Section re: "Sewing" Instance
Two friends, Abe and Sue, are hanging out during a break at an English language school in the Ukraine. Abe is from [[[[[Kazikstan]]]]] and Sue is from Canada, and she does not speak Russian. They have been discussing a crafts class at Abe's school, and Abe has informed Sue that the boys build ships in the class. Sue has just asked if "the girls do that, too", and this segment begins with Abe's response to her question. If we consider their vocalized utterances, the transcript might appear this way (Click the PLAY button to hear audio of Sewing 1):
Sewing 1
Abe: no:. thuh *uh 'hh only boys. and the girls
a:re (0.2) *uh ah=
Sue: =coo- SEWing
(0.1)
Abe: Sewing.
(0.2)
Sue: that's GOO:d
Speaking generally, we hear Abe's first response to Sue's question ("no:. thuh *uh 'hh only boys"). Then Abe extends his turn and begins offering an account of what "the girls" do. We also hear Abe's (0.2) intraturn silence along with other indications that he is engaged in a word search (see below). Then we hear the smoothly latched change of speaker as Sue collaboratively offers candidate items ("coo- SEWing") for Abe's word search, followed by a (0.1) gap between speakers. Then Abe speaks a turn (a repetition of "SEWing"), and that is followed by another (0.2) gap between speakers. The segment shown here ends with Sue's final assessment utterance ("that's GOO:d"). This transcription and brief analysis are based on the vocalized construction units with which the participants have constituted their turns and have co-organized their interaction.
However, when we examine this segment more closely and take into account the participants' embodied action turns -- that is, complete with the nonvocalized components of their turns -- a second transcription reveals a more complex interactional landscape. During Abe's word search, how is the candidate item "SEWing" occasioned? Is Sue merely offering a random guess? A closer look reveals that Abe's physical movements constitute a pivotal part of their collaborative word search activity.
A 2nd Transcription of Sewing
Our focus is on how Abe and Sue are using their bodies as well as their voices in constructing their turns, how each is attending aurally and visually to those productions of the other, and how they display their rapid orientation to and treatment of those nonvocalized components as interactionally relevant. We observe several occurrences of turn "overlap", extended repetitions of nonvocalized embodied actions, and silences but no "gaps" in the interaction as indicated in the first transcription based solely on vocalized turn units and transition-relevant places.
In this second transcript, double parentheses followed by "EA" below a line of talk indicate, roughly, the occurrence of nonvocalized components of embodied action turns performed by that interactant. Dotted lines indicate that that embodied action continues until the double parentheses actually close. (Click the PLAY button for Sewing 2):
Sewing 2
1 Abe: no:. thuh *uh 'hh only boys. and the girls
2 a:re (0.2) *uh ah
((EA sew[ing ---------------------------->
[
3 Sue: [coo- SEWing
((EA sewing --------->
4 Abe: (0.1) / [EA------>
5 Sue: [EA------>
6 Abe: [Sewing.
[ ((& nodding))
[ EA----------->
[
7 Sue: [EA---------------))
8 Abe: (0.2) / EA--------[-------))
[
9 Sue: [that's GOO:d
In line 1, Sue has her gaze continuously directed toward Abe. Abe responds to her just-asked question (whether or not the girls also make ships) in the negative ("no:"); and, after beginning to continue his turn with an article ("thuh"), Abe displays some trouble ("*uh") and reformulates his extended response. He begins again his turn continuation with a definitive "only boys." Although there have been two transition relevant places so far in his turn (after the "no", and after the "only boys"), Abe now continues his turn seamlessly with no gap and begins to report on the girls' activity ("and the girls a:re ... *uh ah") re-employing the definite article ("the"):
1 Abe: no:. thuh *uh 'hh only boys. and the girls
2 a:re (0.2) *uh ah
((EA sew[ing ----------------------------->
In line 2, Abe stretches out the "a:re" slightly, and this bit of his talk is immediately followed by a two-tenths of a second pause. This is not a transition relevant place, and both the stretch and the pause project some possible trouble (see C. Goodwin 1980), in this case, a word search. Abe's next vocalized items are the gutteral gravel vocalization, "*uh", and "ah", neither providing an appropriate and candidate next item due in terms of the word search but both displaying vocally his position as still current turn holder with a turn still in progress. However, what we want to focus on here is that at the same time that Abe is vocalizing "*uh ah", he is also using his body to perform a nonvocalized component to his embodied action turn (a component that he will continue to re-perform four more times throughout the segment until Sue utters "that's" at line 9).
What does Abe do with his body as he is uttering "*uh ah", and thereafter? (Click on the PLAY button for Sewing 2 Slow):
1 Abe: no:. thuh *uh 'hh only boys. and the girls
2 a:re (0.2) *uh ah
((EA sew[ing ----------------------------->
Abe comes out of the (0.2) pause uttering "*uh" as he begins raising both hands off the table and moving them toward each other in front of his chest and in the transaction space (Kendon 1990, 211) directly between Sue and himself, thereby making his performance visually available to her and indicating its recipient-design for her. As he is doing this, his right hand is held in a slighty closed position and we observe him tracing with it a curved trajectory in that space (down and then up again). Just as he completes the prominent upward movement with his right hand, Abe re-directs his gaze toward Sue, uttering "ah" and continuing to re-perform the down-up pattern.
