SECTION 3.3.1

 

WHEN SILENCES ARE NOT PAUSES

When used by interactants as construction units in the production of turns in particular instances of face-to-face interaction, embodied actions may affect our determination of turn boundaries. That is, analysis of the data collection generates this question: if a description of the turn-taking system does not include nonvocalized embodied actions as among the possible construction unit types, how do we (analysts) account for instances in which a participant stops speaking but clearly does not stop the communication of an on-going turn? Or where a participant does not speak at all but, based on the evidence provided by a co-participant, clearly has taken a turn?

As noted earlier, embodied action-turns can be constructed with vocalized components, or speech, and with nonvocalized embodied action (EA) components. Diagrams of some of the possible shapes of these two turn-configuration types provide more structural detail as to how such turns unfold-in-time in relation to moments of silence. Each simplified shape refers to one complete turn in the interaction by ONE turn-holder. Note that all of the nonvocalized components have their closing brackets enclosed in parenthesis to indicate that they occur with varying durations:

1. [nonvocalized EA ( ] )...

( silence )

2. [ speech ]

[ nonvocalized EA ( ] )...

 

3. [speech + nonvocalized EA ( ] )...

( silence )

4. [nonvocalized EA... + speech]

( silence )

5. [speech (silence) speech (silence) speech ( ] )

[ nonvocal EA 1... => nonvocal EA 2--------->( ] )...

Thus, for any one turn-holder, nonvocalized components may occur in any position in a turn. Furthermore, in face-to-face interaction, places of silence virtually ("intraturn pauses") are frequently inhabited by nonvocalized embodied action components. As shown here, overlap of the two kinds of components is possible and occurs regularly; Ochs has referred to this phenomenon as "coocurrence" (58). As illustrated by the third shape-configuration, embodied action components may also occur during interturn pauses, places heard as silence but seen as action or continuing action. The fifth type of embodied action-turn shape shown above illustrates the slippery nature of some embodied action turns that are constituted by and inhabit bits of talk AND nonvocalized action.

Furthermore, nonvocalized action-turns may occur in overlap with other turn units in ways that violate the one-speaker-at-a-time rule recurrently, permissibly, and unremarkably. In shapes 6, 7, and 8, two turn-holders are represented and three shape-configurations of overlapping turns are shown:

6. Turn-Holder A: [ speech ]

Turn-Holder B: [ nonvocalized EA ( ] )...

7. Turn-Holder A: [ nonvocalized EA ( ] )... (silence)

Turn-Holder B: [ nonvocalized EA ( ] )... (silence)

8. Turn-Holder A: [ speech ]

[ nonvocaliz[ed EA ( ] )...

Turn-Holder B: [ nonvocalized EA ( ] )...

[( silence )

 

 

Some Instances: Talk Ceases, Action Continues

Analysis of particular instances of interaction reveals that, when the producer of a turn uses both vocalized and nonvocalized embodied action components to build their turn, and when they produce a turn that has a shape-configuration like numbers 3 and 5 above, there is recurrent and systematic orientation to these action-turns by recipients. Recipients recurrently produce, as next items in the unfolding interaction, their own turns that display analysis and treatment of an embodied multi-unit turn AS a turn and that display some kind of uptake of the content of that turn's nonvocalized component(s):

3. [speech + nonvocalized EA ( ] )...

( silence )

5. [speech (silence) speech (silence) speech ( ] )

[ nonvocal EA 1... => nonvocal EA 2--------->( ] )...

That is, we observe recipient orientation to the "what" that is getting done during a silence as well as to the "when" projected by the unfolding turn-as-a-whole, including what is getting done during the silence. M. H. Goodwin observed in 1980 that:

... participants utilize not only the possibilities of the turn-taking

system but also the resources provided by their co-present

bodies to provide and ratify interpretations of silences, with

the effect that silences are neither pauses or gaps but rather

spaces that continue to be occupied with material implicated

in the production of the speaker's talk. (314)

One focus of the current study is to shift the focus that regards the turn-taking system as comprised primarily of spoken elements; in such a shift, Goodwin's embodied "material" may be re-examined as part of someone's interactive action-turn.

The matter would be less complex if the data revealed that nonvocalized components were always in and of themselves single units, such that, say, in a multi-unit turn, a vocalized component was the first unit and a nonvocalized component was the second unit. However, as we can observe in the following examples, a single action-unit may be constituted by both vocalized and nonvocalized components -- together -- as the turn unfolds for the recipient. The next example, HOOK, demonstrates how participants co-organize a strip of activity that involves an action-turn with both vocalized and nonvocalized components.

In this instance, two friends are studying together. Monica, a Canadian, is explaining to George, a native-Ukrainian, what is meant by the English expression, "getting off the hook." George had borrowed some books from a mutual friend and returned them; the friend advised him that he was now "off the hook." Our focus is on what happens in lines 4, 5, and 6. As in previous transcriptions, "EA" followed by an arrow indicates the occurrence of a nonvocalized action component; and in this instance we have an illustration of a type 3 configuration.

