Embodied Interaction: Language and Body in the Material World [1 ed.] 9780521895637

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EMBODIED INTERACTION How do people organize their body m ovem ent and talk w hen they interact with one another in the m aterial world? How do they coordinate linguistic structures w ith bodily resources (such as gaze and gesture) to bring about coherent and intelligible courses of action? How are physical settings, artifacts, technologies, and non-linguistic sign-sys­ tem s im plicated in social interaction and shared cognition? This volume brings together advanced work by leading international scholars who share video-based research m eth­ ods th at integrate semiotic, linguistic, sociological, anthropological, and cognitive sci­ ence perspectives w ith detailed, m icroanalytic observations. Collectively they provide a coherent fram ew ork for analyzing the production of m eaning and the organization of social interaction in the complex and heterogeneous settings characteristic of m odem life, ranging from ordinary and bilingual conversation to family interaction, and from daycare centers to w ork settings such as airplanes, clinics, and architects' offices, and to activities such as auctions and m usical perform ances. Several chapters investigate how participants w ith com m unicative im pairm ents (aphasia, blindness, deafness) creatively build m eaning with others. Embodied Interaction is indispensable for anyone interested in the study of language and social interaction. This volume will be a point of reference for future research on m ultim odality in h u m an com m unication and action. Jürgen Streeck is Associate Professor of C om m unication Studies, Anthropology, and G erm anic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and a Senior Fellow at Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS). He is interested in the coordination of lin­ guistic stm cture, gesture, and other com m unicative modalities; the phenom enology and philosophical anthropology of the body; the relationship betw een em bodim ent and em placem ent; and the bodily foundations of cognition, language, and com m unication. His publications include Social Order in Child Communication, Childrens World and Children’s Language (with J. Cook-Gum perz and W. Corsaro), Gesturecraft: The ManuFacture o f Meaning, and New Adventures in Language and Interaction. Charles Goodwin is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His interests include video analysis of talk-in-interaction; gram m ar in context; cognition in the lived social world; gesture, gaze, and em bodim ent as inter­ actively organized social practices; aphasia in discourse; language in the professions; and the ethnography of science. His publications include Conversational Organization:

Interaction between Speakers and Hearers, Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon (co-edited with Alessandro D uranti), Conversation and Brain Damage, and II Senso del Vedere: Pratiche Sociali della Significazione. Curtis LeBaron is Associate Professor of O rganizational Leadership and Strategy at B righam Young University. He teaches graduate and executive education courses on leadership, hu m an resources, and qualitative research m ethods. His research inter­ ests include interaction and identity, knowledge and innovation, and organizational strategy as practice. His research has been recognized by the N ational Institute of H ealth (Bethesda, M aryland) and the N ational C om m unication Association (Language and Social Interaction [LSI] division). Funding for research has come from a vari­ ety of sources, including the N ational Science Foundation, a W arren Jones Fellowship (M arriott School of M anagem ent), and an E rasm us M undus Scholarship (E uropean Union). He has published in journals such as Journal o f Communication, Research on Language and Social Interaction, Human Studies, Cognition and Instruction, and Computer Supported Collaborative Work. He is also the co-editor of Studies in Language and Social Interaction (with Phillip Glenn and Jenny M andelbaum ).

LEA RN IN G IN DOING: SOCIAL, CO G N ITIVE, AND COMPUTATIONAL P E R S P E C T IV E S S E R IE S EDITO R E M E R IT U S

John Seely Brown, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center GENERAL ED ITO R S

Roy Pea, Professor o f Education and the Learning Sciences and Director, Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning, Stanford University C hristian Heath, The Management Centre, King’s College, London Lucy A. Suchm an, Centre for Science Studies and Department o f Sociology, Lancaster University, UK S E R IE S FOREW ORD

This series for Cam bridge University Press is widely known as an international forum for studies of situated learning and cognition. Innovative contributions are being m ade by anthropology; by cognitive, developm ental, and cultural psychology; by com puter science; by education; and by social theory. These contributions are providing the basis for new ways of understanding the social, historical, and contextual nature of learn­ ing, thinking, and practice th at em erges from hum an activity. The em pirical settings of these research inquiries range from the classroom to the workplace, to the hightechnology office, and to learning in the streets and in other com m unities of practice. The situated natu re of learning and rem em bering through activity is a central fact. It m ay appear obvious that hu m an m inds develop in social situations and extend their sphere of activity and com m unicative com petencies. But cognitive theories of knowl­ edge representation and learning alone have not provided sufficient insight into these relationships. This series was born of the conviction that new exciting interdisciplin­ ary syntheses are underw ay as scholars and practitioners from diverse fields seek to develop theory and em pirical investigations adequate for characterizing the complex relations of social and m ental life, and for understanding successful learning wherever it occurs. The series invites contributions that advance our understanding of these sem ­ inal issues. Roy Pea Christian H eath Lucy Suchm an TITLES IN THE S E R IE S

The Construction Zone: Working for Cognitive Change in School Denis Newman, Peg Griffin, and Michael Cole Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation Jean Lave and E tienne W enger Street Mathematics and School M athematics Terezinha Nunes, David W illiam Carraher, and Analucia Dias Schliem ann Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context Seth Chaiklin and Jean Lave, Editors Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations Gavriel Salomon, E ditor The Computer as M edium Peter Bogh Anderson, Berit Holmqvist, and Jens F. Jensen, Editors Sociocultural Studies o f Mind Jam es V. W ertsch, Pablo del Rio, and Amelia Alvarez, Editors (Continued after the index)

EMBODIED INTERACTION LANGUAGE AND BODY IN THE MATERIAL WORLD Edited by

Jürgen Streeck, Charles Goodwin, and Curtis LeBaron

R i Cambridge UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Säo Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/ 9780521895637 © Cambridge University Press 2011 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2011 Reprinted 2012 A catalog record fo r this publication is available from the British Library. Library o f Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Embodied interaction : language and body in the material world / edited by Jürgen Streeck, Charles Goodwin, Curtis LeBaron. p. cm. - (Learning in doing : social, cognitive and computational perspectives) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-521-89563-7 (hardback) 1. Sociolinguistics. 2. Psycholinguistics. 3. Semiotics. 4. Social interaction. 5. Gesture. I. Streeck, Jürgen. II. Goodwin, Charles, 1943-III. LeBaron, Curtis IV. Title. V. Series. P40.E43 2011 306.44-dc22 2011007345 ISBN 978-0-521-89563-7 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or ap­ propriate.

Contents

List of Figures and T a b le s................................................................................................. page ix C ontributors..................................................................................................................................xiii 1. E m bodied In te ra c tio n in th e M aterial W orld: An In tro d u c tio n ............................... 1 Jürgen Streeck, Charles Goodwin, and Curtis LeBaron I.

FOUNDING CAPACITIES

2. Collaborative C onstru ctio n of M ultim odal U tteran ces.............................................29 Edw in H utchins and Saeko N om ura 3. F orm al S tru ctu res of P ractical Tasks: A R esource for Action in th e Social Life of Very Young C h ild re n .................................................................. 44 Gene H. Lerner, Don H. Zim m erm an, and M ardi Kidwell

4. E lem ents of F o rm u la tio n ................................................................................................. 59 N. J. Enfield 5. The Changing M eanings of Things: F o und O bjects an d In scrip tio n s in Social In te r a c tio n ...........................................................................................................67 Jürgen Streeck 6. C horeographies of A ttention: M ultim odality in a R outine Fam ily Activity...................................................................................................................... 79 Eve Tulbert and M arjorie H. Goodwin 7. Som e F unctio n s of S peak er H ead N o d s ...................................................................... 93 H irom i Aoki 8. The M ultim odal M echanics of C ollaborative Unit C onstruction in Jap an ese C o n v e rsa tio n ................................................................................................106 Shim ako Iwasaki II.

TRANSFORMATIONAL ECOLOGIES

9. C reating Contexts for Actions: M ultim odal P ractices for M anaging C hildren's C onduct in th e C hildcare C la s sro o m ...................................................... 123 Siri Mehus 10.

M ultilingual M ultim odality: C om m unicative Difficulties an d T heir S olutions in Second-L anguage U s e ............................................................................. 137 M arianne Gullberg

CONTENTS

viii

11. On the Use of Graphic Resources in Interaction by People with Communication Disorders............................................................................152 Ray W ilkinson, Steven Bloch, and M ichael Clarke

12. Terra Incognita: Social Interaction among Blind Children.............................. 169 Sharon Avital and Jürgen Streeck

13. Contextures of Action............................................................................................ 182 Charles Goodwin

14. “A Full Inspiration Tray:” Multimodality across Real and Virtual Spaces................................................................................................ 194 Elizabeth Keating and Chiho Sunakaw a

III.

PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITIES

15. The Organization of Concurrent Courses of Action in Surgical Demonstrations...................................................................................................... 207 Lorenza M ondada

16. Pursuing a Response: Prodding Recognition and Expertise within a Surgical Team........ .................................................................................227 Alan Zemel, Timothy K oschm ann, and Curtis LeBaron

17. Building Stories: The Embodied Narration of What Might Come to Pass.......................................................................................................... 243 Keith M. M urphy

18. Embodied Arguments: Verbal Claims and Bodily Evidence..............................254 Julien C. Mirivel

19. Facilitating Tool Use in the Photography Studio.............................................. 264 Scott Phillabaum

20. Gesture and Institutional Interaction................................................................. 276 C hristian H eath and Paul Luff

21. Musical Spaces...................................................................................................... 289 Jo h n B. H aviland Index

305

Figures and Tables

FIGURES 2.1. 2.2. 2.3.

3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5. 3.6. 3.7. 3.8. 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 5.4. 5.5. 5.6. 5.7. 5.8. 5.9. 5.10. 5.11. 6.1. 6.2. 6.3. 8.1. 8.2. 8.3. 8.4. 9.1. 9.2. 9.3. 9.4.

The “approach to stall recovery” as it appears in the Flight Crew O perating M anual The “departure stall” practice procedure as it appears in the sim ulator briehng slides The 737NG trim wheel and stabilizer trim indicator as seen looking dow n from the vantage of the left pilot's seat. Up on the page is forw ard in the airplane Food staging area and m eal service table First appeal Second appeal No place for an appeal An extended appeal Expression of displeasure D eparting appeal A nascent reprise A ntpöhler inspects com petitor cookie A ntpöhler test-eats com petitor cookie D estrooper inspects com petitor alum inum bag D estrooper fondles com petitor alum inum bag A ntpöhler discards alum inum bag D estrooper rearranges alum inum bag A ntpöhler discards second alum inum bag D estrooper rearranges second alum inum bag G estalt closure in the arranging of boxes and bags T ransform ations of an alum inum bag A ntpöhler w rites num bers Sisters brushing teeth in a nested form ation Body alignm ents in toothbrushing call-to-action M ap of child's journey through space for toothbrushing A single utterance “But um:- ((I)) was interested in drug stuff, too, " consisting of segm ented sub-unit com ponents Em ergence of facial and body display as u n it progresses Display of speaker stance projects upcom ing talk The orchestration of individual and m ultiple m odalities in unit construction K arim reaches for Curtis's bowl M onica sits Applause at Circle Time “Up the w ater spout”

page 33 33

38 46 48 50 51 52 54 55 55 68 68 69 69 70 70 70 70 70 71 72 82 84 88 108 111 114 118 126 127 128 129

IX

FIGURES AND TABLES

X

9.5. 9.6. 9.7. 9.8. 9.9. 9.10. 9.11. 9.12. 9.13. 10.1. 10.2. 10.3. 10.4. 10.5. 10.6. 11.1. 11.2. 11.3. 12.1. 12.2. 12.3. 12.4. 12.5. 12.6. 12.7. 14.1. 14.2. 14.3. 14.4. 14.5. 15.1. 15.2. 15.3. 15.4. 15.5. 15.6. 15.7. 15.8. 15.9. 15.10. 15.11. 15.12. 15.13. 15.14. 15.15. 16.1. 16.2. 16.3. 16.4.

"Down cam e the ra in ” R obert grasps and pulls the chair R obert nudges Thom as into the chair “Gently dow n the stream ” “D o n t forget to scream ” “All done” “Its som eone elses tu rn ” “Good job, Rebecca” “Lena Apple Tree?” Native speaker of French to the left, Dutch speaker of L2 French to the right Native speaker of French to the left, Dutch speaker of L2 French to the right D utch speaker of L2 French to the left, native speaker of French to the right Native speaker of F rench to the left, D utch speaker of L2 French to the right French speaker of L2 Swedish to the left, native speaker of Swedish to the right Dutch speaker of L2 French to the left, native speaker of French to the right Jam es (left) and Jill Mary (left) and Stan Jam al (right) and Colin Ken and Sally in conversation Ken and Sally adopt sym m etrical postures Ken m akes an encouraging rem ark to Sally Sally adopts m atching posture in response April rocking before the beginning of a m usic lesson April jum ps up and dow n during the m usic lesson April calm ing herself by grasping h er arm Pointing to signify and clarify addressee Using technology to expand gaze p aram eters C oordinating activity in m ultiple spaces through language and the body H ead shift, voice, and referent M achine perspective and virtual gaze shift plus hum an perspective and gaze shift The tools m anipulated by the participants Hook approaches to the red dot, 1. 1 “là#”, 1. 1 “coag#”, 1. 3 Hook goes away after coagulation, 1. 5 Hook approaches Hook tends the tissue Hook coagulates Hook dissects Hook approaching (1. 2) Hook and peanut in the dissection space (1. 2) The coordinated positioning of hook and peanut (1. 5) Series of coagulated points (1. 7-18) Initial position of the cam era (1. 3) Zoom of the cam era (1. 7-9) Stenosis and anastom osis Attending tapping the anastom osis Attending s hand on the anastom osis Attending curls fingers dow n

129 129 129 131 131 132 132 132 132 140 140 142 143 144 144 155 159 162 173 173 173 173 179 179 179 196 196 199 200 201 209 210 210 211 211 212 212 212 212 217 217 217 217 218 218 229 229 230 230

figures a n d ta ble s

16.5. 16.6. 16.7. 16.8. 16.9. 16.10. 16.11. 16.12. 16.13. 16.14. 16.15. 16.16. 16.17. 16.18. 16.19. 16.20. 16.21. 16.22. 16.23. 16.24. 16.25. 16.26. 16.27. 16.28. 16.29. 16.30. 16.31. 18.1. 19.1. 19.2. 19.3. 19.4. 19.5. 19.6. 19.7. 19.8. 21.1. 21.2. 21.3. 21.4. 21.5. 21.6. 21.7. 21.8. 21.9. 21.10. 21.11. 21.12. 21.13. 21.14. 21.15. 21.16. 21.17. 21.18. 21.19. 21.20.

Attending reaching up the arm Attending moving down the arm A ttendings finger on the anastom osis R esident constitutes the anastom osis Attending places right hand on arm Attending removes hands from arm Attending returns both hands to arm Attending places finger on anastom osis Attending slides finger up the arm Attending sweeps fingers apart Attending returns fingers to the anastom osis Attending fixâmes the anastom osis Attending releases the site R esident points to the anastom osis R esident places finger on cephalic vein Attending reclaim s the arm Attending waves hand over the site Attending sweeps up the arm R esident points to cephalic vein Attending taps the arm Attending sweeps hand over cephalic vein Attending sweeps along the arm Attending sweeps over the site of fistula Attending points to the stenosis Attending brings finger to the anastom osis Attending moves finger up the arm R esident points to the arm D irection of the surgeons gestural m ovem ents during the exam ination A sam ple contact p rin t Using the contact p rin t Com paring the contact p rin t with negatives The viewing board “and this will becom e less (0.6) uh distracting maybe" “see if her top teeth don't becom e (0.4) whiter" Using the book as a viewing board Using the book as a viewing board Zinacantec m usicians playing violin, harp, and guitar, seated Zinacantec m usicians in procession String quartet The jazz group Bartok SQ #4, 5 m ovem ent, bars 360ff Piano riff (other m usicians prepare) Piano glance (other m usicians start) Cornetist passes the solo to the alto sax Saxophone player “walks" the solo back into the group Cornet checks with glance Cornet points with instru m en t O pening piano chord and cornet riff M arcus M iller signature bass M ozart opening (first violin p art only) “Try..." “Try upbow ..." “Very light on the upbow" “H ere..." “Put your fingers anywhere" “W hat th at turned out to be"

XI

230 232 232 232 232 233 233 233 233 233 234 234 234 234 234 235 235 236 236 236 237 237 238 238 238 238 238 258 266 267 268 268 270 270 273 273 291 291 291 291 295 296 296 296 296 297 297 298 299 300 300 300 301 301 301 301

FIGURES AND TABLES

XII

TABLES 2.1. How the categories Lexical Affiliate and Co-expressive speech fail to label the space of sem antic and tem poral relations am ong sem iotic resources 7.1. The distribution of speaker head nods am ong different pattern s of p articipants' gaze 7.2. The distribution of the two form s of speaker head nods

30 95 95

Contributors

H irom i Aoki University of Alberta

Curtis LeBaron Brigham Young University

Sharon Avital Interdisciplinary Center, H ertzelia

Gene H . L em er University of California, Santa B arbara

Steven B loch University College London

Paul Luff King s College London

M ichael Clarke University College London

Siri M ehus University of W ashington, Seattle

N. J. Enfield Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and R adboud University, N ijm egen

Julien C. Mirivel University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Charles G oodw in University of California, Los Angeles

Lorenza M ondada Université de Lyon & ICAR Research Lab (CNRS)

Marjorie H. G oodw in University of California, Los Angeles

Keith M. Murphy University of California, Irvine

M arianne Gullberg Lund University

Saeko Nom ura Institute for H um an Centered Design, B oston

John B. H aviland University of California, San Diego

Scott Phillabaum San José State University

Christian H eath King s College London

Jürgen Streeck The University of Texas at Austin

Edw in H utchins University of California, San Diego

Chiho Sunakawa The University of Texas at Austin

Shim ako Iw asaki M onash University

Eve Tulbert University of California, Los Angeles

Elizabeth K eating The University of Texas at Austin

Ray W ilkinson University of M anchester

Mardi K idw ell University of New H am pshire

Alan Zem el University at Albany, SUNY

Timothy K oschm ann Southern Illinois University

Don H. Zim m erm an University of California, Santa B arbara

Embodied Interaction in the Material World: An Introduction Jürgen Streeck, Charles Goodwin, and Curtis LeBaron

HUMAN ACTION The chapters in this volume take as their focus the orga­ nization of action in hum an interaction. The question im m ediately arises as to w here and how the structure of hu m an action m ight be investigated. Different disciplines have taken very different kinds of phenom ena, ranging from the m ental intentions of individual actors to large, historically shaped social structures, as the p roper locus for such a study. Here we take as our point of departure events in which m ultiple parties are carrying out endoge­ nous courses of action in concert with each other w ithin face-to-face hum an interaction. A concrete example can m ake clearer w hat we m ean by this. In Transcript 1.1 Ann, a senior archeologist and director of the held school w here the current excavation is taking place, is w orking w ith Sue, a new graduate student, as Sue works to o u t­ line the shape of an archeological feature faintly visible in the color patterning of the dirt they are exam ining (this sequence is exam ined in m ore detail, from a slightly different perspective in Goodwin (2007a).

Transcript 1.1. Embodied Interaction.

