemplary CA studies, as Jack called them. Jack had acquired copies of the telephone conversations between Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp that the latter had secretly recorded and which were later released to the public. These recordings provided the material for us to learn how to transcribe and analyze.
The class was fascinating and had a powerful influence on me. I had already learned some CA from classes I took in Second Language Studies with Gabi Kasper and I was thinking of trying to bring some CA into my (not-yet-started) dissertation research. As a result of this class, well, at least in part as a result of this class, I decided that just trying to incorporate some CA into my dissertation would not be enough. I needed to do a CA dissertation. I figured that Gabi would like the idea and that I could get Jack on my dissertation committee, so I brought it up with my advisor. He seemed less than pleased with the idea, but let me go in the direction that I wanted to go.
I later took other classes with Jack, including one that was a graduate-level introduction to linguistic anthropology. As one assignment, he had us watch the movie Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? We also had to read some stuff from Lévi-Strauss. It was not really clear to me at the time what, if any, the connection was between the movie and the reading material, but Jack somehow made the connection, providing us with a Lévi-Straussian structuralist analysis of the movie.
Jack was a wonderful teacher. He was also a great colleague and friend. He sometimes asked me for feedback on manuscripts that he was working on and was generous in providing feedback on things that I was working on. It was always a pleasure to meet him at conferences or on the occasional trip to Hawaiʻi. With the start of the pandemic, a couple of groups of CA people in Japan began holding our data sessions online through Zoom. One nice thing about this is that it allowed for more regular participation from people in different parts of Japan and East Asia. Even better, it allowed Jack to join us, which he did despite the time difference.
I’m not really sure how to finish, but I’d just like to say, Goodbye, Jack. You will always be my teacher, my colleague, and my valued friend.
Rue Burch
Associate Professor, School of Language and Communication
Kobe University
My experiences with Jack Bilmes, both in and out of class, were always a strange mix of exuberance at the prospect of being intellectually challenged on the one hand, and the trepidation of feeling “what on earth have I gotten myself into?!”. And for someone as socially awkward as I am, my interactions with him (especially in the first few years I knew him) were the perfect in situ example of how we have to tune our interactional competencies to each person we get to know.
After a few classes with him, in which I felt I was always just a fingertip’s length away from grasping the depth of what he taught us, I found myself needing to go to his office to get a signature. Behind that door, I expected the same stern, deep-in-thought Jack Bilmes that I had always witnessed in class. Instead, as the door opens, I see a smile that I never knew could grace his countenance, and arms open wide, as he says excitedly “Rue, my boy! What can I do for ya?” I must admit I was taken aback, and found myself actually saying “Who are you, and what did you do with Dr. Bilmes?” Luckily for me, he met my faux pas with a laugh. It was my first glimpse beyond seeing him as something other than the person I had put on an intellectual pedestal.
Around the time he retired, I was in charge of the CA data sessions, and had started covering bi-weekly workshops for beginners. One day, I see him outside of the cafeteria (I had never seen him away from Saunders Hall before, and it felt much like it did when I was a high schooler seeing a teacher in a super market for the first time), and I mention these workshops to him. His response: “Good. Somebody needs to do that now that I’m not going to be able to.” I was not expecting this, and really didn’t know how to respond. Accepting a compliment is difficult enough – accepting one that had to be understood beyond the words that were used can be even harder.
I was lucky enough to take more classes with him after he retired, and to see him at a couple of conferences after I graduated. I discovered a warmth there that I didn’t know how to look for when I was first taking classes from him. But I’m glad that I discovered it. And I’m proud that I am fortunate enough to be able to take a little bit of that intellectual gift that he passed along to me and so many other people and be able to pass it along to others.
Thanks, Jack!