Abe's performance fills a kind of slot his earlier utterances and word search have created for an appropriate next item due: some kind of display, vocalized or nonvocalized, of an activity engaged in by the girls in his crafts class. Abe performs for Sue a particular pattern of movement, what could be treated as a "hand-sewing routine", that points toward a lexical item that is the object of his word search. Producing this embodied component of his turn at just this place of trouble also displays some expectation on his part that Sue will recognize it and will treat it accordingly as relevant. And she does, as evidenced by her next embodied action turn:
1 Abe: no:. thuh *uh 'hh only boys. and the girls
2 a:re (0.2) *uh ah
((EA sew[ing ---------------------------->
[
3 Sue: [coo- SEWing
((EA sewing --------->
Note again that when Abe utters his "ah" in line 2, and as he is also performing the embodied "sewing" routine for now the second time, he has turned his head and has re-directed his gaze toward Sue, displaying a possible invitation to Sue to collaborate in his word search, a readiness or openness to Sue's taking up and sharing the interactional floor with him (Goodwin and Goodwin 1986). And Sue immediately does so in her turn at line 3. With no gap whatsoever, and in "overlap"with Abe's continued (and second) performance of the nonvocalized component of his embodied action turn, Sue first starts to proffer a candidate word, "coo-", possibly projecting the lexical item "cooking." However, she suddenly cuts off her first utterance short of its completion with a glottal stop ("coo-") and offers a second candidate item, "SEWing." Sue's production of this second item displays that it has been locally occasioned by Abe's physical movements, their relevance to the task at hand, and the sequential slot for an appropriate next item due which they have generated.
1 Abe: no:. thuh *uh 'hh only boys. and the girls
2 a:re (0.2) *uh ah
((EA sew[ing ---------------------------->
[
3 Sue: [coo- SEWing
((EA sewing --------->
But, again, uttering the vocalized components of her turn is not all that Sue is doing in line 3. In fact, precisely when she begins to utter "SEWing", she also begins to perform her own version of Abe's nonvocalized embodied action component, the "sewing" routine. And she does so twice, continuing in "overlap" with Abe's performances and in "overlap" with his next utterance at line 6, "sewing", a repetition of her just proferred lexical item. (Click PLAY button for Sewing 2 Sue).
What does Sue's taking up of the "sewing" routine in line 3 do? First, it provides an embodied display for Abe that shows her orienting to and treating as interactionally relevant his just prior nonvocalized action. Her mirroring or re-performing Abe's physical actions points to Abe's movements and makes of them a kind of "first", to which hers become a "second"; it is a physical display of alignment. Second, Sue's rapid uptake of the movements, and the similarity of her performance to Abe's, display recognition of the pattern of behavior Abe has just performed as well as possible recognition of the indexed activity to which Abe is pointing in his own performance. Third, in that Sue also initiates her utterance of "SEWing" at exactly the same moment that she begins her re-performance of Abe's movements, she also displays for Abe that her utterance, "SEWing", is tied to her -- and so to his -- nonvocalized performances.
1 Abe: no:. thuh *uh 'hh only boys. and the girls
2 a:re (0.2) *uh ah
((EA sew[ing ---------------------------->
[
3 Sue: [coo- SEWing
((EA sewing --------->
4 Abe: (0.1) / [EA------>
5 Sue: [EA------>
In a kind of interactional physical duet, during the brief silence in the "talk" at lines 4 and 5, and at what might otherwise be characterized as a transition relevant place (which is not to claim that it is not), there is a moment in the interaction wherein both participants are continuing to perform in unison (in "overlap") the nonvocalized components of their respective embodied action turns -- the "sewing" routine. (Click the PLAY button for Sewing 2 Duet). They are also hloding their gaze on one another. The participants can be seen attending to one another's movements visually; the talk has momentarily halted but their nonvocalized actions have not.
4 Abe: (0.1) / [EA------>
5 Sue: [EA------>
6 Abe: [Sewing.
[ ((& nodding))
[ EA----------->
[
7 Sue: [EA---------------))
In line 6, Abe continues re-performing the "sewing" routine, vocalizes Sue's proferred lexical item (a repetition), and also nods his head. In so doing, Abe produces a threefold display of acceptance of and alignment with Sue's candidate word, "SEWing". Within his still on-going "frame" of the original nonvocalized "sewing" performance, Abe brings the collaborative word search full circle, ratifying Sue's item with both his vocalized repetition of it and his vertical head nod. Concurrently, Sue re-performs her second and final "sewing" routine in "overlap" with Abe's embodied action turn at line 6. (Click the PLAY button for Sewing 2 Full Circle):
6 Abe: [Sewing.
[ ((& nodding))
[ EA----------->
[
7 Sue: [EA---------------))
8 Abe: (0.2) / EA--------[-------))
[
9 Sue: [that's GOO:d
Finally, at line 8, during the two-tenths of a second silence in the talk, we observe that Abe is still re-performing the "sewing" routine, and he continues to do so until Sue has uttered "that's" in line 9. Sue's "that's GOO:d" provides an assessment of Abe's report that, then, the girls are sewing in his crafts class at his school. Her utterance also indicates a shift from the word-search task; it has been completed, she has dropped her hands into her lap, and her talk relates back to the topic at hand when the word search repair sequence was first initiated by Abe.
To summarize, this instance illustrates that the sequentiality of this word-search line of activity emerges through participants collaborative use of embodied actions with both vocalized and nonvocalized components. Furthermore, the interactional tasks constituted by and realized through their nonvocalized performances in particular demonstrate these participants' pivotal (and unmarked) reliance on a physical, embodied system of ordering and organizing their interaction across this line of activity. The seamlessness of their production, recipiency, and taking up of the nonvocalized components of their embodied action turns is clearly observable here. The lexical item, "SEWing", the candidate for the word search that Sue is proferring, has been occasioned by Abe's just prior nonvocalized performance of a "hand-sewing" routine. Sue instantiates (and displays for her recipient) the link between his nonvocalized performance and her candidate item through her rapid, whole action-turn, constituted by both vocalized and nonvocalized components (her own re-performance of his prior performance).