The actions occurring in Transcript 1.1 are not orga­ nized w ithin a single m edium , such as talk, b u t are instead constructed through the sim ultaneous use of m ultiple sem iotic resources w ith quite different proper­ ties. Thus in line 1, Ann says, “W hado you think of:,". In English, of begins a prepositional phrase th at requires a noun for its gram m atical com pletion. However, no appro­ priate noun occurs in Transcript 1.1. A sim ilar argum ent can be m ade about “aro:und" in line 3, where the entity being gone around is never specified in the talk. If one focuses only on the talk occurring here, and the linguis­ tic structure em erging w ithin th at talk, w hat is said here does not conform to the requirem ents of English gram ­ mar. However the participants do not in any way treat this talk as defective. Instead the "it" in Sues line 3 “Does it kinda go aro:und" explicitly ties back to w hat Ann indicated, and thus not only treats w hat Ann was talk­ ing about as unproblem atically understood, but incorpo­ rates th at recognition into the structure of the utterance responding to A nns talk. There is of course no m ystery in how Sue was able to appropriately understand w hat Ann was telling her. As Ann said “of:," in line 1, she used her right arm and index Unger to point tow ard a particu lar patch of color p a tte rn ­ ing in the dirt they were w orking on together. The slot for the noun in the prepositional phrase in the talk was thus filled by the com bination of a pointing gesture and the visible structure in the environm ent it indicated. Ann was showing Sue som ething in the dirt th at should now becom e the focus of their jo in t scrutiny and work. Well before she produces “it" in line 3, Sue displays precisely this em bodied, work-relevant understanding of the com ­ plex structure of Anns action by m oving her own hand and trowel to ju st the spot in the dirt th at Ann indicated. She then uses th at positioning as the point of departure for the gesture with the trow el tracing structure in the dirt th at accom panies “kinda go around" in line 3. The interaction between Ann, Sue, and the world th at is the focus of their work is organized through the structured exchange of different kinds of signs. These include not only language b u t also a variety of diverse 1

2

signs constituted through the visible organization of the participants' bodies. Ann uses her pointing finger in line 1 to indicate to Sue a specific place in the dirt. Sues m ovem ent of the trowel in line 3 is used to show Ann the p ath in the dirt th at is described in the talk as “kinda go around" and thus constitutes a sign for th at path. Each party builds action by producing signs for the other. Thus, to build relevant action in Transcript 1.1, the participants sim ultaneously m ake use of a num ber of quite different kinds of sem iotic resources th at have different properties and are instantiated in different kinds of sem iotic m ate­ rials (linguistic structure in the stream of speech, signs such as pointing displayed through the visible body, the patterning of phenom ena in the environm ent th at is the focus of their work, etc.). The recognizable and conse­ quential actions they are building for each other cannot be found in any single sem iotic m edium . As noted ear­ lier, by itself the talk is incom plete both gram m atically and, m ore crucially, w ith respect to the specification of w hat the addressee of the action is to attend to in order to accom plish a relevant next action. Sim ilarly the em bod­ ied pointing m ovem ents require the co-occurring talk to explicate the n atu re and relevance of w hat is being indi­ cated. Indeed the m utual organization of talk and gesture has long been a central them e in gesture studies (Kendon, 2004; McNeill, 1992). By itself each individual set of sem i­ otic resources is partial and incom plete (Agha, 2007; Goodwin, 2007a). However, w hen joined together in local contextures of action, diverse sem iotic resources m u tu ­ ally elaborate each other to create a whole th at is both greater than, and different from, any of its constituent p arts (Goodwin, 2000a). Describing how action is built here thus requires an analytic fram ew ork th at recognizes the diversity of sem iotic resources used by participants in interaction, and takes into account how these resources interact w ith each other to build locally relevant action. Having the ability to build action by com bining resources w ith diverse properties has clear advantages and greatly expands the repertoire of possible action available to participants. To note one very sim ple exam ­ ple: In line 3, Sue is tracing w ith h er trow el a complex, irregular shape in the dirt. Describing the precise shape of the phenom ena they uncover in the dirt being exca­ vated is crucial to the w ork of archeology. Suppose the resources available for doing this were restricted to a single sem iotic field, such as language. If each different shape encountered in an excavation h ad to be categorized semantically, the vocabulary of archeology w ould quickly becom e unm anageably large - indeed, useless. However if a lim ited set of sem antic categories (“feature," “post­ mold," “disturbance," etc.) can be supplem ented by an a­ logic signs capable of continuous variation (gestures over a shape such as line 3, draw ings on m aps, etc.), precision and flexibility becom e n o t only possible, b u t quite liter­ ally ready at h an d as w orking hands and trowels artic­ ulate for others relevant structure in the w orld they are acting upon together.

STREECK, GOODWIN, AND LEBARON

To try and dem onstrate as clearly as possible how action is built by com bining resources with diverse properties th at m utually elaborate each other, the discussion has so far been restricted to how talk, gesture, and structure in the w orld m utually elaborate each other. This m ight be glossed as the referential dom ain th at the participants are focusing on: w hat they are talking about and form u­ lating as p articular kinds of structure in the dirt they are excavating. However this does not in any way exhaust the different kinds of sem iotic resources th at are im pli­ cated in the organization of their action. For example, how can Ann unproblem atically assum e th at Sue will take her gesture into account, som ething an addressee m ust do in order to properly und erstan d w hat Ann is telling h er and thus build an appropriate next action? Note th at Ann places her gesture rig h t in front of S ues eyes, over the dirt she is already looking at. Ann treats S ues gaze as a sign for w here she is attending and w hat she is attending to. More generally, the m utual orientation of the p articipants' bodies creates w hat Goffman (1964: 64) called an “ecological huddle," w hich publicly dem onstrates through visible em bodied practice th at the participants are m utually oriented tow ard each other and frequently tow ard p articu lar places, objects, and events in the surrounding environm ent (H eath, Luff, vom Lehn, H indm arsh and Cloeverly, 2002). Such em bodied p articipation fram ew orks (Goodwin, 2000a) or F-form ations (K endon, 1990) are central to the organization of action in face-to-face interaction. Like gestures, these displays of m utual orientation are con­ structed through em bodied signs. However, they differ from gesture in a n u m b er of im p o rtan t respects. First, they are not “about" the substance of w hat the p artici­ pants are talking about (e.g., relevant structure in the dirt these parties are w orking on), b u t instead have as their subject m atter the orientation of the participants tow ard each other, and the w orld th a t is the focus of th eir activity. Second, they have a quite different tem ­ poral organization. Unlike particu lar elem ents of talk, or specific gestures, w hich disappear and are replaced by other w ords or gestures alm ost as soon as they occur, em bodied p articipation fram ew orks can be sustained over extended stretches of talk and action. Third, even not being ab o u t the substance of w hat is being talked about, they contribute to the organization of th a t talk in other im p o rtan t ways. For example, the shared ori­ entational fram ew orks they m ake publicly visible deictically ground m any of the indexical expressions that occur w ithin th at talk (including “you," “it," and “there" in T ranscript 1.1) while m aking possible other indexical, context sensitive uses of language, such as the “incom ­ plete" prepositional ph rase noted earlier. These em bod­ ied orientational fram ew orks create local environm ents w here participants can treat each o th er as attending to, and working together w ithin, a shared world of percep­ tion and action, som ething crucial to the way in which Ann and Sue are building action together by attending to

e m b o d ie d in t e r a c t io n in t h e m a t e r ia l w o r l d

how each o th er is interpreting and operating on the dirt th a t is the focus of th eir work. In essence, the signs used to create and continuously sustain, m odify or dism an­ tle p articip atio n fram ew orks (Goodwin, 1981, 2007b; Kendon, 1985) create a public sem iotic environm ent w ithin w hich oth er kinds of sign exchange processes, such as talk and gesture, can flourish. Events of the type found in Transcript 1.1, in w hich m ultiple parties are carrying out a course of action together through the use of talk and oth er em bodied action while attending to each other and frequently to the phenom ena in the w orld th a t are the focus of their scru­ tiny and activities, provide a perspicuous environm ent for the system atic investigation of a range of phenom ena th at are central to the organization of h u m an language, social organization, culture, and cognition. First, inso­ far as a com m on course of action is being accom plished through the joint, collaborative w ork of m ultiple parties, such events provide pervasive exam ples of elem entary h u m an social organization, a place w here one can inves­ tigate in detail the actual practices used to build endog­ enous social order. Sim m el (1950: 21-22) argued th at “if society is conceived as interaction am ong individuals, the description of the form s of this interaction is the task of the science of society in its strictest and m ost essen­ tial sense.” Such sites, in w hich action is organized with reference to the properties of em bodied co-presence, ren ­ der clearly visible m any of the central features of hu m an interaction noted by Goffman (1963), including m utual m onitoring and the reflexivity of em bodied interaction. Second, as has long been noted by conversation analysts (Sacks, 1992; Schegloff, 2006), face-to-face interaction is a central place w here language em erges in the n a tu ­ ral world. Third, if p articipants are to carry out courses of collaborative action together, they m u st in som e rel­ evant sense u n derstand w hat each other is doing, and the natu re and detailed stru ctu re of the events they are engaged in together. Such sites thus perm it investigation of the practices of sense m aking noted by Garfinkel ( 1967) and of cognition as public practice m ore generally. They are also central to contem porary work in Europe, such as Linell (2009), w hich is attem pting to rethink language, the m ind, and the world dialogically. Fourth, though organized through general practices, the p articulars of w hat participants m ust see and und erstan d in order to build action together, such as how color patterns in a patch of d irt can be interpreted as archeological features, are lodged w ithin specific com m unities. Situations such as these are places where the content and organization of culture as practice, as well as the ways in w hich such knowledge, skills and practices are ap propriated by new­ com ers ju st entering its distinctive phenom enal w orld of a community, can be exam ined in fine detail (Sue is a beginning archeologist at h er first excavation). Fourth, in such events, it is possible to investigate both the p art played by the individual body in the organization of cog­ nition and action, including how such bodies gain the

3

skills required for relevant action w ithin specific com ­ m unities (Ingold, 2000), and how participants see and understand each o th ers bodies so th at they can antici­ pate w hat each other is about to do and jo in t action can be successfully accom plished. It is not being argued th at such events are the only place where hum an action occurs, or th a t they are in some sense prim ordial. M any actions, such as the words now being w ritten, are created by solitary individuals, though ones using culturally structured resources such as language. An individual can come to know the w orld and its distinctive properties through exploration and work with her own hands (Streeck, 2009), and m uch p h e­ nom enal knowledge is lodged w ithin the experience of an individual em bedded w ithin a consequential world. The interactive organization of m ulti-party action does, how ­ ever, provide a fruitful arena for investigating from an integrated perspective a host of crucial phenom ena th a t are central to the organization of h um an action, cogni­ tion, and social life. In brief, by looking at events such as th at found in Transcript 1.1, it is possible to system atically exam ­ ine som e of the practices used by hum an beings to build action in concert w ith each other. As has long been strongly dem onstrated by conversational analysts (Jefferson, 1988; Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, 2007), sequential organization is central to both the structure of action and the way in w hich it is understood by the participants themselves (Sues talk is built in response to w hat Ann has ju st said and done, and, as noted earlier, a num ber of constructional features of her utterance explicitly display this, including the “it,” which ties to w hat Ann has ju st said and done). One p h e­ nom enon th at quickly em erges from records th a t p re­ serve not only the talk but also the bodies of actors, is th a t action is built through the m utual elaboration of diverse sem iotic resources with quite different properties, each of which, including language, can m ake only a partial, incom plete contribution to the action in progress. The participants themselves attend to both this diversity and to the unique, distinctive contributions m ade by differ­ ent kinds of sem iotic resources. Thus Sue builds a new action to Ann both with talk and w ith relevant actions of her body - for example, by moving her own trow el to the place in the d irt indicated by Ann and then using th a t trowel to outline w hat she has been asked to see, and on another level, by aligning h er body tow ard both Ann and the patch of dirt they are exam ining together. A unifying thread running through all of the papers in this volume, though one developed in very different ways, is the system atic investigation of how m ultiple participants build action together in the m idst of situ­ ated interaction, typically by using different kinds of sem iotic resources th at m utually elaborate each other. One aspect of this process th at the current volum e is not able to adequately address is prosody. However, this is the focus of rich and im portant work, m uch of it in

4

Europe, by several linked groups of scholars including Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, M argaret Selting, D agm ar Beth-W eingarten, Elisabeth Reberm , John Local and his collaborators in York, and m any others (see, for example, Couper-Kuhlen and Selting, 1996b). This volum es focus on the organization of action w ithin interaction differ­ entiates it from som e other approaches to w hat is som e­ tim es glossed as m ultim odality It is, however, consistent w ith a growing body of work, in Europe, Japan, and the United States, th at has begun to engage in intensive anal­ ysis of how action is built through the inter-elaboration of talk, the body, encom passing activities and features of the setting (see, for example, H eath and Luff, 2000; M ondada, 2008a, 2008b; N ishizaka, 2007), and reflexive analysis of the transcription practices th at can m ake such phenom ena visible and am enable to analysis (Lindwall and Lymer, 2008; Murphy, 2005; M ondada, 2006). The approach taken in this volume, w ith its focus on system atic investigation of the different kinds of sem iotic resources and m eaning-m aking practices th at partici­ pants them selves attend to, and treat as relevant, as they build action w ithin interaction together, seems to us not only fruitful, b u t straightforw ard and uncontroversial. The sim ultaneous use of diverse sem iotic resources currently discussed u n d er the heading multimodality (see the fourth section of this chapter) - is pervasive in the organization of endogenous hu m an action. The issue therefore arises as to why the relevance of adopting a perspective th a t takes this into account m ust be clearly argued. Briefly, m uch existing research has avoided the crucial issues posed by the heterogeneous sem iosis that sits at the center of actual hu m an action by focusing on the analysis of individual sem iotic systems as selfcontained wholes. For example, Saussure (1959: 16) envisioned a general science focused on 'The life of signs w ithin society." Such a goal is entirely com patible with the w ork in this volume. However, Saussure then argued th a t linguistics should confine its study to ju st one part of this larger field by investigating language as an isolated self-contained whole: A science that studies the life of signs within society is con­ ceivable; it would be a part of social psychology and con­ sequently of general psychology; I shall call it “semiology" (from Greek semefon, “sign"). Semiology would show what constitutes signs, what laws govern them. Since the science does not yet exist, no one can say what it would be; but it has a right to existence, a place staked out in advance. Linguistics is only a part of the general science of semiology; the laws discovered by semiology will be applicable to lin­ guistics, and the latter will circumscribe a well-defined area within the mass of anthropological facts. To determine the exact place of semiology is the task of the psychologist! The task of the linguist is to find out what makes language a spe­ cial system within the mass of semiological data. Language is thus dem arcated as a “special system" that not only can be, b u t should be investigated w ithout reference to other sem iotic processes w ith which it characteristically

STREECK, GOODWIN, AND LEBARON

co-occurs. Delimiting the scope of inquiry in this way, and thus defining the phenom enal and analytic field w ithin which all subsequent inquiry will occur, has had enor­ m ous consequences. Such limits defined the scope of for­ m al linguistics, and were carried over as unquestioned assum ptions w hen new fields, such as cognitive science, emerged. Thus it took m uch creative innovation for cog­ nitive science to reshape itself so that phenom ena such as em bodim ent (Clark, 1997; Gibbs, 2005) and the dis­ tribution of cognitive processes beyond the individual brain to encom pass the situated practices of com m uni­ ties (Hutchins, 1995; Suchm an, 1987) were recognized as essential to the analysis of hum an cognition. From a slightly different perspective, hum an language possesses rich, intricate, and varied structure com bined with extraordinarily powerful representational capac­ ities. Moreover, for thousands of years it has been pos­ sible to use writing to capture m uch of this richness in another, m ore perm anent m edium . W riting does, how ­ ever, have the effect of rendering invisible the em bodied frameworks w ithin w hich language in face-to-face inter­ action is embedded, including the crucial part played by co-present hearers. R ather than simply being constraints, the restrictions and distinctive properties of writing, as a sem iotic m edium in its own right, m ake possible new and im portant ways of using language and preserving some of its detailed structure not only across encounters, but also across generations. In part because of the pow ­ erful resources provided by writing, m any fields, includ­ ing some th at strongly oppose the form al and monologic assum ptions of Saussure and argue persuasively for the crucial im portance of dialog (Bakhtin, 1981; Volosinov, 1973), have nonetheless restricted the scope of their inquiry to phenom ena th at fall w ithin a broad conception of language. While offering a powerful and m ost im por­ tan t arena for study, such logocentricism - w hat Linell (2005) calls the w ritten language bias in linguistics nonetheless renders invisible m any of the crucial forms of semiosis th at shape hum an action in actual interaction (for example m any of the em bodied phenom ena found in Transcript 1.1, as well as the crucial role of structure in the world that is a focus of the participants' talk and action). Not all interaction occurs w ithin the fully em bodied fram eworks of m utual orientation found in Transcript 1.1. Indeed this is a system atic consequence of the very sem iotic structure of such events. Because action is being built through the co-articulation of different sem iotic fields, it is possible to rem ove some of these fields while adapting the structure of others so th a t the accom plish­ m ent of relevant action rem ains. T hroughout h u m an his­ tory, from h u n ter gatherers talking across cam pfires in the dark to contem porary talk over telephones, hum an beings have been able to build rich interaction w ith each other through talk alone. Situations w ith such restricted sem iotic structure do, however, elim inate for p artici­ pants as well as analysts m any of the crucial resources im plicated in the organization of action in face-to-face

EMBODIED INTERACTION IN THE MATERIAL WORLD

interaction. Thus, in fully em bodied situations, utter­ ances are not constituted exclusively w ithin the stream of speech by the actions of the speaker. Instead the visi­ ble actions of hearers, including both orientation tow ard the speaker and operations on the specifics of the talk as it is being spoken, can system atically lead the speaker to change the structure of a sentence in progress (Goodwin, 1981; M. H. Goodwin, 1980). Many of the consequen­ tial actions of the hearer are perform ed through visible displays of the body ra th e r than with talk. W ithin such fram eworks, both the utterance and the turn-at-talk w ithin which it emerges are not only intrinsically m ulti­ party activities, b u t also ones built through the inter­ play of structurally different kinds of sem iotic processes, including the talk of the speaker and the visual displays of hearer (the speaker also m akes consequential visual displays, for exam ple using gaze to indicate address). Noting this is not to deny the pow erful analysis th at has been developed from audio recordings of interaction, but it does dem onstrate the relevance of analysis th at takes into account the distinctive sem iotic structure of fully em bodied co-presence.

THE INTERACTION 1ST PERSPECTIVE The study of em bodied interaction as it is presented in this book takes inspiration from a variety of sources, m ost of w hich are fam iliar nam es: Mead, Vygotsky, Bakhtin, Bateson, Goffman, Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, Kendon. Some w ould w ant to include W ittgenstein in the list, others M erleau-Ponty and Heidegger, or Bourdieu, de Certeau, and Marx. Even though there may be m inor disagreem ents about the list, on the whole our held is not lacking in intellectual cohesion. We cannot account for these influences in detail, b u t w ant to rem ind the reader of som e especially p ertinent intellectual forces that con­ tinue to shape the ways in w hich interactionist research­ ers think about th eir subject m atter and the proper ways to analyze it. Of p articu lar im portance for work on em bodied inter­ action has been G. H. M eads critique of m ethodologi­ cal individualism (Mead, 1909, 1934), th at is, of those accounts of social life and sym bolic interaction th at posit the self as given and treat m eaning, m ind, and inter­ subjectivity as epiphenom ena or products of individual m inds. Mead (1934: 222-223) m aintained that a theory w hich ... assumes individual selves as the presuppositions, logically and biologically, of the social process or order within which they interact__ , cannot explain the existence of minds and selves__ [In contrast, a theory which] assumes a social pro­ cess or social order as the logical and biological precondition of the appearance of the selves of the individuals involved in that process or belonging to that social order, ... can explain that which it takes as logically prior, namely the existence of the social process of behavior, in terms of such fundamental biological relations and interactions as reproduction.