Scott Saft
Professor, Linguistics
University of Hawaii, Hilo
It is really difficult to write this as it feels like a formal goodbye, and I am finding it very difficult to say goodbye to one of the people who has meant the most to my career. I first met Jack when I was a student at UH-Mānoa in the early 1990s after a couple of fellow classmates recommended his 600-level linguistic anthropology course to me. The recommendation, though, came with a couple of caveats; they said I had to be prepared for his personality and I also had to be prepared to not to just be handed an “A.” When I asked what they meant, they just smiled and said “you will see.” What I came to “see” was, among other things, a sometimes brutal honesty and a lack of inhibition on the part of Jack in telling students when they were full of bullsh##. After making it through the first course, I eagerly signed up for his upper level seminar courses and still remember with pride getting an “A-“ on the first CA paper I ever wrote for him. I also remember his only comment at the end of the paper (there were many “comments” throughout the analysis); “this paper has many virtues but suffers from a lack of attention to details.” Needless to say, I was delighted to get even the slightest praise from him.
I came to understand that Jack carried the same brutal honesty that I saw in class over to his own academic work. Seeing CA and ethnomethodology through Jack’s eyes and through his work, I developed a tremendous appreciation for CA as “the” analytical method that paid the most attention to the orientations of the participants themselves. I also appreciated the fact that Jack was not above being critical of CA as a method and of CA researchers when he thought they overextended their reach. I remember him telling me one time with that wry Jack smile about an exchange he had with Manny Schegloff and how Manny left the conversation pissed off at Jack for daring to question Manny’s methods.
Jack himself, though, was not afraid to push the boundaries of CA and ethnomethodology, something he did from early on in his career with his focus on Thai language data and by being one of the first to seriously consider the “cultural context.” He once told me that he was considered a “maverick” by other conversation analysts, but it was his willingness to think outside of the box of “proper CA” that I came to admire greatly and to draw inspiration from. One of the main lessons I took from Jack is that even when pushing boundaries, if you ground your analyses in the details of the data and in the orientations of the participants, then you cannot go wrong. Others may disagree with your analysis, but at least you can have an “open” argument that is based on actual details of the data, not the biases of the analysts. I still carry this lesson with me in all of my academic work and teachings and still give credit, in my mind and sometimes verbally to my students, to Jack for this perspective.
Since Jack was not in my department, he could not serve as the Chair of my Ph.D. committee, but I give him, together with my official Chair, Dina Yoshimi, the most thanks for getting me through the Ph.D. dissertation/defense process with very fond memories. But Jack’s mentorship did not stop with the Ph.D. process at Mānoa. I remember vividly the serendipitous meeting I had with Jack on my way to my first real international conference, the 1998 IprA conference in Reims, France. As I sat nervously on a train in Paris by myself, I watched with amazement as Jack and Peng boarded the train. Jack did not see me at first as he was busy searching for his assigned seat, and to both of our surprises, we discovered that I was mistakenly sitting in his seat (I was supposed to be sitting in the seat behind him). After much catching up and after our arrival in Reims I learned that Jack spoke French and it was also there that he took me under his wing and introduced me to many international scholars, some of whom have since become lifelong friends. I even remember him seeking and finding me, in the days before WhatsApp, in my hotel in Reims to invite me to a dinner with him and other scholars.
Our meetings at various IPrA conferences every two/three years became a happy routine. I remember Jack inviting me to go for a drive with him and Peng to see the Italian Alps during the IPrA conference in 2005 in Riva del Garda (Jack did all of the driving in the car they had rented). I also remember, among other memories, dinners with him in Budapest in 2000, walking the streets of Melbourne in 2009 looking for a pizza place, and most recently, dining with him, Peng, his daughter Leela, and his grandaughter in Belfast in 2017. I am not much of a picture taker and therefore was unable to find any pictures, but I can still remember these meetings with much vividness, including Jack’s wry smiles and brilliantly timed sarcasm. Jack has served as a role-model in so many ways, including but by no means limited to his scholarship and mentorship. After feeling much sadness in his passing, I realize that the only thing I and other students of his can do is try to provide guidance for younger scholars, as Jack did for me—and throw in of course a few wry Jack smiles along the way.