(Click on PLAY button for HOOK: One Embodied Action-Turn, With Vocalized and Nonvocalized Components)

 

1 Monica: the FISH is o:n the HOOK:

2 George: yeah.

3 Monica: ca:n't get awA:y, the fish is in trOUble.

4 George: but (0.2) NO:W [I'm ((EA--(0.2)------>))

5 Monica: [but i f w e : sa:y-

6 (0.1) yeah nOw you are FREE

First, observe what George does in constructing his turn at line 4. He utters "but" and then stops for two tenths of a second before continuing with his turn; so for that length of time he is silent and immobile. This stopped condition -- that is visually available to Monica as she is directing her gaze continuously toward him --contrasts with what he does next. As George utters "NO:W I'm", he turns his head to his extreme far right (without moving his upper torso); and this preparatory movement sets up the physical conditions that enable him to perform what comes next. He ceases talking and whips his head back across the path he had just moved through and continues turning it to his left until it reaches the anatomical limits of movement given the status of the rest of his body (immobile). Upon reaching the extreme far left of his embodied performance, George returns his head more slowly to its original position, that is, with head and gaze directed toward Monica and more or less sustained there. The speed and force of his head-turning contrast markedly with both his before and after body movement -- that is, there is virtually none.

To sum up thus far, in line 4, George produces a single action-turn using vocalized and nonvocalized components. Completion of his turn and transition-relevance do not occur at the end of his spoken utterances ("but (0.2) NO:W I'm"); they do not occur until the completion of his nonvocalized embodied performance ("roughly," the extreme endpoint of this head-whipping movement). Furthermore, this first possible place of projectable completion is exactly when Monica cuts off the unfolding of her own overlapping talk ("but if we: sa:y-") and displays for George -- who is now gazing at her again -- her orientation to his now completed turn by uttering, "yeah nOw you are frEE."

As has been observed, orienting to transition-relevant places of nonvocalized embodied action-turns and turn components provides evidence to us (as co-interactants and as analysts) that such actions constitute valid turns or parts of turns. However, as this instance demonstrates, transition-orientation is not all that recipients of embodied action-turns recurrently do. Recipients -- like Monica in this instance -- also recurrently produce as "next items" their own turns that display analysis and some kind of uptake of that turn's nonvocalized "content." Closer examination of this strip of interaction offers up such evidence.

1 Monica: the FISH is o:n the HOOK:

2 George: yeah.

3 Monica: ca:n't get awA:y, the fish is in trOUble.

4 George: but (0.2) NO:W [I'm ((EA--(0.2)------>))

5 Monica: [but i f w e : sa:y-

6 (0.1) yeah nOw you are FREE

In lines 1 through 3, Monica is teaching George an English-language idiom, "on the hook", ending line 3 with, "the fish is in trOUble." (Although they will not be detailed here, note that Monica is producing nonvocalized embodied components -- with a curved finger, for instance -- as part of her turns; her performed orientation to the "hook" however is quite different from what is coming up next from George. Embodied actions and displays of shifting perspective are taken up in Chapter Five). In line 4, George takes up and extends Monica's explanatory work himself, and he uses the conjunction "but" to link his turn explicitly with hers. Using the personal pronoun, "I", George also displays for Monica his understanding that the "fish" in her utterances metaphorically refers to himself: "but (0.2) NO:W I'm".

But perhaps a better description of what George is doing in this turn is as follows: using embodied performance, he playfully displays for Monica that he "is" (metaphorically) the "fish." At line 4, we observe (and Monica can observe) that George builds his turn using vocalized components ("but (0.2) NO:W I'm") and nonvocalized components, and in the latter George performs his embodied "getting-off-the-hook" from the perspective of the "fish" -- AS the "fish." Further, George performs the "fish" "getting off the hook", an action whose outcome he embodies (in relation to the borrowed books) and that Monica, in her uptake, articulates explicitly: "yeah nOw you are frEE."

4 George: but (0.2) NO:W [I'm ((EA--(0.2)------>))

5 Monica: [but i f w e : sa:y-

6 (0.1) yeah nOw you are FREE

When Monica stops in mid-utterance ("but if we sa:y-") and begins again with "yeah nOw you are FREE", she shows analysis of George's vocalized grammatical form ("NO:W I'm") to build her "yeah nOw you are." She displays explicit orientation to the "what" that George has just performed during the two-tenths of a second after he ceases to talk. His "getting off the hook" performance gets taken up by her as "FREE." Therefore, we can observe that Monica is providing specific evidence of uptake of the upshot-formulation of the vocalized AND nonvocalized components of his single action-turn.

Let us turn to additional examples with action-turns whose boundaries are constituted by nonvocalized action-components rather than by lexical, grammatical completion. What is being demonstrated is the extent to which embodied actions permeate instances of face-to-face interaction and that they are oriented to and treated as valid turns or turn components by participants. This evidence supports the claims made in Proposition One.

A type-four configuration is illustrated in one of the instances from our ADJACENCY-PAIR series, the THUMBS-UP example. The embodied action-turn occurs at the end of the fragment at line 12:

THUMBS-UP

1 Gran: I: wouldnÕt LEt em jump on MY be:d =

2 Joan: = I wouldnÕt let em jump on MIne

3 Either but weÕre not AT mY

4 ho[u:se

5 Dot: [W(h)A(h)[EE

6 Gran: [tchh(h) huh huh

7 (0.8) / ((sounds of bed-jumping))

8 Lily: wwha:t does STANley think

9 (1.0)

10 Stan: ((EA-thumbs up--(0.4)-->)) =

11 Gran: = do YOU jump on this be:d stanley= <--1PP

12 Stan: ((EA-head turn-[-->)) <--2PP

[NO::? <---