5

Mead conceived interaction as a conversation of ges­ tures. Gestures in M eads conception are not hand ges­ tures as they are studied today, but m ore broadly early parts of acts, com ponents th at can becom e separated as free-standing units with organic and motivated, yet con­ ventional, relationships to the social acts in which they have emerged. Nevertheless, M eads conception is quite com patible with interactionist accounts of hand gestures. He observed that ... throughout the entire process of an interaction, we ana­ lyze the incipient actions of others by our own instinctive reactions to changes in their postures and other signs of developing social actions (Mead, 1909: 219). Thus, m aking gestures th at come from and designate acts, we creatively hatch courses of joint action. Through gestures in M eads sense, we rapidly and incessantly indicate to one another - and thus prepare - w hat is to come next (M cDerm ott and Roth, 1978). Mead draws o u r attention to the forw ard-design of h u m an action. The foreshadowing of im m inent actions is m ade possible not least by the m ultim odal structure of the hum an body - its ability to move som e of its p arts independently from one another and thus create m ultiple, heterogeneous signs at the sam e time. As the self is m ediated by interaction, it is also inex­ tricably em bedded in a com m unity and draws on this com m unity's historically evolved sense-m aking tools, in the first place a language and the typified categories of experience th at it offers. Vygostky, a near-contem porary of Mead, called such "m ediational m eans" (Wertsch, 1991) psychological tools (Vygotky, 1978). Individual m inds are produced through cultural apprenticeship. B akhtin (1986) proposed an analogous view of lan ­ guage: Speaking m eans to ren t words from a community, to fashion oneself (and on es utterance) by using com ­ m unal m eans. In every act of speaking, individual and society are intertw ined. From Gregory Bateson we have learned to think of speech and "nonverbal com m unication" not as a com bi­ nation of signs, b u t as a relation between act and context. Contexts frame or type behavior. Context can be a m eta­ message, for example, "[T]his is play" (Bateson, 1956), which instructs us not to take anything th at is contextu­ alized by it at face value. B ut the relation is mutual: The context is also created by the act, a relationship th a t G um perz (1992) expresses in his notion of "contextualization cues." The act is "part of the ecological subsystem called context and not ... the product o r effect of w hat rem ains of the context once the piece w hich we w ant to explain has been cut out from it" (Bateson, 1972: 338). In Goffm ans dram atistic view of interaction, charac­ teristic especially of his earlier work (1959, but see 1976), the entire setting insofar as it is under the actors control can be m anipulated to display the com m itting of acts, to embody the working consensus, or to represent som e­ thing as som ething else. He wrote: "[T]he representation

6

of an activity will vary in som e degree from the activity itself and therefore m isrepresent it” (Goffman, 1959: 45). He also noted th at we cannot separate bodily signs from the settings in w hich the bodies th a t m ake them operate: The individual gestures with the immediate environment, not only with his body, and so we must introduce this envi­ ronm ent in some systematic way ... while the substratum of a gesture derives from the m akers body, the form of the gesture can be intimately determined by the microecological orbit in which the speaker finds himself. To describe the ges­ ture, let alone uncover its meaning, we ... have to introduce the hum an and material setting in which the gesture is made (Goffman, 1964: 164). This rarely cited dictum could serve as a m otto for this book; it presages the com m on ground of m uch contem po­ rary research on em bodied and m ultim odal interaction. Goffm an s term footing (Goffman, 1981) also reveals his interest in em bodim ent, in the question of how aspects of the interaction order are given corporeal form. The term “footing” designates th e differing form s of align­ m en t and presence in an utteran ce th at can be taken up by the range of structurally differentiated participants w ho are im plicated in the organization of a strip of talk. F or exam ple the current speaker, or anim ator, m ay be voicing w ords authored by either herself or others, and w hile quoting the w ords of others can display varying stances tow ard the talk and action being reported (see also Bakhtin, 1981; Goodwin, 2007b; Hanks, 1996; Levinson, 1988; Volosinov, 1973). N on-speaking partici­ p ants can have a range of quite different kinds of align­ m ent tow ard the current utterance, b oth in term s of typology of different kinds of hearers Goffm an offered in footing, and w ith respect to local operations on the stru ctu re of em erging u tterances (M. H. Goodwin, 1980). W hen we observe conversations am ong people who are standing, we can indeed often read off changes in foot­ ing from the reshuffling of the participants' feet, as they reconfigure th eir spatial arrangem ent: It was this type of m odality-crossing representations of the interaction order th a t Goffm an was especially interested in. W hat inspires all contributions to this volum e is a view of speakers and listeners as profoundly and inextricably “intervolved” (Dreyfus, 1991) w ith the m aterial context th at they operate in - w ith the w orld at h and (Schütz, 1967). W hen we im agine a speaker, we typically envi­ sion h er w ith pen and w rench in hand, or preparing a blood vessel for surgery, o r w ith feet firmly planted in a hopscotch grid. This analytic orientation - to picture speaker and listener at work, doing things with things (Streeck, 1996a) - resonates w ith a certain concep­ tion in philosophical anthropology, dating back to the Enlightenm ent, of hum anity as homo faber, as m akers of artifacts, caught up in the never-ending project of sustaining the w orld and surviving in it by m aking and rem aking it over and over and over. A phenom enologi­ cal perspective shapes the w ork of an increasing num ber

STREECK, GOODWIN, AND LEBARON

of linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, an d other researchers of com m unicative practice (Gehlen, 1988; Hanks, 1996). H erder (1772), and Plessner (1965, 1980), am ong m any others, have conceived of hum anm ade m aterial culture and language as an Ersatz for a m issing biosphere. The h u m an species suffers from its “excentric positionality” (Plessner, 1975) in the world: It is not biologically adapted to a biosphere, but m ust cre­ ate its own artifactual w ork and adapt itself to it, each group to its own, in order to survive. The evolution of the h u m an m ind is p art of this adaptation. Our ability to adopt a reflective attitude tow ard our ow n words and ges­ tures - to regard and scrutinize them as our own objec­ tivations - m ust have evolved from our prim ary ability to m anufacture - and then behold, probe, and m odify m eaningful things. Just like artifacts, w ords and gestures are external objects brought into existence by hu m an action (Donald, 1991). O ur capacity for m anufacture is grounded in specific abilities of hand-eye coordination and certain kinds of precision grip, th at is, the ability to closely inspect, rotate, and m odify objects while firmly holding on to them (Napier, 1980). The grounding of m anufacture and reflexivity in hand-eye coordination, central already to the work of Gehlen (1988) and Plessner (1965) and, m uch later, B runers theory of language acquisition and g ram ­ m atical relations (Bruner, 1969), is central to any kind of craft (McCullough, 1996; Sennett, 2008; Streeck, 2009). The conception of interaction as m ultim odal, as it is p re­ sented in this book, is consistent w ith this philosophi­ cal-anthropological notion of the excentric positionality of the h um an species: We have survived by m eans of our m ultiple and hetereogeneous objectivations, w hich include language and artifacts such as tools, skilled practices, rituals, and institutions. These objectivations can only be understood and explained in relation to one another. Such a view contrasts sharply w ith approaches th at seek to ab stract language from this nexus and attrib ­ ute to an innate faculty or claim the centrality of texts to h u m an social life and reproduction. Phenom enological philosophers have given us a notion of the body as a vehicle for being in the w orld (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) and a prim arily haptic - rath er than visual - epistemology. M anipulations are our prim ary understandings of the w orld (Heidegger, 1962). “U nderstanding is not in our m inds but in o u r skillful ways of com porting ourselves” (Dreyfus, 1991: 75). It is the body thus conceived - in its concrete, unique, pre-verbal, skilled, and practical cou­ pling w ith a world - th a t occupies center stage in the studies of em bodied interaction th at are collected here. In another theoretical context, the French social anthropologist M arcel M auss, nephew and co-worker of Ém ile Durkheim , proposed the study of techniques corporelles (1973), of m ovem ent and action skills that people acquire by living in some social milieu. B ourdieu elaborated this focus on the body as practice in th e con­ cept habitus (Bourdieu, 1977), w hich designates the

7

e m b o d ie d in t e r a c t io n in th e m a t e r ia l w o r l d

socially contexted bodily dispositions, sensibilities, and skills th at perm eate our sensory cognition and action skills. Previously, B ateson and M ead had worked from a sim ilar concept w hen they described the Balinese by focusing on “the way in w hich they, as living persons, moving, standing, eating, sleeping, dancing, and going into trance, em body th at abstraction w hich (after we have abstracted it) we technically call culture” (Bateson and Mead, 1942: xii). A nthropologists have produced m any textual and visual accounts of em bodied culture. As examples for m any others, Keller and Keller (1996) have analyzed the sensory cognition of blacksm iths, and H arper (1987) the w orking knowledge of a car m echanic (see also Csordas, 1994; Ingold, 2000; Jackson, 1989; Strathern, 1996). French anthropologists have developed film-based m eth­ ods for the praxeological study of cultural transm is­ sion (Comolli, 2003; de France, 1983), as exemplified by the gestes de savoir (Comolli, 1991) of housewives and violinists. The phenom enological conception of the body as situ ­ ated in and “intervolved” (Dreyfus, 1991) w ith a m aterialpractical w orld is in m any ways a forerunner (som etim es acknowledged, som etim es not) of the currently popular cognitive science program know n as embodied cogni­ tion. Its agenda is neatly sum m ed up in the subtitle of A. C larks book: “putting brain, body and w orld together again” (Clark, 1997), whose title, Being There, is a direct translation of H eideggers term Dasein (Heidegger, 1962). Cognitive scientists who conceive cognition as em bodied widely agree on the following points: (a) the com putational view of the m ind, according to w hich the m ind-brain operates by m anipulating abstract (am odal) symbols, is rejected; (b) experience (m em ory) is m odally stored, in the form of “perceptual symbol system s” (Barsalou, 1999); the sensory, perceptual dim ensions of experience are retained in the form ation of concepts; (c) the brain is m ultim odal: it allows us to recode experience, to structure it in term s of schem ata from other dom ains (Deacon, 1997); (d) the original function of any brain is to control m otion - only m obile organism s have brains; other functions of the brain m u st have evolved from this prim ary ability (Llinàs, 2001); (e) cognition and em otion are inseparable; em o­ tion is a form of (em bodied and social) cognition (Damasio, 1994, 1999); (f) perception and m otor control are not separate in the brain; perceiving an o th er h u m an being s action m eans producing an internal (i.e., inhibited, sim u­ lated) version of th at action (this is know n as com ­ m on coding of m otor-control and perception). Many cognitive scientists interested in em bodied cog­ nition, while granting th at the body m ust be conceived as a body in action, even in jo in t action (K noblich and

Sebanz, 2006), are reluctant to situate it fully w ithin the m aterial, external, hum an-m ade world. Psychologists, keen to m aintain the separate integrity of the psycholog­ ical system(s), have a hard tim e accepting the idea of dis­ tributed cognitive systems as agents of cognitive activity, as proposed, for example, by H utchins (1995) and con­ tributors to this volume. Thus, Wilson (2002: 126) grants th at “cognition is situated, ... takes place in the context of a real-world environm ent, and ... m ust be understood in term s of how it functions u n der the pressures of real­ tim e interaction w ith the environm ent, [and] we off-load cognitive work onto the environm ent.” She rejects, how ­ ever, the notion that, because “the environm ent is p art of the cognitive sy ste m ,... the m ind alone is n o t a m eaning­ ful unit of analysis” (loc.cit.). For the researchers repre­ sented in this volume, an understanding of cognition as socially shared and distributed across m ind, com m uni­ cation m edia, and other artifacts is essential.

EMBODIED INTERACTION This volum e contributes to a stream of research th at has gradually em erged and m atured during the past four decades. In this section, we seek to account for the con­ vergence of several strands of research and delineate the place of our own attem pts in this development. In the 1970s, scholars from various disciplines began to lam ent the artificial separation and isolation of socalled “verbal” and “nonverbal” behavior. For instance, Kendon (1972) observed th at “it makes no sense to speak of verbal com m unication' and ‘nonverbal com m unica­ tio n ” (443); he argued that theories of language derived from a study of only speech should be thought of as special language theories, w hereas general language theories would show how vocal and visible behaviors function together (Kendon, 1977). In a sim ilar spirit, M argaret Mead (1975) rejected nonverbal research as a “discipline-centric” neglect of vocal phenom ena: She argued against E km ans (1973) theory th a t facial expres­ sions have universal m eanings, suggesting th at m em bers of cultures derive m eaning from facial expressions by relating them to the context in which they occur, w hich includes vocal behavior. Such lam ents in the 1970s w ere coincident with the m ass m arketing of a new technol­ ogy called “videotape,” w hich set the stage for m ore p ro ­ gram m atic explorations of face-to-face interaction. In the 1980s, a handful of sem inal studies clearly an d em pirically established how talk and em bodied behavior co-occur as interdependent phenom ena, not separable m odes of com m unication and action. R esearchers in the tradition of conversation analysis explored the relation­ ship betw een talk and eye gaze. Goodwin (1979) exam ­ ined a videotaped dinner conversation and focused on a single spoken sentence th a t was shaped and reform ed in the process of its utterance as the speaker shifted his gaze am ong recipients who had different knowledge states - w hich called into question the linguistic notion of

8

a sentence as som ething w hose organization was lodged w ithin the m ental life of a single individual, the speaker. In an other work, C. Goodwin (1980) analyzed a collection of videotaped instances to show subtle form s of coordina­ tion betw een utterance-initial restarts and shifts in par­ ticipants' eye gaze (hence attention) tow ard the speaker. Atkinson (1984) dissected recordings of political speeches to show how politicians elicit applause from audiences, not m erely through vocal devices such as "contrastive pairs" and "three-part lists," b u t also through their rhyth­ m ic coordination of talk and gaze shifts tow ard their audience. H eath (1986) studied the organization of talk and gaze during m edical consultations, w hereby patients m ay direct their doctor's attention tow ard p arts of their bodies th at need m edical attention. Although some prior research had explored the relationship betw een talk and gaze (e.g., Kendon, 1967), these studies in the 1980s were sem inal because they em phasized the sequential unfold­ ing of hum an activity w ithin specific situations: R ather th an code the phenom ena and count the frequencies of occurrences, these scholars transcribed and carefully analyzed particu lar strips of situated interaction. Researchers who conducted sequence-analytic stud­ ies of videotaped interaction also turned their attention to hand gesture (e.g., Kendon, 1983, 1988; Goodwin and Goodwin, 1986), which has becom e an especially fruitful branch of naturalistic inquiry. W hen people gesture, they usually talk at the sam e time, coordinating their behav­ iors to be understood as an ensem ble (e.g., Goodwin, 1986; Goodwin and Goodwin, 1986). Schegloff (1984) considered the connection betw een gestures and their "lexical affiliates" as evidence for the "projection space" during which an elem ent of talk is in play, w ithout hav­ ing been uttered, allowing co-interactants anticipatory adaptations. Streeck (1993) showed how gestures may be "exposed" (i.e., m ade an object of attention during m om ents of interaction) through their coordination with indexical form s of speech (e.g., w ords such as "this") and eye gaze (which may perform "pointing" functions). H ands move w ithin three-dim ensional spaces th at include objects and artifacts, and gestures m ay be largely recog­ nized and understood through their relationship to the m aterial world w ithin reach (e.g., Goodwin, 1997, 2000b; H eath and H indm arsh, 2000; LeBaron and Streeck, 2000). F urtherm ore, gesture m ay be em bedded w ithin extended processes or activities, such th at any particular gesture is understood through its relationship to the whole activ­ ity (e.g., K oschm ann, LeBaron, Goodwin and Feltovich, 2006). During this time, David McNeil (1992) and col­ leagues at the University of Chicago, including Susan D uncan (2002) and Susan Goldin-Meadow (2003), devel­ oped im portant fram eworks for the analysis of gesture that were consistent with their orientation in psychology. M eanwhile, interaction-focused researchers of gesture dem onstrated th at com m unicative acts are always "envi­ ronm entally coupled" (Goodwin, 2007a), b u t can also structure the perception of the environm ent. W orking as

STREECK, GOODWIN, AND LEBARON

an anthropologist in Chiapas, Mexico, Haviland (2000) docum ented the directional precision of a farm er's pointing gestures, suggesting that his gestures m ade his "m ental m ap" interactively available, even interactively constructed. Gestures have been explicated as a locus of shared knowledge and em ergent understanding (e.g., Enheld, 2008; K oschm ann and LeBaron, 2002; LeBaron and K oschm ann, 2003), organizing social interaction on the one hand and shaping individual cognition on the other (LeBaron and Streeck, 2000). Such studies of ges­ ture have been m ore anthropological th an psychologi­ cal (e.g., Sidnell, 2005), em phasizing the public n ature of "individual" cognition (Streeck, 2002), treating the hum an m ind as som ething that extends beyond the skin to include social and m aterial worlds. This research offers an alternative to views th at are m ore psychologically o ri­ ented, such as McNeill's, who suggested th a t "gestures are the person's m em ories and thoughts rendered visible ... [belonging] not to the outside world, b u t to the inside one of memory, thought, and m ental images" (1985: 12). All the chapters in Schm itt (2007) focus on the deli­ cate coordination of m odalities, both intrapersonal and interpersonal, th at bring about ordered and intelligi­ ble sequences of interaction. D epperm ann and Schm itt (2007), who have done m uch to establish the study of m ultim odal interaction as a recognized held w ithin E uropean linguistics, conceive the study of m ultim odal­ ity as a study of coordination, on the one hand of differ­ ent strands of bodily action w ithin the single particip an t (self-organization), and on the other the coordination betw een co-interactants (interactional organization). The structuring of actions in one m odality - for example, gaze - is clearly constrained by, or interacts with, those in another m odality - for example, postural configurations or "F-formations" (Tiittula, 2007; cf. Kendon, 1976). As M ondada (2007b) has shown, self-organization is of par­ ticular im portance w here people participate in m ultiple activities at the sam e tim e ("multi-activities" such as con­ ducting a conversation while driving a car or perform ing surgery while explaining the process to a rem ote audi­ ence). Lindström and M ondada (2009), building on work by Goodwin and Goodwin (1987, 1992), exemplify the m ultim odal n ature of h u m an interaction in a single lan­ guage game, assessm ents of which are often perform ed through careful orchestration of talk, gaze, and facial displays (Ruusuvuori and Peräkylä, 2009), am ong other m odalities. Krafft and Dausendschön-G ay (2007) intro­ duce a useful distinction between "direct coordination" (coordination through the spatial organization of the bodies of the interactants) and coordination via objects, which occurs w hen participants use gestural and verbal acts of deixis to achieve a shared orientation to the set­ ting of the interaction. D epperm ann and Schm itt (2007) point out th at research on m ultim odality com plem ents the analysis of sequencing that is at the core of conver­ sation analysis by an additional focus on simultaneity, th at is, close attention to which behaviors are produced

e m b o d ie d in t e r a c t io n in th e m a t e r ia l w o r l d

at the sam e tim e and how such synchronous productions are possible. Sim ultaneity is a constitutive feature of any interaction, w hich implies the im portance of spatial relations: how participants are positioned in relation to one another or w here they look at any point in tim e is as im portant as the tem poral relations betw een their talk and m ovem ents. This, in turn, points up the relevance of the materiality of com m unication modalities, for exam ­ ple the affordance of gesture to be perceived and p ro ­ cessed sim ultaneously with speech as well as to attract and direct the addressees visual attention (Heath, 1986; Streeck and Hartge, 1992). That even speech alone com prises several m odalities th at m ust be explicated both in relation to one another and to their shaping, and functions in real-tim e interac­ tion is the them e of a new paradigm w ithin linguistics know n as interactional linguistics (Selting and CouperKuhlen, 2001). One focus of this conversation-analysisbased held of studies have been the roles of rhythm and prosody in conversational interaction (Auer, CouperKuhlen, and Müller, 1999; Couper-K uhlen and Selting, 1996a, 1996b; U hm ann 1992, 1996); another the em er­ gence and operation of syntactic constructions in inter­ actional contexts (Auer, 2009; D epperm ann, Fiehler and Spranz-Fogasy, 2006; G ünthner and Imo, 2006; Streeck, 1996b. See also Ford, Fox, and Thom pson, 1998; Ochs, Schegloff, and Thom pson, 1996.) Although we cannot cover this held here, it is im portant to note th at it is guided by the sam e view of interaction as m ultim odal and of structural form s (constructions) as in part interactionally m otivated. Several of the contributors to this volume are linguistic anthropologists. Linguistic anthropology has given us sev­ eral distinct analytic traditions; it is centrally concerned with the symbolic structuring of behavior. We have learned from linguistic anthropologists to attend to the socialsymbolic signihcance of m inim al differences in interac­ tively produced forms (e.g., phonetic choices or prosodic contours; see Gumperz, 1982a, 1982b), but also to inves­ tigate such dim ensions of em bodim ent in the context of culturally dehned, regulated, and recognized events (Agar, 1975). In Linguistic Anthropology, Duranti (1997) presents the study of em bodied interaction as one of the standard methodologies in contem porary linguistic anthropology. His own work is a good example of the inevitably “m ulti­ m odal” nature of anthropological research into linguistic practice: studying the Sam oan honorific system (which is expressed in verb morphology), D uranti (1992, 1994) discovered that the system is inextricably bound up with ways in which Sam oans position themselves in relation to the place they are in and to one another. IV1ULTSMODALITY: EMBODIED INTERACTION IN THE MATERIAL WORLD In a recent review of Tomasello’s (2008) Origins o f H um an Com m unication, Kendon has em phasized, w ithout