Werasit Sittitrai
ASG of Thai Red Cross; Former Department Director at UNAIDS (Geneva)
I was a student in Pol.Sci. at U.H. doing a PH.D. that combined Political Science and Anthropology. It was a tough and challenging task. Fortunately I had all the guidance and help from Prof. Jack Bilmes who was always kind, gentle and continuously provide support and wisdom during my course work and in my thesis committee.
Also, as Prof. Jack married a great Thai lady, whom we called respectfully "Auntie" Pongsuwan who is always very kind to me , therefore I, just like most other Thai students, felt very close to the Bilmes family.
May I pay great respect to Prof. Jack Bilmes in heaven.
From your student,
Werasit
Matthew Prior
Associate Professor, English (Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, TESOL)
Arizona State University
Formulating Jack Bilmes
I first met Jack Bilmes when I was an M.A. student in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi. Because of my growing interests in discourse analysis and conversation analysis, Gabi Kasper insisted I take some of Jack’s seminars—and how grateful I am that I heeded her advice. As I expect others will note, Jack Bilmes was many things to many people: not least of all a tremendous teacher, a respected researcher, and a scholar’s scholar. I suspect he would take great interest and no small amusement in the sharing of our stories about him. As we remember his life and mourn our collective loss, our descriptions of Jack and our own emotions and memories are, to use his words, “laden with formulations.” Formulations—words, phrases, signifying gestures, or “expressions”—fascinated Jack. Throughout his academic career, he devoted much of his intellectual energies to developing a systematic, more technical approach to formulations and their meanings in actual use.
Jack’s graduate courses at UH and his many publications were master classes on how to observe and appreciate the rich linguistic and social worlds around us. I found his seminars intimidating: the readings dense, our data analyses never complete, and his piercing gaze refused superficial responses. Although he demanded scholarly rigor in theory and analysis, he was wary of disciplinary dogma and expected nothing less than absolute respect for human beings and language. Like many of my peers, I left each class intellectually humbled and analytically drained—but also energized and curious, wanting to learn more and to emulate Jack’s model as a keen observer of human life. What I remember most is that despite all his knowledge and experience, Jack saw himself as a learner, too. He always had an unmistakable air of authority, but he tempered it with humility, humor, patience, compassion, and a genuine interest in other people. And as all his students can attest, he was uncommonly generous with his feedback, time, and smiles.
As I reflect on my own scholarly trajectory, I can see Jack’s influence everywhere. He introduced me to discursive psychology, discursive practices, conversational implicature, interpretive repertoires, and diverse epistemological perspectives from sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines. His ethnomethodological and ethnographic sensibilities helped shape my analytic mindset. He also instilled in me, as a graduate student and novice researcher, the importance of community. In the acknowledgements section of his book, Discourse and Behavior, Jack writes, “Every assertion seems to open a set of controversial issues, and to work them through in silent isolation is, for me at least, almost an impossibility. Accordingly, the dialogues that I have had with my colleagues have been essential in the development of my thinking on these matters.” Jack always encouraged dialogue, and I know that the conversations I have had with him and with others through him encourage me to stay curious and open to the unexpected.
Jack also helped me appreciate how “failure” can transform research and the researcher. Describing the various frustrations he experienced in his dissertation research investigating how Thai villagers make decisions, he explained how a breakthrough came when he stopped focusing on intentionality and instead learned to listen. By shifting focus to how people explain and understand their own practices, he encouraged attention to “commonsense discourse” and the development of what he called “discursive sociology,” which was truly ahead of its time.
When I graduated, Jack took me aside and, in his unique mix of sincerity and humor, waved his hands and pronounced, “I now absolve you of our student-teacher relationship. We are now colleagues.” Jack and I kept in touch over the years, and true to his word, he treated me as a colleague—asking for advice and offering feedback on various projects. In 2019, with Jack’s encouragement, Eric Hauser and I co-edited a special issue for the Journal of Pragmatics on “Topicalizing Regrading in Interaction.” With Jack’s paper anchoring the issue and contributions by other scholars, including his former students, it was an informal festschrift that celebrated his intellectual contributions to the field and his far-reaching legacy. What a privilege and an honor it is to have known Jack and to be counted among those who remember him as a teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend. He will be missed, but never forgotten.