9

employing the term , the inherently m ultim odal nature of hum an com m unication: [T]he transition into referential or language-like expres­ sions involved hands and body, face and voice and mouth, all together, as an integrated ensemble. What so many writ­ ers on this topic - “gesture hrsters" and “speech hrsters" both - pay little attention to is the fact that modern humans, when they speak together in face-to-face situations ... always mobilise face and hands and voice together in com­ plex orchestrations... Every single utterance using speech employs, in a completely integrated fashion, patterns of voicing and intonation, pausings and rhythmicities, which are manifested not only audibly, but kinesically as well, and always, as a part of this, there are movements of the eyes, the eyelids, the eyebrows, the brows, as well as the mouth, ... patterns of action by the head, and ... from time to time var­ iously conspicuous hand and forearm actions or “gestures" (Kendon, 2009: 363). In the sam e vein, Stivers and Sidnell w rite that “faceto-face interaction is, by definition, m ultim odal interac­ tion in w hich participants encounter a steady stream of m eaningful facial expressions, gestures, body postures, head movem ents, words, gram m atical constructions, and prosodic contours" (Stivers and Sidnell, 2005: 1). Following Enfield (2005), they distinguish betw een “vocal/aural" and “visuospatial modalities." In contrast, we regard the abstraction of the interacting body from the m aterial world as an abstraction w ith problem atic consequences and - although we acknowledge the use­ fulness of term inological distinctions betw een different kinds or groups of m odalities of com m unication - nev­ ertheless insist th at em bodied interaction in the material world, w hich includes m aterial objects and environm ents in the process of m eaning m aking and action form ation, is primary. Many of the contributions to this book th ere­ fore go beyond the study of the ways in which several bodily “channels" are coordinated in social interaction to show how environm ental sources of m eaning are draw n into the production of inter-subjective understanding and how interaction, in turn, structures its own sem iotic and m aterial environm ent. Long before the term “m ultim odal(ity)" entered the held of interaction studies, it was established as a tech­ nical term in two entirely different fields, logistics and therapy. In the logistics industry, “m ultim odal" refers to the coordinated tran sportation of goods by air, land, and water; in m edicine and psychotherapy, to the com bina­ tion of m ultiple therapeutic practices, for example m usic therapy and talking cure or surgery and radiation. M ore recently, the term has taken center stage in com puter sci­ ence, where it describes hum an-com puter interfaces th at allow for m ultiple sim ultaneous input (e.g., by voice and gesture) and heterogeneous representations. Not very dif­ ferent from this usage is the term “m ultim odal corpora" applied to linguistic research, th at is, the production of data representations that com bine auditory and visual with textual representations (Kipp, M artin, Paggio, & Heylen, 2002). The term “m ultim odal com m unication"

10

is also used by various groups of researchers who seek to expand the sem iotic analysis of texts so as to accom ­ m odate text-im age com binations, b u t also other artifacts including Elms, buildings, and objects of daily use (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001; N orris, 2004). Som e of these researchers draw on H alliday’s system ic-functional per­ spective (O’H alloran, 2004), others develop their own versions of discourse analysis (Levine and Scollon, 2004), b u t none approach h u m an interaction in the m aterial w orld w ith the rigorous m icroanalytic focus on the for­ m ation of action sequences th a t is characteristic of the contributions to this book. W hen exactly the term "‘multim odalOty)” entered the m icroanalysis of interaction is not entirely clear - cer­ tainly long before the appearance of Stivers and Sidnell (2005). W hat is equally certain is th at the reconceptual­ ization of em bodied interaction as m ultim odal and the subsequent recognition of the im portance of m aterial con­ texts and artifacts drew a great deal of inspiration from and partly overlapped w ith - two new, interdisciplinary research program s: studies o f work (or workplace studies) and science and technology studies (see, am ong m any oth­ ers, Lynch and Woolgar, 1988; see also Heath, Luff, and Knoblauch, 2004). Inspired by these studies, sociologists becam e interested in the contingent, local production of practical, norm atively accountable actions in the context of labor rath er th an conversational interaction. One of the hallm arks of this research program was recognition of the p aram o u n t im portance of physical objects - things in the conduct of w ork-related activities. Explaining the new research program , Garfinkel w rote th at it was evident from the availability of empirical specifics that there exists a locally produced order of works things; that they make up as massive domain of organizational phe­ nomena; that classical studies of work, without remedy or alternative, depend upon the existence of these phenomena, make use of the domain, and ignore it (Garfinkel, 1986: vi). In an early, sem inal study, S uchm an (1987) dem on­ strated th at norm ative rules of use are unable to guide (or explain) the operation of technological objects (in her case: copy m achines), b u t th a t usage of such objects and the norm ative accountability of such usage - rep­ resents ongoing, situated, contingent, and interpretive accom plishm ents. U nderstanding technology-supported action, as well as designing “user-friendly” technologies, thus requires the precise, m om ent-by-m om ent study of people’s physical actions an d the practical reasoning dis­ played by them , rath er th a n reliance on decontextualized m odels of cognitive 'p la n s ” in the vein of Miller, Gallanter, and P ribram (1960). In an o th er study, Suchm an (1996) investigated how com petent actors construct shared w orkspaces and arrange resources and tools to assem ­ ble readily interpretable surfaces th at facilitate collabo­ rative action. Suchm an s w ork contributed to a growing tren d am ong m icroanalysts of interaction to investigate talk and em bodied com m unication n o t ap art from, but

STREECK, GOODWIN, AND LEBARON

w ithin complex m aterial environm ents th at they sim ul­ taneously m ake intelligible and coherent (Button, 1993; Engeström and M iddleton, 1996). A wealth of new research into hitherto unexplored dom ains of hum an action and interaction thus emerged. H eath and Luff (2000), in their wide-ranging research in contexts such as control room s of the London Underground, com puter-assisted architectural design, video-conferencing, and software development, focused attention on the difficulties of adapting new technologies to established orders of m undane reasoning and inter­ action. R ather th an sim ulating face-to-face interaction, com m unication technologies such as video-conferencing dem and th at participants reconfigure participation fram e­ works and practices of turn-taking and speaker-listener coordination. W ith this widening of scope, com pared to the initial focus on conversation over the telephone, ethnom ethodological and interactionist researchers began to seriously im plem ent W ittgenstein’s vision that the study of a language m ust encom pass the entirety of the com m u­ nity’s language games and explicate them as forms of life. As McHoul (2008: 825) writes, "what we are ultim ately interested in is taking pretty m uch any bit of ordinary everyday interaction as a m eans of understanding forms of life (Lebensformen) as such and not simply for its own sake as a technical object__ Conversation may be our favourite ‘gam e’, b u t it is not the only one in tow n.” A type of workplace th at attracted particular attention were science laboratories, in which the study of work took on the form of studying the practices, instrum ents, and representations by which scientific findings are assem bled and ratified as facts by the relevant com m unity of scien­ tific practice (Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay, 1983; L atour and Woolgar, 1986; Lynch, Potter, and Garfinkel, 1983; Lynch and Woolgar, 1988). W hereas scientific work - especially laboratory work - is inherently m ultim odal (it is the nor­ matively guided coordination of practices of perceiving, experim enting, m easuring, and representing th at consti­ tutes legitim ate scientific practice), particular attention was paid to the production and interpretation of visual representations. In L atour’s (2005) influential conception, dubbed "actor-network theory,” agency is seen as being distributed across hum an actors and m aterial things. Even though this view m ay not be universally shared by researchers of science, technology, and interaction, L atour’s work has undoubtedly contributed to a scientific clim ate in w hich it is m uch easier to find acceptance for the notion th at interaction, cognition, and work are inherently m ultim odal affairs th at cannot be studied on the basis of w hat goes on in a single "channel” alone or by relying on textual representations abstracted from the rich contexts of the phenom ena represented by them . The dom ain of things had rarely entered the picture in studies of con­ versational interaction, and never in studies of telephone conversation (but see M ondada, 2008b; Whalen, 1995). W hat is som etim es referred to as the "logocentric” bias in conversation analysis (e.g., Erickson, 2010) certainly has

e m b o d ie d in t e r a c t io n in t h e m a t e r ia l w o r l d

its basis in the seem ing irrelevance of m aterial things to the organization of social interaction conducted over the telephone. In contrast, beyond the evident relevance of m aterial objects, science settings im press on their observ­ ers the prim ordial m ultim odality of h um an action and interaction, the skilled, socialized nature of vision, olfac­ tion, and m anipulation, and the necessity of coordinating sim ultaneous, heterogeneous m odes of perception and action in order to produce viable, coherent, and norm al outcom es, be they m anufactured objects, docum ents, or scientific findings. The hum anities and social sciences are presently w it­ nessing a “spatial tu rn ” (e.g., W arf and Arias, 2009), and the m ultim odal constitution of interaction spaces has becom e a very thoroughly studied topic in m ultim odality research (e.g., H adington and Keisanen, 2009; Mcllvenny, B roth and H addington, 2009; M ondada, 2007a, 2009a; M üller and Bohle, 2007). W hereas this research takes up a concern th at has been central to context analysis (see, for example, K endon 1973, 1976; Scheflen, 1976), the curren t focus is on the m ultiple resources and m odalities involved in organizing interaction spaces (e.g., gaze, pos­ ture, orientation) ra th e r th an on the way space is used to organize interaction. Schm itt and D epperm ann write: Interaction spaces are constituted by the interplay of phys­ ical circumstances which, because of their features, have certain implications for the structuring of interaction, and interactive accomplishments in which participants use these features as a resource for their situated ... praxis. Interaction spaces also are connected to certain structures of relevance, which are expressed, for example, through the symboliza­ tion of inclusion and exclusion. The concept “interaction space” describes dynamic, constantly changing constella­ tions which partly reveal clear spatial contours (Schmitt and Deppermann, 2007: 96). Work settings have becom e a prim e site for research on hum an com m unication, sym bolization, cognition, and interaction. Goodwin studied a variety of professionals at w ork - archeologists (Goodwin, 1994, 2000a), attorneys (Goodwin, 1994), oceanographers (Goodwin, 1995a), geochem ists (Goodwin, 1995a, 1997), and airport techni­ cians (Goodwin, 1996; Goodwin and Goodwin, 1996) - to reveal the natu re of w hat he called “professional vision.” He showed how experts interactively direct the atten ­ tion of others, showing them what to see and how to see it, using tools to highlight and code th eir surroundings, while articulating the upshot and im port of w hat is being seen. Such research w ent beyond the coordination of talk and em bodied behavior to consider the entire “contex­ tual configuration,” w hich included “a range of structur­ ally different kinds of sign p henom ena in both the stream of speech and the body, graphic and socially sedim ented structure in the surround, sequential organization, encom passing activity systems, etc.” (Goodwin, 2000b: 1). Scholars have also exam ined m edical consultations (e.g., Beach and LeBaron, 2002; Heath, 2002, 2006; Mirivel, 2007; Modaff, 2003; Robinson and Stivers,

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2001), surgeries (e.g., K oschm ann, LeBaron, Goodwin, Zemel and D unnington, 2007; Zemel, Koschm ann, LeBaron, Goodwin and D unnington, 2008;), therapy ses­ sions (e.g., M cM artin and LeBaron, 2006), police in terro­ gations (e.g., LeBaron and Streeck, 1997), job interviews (e.g., LeBaron, Glenn, and Thom pson, 2009), business negotiations (e.g., Streeck, 1996a), m useum s (e.g., vom Lehn, 2006; vom Lehn, H eath, and H indm arsh, 2005), and more. Researchers have closely exam ined the situ­ ated work of anesthesiologists (H indm arsh and Pilnick, 2007), physicists (Becvar, Holland, and H utchins, 2005; Ochs, Gonzales, and Jacoby, 1996), architects (e.g., Murphy, 2005), auto m echanics (Streeck, 2002), hair­ dressers (LeBaron and Jones, 2002), auctioneers (e.g., H eath and Luff, 2007), pilots (H utchins and Palen, 1997), and so forth. An especially prom ising stream of workplace studies focuses on the interaction of peo­ ple w ith and through technology (e.g., H eath, Luff, and K noblauch, 2004; Heath, vom Lehn, and Osborne, 2005; H indm arsh, H eath, and Fraser, 2006; Luff, H indm arsh, and H eath, 2000). Of p articu lar interest to some of these researchers is a dom ain virtually non-existent during the early days of context analysis, nam ely the constitu­ tion and configuration of virtual or distributed interac­ tion spaces, for example in online environm ents or in the context of interactions m ediated by visual technol­ ogies such as video-conferencing (H eath and Luff, 1992, 1993; M ondada, 2007b). C ontributors to Mcllvenny, Broth, and H addington (2009) have investigated inter­ action in m obile technological environm ents, including m o tor-vehicles and m obile-phone networks, in order to establish how talk and interaction are adapted to set­ tings other th an the prim ordial face-to-face form ation. These technologies also pose new challenges for research methodology, in p articular w hen interaction m ediated by video - th at is, interaction w hose p articipants are d istrib­ uted across different locations - is studied by m eans of video (e.g. H eath and Luff, 2006; Knoblauch, Schnettler, R aab and Soeffner, 2006; LeBaron and Koschm ann, 2003; M ondada, 2006, 2009b; Ochs, Graesch, M ittm an, B radbury and Repetti, 2006; Suchm an and Trigg, 1991). Altogether, this growing body of research gives us a rich understanding of hum an activity within organizational set­ tings: By carefully examining embodied interaction (includ­ ing talk), analysts show how people interactively draw on a wide range of social and m aterial resources to negotiate and constitute their institutional lives - w hich are intellec­ tual and relational, artifactual and technological, cultural and political. Most of the chapters in this book consider m ultim odal features of hum an interaction in relation to their organizational or institutional settings. Although workplace studies currently dom inate the field, some lines of research have different and im portant emphases. Thus, m ultim odality has becom e a concern w ithin m ore traditional fields such as childhood and fam ily com m unication. For example, M arjorie Goodwin has exam ined the em bodied linguistic resources of children

12

at play: During games of hopscotch, girls locate and m aneuver their bodies relative to each other and their hopscotch grid in order to produce disagreem ents and argum ents (e.g., Goodwin, Goodwin, and Yaeger-Dror, 2002) th at achieve a social stance th at is sim ultaneously cooperative and conflictive (M. H. Goodwin, 2006; see also Ochs, Sm ith, and Taylor, 1989; de Leon, 1998, 2007.) Even pre-lingual children are capable of rath er nuanced and sophisticated form s of social interaction as they produce recognizable courses of action, showing th at they expect their actions to be recognized (Lerner and Zim m erm an, 2003), relying on subtle patterns of gaze (e.g., Kidwell, 2005) and body orientation (e.g., Kidwell and Zim m erm an, 2007) as they engage with other children, objects, and caretakers. Video recordings of naturally occurring interaction som etim es evidence aw areness or capability th a t m ay escape the notice of m ore m ainstream m ethods for observation and assess­ m ent. For instance, G oodw ins (1995b) study of an apha­ sie m an showed how people w ith severe disabilities may com pensate for their physiological lim itations through ways of interacting w ith oth er people: Although partially paralyzed and only able to speak three words, the m an participated actively in family conversations and deci­ sions as he carefully coordinated his utterances with gestures such th a t others could articulate his contribu­ tions. Analysis of how people with language and other disabilities are able to use the resources provided by the organization of talk and em bodim ent in interaction has led to im p o rtan t new insights about the nature of such disabilities, and how the lives can be im proved by shifting focus from the individual deheits to the collab­ orative organization of action and m eaning w ithin situ­ ated h u m an interaction (see, for example, the work of W ilkinson and his colleagues, including C hapter 11 of this volume, and the range of scholars who contributed to Goodwin, 2003). Som e of the chapters in this book focus on the interaction of children, including those who are pre-lingual and disabled, which are recent and p ro m ­ ising lines of inquiry. As video-based m ethods have becom e m ore popular, and as em pirical studies and findings have accum ulated, researchers have been reflective about their approaches and assum ptions. Although m uch has been accom plished, there is nonetheless a “lingering dualism " (Streeck, 2003) in n aturalistic research th a t often m aps onto the Cartesian divide betw een m ind and body. Theoretical, conceptual, and em pirical achievem ents (and m isfortunes) neces­ sarily em erge from the everyday practices and m undane m ethods of social science. Too often, analysts regard talk as th eir starting point, even w hen talk appears late in the order of things accom plished in face-to-face interaction. R eferring to the work of conversation analysts, ten Have (1999) observed th at even w hen videotapes are used, investigators usually sta rt with an audio transcription so th at “the verbal p roduction by p articipants is seen as the base-line for understanding of the interaction, with

STREECK, G O O D W IN , AND LEBARON

selected visual details being added to this und erstan d ­ ing [subsequently]" (9). Arguably, analysts should con­ sider visible phenom ena from the outset, especially w hen “body parts are the first m ediating elem ents in our inter­ action with the people and objects around us" (Duranti, 1997: 322; see also de Leon, 1998). In a special journal issue of the Journal o f Communication on the em erging integration of verbal and nonverbal research, Jones and LeBaron (2002) w ondered w hether audio recordings of face-to-face interaction are sufficient, and suggested th at “com plete audiovisual records be the basis for future research" (512). W hen people interact w ithin em bod­ ied social fram eworks th at are structured and changed through their shifting co-presence, analysts should attend to w hat the participants themselves are treating as im portant. OVERVIEW OF THE VOLUME

Founding capacities The chapters in this initial section dem onstrate som e of the ways in which the phenom ena participants construct w ithin interaction, including units, stances, action, and the forms of understanding they display to each other, are built through the use of diverse linguistic, m aterial, and em bodied resources. All of the chapters dem onstrate the crucial contributions m ade—not only by the speaker, b u t also other usually silent participants—to the orga­ nization, com prehension, and integrity of the actions in progress. H utchins and N om ura offer a very original analysis of the organization of gesture, talk, and writing w ithin a dis­ tributed multi-party, m ultim odal interactive field. They exam ine videotapes in w hich two Japanese airline pilots, who occupy different positions w ith different duties on the flight deck, are being briefed by an American instruc­ tor in preparation for training exercises in a flight sim u­ lator. T hroughout this process, not only the speaker but also hearers use gesture to enact the em bodied actions th at will be required to m anipulate the aircraft controls in order to accom plish the instructions found in both the in stru cto rs talk and the w ritten docum ents th at specify the procedures to be followed in the cockpit and sim u­ lator. The actions being investigated are sim ultaneously collaborative in that they are constructed through the dif­ ferentiated actions of m ultiple parties, and m ultim odal in th at they are built through the m utual elaboration of different kinds of sem iotic m aterials, including talk, ges­ ture, and writing. M any previous studies of gesture have focused on phe­ nom ena such as co-expressive gesture and the relative tim ing of a gesture and its lexical affiliate. H utchins and N om ura move beyond this fram ew ork to describe how collaboratively constructed conceptual representations th at include talk and gesture are situated at the intersec­ tion of m ultiple attributes including tem poral placem ent

e m b o d ie d in t e r a c t io n in the m a t e r ia l w o r l d

(either sim ultaneous or offset) and different kinds of sem antic relationships betw een talk and gesture. While the sem antic relationships betw een different elem ents of a m ultim odal conhguration can be congruent, they can also be com plem entary in two different ways: 1) m etonomy, in which relationships betw een cause and effect are m ade visible (som ething th at is m ost relevant to depict­ ing the relationship betw een an instruction to produce a particu lar outcom e, and the em bodied actions with spe­ cific controls needed to accom plish th at outcome); and 2) synecdoche, w here one representation refers to a whole and the other to a p art of that whole. Temporal offsets in the placem ent of gesture provide speakers w ith resources for working around the constraints im posed by the tem ­ poral unfolding of linguistic item s in talk by enabling them to highlight a salient action before it is fully speci­ fied w ithin the stream of speech. Temporal juxtaposition of gesture by hearers with em erging talk m akes it pos­ sible for pilots receiving an instruction to dem onstrate their em bodied understanding of w hat it m eans to carry out the requested action, w ithin the specific environm ent of the cockpit, by displaying m anipulation of relevant controls. These are in fact never m entioned in either the printed instructions or the talk. Two features of this analysis can be briefly noted. First, it provides a strong dem onstration of the im portance of cognitive ethnography. The analysts ability to under­ stand the relevance of the m ovem ents of the participants' bodies requires thorough knowledge of both the environ­ m ent th at is the focus of their concern, the flight deck w ith its specific controls and tasks, and of the em bodied actions th at habitually occur w ithin th at environm ent. This knowledge is also used in very interesting ways by the participants themselves. For example, the instructor's gestures som etim es take into account the specific posi­ tions of different pilots w ithin the flight deck (one sitting on the left, one on the right). Second, m ost p rio r research has treated gesture as som ething done by speakers (but see Goodwin, 2000b). In this work, gestures produced by hearers are given an equally prom in en t role w ithin a p ro ­ cess of public, collaborative im agining, as participants discuss together future courses of action. Lerner, Zim m erm an, and Kidwell describe how even children who have not yet acquired the ability to speak can engage in consequential interaction with others by parsing m undane natural activities, such as the process of serving food to another child, into sequential struc­ tures w here possibilities for participation system atically and visibly emerge. The children thus actively use the visible em bodied behavior of others to create interactive contexts th at guide the organization of their own action. The sequence the authors exam ine in the current chap­ ter is draw n from a corpus of videotapes of twelve- to thirty-m onth-old children in infant-toddler day-care cen­ ters. Not only do such young children robustly display the ability to analyze detailed structure in the actions of others, but they also produce their own actions with

13

an orientation to how their m ovem ents (for example, pointing tow ard som ething relevant in the local envi­ ronm ent) will be treated as forms of action by others. Long before they have m astered the rudim ents of lan­ guage, the children are com petent, thoroughly reflexive interactive actors. The chapter focuses prim arily on the actions of Laura, a sixteen-m onth-old girl who is present as another to d ­ dler is fed, but who is not perm itted to eat herself. The feeding of the other girl is accom plished through a series of discrete sub-activities, including successively retriev­ ing a bib, washcloth, and food containers from a tray on a railing above the children and placing these in front of the child to be fed. Each of these activities has a projectable sequential structure of its own, including, m ost cru ­ cially, a “task transition space" at the transition betw een one activity and another. As the feeding is being prepared, Laura system atically places bids to be fed herself (such as pointing gestures tow ard the food w ith appropriate vocalizations), and thus be included in the activity, p re ­ cisely at these transition spaces. She thus dem onstrates through her own em bodied action that she has parsed the actions she is w itnessing into just those sequential structures that would provide for her possible inclusion in the activity, recognizing sim ultaneously the com ple­ tion of one task and the relevant projected occurrence of a next. Eventually it becom es clear that L aura will not be given food. H er recognition of this is displayed through a change in the sequential organization of her action. R ather than placing bids at transition-relevant places, she now produces loud cries of com plaint in the m idst of the actions being carried out by others. She displays a practical grasp of the em erging organization of a local routine in term s of the possibilities for co-participation each next m om ent does or does not provide. The authors argue th at this ability offers an alternative to models, such as scripts, th at posit overall cognitive tem plates for recognition of larger activity structures. Moreover, such projection of em erging courses of action by others con­ stitutes the basis for w hat is frequently analyzed as the ability to recognize the goals and intentions of others. Enfield's chapter proposes a fram ew ork for pragm atic analysis in which “the interpreter, not the producer, is the driving force in how utterances com e to have m ean ­ ing." Such a perspective stands in strong contrast to m uch work in both formal linguistics and fields such as speech act theory, which take as their prim ary dom ain of study the m ental life and/or sign activity of a speaker constructing an isolated utterance. In shifting analytic focus to the investigation of how w hat Peirce described as interprétants are constructed, Enfield uses as his p o in t of departure both the classic work of Pierce (1955) and recent research in linguistic anthropology by Kockelm an (2007). Enfield notes that w hereas all m eaning m aking requires an interpreter, a sender is n o t necessary for the construction of m any relevant signs (consider, for

14

example, how sm oke is seen as a sign for fire, despite the com plete absence of anything like a com m unicative intention on the p a rt of the fire). Any p articu lar u tterance will contain, in addition to lexicon and sem antics, a host of other kinds of em bod­ ied signs, such as prosody and gesture, and will occur in a p articu lar spatial, m aterial, and cultural environ­ m ent, all of w hich will m odulate the m eaning of w hat is being said. Enfield seeks to develop a fram ew ork for the study of m eaning m aking th at encom passes all sem i­ otic m odalities, including gesture, gaze, and posture, and which, moreover, takes into account how actors are situ­ ated w ithin m eaningful, historically stru ctu red environ­ m ents. Peirce provides resources for doing this. Intentionality is central for prototypical cases of hum an com m unication through language. However, rath er th an focusing on the m ental life of the speaker to investigate intentionality, Enfield argues th a t the task faced by som e­ one producing an u tterance is pre-supposing the kinds of interpretative w ork th a t will be done by th eir address­ ees, and in light of this placing in a public environm ent appropriate signs th at will guide relevant interpretative work: “To com m unicate is n o t literally to send a message b u t to m ake public the m eans ... for ano th er person to build an adequate understanding in response." Enfield argues th at the basic u n it to be focused on is w hat Goffman called the move w ithin com m unicative action sequences. The move is both a building block for larger structures and contains w ithin itself internal com ­ plexity draw n from a range of different kinds of sem iotic m aterials. Different signifying m aterials can be described in fine detail w ith respect to an array of attributes. W ithin the process of interpretation, these varied sem i­ otic resources are integrated into a unified sign-vehicle th at expresses the m oves inform ative intention. One effect of the analytic perspective developed by Enfield is to shift away from language as an isolated, self-contained system, to focus instead on the rich sem iotic and com ­ m unicative ecology w ithin w hich language is em bedded through h u m an conduct. Streecks chap ter opens up for investigation interstitial m eaning-m aking practices. In m uch academ ic inquiry, the scene w ithin which p articipants build action together is divided into categorically distinct phenom ena, such as language, m aterial objects, gesture, and writing. However a range of crucial hybrid acts com e into existence in the spaces created betw een these canonical distinctions. These activities move across boundaries and intertw ine diverse m aterials into enduring structures th a t reshape not only the physical and sem iotic environm ent, but also the ways in w hich p articipants classify for each other w hat is happening in th eir interaction. Two sets of such practices are examined: first, the use of found objects to build interactive action; and second the act of w rit­ ing, a process th a t encom passes b oth the visible activity and the enduring inscriptions th at are produced by this process.

STREECK, GOODWIN, AND LEBARON

Noting th at “social interaction is a vociferous process, always hungry for stuff out of which signs, symbols and scenic arrangem ents can be made," Streeck begins by looking at how two businessm en negotiating a new con­ tract use the physical presence of their product - cook­ ies and the packages they are sold in - to symbolically classify w hat they are talking about, and the character of their interaction with each other. For example, the phys­ ical properties of the alum inum bag used to package the cookies becom es an enduring display of one of the focal issues being discussed in the talk, nam ely the ability of the cookies to retain their freshness. By putting the bag down w ith a dismissive gesture, one speaker is able to signal the im possibility of entering the American m ar­ ket. In this process, the instrum ental action of placing the bag back on the table and the m aterial structure of the bag are transform ed into signs th at contribute to the dense organization of the participants' local practices of constructing m eaning for each other. Streeck provides a range of examples of how m undane objects are successively transform ed into situated sym ­ bols that, because of th eir enduring physical presence, becom e external m em ories of actions accom plished, and topics addressed, w ithin a particular conversation. He then investigates a range of interactive activities accom ­ plished through writing. For example by actively using w riting to divide a page into costs and profits allocated am ong the participants, they are able to rhetorically and dram atically m ake visible as a staged perform ance the particulars of the financial relationship they are negoti­ ating, and m oreover to leave a perm anent trace of that process. Despite its apparent simplicity, the draw ing of lines provides participants with pow erful interactive, pragm atic, and symbolic resources. The interstitial position of the practices Streeck exam ­ ines, and the way in w hich they establish links betw een different kinds of dom ains, creates possibilities for social and cognitive blending as m eaningful gestalts are projected from one system to another. The effect is the ongoing transform ation of m eaning and action through powerful sem iotic bricolage across m odalities and par­ ticipants w ithin situated interaction. Tulbert and Goodwin focus on w hat they call C horeographies of Attention. They exam ine how p artici­ pants use th eir bodies, local activity systems, the orga­ nization of inhabited spaces, and m aterial objects to construct, contest, and negotiate the fram eworks of inter­ subjectivity and co-orientation that ground central forms of hum an action, such as directives. Their data consists of video recordings of the daily lives and household activ­ ities of thirteen families in Los Angeles, California. To make possible the com parative study of diverse phe­ nom ena im plicated in the organization of m ulti-party em bodied interaction, Tulbert and Goodwin examine how a single activity - parents getting their children to brush their teeth - is organized in a range of different families. Such directives m ake relevant m utual alignm ent

e m b o d ie d in t e r a c t io n in th e m a t e r ia l w o r l d

betw een participants, som ething th at is publicly visible through both the spatial organization of the participants' bodies and the establishm ent of a joint focus of attention. However, as parents attem pted to initiate such directives, the children frequently attended to com peting foci of atten­ tion such as com puters and television sets. Establishing m utual orientation betw een participants, and alignm ent to the activity of tooth brushing - the establishm ent and ratification of a shared phenom enal world implicated in the organization of action - was thus som ething that required interactive work, and m oreover was a project th at could fail. Some of the caregivers who succeeded explicitly prefaced their directives by extinguishing com ­ peting activities, for example by turning off com puters th at children were looking at. Alternatively, frameworks of em bodied m utual orientation were som etim es cho­ reographed by physically moving a child's head so that the directive occurred w ithin a participation fram ework where the parties were m utually gazing tow ard each other. Such phenom ena highlight the way in w hich a successful directive requires cooperative alignm ent. Because of this, the directives also provided an environm ent where chil­ dren could explicitly refuse to align with the caregiver, so th at the requested activity never moved forward. R ather th an simply existing as a speech act, entirely in the stream of speech, directives - and the shared foci of attention they require - are organized w ithin em bodied choreogra­ phies of m utual alignm ent. Tooth brushing occurs w ithin culturally organized spaces and arrangem ents of objects w ithin the house­ hold. By having their activities guided through the bod­ ies of caregivers, very young children acquire the ability to discern the affordances provided by these spaces, and the tools and artifacts they contain. Even quite young children dem onstrate the ability to navigate through the house as an organization of m eaningful activity spaces, as they m obilize w here they have to go and w hat they need to carry out a p articular task. The im portance of the cultural organization of such taken-for-granted spaces is brought into sharp relief in a n u m b er of cases in w hich caregivers tried to initiate the activity of tooth brushing, no t by directing children to the bathroom , b ut instead by carrying toothbrushes to room s w here children were w atching television. This not only led to long delays, but som etim es the caregiver's attention shifted to the com ­ peting activity as well. The com parative fram ew ork provided by exam ining how different cohorts of p articipants accom plish the sam e activity w ithin the endogenous spaces, and social arrangem ents th at structure th eir daily activities, makes it possible to see both the diverse alignm ents of language, bodies, and spaces that m u st be m obilized to accom ­ plish a p articu lar activity, and the cooperative stances (Garfinkel 1967, Goodwin 2007c) required for a directive to be successful. Aoki investigates in detail the interactive organization of nods by speakers in Japanese conversation. H er study

15

com plem ents a range of earlier research on recipient head nods. Speaker nods are organized sim ultaneously with reference to two different kinds of phenom ena in the co-occurring interaction: 1) the sequential and lin­ guistic structure of the talk in progress, including posi­ tioning w ithin the turn, and the presence of a range of different kinds of particles; and 2) the current, projected, and requested actions of the turn's hearers. Speaker nod­ ding is thus organized w ith reference to a range of dif­ ferent sem iotic fields, including linguistic and sequential structure and the em bodied displays of participants who frequently are m utually oriented to each w ithin a partic­ ipation fram ew ork characterized by m utual gaze. In the m ajority of cases, speaker nods are designed to be seen and responded to. Speakers attend to w hat their address­ ees do in response to a nod because th at m ay be conse­ quential for w hat the speaker will do next. Thus, though produced by a single party, speaker nods are organized as com ponents of m ulti-party interactive action. Using a clear and simple system for transcribing nods, Aoki distinguishes two different kinds of speaker nods: a singular regular nod, and a stretched nod that begins with a head raise th at is held for variable lengths of tim e before the head falls to com plete the nod. The frequen­ cies of regular and stretched nods are approxim ately the same. M ost occur in the final p a rt of a prosodic unit, w ith the final fall of the speaker's nodding head occurring over the final m ora of a prosodic unit. In turn-final position, speaker head nods frequently occur w ith other devices th at function to elicit responses from recipients, such as high-rising term inal pitch con­ tour, and a variety of interactive particles. However, speaker head nods can solicit responses from recipients even w hen produced alone, w ithout other elicitation sig­ nals. In the m idst of prosodic units, speaker nods can signal to recipients th at responses are relevant at specific salient m om ents w ithin the unfolding structure of the talk. The recipient nods th at follow operate on these spe­ cific parts of the tu rn th at speaker, through the production of a nod, has indicated as m eriting special attention. Though occurring in a variety of different positions w ithin the organization of the turn, and w ith respect to the co-occurring talk, speaker head nods function inter­ actively to signal to recipients th at a response is im m edi­ ately relevant. Aoki dem onstrates, by exam ining speaker head nods in a range of different positions, th at they p ro ­ vide participants w ith im portant resources for calibrat­ ing w ith each o th er their ongoing understanding of the events they are accom plishing together. Iwasaki's chapter develops an im portant new perspec­ tive for the analysis of how units are constructed in inter­ action. It has long been recognized that the units used to build tu rn s at talk (w hat conversation analysts call Turn C onstructional Units, or TCUs) in Japanese have a notice­ ably segm ented or perm eable character (Fox, H ayashi, and Jasperson, 1996). Unlike w hat happens in English, the units that m ake up individual tu rn s in Japanese

16

frequently em erge bit by bit, w ith crucial gram m atical and sequential inform ation being provided only at the very end of the unit. This process lim its the resources th at m ake it possible for hearers to project the upcom ing structure of a u n it (Hayashi, 2004b; Tanaka, 2000). Iwasaki focuses analysis on the subunits found w ithin individual TCUs and dem onstrates th at these units are them selves constructed through system atic processes of interaction betw een speaker and hearer(s). These sub­ units, w hich Iwasaki calls Interactive Turn Spaces, are n ot static, single-party activities, b u t instead are pro ­ cesses constructed through the m utual m onitoring and ongoing interaction of m ultiple parties - hearers as well as the speaker - th at are coordinating their collaborative alignm ent through not only talk, b u t also w ith a range of other em bodied m odalities, such as facial displays. The locus for projection w ithin Japanese is lodged w ithin these units ra th e r than the tu rn as a whole. In order to m ake h er argum ents about the m ulti­ modal, m ulti-party organization of units, Iw asaki found it necessary to develop new m ethods for transcription to display the intricate, m ultim odal organization of units she is exam ining on the prin ted page. Som e of the phenom ena th at are central to the analytic argum ents in the chapter can be briefly illustrated with one of Iw asakis examples. In Japanese, gram m ar nouns have a particle (case or adverbial) attached to them. In excerpt 2 in Iw asakis paper, a speaker produces a noun, b u t then pauses w ithout proceeding to the gram m ati­ cally necessary following particle. Sim ultaneously his face breaks into a smile, producing a display of stance tow ard th a t nou n (“drug stuff”), and his gaze moves to his addressee. Only after the addressee produces a reciprocal display of alignm ent does the speaker at last move to the required particle. W hat has traditionally been considered an indivisible gram m atical structure in Japanese - Noun + Particle - here becom es a site for multi-party, m ulti­ m odal interaction (see also Hayashi, 2004a). Processes of interaction betw een speakers and hearers are thus con­ stitutive of the basic units from w hich talk in interaction is built.