Emi Murayama
Instructor, Japanese Language and Linguistics
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
I recently found an old folder containing a number of transcripts of the telephone conversations between Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp. It was a folder that I created when I took Prof. Bilmes’ seminar in 2004. Prof. Bilmes assigned his students – mostly non-native speakers of English – to take turns transcribing the conversations. I remember my initial fear of transcribing a conversation in a language other than my own. But looking back, I see that it was a breakthrough in my training as a conversation analyst. I learned how to pay close attention to audio recordings without being biased by my own intuition. Because I couldn’t rely on a native speaker’s sense of the language, I had to pay attention to the sounds being made rather than what I though was being said. Through this exercise, Prof. Bilmes gave his students an opportunity to realize the importance of looking at a language without preconceptions. Bilmes-sensei, I feel indebted to you for this experience and for all the advice you gave me!
I remember running into Prof. Bilmes at Foodland in my neighborhood, which was also close to his home. With a shy smile, he told me that he was there to buy a sweet treat – and he walked away from the store with a small plastic container of cake in his hand. The store is gone now. But I won’t forget his smile on that day.
Karen Ann Watson-Gegeo
Emeritus Professor, School of Education
University of California, Davis
Remembering also for David Welchman Gegeo, PhD, Political Science, UH Manoa; currently Solomon Islands National University (SINU), where he is Associate Prof (Social Sciences and Humanities), Director of the Office of Research and Postgraduate Studies, and Acting Head of the School of Humanities.
I (Karen) got to know Jack when he came to the Anthropology dept about the time I returned to take up a Research Associate position at the East-West Center, having completed my PhD in the Anthropology dept. at UHM while doing two final years of study at UC Berkeley (part of the agreement on my NIMH doctoral grant). David was sent to the EWC by the Solomon Islands govt. for a 6-months program that I headed, and stayed on for surgery at Kaiser. During that year, we married, and subsequentlywe moved to Cambridge, MA for David to complete his BA in Anthropology at U MASS Boston while I took up a faculty position at Harvard, teaching ethnographic methods to graduate students. I was recruited back to UH Manoa into what became the Dept of Second Language Studies (actually, applied linguistics), in 1986. David began the PhD program the next year in Political Science, focusing his work on rural development theory, and conducting research on the history of colonialism, missionization, and rural development from Western contact through the 1980s. All during this time, David and I had been conducting language learning (first and second) in Solomons villages, doing discourse analysis (following the methods I learned from John Gumperz during the time I was at UC Berkeley, working in English, Kwaraʻae, and SI Pidgin. We enjoyed many gatherings with the Bilmes' as well as academic events. As many others have shared here, conversations and debates with Jack were stimulating, exciting, informative, and I think he felt the same. We moved to California when I was recruited to UC Davis to take up a position similar to the one I was in for 9 years at Harvard while was David was doing his BA in Anthropology and MS in Mass Communication at U MASS Boston/Boston U. But then one summer when David was in the Solomons reporting to the people about his dissertation results, and I was in Hawaiʻi working with Charlie (Charlene) Sato on our Hawaiʻi Creole English project, I was accidentally sprayed with herbicide and to make a long story short, my immune system was severely damaged. David and I spent 6 months in Dallas at a clinic that treats chemical injuries, before I could recover enough to return to California. I was fortunate, the doctors told me, to have survived. David got to see Jack and talk with him again when he was sometimes in Hawaiʻi, but I have not been allowed to leave the Bay Area by my doctors since 1996. But we are grateful that we knew Jack, knew his wonderful family, as bright stars in the universe of our lives.