Transformational ecologies The chapters in this section investigate how m eanings of actions are created or altered and how difficulties in p ro ­ ducing coherent and intelligible actions and utterances as a result, for example, of com m unicative im pairm ents or disorders, are overcom e by skilled m anagem ent of the m aterial, behavioral, and h u m an environm ent, som e­ tim es creating opportunities for the further developm ent of skills. M ehus investigates how caregivers in a day-care center use m ultim odal resources to co nstruct contexts for young ch ild ren s im m inent actions, specifically those th a t w ould otherw ise th reaten to d isru p t the social order. Adult-child interaction is characterized by asym m etries

STREECK, GOODWIN, AND LEBARON

of symbolic com petences and capacities to m anage one­ self and the interaction at hand, and adults often need to provide scaffolds to enable the interaction to p ro ­ ceed. The practices th at she describes and w hich she aptly calls anticipatory contextualization alter the signif­ icance of actions in w hich a child is engaged or is about to engage. Instead of directly intervening in or inh ib it­ ing an action by a child, a context is provided for it so th a t it rem ains w ithin the boundaries of the agreed-on social order. There is not a set repertoire of such recontextualization practices. Rather, caregivers draw on local-cultural resources such as specialized lexicalized item s and routines, as well as innovative speaking p ra c ­ tices, in an im provisational m anner th at M ehus char­ acterizes as multimodal bricolage. While the m ethods th at she describes are im provisational rath er th an preestablished, there is always the possibility th a t routines evolve from them and becom e sedim ented as elem ents of the practical culture of the local community, a culture th at usually interacts w ith social system s th at extend beyond the com m unity at hand, such as historically dom inant ideologies of childhood and child-rearing. M ehus’ study exemplifies that the significance of an action is not a direct product of the motives and goals th a t the agent invests in them, b u t rath er issues from its em beddedness in a context, for example the present constellation of co-participant actions and orientations and props for shared and individual activities, so that the m eaning and upshot of an ongoing action can be modified by others who m ay reconfigure th at constella­ tion w ithout im pacting the physical action itself. Action is distributed (see H utchins and N om ura, C hapter 2, and Goodwin, C hapter 13 of this volume). M ultim odal bricolage does not only describe the logic and sem iotic features of a setting as rich in objects and physical activity as a day-care center, but also the prac­ tices of m eaning m aking in settings th at have tradition­ ally been called “verbal interaction.” Gullberg describes how non-native speakers of a language (L2 speakers) deploy and coordinate hand gestures to support and com plem ent their linguistic production and how the jo in t deploym ent of speech and gesture may yet require the system atic m obilization of additional resources and dim ensions of interactional co-presence such as differ­ ential uses of space and gaze direction. Like M ehus and m any other contributors to this volume, Gullberg ana­ lyzes the perceptual and com m unicative ecologies of com m unicative encounters and points out that han d ges­ tures alter the com m unicative environm ent; they do not simply add additional form s and significance to w hat is sim ultaneously being conveyed by speech, b u t - in L2 conversations as well as in conversations betw een native speakers (Goodwin, 1986; Streeck, 1993) - “are care­ fully deployed to elicit lexical assistance from the inter­ locutor” (7). Speakers system atically create differential ecological constellations for their gestures - for exam­ ple, by choosing betw een a location near their lap or an

EMBODIED INTERACTION IN THE MATERIAL WORLD

exposed position closer to the recipients line of regard and thereby constrain and im pact the interlocutors co­ p articipation in different ways: While a gesture can be m ade in a way to request an overt interpretation (e.g., in the context of a w ord search), it can also be m ade in ways that discourage others from contributing. In either case, we see th at not only action b u t also m eaning m aking is distributed betw een participants and m odalities, and that the integration of distributed resources is itself m ediated and structured by shifting local ecologies. Ironically, in the context of L2 conversations w here one or m ore par­ ticipants desire to acquire a language, the short-term benefit of achieving inter-subjectivity and facilitating the progress of the conversation th at the system atic deploy­ m ent of non-linguistic resources such as hand gestures can incur the long-term cost of negatively im pacting lan­ guage learning: The routine use of ‘'com pensatory" p rac­ tices of m eaning m aking can slow down or even stall the acquisition of lexicon and gram m ar. A different type of cost-benefit ratio is at issue in W ilkinson, Bloch, and Clarkes study of graphic resources such as w riting on p aper and hand as well as keyboardbased com m unication technologies in interactions involving people w ith com m unication disorders. Their chapter exemplifies the im m ense need for m icroanalytic studies of the deploym ent of these new technolo­ gies in everyday interaction, not only to enable engineers to develop devices th at are easy to incorporate in the flow of face-to-face interaction, b u t also to educate their users and their interaction p artners about best ways of adapting interaction practices to the constraints of the technologies. W hen people who have a difficult time finding or articulating a w ord tem porarily tu rn to w rit­ ing to bridge w hat would otherw ise becom e a gap in the process of understanding, their co-participants usually have no problem shifting their gaze along with them to the surface on w hich the graphic signs are made, and to retu rn them to the speaker once the interaction is shifted back to the vocal modality. Such shifts in the focus of attention are fam iliar and com m onplace, and the production of m ultim odal utterances th at com prise both vocal and graphic com ponents does not appear difficult at all, despite the differences in the tem poral organization of the two m odalities. Most participants in interaction are fam iliar enough with the cognitive and behavioral requirem ents of w riting so th at they can eas­ ily com bine this activity w ith sim ultaneous talk. Voiceo u tp u t com m unication aides, on the other hand, as they are used by people w ith cerebral palsy, produce auditory o utput interrupted by long pauses, and in the situation th at W ilkinson, Bloch, and Clarke describe lead to m any anticipatory completions on the p art of the interaction partner. U nder this circum stance, the speaker who has the com m unicative disorder m u st invent or learn preven­ tive practices to secure authorship of their turns at talk and agency in the interaction. There is also the difficulty of m aintaining conversational coherence and to display

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the type of com petence and wit th at is usually dem on­ strated by close tim ing (e.g., of a response). R ather than ju st aiding and supplem enting verbal com m unication, every com m unication technology - just like each bodily m odality th at is deployed along w ith speech or in which speech is em bedded - comes w ith its own affordances and constraints and reconfigures the ecology of action and interaction w ithin which the parties operate. In the case of the blind, these ecologies are still to a large extent terra incognita, as Avital and Streeck sug­ gest. In contrast to the trem endeous am ount of research on deaf signers and their languages th at has been con­ ducted - and notw ithstanding the existence of a very active com m unity of educators and psychologists who conduct research on blind childrens linguistic and social developm ent and design interventions - there have been virtually no m icroanalytic studies of social interaction in the everyday lives of the blind. Accordingly, we know little about the ways in w hich non-visual resources and practices scaffold social interaction, inter-subjective understanding, and joint and distributed activities. In their exploratory ethnographic study in a school for blind and visually im paired students, Avital and Streeck report the use of acoustic signals - w hich they dub auditory gestures - by which these students facilitate each o th ers navigation and participation in classroom activities, and they describe how voice projection and orientation are used to organize fram es of focused interaction. They also explore m om ents of behavioral coordination th at sug­ gest th at specific sensory resources (collectively know n as peripersonal perception) are utilized w here sighted individuals rely on visual inform ation to m anage shifting fram eworks of participation. As is the case in other chap­ ters, their investigation suggests that often m ore insight can be gained into the processes of m eaning m aking and interactional collaboration by focusing on how the con­ text is being organized th an on the individual agent's behavior: They describe instances of stereotyped, repeti­ tive behaviors, know n as blindism s, for exam ple constant rocking or jum ping up and dow n from a chair, th at are com m on am ong m any blind children and that th em ­ selves appear to provide a kind of ecological com pensa­ tion to children w hose ability to move about is otherw ise severely constrained by their inability to see; one m ight expect such behaviors to be highly disruptive, rendering conversation nearly impossible, but the childrens inter­ actions with fam iliar partners such as classm ates and teachers who know to disattend these behaviors seem to be completely unaffected by them . Goodwin shows in his chapter not only th at action is m ultim odal in the sense th at it is “constructed from stru c­ turally different kinds of sign phenom ena th at m utually elaborate each other" (6), b u t also because actors system ­ atically incorporate m aterials from the actions of others in their own productions - a phenom enon th at B akhtin has explicated u n d er the term answerability (Bakhtin, 1990) and that Sacks (1992) has called "tying techniques."

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Goodwin analyzes m om ents of inter-subjectivity in the conversations of an aphasie m an, who can u tter only three words, and m em bers of his fam ily He describes the practices th at the speaker uses to get his conversa­ tion partn ers to produce actions and talk to w hich he can then tie his ow n m ultim odal u tterances - a word, a series of gestures, an intonation contour superim posed into nonsense syllables - so th a t th eir significance becomes evident from the context. The speaker, despite lacking “the sem antic and syntactic ability to construct sentences th a t w ould state [his] proposition by h im se lf,... is able to vastly expand his repertoire as a speaker by sequentially tying to the particulars of the complex talk and language structure of his interlocutors” (14). Goodwin reveals the enorm ous complexity of cooperative semiosis, of the dis­ tributed production of action by interaction participants who draw on vast and shifting arrays of symbolic and environm ental resources, notably including their own and each o th e rs bodies. By subtly redirecting their gaze to a sign inscribed in the environm ent or by borrow ing the syntactic and prosodic structure of the o th ers previ­ ous tu rn at talk, they m ay profoundly alter the horizon of significances w ithin w hich bits of behavior are taken to m ake sense. The processes of interacting w ith an apha­ sie m an, who is incapable of producing symbolic speech, reveal the indexical underpinnings of h u m an action and com m unication while at the sam e tim e showing the dif­ ficulties of purely indexical and iconic com m unication. Symbolic language, in contrast, is a resource th at links “the cognitive lives and abilities of different actors ... together in ways th at enable the fluent accom plishm ent of radically new form s of actio n ” (26-7). It allows actors to im m ediately recognize each o th ers actions. As Goodwin argues, the example of the aphasie m an who, through m anaging his h um an environm ent, is able to produce complex sem antic structures and action by tying his lim ­ ited verbal productions to the complex utterances of o th ­ ers, also suggests th at we reconceptualize w hat a speaker does: Instead of being solo productions, action and m eaning are m ore often th an not “organized through the cooperative sem iosis of m ultiple actors” (28). W hereas the other chapters in this section investigate ecologies of em bodied co-presence and th eir refiguration and transform ation through m ultiple m odalities and technologies, Keating and Sunakaw a study how action and sem iosis are restru ctu red in the digitial world. Exam ining b o th m ultiple-player online gam ing and dig­ ital (visual) com m unication technologies for the deaf, they show how digital technologies transform contexts of social interaction as well as som e of the com peten­ cies th at participants need to develop in order to be able to achieve coherence w ithin and across different inter­ action spaces and to move back and forth betw een “real space” and the m ultiple virtual spaces th at the digital realm offers. On the one hand, digital technologies con­ stitute new “extensions” (M cLuhan, 1994 [1964]) th at give p articipants new and expanded ways of looking,

STREECK, GOODWIN, AND LEBARON

moving, and self-transform ation. At the sam e time they also im pose new constraints on w hat can be done “in real space” w ithout disrupting the shared activity. Keating and Sunakaw a lay out a research perspective that will enable us to keep track of and understand how h um an agents develop new skills, new cognitive architectures, and new m ethods of cooperating and sense m aking to exploit the possibilities th at technology gives them to extend and diversify their abilities to act in the world and shape the actions of others: “H um an action and com ­ m unication in a sociotechnical environm ent entail both restrictions and enhancem ents of possibilities com pared to face-to-face interaction, and participants m anage new challenges through reinterpreting constrastive proper­ ties of com m unicative resources and the environm ent as well as by distributing m eaning across m ultiple m odali­ ties both sim ultaneously and sequentially” (26).

Professional communities W hen researchers exam ine hum an activity w ithin orga­ nizational and professional settings, they have an oppor­ tunity (some m ight say obligation) to consider how interaction relates to the purposes, policies, practices, and histories of the institutional host. W ithin the n at­ uralistic research tradition, there is an abiding sense (perhaps consensus) th a t m undane or everyday form s of interaction are shaped or im printed by the organizations th at appropriate them , according to the organizational purposes th at they are used to serve (e.g., Drew and Heritage, 1992). At the sam e time, of course, form s of interaction also shape and help constitute the appropri­ ating organizations. The chapters in this section explore these issues and contribute to ou r understanding of em bodied interaction w ithin organizational settings that are often complex and subtle. In the opening chapter of this section, M ondada addresses issues of m ultim odality through a careful con­ sideration of “m ulti-activity” - th a t is, w hen people are sim ultaneously engaged in m ore th an one activity, such as talking while driving, driving while eating, or eating while working. M ulti-activity settings typically involve complex configurations of spatiality (built spaces that both afford and constrain), m ateriality (objects, artifacts, tools, representations, etc.), and participation (varying levels of involvement, shifting orientations, and more). Analysts' descriptions of multi-activity, she argues, should be inform ed by the behavior of the participants themselves, who necessarily organize and coordinate th eir situated involvements. Eventually, M ondada turns her attention to a complex corpus of videotaped data in which m em bers of a surgical team are sim ultaneously involved in two distinct activities: While the chief sur­ geon and his team conduct a surgical procedure, the chief surgeon sim ultaneously gives dem onstrations and instructions to an audience of ab o u t one h u ndred train­ ees and a few experts, who w atch the surgery by video

e m b o d ie d in t e r a c t io n in th e m a t e r ia l w o r l d

link and ask the chief surgeon questions via an audio con­ nection. Thus, both activities are accom plished through talk and em bodied actions, carefully coordinated so that the m ulti-activity coheres w ithout running at cross pur­ poses. In great detail, M ondada unpacks the complexities and subtleties of surgical activity th at are inherent to the purposes of the host organization - a teaching hospital. Zemel, K oschm ann, and LeBaron contribute another study of a surgical team operating w ithin a teaching hospi­ tal. In addition to successfully com pleting a surgical p ro ­ cedure, the senior and m ost expert surgeon (“A ttending”) is responsible for the education and training of a less experienced surgeon (“R esident”). The authors focus on a strip of interaction in which Attending asks a question th at R esident has difficulty answ ering. R ather th an p ro ­ vide the answ er to his own question, Attending pursues a correct response from R esident by deploying various m odalities of interaction in ord er to invoke and navigate the complex referential relevancies th at w ould allow the R esident to produce a p roper answer. The w ork of produc­ ing a question th at Resident could answ er dem onstrated the indexical ground shared by Attending and Resident, and indicated the R esident s level of expertise. Talk alone was simply not enough to accom plish all this. Gestures and o ther em bodied referential actions, the p atien ts own arm , and the talk of Attending and Resident were all used in coordinated and artful ways to m ake evident the rele­ vant states of the surgical site and the various issues to be addressed in the surgery. M urphy exam ines the storytelling practices of profes­ sional architects. His chapter begins w ith a broad over­ view of how narrative has been conceived and studied, as both a m acro- and m icro-social form, by scholars of var­ ious disciplines, including discourse and conversation analysis. Against this theoretical backdrop, he focuses specifically on the sense-m aking features and functions of narrative, and how em bodied actions help constitute narrative structure and activity in interaction, because stories are not m erely told in interaction b u t are also demonstrated in ra th e r com plex ways. W hen architects use narrative to do professional work, their stories are less about the em pirical p ast and m ore about an im ag­ ined future. W orking with the tools of th eir trade, such as com puter-generated draw ings, they perform gestures and em bodied m aneuvers as the anim ation of their architectural plans, so that they can “experience” their plans in the p resent and solve the problem s th at they “encounter” - before those plans actually take shape as steel, m ortar, and glass. M urphy identifies and explicates a recurring narrative form th a t seems especially useful to architects: He calls it the embedded skit - th at is, a short and rath er undeveloped vignette from an archi­ tects im agination, w ith enough substance to resonate as relevant to the current conversation, b u t not set off from the surrounding discourse to constitute a discrete speech activity of typical storytelling. M urphy observes th at em bedded skits are a discursive strategy, enabling

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architects to m ake argum ents about a design at hand. By m om entarily stepping into the future, architects acquire “evidence” for the purpose of calibrating their architec­ tural vision and persuading one another to modify their plans. These skits are fundam entally em bodied, occur­ ring w ithin the context of hands-on activity, often in relation to a draw ing or artifact w ithin reach, perform ed w ith the body as a kind of cognitive work, with one per­ son experiencing and thinking aloud in order to clarify and persuade. Em bodied argum ents are also featured in the chapter by Mirivel, who notes th at argum entation has trad itio n ­ ally belonged to the field of rhetoric, w hich has favored discourse-centered scholarship and largely ignored (at least until recently) the rhetoric of the visual, artifactual, and em bodied. Mirivel locates and studies em bod­ ied argum ents w ithin a plastic surgery clinic. Drawing on two m ethodological traditions (discourse analysis and m icroethnography), he collects a variety of data from docum ents, interviews, and video recordings. And he quickly puts his finger on an institutional tension hence an interactional dilem m a - th at becom es the focus of his analysis: th at is, the clinic is both a m edical center and a beauty shop; it is about health care and m aking money. On the one hand, plastic surgeons have a m ed­ ical responsibility to screen out people in poor health and to educate patients about the risks associated w ith cosm etic surgery. On the other hand, the doctors need plenty of clients to sign up for elective surgeries so th a t their business will rem ain profitable. Mirivel shows how these com peting institutional goals are played out dur­ ing initial consultations betw een plastic surgeons and new clients. At the beginning of the consultations, sur­ geons carefully fram e their activity as a m edical encoun­ ter, and then they conduct a m edical exam that m akes the p atien ts body an object of scrutiny, visual analysis, and assessm ent. Through visible and tactile behaviors such as looking, pointing, touching, squeezing, giggling, and gesturing, surgeons move to constitute the p a tie n ts body as flawed, at the sam e tim e th at they form ulate w hat their exam ination has “discovered.” Thus, plastic surgeons m ake argum ents w ith their whole bodies, such th at m edical facts becom e indistinguishable from aes­ thetic claims, m aking surgery a logical next step. In another study of aesthetic assessm ent, Philabaum takes us into a photography studio w here novices learn to use the tools of their trade by w atching, talking, and working alongside m ore experienced photographers. Philabaum focuses on a couple of tools th at enable p h o ­ tographers to m ake decisions through practices of com ­ parison: (1) the contact p rin t and the negative; and (2) the viewing board. M ost obviously, the photographic negative is a m aterial artifact - th at is, a perm anent repository of the original photographic image, providing the raw data for an endless num ber of final prints. However, w ithin the darkroom , the negative and the contact print func­ tion as tools for com parison, enabling photographers to

STREECK, GOODWIN, AND LEBARON

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determ ine correct exposure tim es for m aking new prints. Similarly, the viewing board is m ore th an a surface for affixing prints; it provides a neutral background and basis (white) for assessing w hether the color balance of a p rin t is correct. In order to look like a photographer, novices m ust learn to use the objects of th eir profession, w hich are also tools for aesthetic judgm ent w hen in the hands of an expert. Philabaum acknowledges th at recent advances in digital photography are changing how ph o ­ tographers do their work - for example, there are no negatives. Nevertheless, he observes th at new tools have em erged to support practices of com parison, which rem ain at the center of artistic vision for this profession. W ithin organizations, em bodied form s of interaction and activity can becom e unique and highly specialized. H eath and Luff exam ine a videotaped auction of hne art and antiques to reveal a com plex but subtle orchestration of talk, gaze, and gesture, w hich is critical to the insti­ tu tio n s ability to rapidly escalate the price and advance the sale of goods. R ather th an focus only on the th eatri­ cal perform ance of the auctioneer, as other researchers have done, H eath and Luff also analyze the behaviors of bidders who are fully and interactively com plicit in the high prices th at auctioneers attain. The process unfolds increm entally: Auctioneers rhythm ically chant to show th at next projected values are offered and then received, and at the sam e tim e they shift their gaze and gesture aro u n d the room , creating specific opportunities for par­ ticular individuals to bid, while bidders visibly negoti­ ate their entrance into and exit from a p articu lar "ru n /’ all in rapid succession. H eath and Luff em phasize that this entire process is perform ed for the purview of the participating audience, and th a t auctioneers m ay go to som e trouble to display significant changes in participa­ tion and price, w hich m aintains an orderly and transpar­ ent p attern of interaction consistent w ith the institution s position of “neutrality” and the publics belief or trust in the outcom e of auctions. Thus, fundam ental purposes of the organization - to m ake a profit while m aintaining tru st - are jointly accom plished through em bodied form s of interaction betw een auctioneers and bidders. In his chapter about m usical spaces, H aviland under­ takes a rich anthropological exploration of the em bod­ ied interaction associated w ith three different m usical groups: a string quartet, a jazz combo, and a trio of m usi­ cians (violin, harp, guitar) w ithin a M ayan Indian com ­ m unity of southeastern Mexico. Although m usic m ay be fundam entally akin to conversation - th a t is, highly com ­ m unicative, jointly accom plished, sequentially organized, and m ultim odal - studies of m usical interaction provide a com pelling counterpoint to talk. First, Haviland takes m usical space literally by analyzing the physical places w here m usicians play: Video recordings show the loca­ tion and orientation of bodies w ithin built spaces that include physical objects and m usical instrum ents. W hen the participants encounter problem s of m usical coordi­ nation, their ad hoc solutions are shaped by the spatial

arrangem ents and physical places they occupy. Second, he considers the coordination of action w ithin the three contrasting m usical traditions through the notion of m usical “dialogues”: The m usicians “talk” to each other through the instrum ents they play, negotiating points of entry, exit, and transition; and they respond to the affect of each other s perform ance through such features as har­ mony, rhythm , and style. Finally, he observes some of the other sem iotic resources th at the m usicians som etim es employ, including talk, paralinguistic sounds, visible behaviors, and other form s of social music. H avilands chapter is an appropriate conclusion to this volume about m ultim odality in h um an interaction and activity because his exploration foregrounds w hat the m usicians themselves seem to privilege. That is, he first explicates their way of com ing and being together, then th eir coor­ dination of instrum ental interaction th at has no lyrics, with considerations of talk coming in at the end rath er th an the beginning. Regarding m usic both literally and metaphorically, Haviland nudges research on em bodied interaction and m ultim odality in one of the directions th at it needs to go.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Lorenza M ondada and an anonym ous reviewer for their very helpful com m ents on a p rio r draft of this introduction; Gene L erners suggestion of a title for the book is gratefully acknowledged. The introduction was com pleted while Jürgen Streeck was a fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS).

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Schegloff, Emanuel (1984). On some gestures' relation to talk. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action (pp. 266-296). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, Emanuel (2006). Interaction: The infrastructure for social institutions, the natural ecological niche for language, and the arena in which culture is enacted. In N. Enfield (Ed.), Roots of Human Sociality (pp. 70-95). London: Berg Press. Schegloff, Emanuel (2007). Sequence organization in interaction. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Schmitt, Reinholt (Ed.). (2007). Koordination. Studien zur mul­ timodalen Interaktion. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Schmitt, Reinholt, & Deppermann, Arnulf (2007). Monitoring und Koordination als Voraussetzungen der multimodalen Konstitution von Interaktionsräumen. In R. Schmitt (Ed.), Koordination. Studien zur multimodalen Interaktion (pp. 95-128). Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Schütz, Alfred (1967 [1932]). The phenomenology of the social world. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Selting, Margret, & Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth (Eds.) (2001). Studies in Interactional Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Sennett, Richard (2008). The craftsman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sidnell, Jack (2005). Gesture in the pursuit and display of recognition: A Caribbean case study. Semiotica, 756(1/4), 55-87. Simmel, George (1950). The sociology of George Simmel. Translated by Kurt Wolff. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Stivers, Tanya, & Sidnell, Jack (2005). Multi-Modal Interaction. Semiotica, 756(1/4), 1-20. Strathem, Andrew J. (1996). Body thoughts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Streeck, Jürgen (1993). Gesture as communication I: Its coor­ dination with gaze and speech. Communication Monographs, 60, 275-299. Streeck, Jürgen (1996a). How to do things with things. Human Studies, 19, 365-384. Streeck, Jürgen (1996b). A little Ilokano grammar as it appears in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 26, 189-213. Streeck, Jürgen (2002). A body and its gestures. Gesture, 2(1), 19-44. Streeck, Jürgen (2003). The body taken for granted: Lingering dualism in research on social interaction. In P. Glenn, C. LeBaron, & J. Mandelbaum (Eds.), Studies in Language and Social Interaction (pp. 427-440). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Streeck, Jürgen (2009). Gesturecraft: The manufacturing of meaning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Streeck, Jürgen, & Hartge, Ulrike (1992). Previews: Gestures at the transition place. In P. Auer & A. di Luzio (Eds.), The Contextualization of Language (pp. 138-58). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Suchman, Lucy A. (1987). Plans and situated actions: Theproblem of human machine communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Suchman, Lucy A. (1996). Constituting shared workspaces. In Y. Engeström & D. Middleton (Eds.), Cognition and Communication at Work (pp. 35-60). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Suchman, Lucy A., & Trigg, Randall H. (1991). Understanding practice: Video as a medium for reflection and design. In J. Greenbaum & M. Kyng (Eds.), Design at Work: Cooperative

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imrnmcW

Collaborative Construction of Multimodal Utterances Edwin Hutchins and Saeko Nomura

INTRODUCTION The production of collaboratively constructed utterances is well-known (Goodwin, 1979; Goodwin, Goodwin, & Yaeger-Dror, 2002; Jacoby & Ochs, 1995). In the m ost frequently studied type of collaboratively constructed utterance, one speaker begins an utterance in a way that projects possible com pletions. A nother speaker then con­ tributes utterance elem ents th at are incorporated into a jointly produced utterance. The acceptance by p artici­ pants of a collaboratively constructed u tterance is strong evidence for the establishm ent of com m on ground under­ standing (Clark, 1992). M ultim odal utterances (Goodwin, 2006) contain both verbal (speech) and non-verbal (gesture) elements. Of course, virtually all verbal utterances are m ultim odal in the sense that they are produced in concert w ith coordi­ nated m odulation of body posture, facial expression, and eye gaze. In this chapter, we will reserve the m ultim odal label for utterances in which the verbal and non-verbal elem ents m utually elaborate one another. M ultim odal utterances are also extremely com m on. In this chapter we examine the intersection of the set of collaboratively constructed utterances with the set of m ultim odal utterances. We are especially interested in cases w here the m ultim odal n ature of the utterance intersects w ith the process of collaborative construction such th at a gesture or other non-verbal elem ent p ro ­ duced by one participant stands in a relation of m utual elaboration w ith a spoken elem ent produced by another participant. M utual elaboration is a complex relationship. Goodwin speaks of it as existing am ong elem ents of a m eaning­ m aking event. W hen the m eaning of each of two or m ore elem ents is constrained, altered, or enriched by the m eanings of the other elem ents, the elem ents can be said to m utually elaborate one another. In order for an analyst to claim th at such a relationship exists, the an a­ lyst m ust know the concepts th a t constitute the dom ain

of discourse and m ust be able to provide ethnographic w arrants for claims about the m eanings of the sem iotic resources. In the analysis th at follows, we will focus on two kinds of correspondence am ong elem ents of the sem iotic field: 1) Sem antic correspondence, in w hich two or m ore elem ents in the active sem iotic field refer to the related conceptual elements, even if they are not produced or processed simultaneously. 2) Temporal correspondence, in w hich two or m ore utterance elem ents are produced close in tim e so th at they afford processing together, even if they do not refer to the sam e conceptual elements. We hypothesize th at hum an m inds are always looking for these kinds of correspondences. Each of these kinds of correspondence probably recruits a different kind of processing underlying the m utual elaboration of the sem iotic resources. This is a topic for subsequent exper­ im ental investigation. Schegloff (1984) introduced the concept of "lexical affil­ iate” to address sem antic correspondence between a ges­ ture and a spoken element. He identified the lexical affiliate as "the word or words that correspond m ost closely to a gesture in m eaning.” Kendon argued th at this notion is problem atic because not all gestures have lexical affiliates. It is also problem atic because sem antic relations are com ­ plex and it is not clear w hat m easure of sem antic distance is implied by the notion of close correspondence in m ean­ ing. This is problem atic in a third way because neither gestures nor words have m eanings that are independent of the context of their production. If a gesture and an ele­ m ent of speech are construed to be related in a m eaningful way, then they probably m utually elaborate each o th ers m eanings. Finally, this is problem atic because the defini­ tion seems to w ant to be about the relation between talk and gesture, but the label "lexical affiliate” highlights just one element of a complex relation.

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HUTCHINS AND NOMURA

30

Table 2.1. How th e categories Lexical Affiliate and Co-expressive speech fail to label th e space of sem antic and tem poral relations am ong semiotic resources Temporal relation Concurrent

Semantic relation

Congruent Complementary Unrelated

Offset

Lexical affiliate & Co-expressive speech Co-expressive Speech

No two representations ever refer to exactly the same con­ cept. B ut conceptual objects as created in hum an activity are complex and have parts. We can say that the referents of two or m ore representations can sometimes be captured by a particular element of a conceptual object. When that happens, we will say they bear a congruent sem antic rela­ tion to one another. W hen the referents of two or m ore rep­ resentations are captured by different elements of a single complex conceptual object, we say th at the representations bear a com plem entary sem antic relation to one another. Some com m on forms of com plem entary relations occur w hen one representation refers to a cause and the other refers to the effect of th at cause (metonomy), and when one representation refers to a whole and the other repre­ sentation refers to a part of th at whole (synecdoche). With respect to tem poral correspondence, Schegloff (1984), studying single-speaker production, noted th at gestures tend to precede th eir lexical affiliates. Because we are interested in cases th a t involve two or m ore par­ ticipants, one m ight assum e th at spoken elem ents p ro ­ duced by one p articip an t will norm ally precede and serve as cues or triggers for gesture elem ents produced by anoth er participant. This does happen, b u t it does not appear to be the m ost frequent case. In the analysis pre­ sented fu rth er in the chapter, we identify seven instances of collaboratively constructed m ultim odal utterances. McNeill (2005) used the phrase “co-expressive speech” to designate spoken language th at co-occurs in tim e with gestures such th at the speech and gesture have related ref­ erents. Like Schegloffs term “lexical affiliate,” the phrase “co-expressive speech” is intended to describe a relation, b u t it highlights just one elem ent of the relation. This class of relations is interesting because of the productivity of the em ergent properties of the conceptual integrations. Of course, it is possible th a t the referents of two sim ul­ taneously produced representations are unrelated. We observed this in our corpus w hen an instructor scratched his elbow while describing a flying procedure. We use o ur ethnographic grounding to establish the presence or absence of relations am ong representations. It is hard to say th at any two things are really unrelatable. H um an im agination is a powerful constructor of relations. No two representations ever occur at exactly the sam e time. The perception of sim ultaneity is an interesting problem in psychophysics th at we cannot treat here. However, people judge th at som e things occur close

Unrelated

Lexical affiliate No named category

enough in tim e to be taken as having been sim ultaneous. O ther pairs of representations occur at perceptibly dif­ ferent points in time, yet are still taken to be p art of a sin­ gle larger act of m eaning making. Still further separated in time, representations m ay be so rem ote th a t they are not construed as being p a rt of the sam e m eaning-m aking activity. The threshold here is not simply a function of the passage of time, b u t depends on the understood tem ­ poral structure of the activity. That is, tem poral relevance is a negotiated aspect of the interaction. McNeill (2005) addressed both sem antic and tem poral relations w hen he distinguished the lexical affiliate from co-expressive speech. “A gesture, including the stroke, may anticipate its lexical affiliate but, at the same time, be syn­ chronized with its co-expressive speech segment” (McNeill, 2005, p. 37). Following this classification scheme, analysis proceeds by first finding a gesture and then locating the ges­ ture s lexical affiliate (if any) and the gesture's co-expressive speech (if any). We will take a different approach. In our analysis we will examine the relations among the sem iotic resources th at are recruited by the activity of collaboratively constructing conceptual representations. Focusing on the properties of relations rather th an on the properties of the elem ents solves the problem s noted ear­ lier with the use of the term s “lexical affiliate” and “coexpressive speech.” The term “lexical affiliate” denotes the spoken elem ent of a gesture-speech relation in which the two elem ents are sem antically congruent, w hether or not they occur at the sam e time. The term “co-expressive speech” denotes the spoken elem ent of a gesture-speech relation in w hich the two elements occur at the sam e time, and are either sem antically congruent or complementary. Table 2.1 m aps the intersection of sem antic relations and tem poral relations and shows where the phenom ena denoted by the term s “lexical affiliate” and “co-expressive speech” lie in our proposed new classification. Table 2.1 highlights the fact th a t the existing catego­ ries focus on the properties of p articular representations rath er th an on relations am ong representations. The m ovem ent from theories th at focus on properties of ele­ m ents to relations am ong elem ents is underw ay in m any p arts of science, including cognitive science (Hutchins, 2010 ; 2011 ) . The m ost fam iliar relation is sem antically congruent and tem porally concurrent. This is the case w hen gesture and talk are produced sim ultaneously and refer to the

COLLABORATIVE c o n s t r u c t io n o f m u lt im o d a l u tte r a n c e s

sam e conceptual elem ent(s). This is probably the m ost frequently produced type of relation betw een speech and gesture in single-speaker utterances. It is probably not the m ost frequently produced type of relation in collab­ orât ively constructed utterances. This possibility high­ lights the fact th at these relations m ay arise in three different configurations of socio-cultural space: 1) rela­ tions am ong elem ents produced by a single speaker, 2) relations am ong elem ents produced by m ore than one speaker, 3) relations am ong elem ents th a t are produced by a speaker and representations in m aterial media. One can im agine constructing a table for each configuration. We expect the relative frequencies of events to be differ­ ent in the three configurations. This is a topic for further investigation. METHODS Since 2005, und er a research agreem ent w ith Boeings Flight Deck Concepts Center, we have been conduct­ ing a worldwide investigation of the roles of language and culture in com m ercial airline flight deck (cockpit) operations. O ur ethnographic d ata collection procedures include the observation of airline pilots in revenue flight and in high-fidelity sim ulators, and interviews w ith pilots and other airline personnel. From the observers seat in the flight deck, we take extensive w ritten notes, capture digital still images, and collect copies of all of the flight paperw ork. These data are subsequently integrated into hyperlinked field notes. Video d ata from the flight sim u­ lator are transcribed and the m icro-scale language and culture practices are docum ented.

Cognitive ethnography In experim ental studies, the research ers knowledge of the stim ulus conditions and the organization of the activity in the experim ental trials provide the w arran t for interpretations of the observed responses. This is espe­ cially true w hen the interpretations involve claim s about the m eanings of the observed behavior. The researcher assum es th at the m eanings of the subjects' behaviors are knowable, and th a t they can be recovered not only by the researcher, b u t by readers w ho are first inform ed of the n ature of the m aterials and the experim ental tasks perform ed by the subjects. McNeill (2005, pp. 259-60) points out th at som e knowledge of this so rt is needed to solve w hat he called the "circularity problem ." W ithout an independent way to establish m eanings, gestures could only be interpreted as having the sam e m eaning as the talk w ith w hich they co-occur. One could never distinguish tem porally offset congruent relations from tem porally con cu rren t com plem entary relations. W hen we do cognitive research in the real world, we have the sam e need for w arrants to support interpretations ° f the m eanings of observed behaviors. B ut as cogni­ tive ethnographers, we m ake no attem p t to control the

31

observed activities. W hen behavior is observed in n a tu ­ rally occurring, culturally organized activities, an eth ­ nographic study of the activity system takes the place of the laboratory research ers knowledge of the experim en­ tal conditions. In either case, the in terpretation of the significance of observed behaviors relies on knowledge of the conditions of its production. The interpretation of the behavior of any airline pilot requires a w ealth of tech ­ nical knowledge about aircraft and airline operations. U nderstanding and interpreting p atterns of behavior of pilots from o ther cultures requires a deep knowledge of the language and culture involved. Fortunately we have been able to assem ble a research team th a t includes tech ­ nical pilots and hu m an factors specialists from Boeing in addition to a cognitive anthropologist. O ur w ork w ith Japanese airlines has included an expert on Japanese language and culture. In the discussion below, we will refer to training docum ents and docum ented practices of professional pilot culture as well as native language com petence in the languages spoken as sources of w ar­ rants for claim s about the probable m eanings of sem i­ otic resources.

Data collection So far we have collected data in five nations. We have ridden in the flight deck w ith the crews, observing six­ ty-four pilots as they flew seventy segm ents of revenue flight. At various training centers we have m ade video recordings of twenty-six pilots as they engaged in m ore than fifty hours of sim ulator flying and approxim ately thirty hours of pre- and post-sim ulator session briefings. In addition to audio and video recordings, we also col­ lected paperw ork used in training (lesson plans, flight profiles) and electronic copies of the flight crew tra in ­ ing m anual and operating m anual for the airplane being learned. Twenty-three hours of training were recorded in Japan, where the training was conducted in Japanese. Twelve hours of training were recorded in Brazil, w here the sessions w ere conducted in B razilian Portuguese. We m ade video and audio recordings of instructor/pilot interactions both in the sim ulator and in the briefing room before and after the sim ulator session. A total of thirty-seven hours of training for three Japanese pilots were recorded in Seattle, W ashington. This training was conducted in English. We base the analysis presented in this p ap er on ju st one brief clip from this Seattle corpus. The clip records two m inutes and thirty-seven seconds of interaction betw een an Am erican instru cto r and two senior Japanese pilots engaged in a pre-sim ulator ses­ sion briefing. B oth of the pilots were already qualified to fly as captains in different m odels of Boeing airplane. In this course, they were transitioning to the Boeing 737NG1. 1 The NG (Next Generation) is an updated 737 model with new engines, wing profile, on-board systems, and flight deck displays.

32

Analysis method We have chosen a brief interaction to illustrate the p h e­ nom ena of collaborative construction of m ultim odal utterances. The interaction creates conceptual objects. David McNeill (2005) claim s th at in complex acts of m eaning making, the p arts get their m eanings from the whole ra th e r th an the o th er way around. Following this insight, we first identify the conceptual projects of each participant. The claims we m ake concerning conceptual structures are based on o u r extensive ethnographic doc­ um entation of the activity of com m ercial airline opera­ tions and training2. We infer from ongoing talk and gesture the structure of a conceptual object th at the par­ ticipants construct in interaction. Once the developm ent of the conceptual objects of interest have been described, we exam ine the ways th a t verbal and non-verbal utter­ ance elem ents instantiate various p arts of the conceptual object of interest. By this we m ean th at we can exam ine the relations of m utual elaboration am ong the sem iotic resources. We can see w here gesture and talk refer to the sam e aspect of a conceptual object of interest, and where they refer to different aspects of th at conceptual object. For each observed gesture, we identify the view­ point im plied by the p roduction of the gesture in con­ text (McNeill, 1992; Kendon, 2004). We also exam ine the tim ing of the production or highlighting of conceptual elem ents. Doing this allows us to exam ine the relations betw een verbal and non-verbal elem ents as they are m ediated by the developing conceptual object. We iden­ tify both the tem poral and sem antic relations am ong the sem iotic resources incorporated in the representations. W here the elem ents are tem porally offset, we also note w hich elem ent (gesture or speech) anticipates the produc­ tion of the other. We code the sem antic relations between sem iotic resources as congruent or com plem entary.

FLIGHT TRAINING ACTIVITY Flying is an em bodied activity. Even in the age of com put­ erized autoflight systems th at are capable of landing an airplane w ithout the pilot touching the controls, pilots still learn how to hand-fly all m aneuvers. Flying requires com ­ plex coordination skills. In an airplane with conventional controls, roll and pitch are controlled by the yoke, and yaw is controlled using rudder pedals. T hrust is controlled by thrust levers. Many m aneuvers require the sim ultaneous coordinated m anipulation of all of these controls. High-fidelity flight sim ulators are pow erful training tools because they allow pilots to practice flying skills, and especially to practice responding to events that

2 First author, Hutchins, has twenty years of experience studying commercial air operations worldwide. He holds a commercial pilot certificate with type ratings in an airliner and a business jet. Second author, Nomura, has four years of experience studying airline operations and training in Japan and Oceania.

HUTCHINS AND NOMURA

would be dangerous to practice in an actual airplane. The pilots in a pre-sim ulator briefing typically im agine the actions they will take when they encounter specific circum stances of flight in the simulator. Because flying an airplane is partly a m atter of using the body to m an ip ­ ulate controls, pilots often use their bodies to im agine or pre-enact the actions they expect to take in the simulator. Similarly, in post-sim ulator debriefings, pilots often re­ enact the actions they took, or should have taken, during the sim ulator session as a way of refining their m otor representation of the actions. All m odern airliners are operated by a two-pilot flight crew. On each flight segment, one pilot serves as Pilot Flying (PF) and is responsible for controlling the air­ craft and supervising its navigation. The other pilot serves as Pilot M onitoring (PM) and is responsible for com m unicating with air traffic services, operating the airplanes systems, reading checklists, and backing up the PF w hen needed. The coordination of crew activity under the regim e of these roles is called Crew Resource M anagem ent, and is a p a rt of all airline flight training.

APPROACH TO STALL RECOVERY One of the m aneuvers practiced by the pilots is called an A pproach to Stall Recovery.3 As we will see, there is a difference betw een the way Boeing teaches this m aneu­ ver and the way it is practiced at the airline for which the pilots work. A pilot can approach a stall by holding back pressure on the yoke as the airplane decelerates. To recover from a stall approached this way, a pilot adds pow er and then simply relaxes the back pressure on the yoke. This is how the m aneuver is taught by the airline for w hich the pilots work. Another way to approach a stall is to use stabilizer trim to neutralize control pressures while decelerating. To recover from a stall approached this way, the pilot adds pow er and m ust now push the yoke forward to restore an angle of attack suitable for the target speed. This can require quite a lot of force. Boeing teaches the m aneuver using this second, m ore difficult approach to stall technique. The pilots refer to this as the "Boeing way.” The procedure show n in the Flight Crew Operating M anual (FCOM) (Figure 2.1) is a generic pro­ cedure th at can be used to recover from an approach to a stall in any configuration (setting of flaps and landing gear). The pilots are preparing to practice an approach to a particular kind of stall event know n as a departure stall. This is flown with the landing gear retracted, the flaps extended at 5 degrees, and with 20-degree bank attitude (Figure 2.2). The flap setting is a key element because it determ ines the speed at which the m aneuver is begun as well as the target speed for its com pletion. 3 An airplane stalls when the flow of air over the wings separates from the surface of the wing. When this happens, the wing ceases to produce lift. Pilots never practice taking an airliner into a full stall. Instead, they practice response to the first indications of an impending stall; thus the approach to stall recovery.

COLLABORATIVE CONSTRUCTION OF MULTIMODAL UTTERANCES 737 Flight Crew Operations Manuals Maneuvers

Chapter MAN

Non-Normal Maneuvers

33

control yoke. This is one of the indications that the airplane is on the verge of a stall.4

Section 1

ANALYSIS Approach to Stall Recovery The following is immediately accomplished at the first indication of stall buffet or stick shaker. Pilot Flying

Pilot Monitoring

• Advance thrust levers to maximum thrust.

8 Verify maximum thrust.

• Smoothly adjusting pitch attitude* to avoid ground contact or obstacles.

» Call out any trend toward terrain contact.

• Monitor altitude and airspeed.

8 Level the wings (do not change flaps or landing gear configuration). •

Retract the speedbrakes.

When ground contact is no longer a factor: « Adjust pitch attitude to accelerate while minimizing altitude loss. * Return to speed appropriate for the configuration. Note: *At high altitudes it may be necessary to decrease pitch attitude below the horizon to achieve acceleration.

Our example is a video clip which is two m inutes and thirty-seven seconds in length. Three pilots are seated at a table (see Transcript 2.3). On the far side of the table, facing the cam era, is an in structor pilot. The instructor m akes use of d ia­ grams, lesson plans, and the like, both on paper and on a com puter display. He has a laptop com puter in front of him that he uses to control the display screen placed at the left end of the table. On the near side of the table, with their backs to the cam era, are the two Japanese pilots (PF on the left and PM on the right). The students have their own m aterials that they can annotate. On the table in front of the pilots are note­ books. In this excerpt, the instructor placed the FCOM on the table in front of the pilots so it was right side up for them .

Overview of the clip

The instructor began by reading the "Approach to Stall Recovery" procedure from the FCOM. Reading text while tracing the w ords with on es finger is a practice th at supports com ­ prehension by non-native English speakers (H utchins, N om ura, & Holder, 2006), and is a good example of the coordination of action with an artifact. He used gesture to elaborate his speech by m odeling the attitude of the airplane and the crew s m anipulation of the controls. The instructor provided com m entary on elem ents of the procedure as he read them and exemplified some of the procedural steps by role playing, m im ing the actions of a pilot recovering from an approach to stall. PM noticed the difference betw een the Boeing technique for p ractic­ ing this m aneuver and the one used at his airline. This

Figure 2.1. The "approach to stall recovery" as it appears in the Flight Crew Operating Manual.

#1: FLAPS 5 20° Bank •

Start: Flaps 5. FLAPS 5 speed

•

N1 45% (approx 1 knot/sec decel)

•

Establish 20° bank (PF check VSI, ALT, PLI)

•

Stick shaker

•

o

Smoothly apply MAX Power (PM adjust to GA)

o

Level wings, do not change config, retract SB

o

Power comes up, apply nose down trim

o

Airspeed increases, lower pitch to 5 - 6°

o

Approaching Flaps 5 speed- 65%

Finish: FLAPS 5 speed

Figure 2.2. The "departure stall” practice procedure as it appears in the simulator briefing slides.

The com puter displays the specihc procedure for practicing a recovery from a departure stall in the sim u­ lator (Figure 2.2). In the figure and the following discus­ sion, "stick shaker" refers to a vibration th at is felt in the

4 The feel of traditional controls in small airplanes provides a lot of information about the behavior of the airplane. Controls feel crisp and firm at high speeds and get "mushy” when the airplane is going slowly. When an airplane begins to stall, the airflow on the surface of the wings is disturbed. This causes the control surfaces to flutter, and this is felt as vibration in the control stick or yoke. When hydraulic devices position the control surfaces, however, these vibrations are not transmitted to the yoke, so the pilot looses an important source of tactile information about the behavior of the airplane. Modern airplanes partly compensate for this loss by adding a device, called a “stick shaker," that vibrates the control yoke as the airplane approaches a stall. This is one of the few con­ cessions to multimodal perception in contemporary flight decks that are otherwise dominated by visual perception. Modern air­ planes also provide visual indications of approach to stall includ­ ing angle-of-attack indicators and in the airplane treated in this article, a "pitch limit indicator.”

HUTCHINS AND NOMURA

34

gave rise to a discussion of the differences betw een the techniques and w hat the pilots w ould have to do to fly the m aneuver the Boeing way. In the last twenty-five sec­ onds, the instru cto r drove hom e a point about the Boeing technique by linking it to a dynam ical property of the airplane. W ith engines m ounted u n d er the wings, the air­ plane will tend to pitch up w hen pow er is increased sud­ denly. The pilots knew this dynam ical principle, and PF anticipated the punch line of the instru cto r s story. T hroughout the clip, the pilots collaborated w ith the instru cto r producing w hat would conventionally be called verbal and gestural back-channel behavior5(Yngve, 1970). At tim es, one or an o th er of the pilots becam e the m ost active speaker, an d w hen they did, they used their w ords and th eir bodies together to create m ultim odal utterances. W hen pilots spoke, the in stru cto r produced conventional verbal and gestural back-channel behavior. However, in this clip we observe m any instances in which m ultiple speakers are sim ultaneously active producing representational elem ents in different m odalities. We call the utterances produced in this way collaboratively con­ structed m ultim odal utterances. The pilots produce a few single-author utterances w ith­ out any visible gestural accom panim ent. All verbal utter­ ances in this setting are accom panied by coordinated facial expression, body posture, eye gaze, and so on, we will treat as m ultim odal only those utterances th at incor­ porate both spoken language and m eaningful gesture. All collaboratively constructed utterances in this clip were also m ultim odal in the sense th at the p articipants p ro ­ duced coordinated talk and m eaningful content-bearing gesture.

Multimodal utterances Because coherent m eaning structures are created by m ul­ tiple utterances, we organize the p resentation by cases ra th e r th an by utterances. A single conceptual object is created in each case. E ach case is given a n u m ber and a brief descriptive title. Following the case title, we show, in brackets, the tim e boundaries of the case in the clip and note w hether it prim arily contains single-author m ulti­ m odal utterances, denoted by the letter S, or collabora­ tively constructed m ultim odal utterances, denoted by the letter C. We then give a concise description of the con­ ceptual object th at is constructed in the case. Excerpts from the tran scrip t are provided w ith each case6. 5 We are aware that the conventions for producing back-channel behavior are different for Japanese speakers than they are for English speakers (Maynard, 1986). We do not think these differ­ ences affect the arguments we make in this work. 6 Following Goodwin, we use a modified form of the Jefferson con­ ventions for transcription. The three speakers are identified as “I” instructor, “PF," and “PM." Punctuation is used to represent into­ nation: A period indicates falling pitch, a question mark rising pitch, and a comma falling contour, as would be found, for exam­ ple, after a non-terminal item in a list. A colon indicates length­ ening of the current sound. Numbers within single parentheses

Case 1: Enacting the procedure as read [00:03-00:13; S] Conceptual object: A specific sequence of actions to be perform ed by PF presented in the im perative m ood. The instructor read the steps shown in the FCOM. While reading “level the wings,” the instructor used the standard hand shape for aircraft attitudes, palm down, fingers slightly spread. This is one of m any conventional gestural form s shared by pilots around the world. Note th at there is no need to describe the control in put that will level the wings. I: Level the wings t .

[models airplane roll attitude with right handpalm down] PF: Hmmm I: right, I: don't change your flap or landing gear confiqurationt.

[raisesfingers of right hand PF: Hmmm, hmmm

and waSs t0 ri^

I: rightÎ?

[drops hand to table. Pilots nod] Retract speedbrake.

[right hand models pushing speedbrake leverforward and down] Hopefully that's not (0.1), not gonna be a problem. (1)

[raises right hand wags to right, then drops to table] [PF shakes his head side to side] Transcript 2.1. We believe th at the hand wag to the right produced in synchrony w ith the w ord “configuration” was a m et­ aphorical echo of the negation in the word “don't.” In the procedure as it was read, syntactic constraints kept the negation near the verb “change” and far from the noun “configuration.” The gesture brought th at negation into tem poral proxim ity with the noun. This illustrates how gesture, operating under different constraints from speech, can produce m ultim odal utterances w ith sem an­ tic juxtapositions th at are not possible in speech alone. The gesture has two m eaningful relations to elem ents in the speech stream . The gesture is congruent w ith and tem porally offset from the negation in the w ord “d o n t.” At the sam e time, it is produced concurrently w ith and has a com plem entary sem antic relation to the word “configuration.”7 mark silences in seconds and tenths of a second. Words within parenthesis indicate uncertain transcription. Underlining denotes words that are spoken in synchrony with gestures. Where video frames are illustrated, a line from the transcript to the illustration indicates the temporal location of the frame. 7 It is interesting that the procedure specifies something to not do. The expectation that pilots might want to change configuration comes from a general piece of pilot knowledge that when recover­ ing from a stall, it is good to increase lift or reduce drag, and that is what changing configuration does. Many airplanes include con­ figuration changes in stall recovery procedures, but Boeing 737 does not.

COLLABORATIVE CONSTRUCTION OF MULTIMODAL UTTERANCES

The gesture th at the instructor produced with the words 're tra c t speedbrake” m odeled the m anipulation of a con­ trol, rath er than an airplane attitude. This was an iconic character viewpoint gesture produced concurrently with, and is sem antically congruent with, the phrase "retract speedbrake.” This gesture seem s idiosyncratic and dem ­ onstrates the productivity of pilots using speech and gesture to im agine interaction w ith their fam iliar flight deck environm ent. The pilots' response to the utterance, "Hopefully, that's not (0.1) not gonna be a problem . (1)'' was deeply em bedded in the setting. The pilots know that w hen practiced in a simulator, the recovery from departure stall m aneuver is norm ally entered with the speedbrake already retracted. Of course, if a stall were approached accidentally in some other phase of actual flight, the speedbrake m ight be extended. W hen the instructor com ­ m ented on the procedural element, "Retract the speedbrake,'' saying "Hopefully, that's not (0.1) not gonna be a problem . (1),'' the nodding pilots indicated th at they understood th at they would not have to retract the speedbrake w hen they practice the departure stall m aneuver in the sim ulator (and this was the case).

Case 2: Thrust is set [00:13 - 00:16; C] Conceptual object: A specific sequence of actions to be perform ed by PM presented in the im perative mood. The instru cto r continued reading from the FCOM on the table in front of the pilots. At this point he was read ­ ing descriptions of actions to be accom plished by the PM. All the while, the practice procedure was show n on the com puter display. (See Figures 2.1 and 2.2.) I: (reading) PM verifies thrust is set, monitors altitude and airspeed,

[PM raises his left hand and spreads hisfingers and thumb] calls out any trends towards terrain.

Transcript 2.2. The instru cto r began his utterance w ith the acronym used to designate Pilot M onitoring, PM. He then slightly p araphrased the instructions transform ing "Verify m axi­ m um th rust'' into "verifies th ru st is set.'' We do not know why the im p o rtan t conceptual elem ent "m axim um '' was om itted from this representation. Of course the pilots know th at m axim um th ru st is the appropriate setting and they can read the w ords in the prin ted procedure highlighted by the instructor's finger as he p araphrased the procedure. At this m om ent, three representations of the sam e action were present in the setting. The text in the FCOM reads "Verify m axim um thrust,'' the instructor has said "verifies th ru st is set,'' and the procedure show n on the com puter screen said "Sm oothly apply MAX pow er (PM adjust to GA).'' While the instru cto r spoke the words “m onitors altitude,'' PM m ade a gesture th at m odeled the m anipulation of the th ru st levers. PM raised his left hand and spread his hngers and thum bs into the hand shape

35

characteristic of grasping the two th ru st levers.8 There was a slight dow nw ard jerk of the hand before it was sm oothly retracted to PM's lap. It is clear that the gesture does not enter a relation of m utual elaboration with the words about m onitoring alti­ tude that were being spoken w hen it was produced. If we were using the old categories, we would say that there was sim ultaneous speech and gesture, but the speech was not "co-expressive.” The gesture that PM produced as the instructor read from the FCOM the words "m onitors alti­ tude'' might, however, enter into a relation of m utual elab­ oration with any or all of the three representations of the action to be taken by the PM w ith respect to the thrust. W ith respect to the tem poral relationships, the gesture was clearly offset in tim e from the spoken words "veri­ fies th ru st is set.'' The tem poral relationships betw een the gesture and the two p rin ted representations of the action are m ore difficult to assess. We cannot see the pilot's eyes, so we do not know w hen or if he looked at the printed representations. The pragm atic relation of the gesture to the spoken words "verify th ru st is set'' is com plem entary. Specifically, it is a synecdoche because moving the thrust levers (enacted in gesture) is p art of the com plex perceptual/ m otor process of verifying th ru st (described in speech). Notice th at this event is not captured by the traditional categories. The spoken w ords "verify th ru st is set'' are a poor example of "lexical affiliate'' because they do not refer to the sam e concept as the gesture. Furtherm ore, because the speech and gesture do not co-occur in time, the w ords cannot be "co-expressive speech'' with respect to the gesture. The gesture and talk are thus sem antically com plem entary and offset in time. The technique show n on the com puter display described the sam e action by specifying th at the PM should "adjust [thrust] to GA.'' This m eans to adjust the th rust to the Go-Around T hrust limit, w hich will usually require pull­ ing the th ru st levers back slightly from the full forw ard position th at the pilot flying will have pushed them to. The slight dow nw ard jerk in PM's gesture m atches the m otion required to produce the anticipated m inor red u c­ tion in thrust. The gesture bears an iconic relation to the word "adjust” show n on the com puter display. Thus, the w ords on the com puter display are sem antically congru­ ent w ith the gesture, and because the text on the screen is continuously available, they may be tem porally con­ current as well. The relation experienced by PM while perform ing the gesture m ight have been either, or even both, the sem an­ tically congruent (iconic) relation to the w ritten w ord "adjust” and the sem antically com plem entary (synecdo­ che) tem porally offset relation to the spoken word "ver­ ify.” On the basis of the data we have, it is not possible to elim inate either of these hypotheses. 8 This gesture is very distinctive, and even though it is not common, it cannot be mistaken for any other action in the flight deck.

HUTCHINS AND NOMURA

36

I: For us. if we start out flaps five (1 ) sp..

[looks to computer monitor and right index point to it] Let’s go to flaps five,

[raises right arm and opens right and left palms to make “five ”] flaps five speed

[PFpositions his hands as if to hold a yoke and pushes forward] -----that’s what we are gonna go to, okay?

[shakes right and left hands rhythmically] [scratches left elbow with right hand]

Transcript 2.3.

PM's gesture was a d em o n stratio n of his u n d erstan d ­ ing of the required action, and also a pre-en actm ent of the action he w ould take in the upcom ing sim ulator ses­ sion. It p resupposed his role as Pilot M onitoring and the details of his p lan n ed m ethod of verifying th at m ax­ im um th ru st was set. W hat accounts for the lag betw een the instructor's verbal elem ent "th ru st is set" and PM’s gesture elaborating the sam e concept? PM began lean­ ing back from the table to free the m otion of his right h an d as soon as the in stru c to r said "set." It appears th at PM's gesture was a d irect response to the instructor's w ords. The gesture followed the w ords, having been triggered by them . This sort of gestural "follow-on” indicates th a t the listen er inhabits a conceptual world th a t is constructed in response to w hat the speaker has already said.

Case 3: Flaps 5 speed [00:48 - 00:54; C]

"go to flaps five, flaps five speed." The words provide the effect th at is not present in the gesture. The two elem ents m utually elaborate each other as a m etonym ic causeand-effect relationship. This is a collaboratively con­ structed m ultim odal utterance in which the instructor's speech and the pilot's gesture are tem porally concurrent and sem antically complementary. W hat functional role did PF's gesture play in the activ­ ity? At th at m om ent, the instructor was using his body to highlight relevant inform ation, and not to im agine going to flaps 5 speed. This may have created a concep­ tual void in the interaction th at PF's gesture filled. The cognitive ecology of the pre-sim ulator briefing suggests another cognitive function for this gesture. Considering th at PF was representing a com ponent of the procedure th at he would later execute, it m ight also be a sort of pre-enactm ent th at could facilitate m em ory for the pro­ cedure later. This effect also appeared in case 2.

Conceptual object: Airplane dynamics; accelerate an air­ plane from stall speed to flaps 5 speed, constructed from the p oint of view of the crew.9 The instru cto r resum ed reading the procedure from the FCOM, tracing the text w ith his left index finger as he read, "R eturn to speed appropriate for the configuration." He then looked at the com puter m onitor and pointed to highlight the portio n of the procedure described by the w ords "Finish: FLAPS 5 speed" (see Figure 2.2). The instru cto r elaborated this p art of the m aneuver and as he w ithdrew his right h an d from a full h and point to the procedure show n on the com puter monitor, he said "flaps five speed." Simultaneously, PF positioned his hands as if holding the control yoke and pushed them forw ard (see T ranscript 2.3). This gesture enacted the control input needed to retu rn to flaps 5 speed. Notice th at the instruc­ tor's u tterance does n o t specify the sort of control input th at will be needed to retu rn to flaps 5 speed. The pilot knows th a t in order to accelerate, he will have to push the yoke forw ard. Thus, the gesture provides the cause th a t is n o t present in the verbal description of the effect

Conceptual object: To decelerate an airplane in level flight, reduce pow er and hold back pressure, constructed from the PF's character viewpoint. The in stru cto r produced a verbal elem ent "and then" th at was a continuation of PM’s verbal utterance, "Our procedure ju st trim out at flap five speed." By itself, the in stru cto r’s continuation "and then" w ould create a collaboratively constructed verbal utterance. But the in structor also sim ultaneously gestured to m odel pull­ ing back on the yoke (Transcript 2.4). The added ges­ ture here fills in content for the projection of his own words "and then" and projects a conceptual structure for PM to com plete verbally. Every pilot know s that if you do not trim to decelerate, you m ust pull back on the yoke.10 The in stru cto r used th a t knowledge to antici­ pate the projection of PM’s w ords w ith his gesture. This projection was especially well m arked as PM had stated th at his company's procedure is different from Boeing's procedure, w hich they had discussed and w hich involves

9 The use of first-person plural pronouns is very common in flight deck conversation. It is a form of metonymy in which the crew stands for the airplane.

10 For the curious reader, a very accessible description of the basics of airplane behavior and pilot technique is Wolfgang Langewiesche's (1990/1944) Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying.

Case 4: Back pressure only [01:11 - 01:19; C]

COLLABORATIVE CONSTRUCTION OF MULTIMODAL UTTERANCES

37

PM: Yes, I know difference between Boeing and (Company X)'s procedure. Our procedure just trim out at flap five speed (0.2) I:

and then

[makes two fists to represent holding yoke and pulls toward his chest] PM: keep back pressure on ly.

[I continues holding his two fists near his chest] not applying any more trim.

Transcript 2.4. trim m ing to the stall speed. Thus, the in stru cto rs gesture is sem antically congruent w ith and tem porally antici­ pates PM s spoken words "back pressu re.” The gesture also has a relation of m utual elaboration to the concur­ rently produced w ords "and th en .” The sem antic rela­ tion here is com plem entary (synecdoche), because the talk represents a sequence in w hich the back pressure enacted in gesture is a com ponent action. The initiation of the in stru c to rs gesture was anticipatory, b ut he held it while PM continued speaking, saying "keep back p res­ sure only.” By the end of this statem ent, the in stru cto rs gesture and PM s speech w ere sem antically congruent and tem porally concurrent.

Case 5: It's realistic the Boeing way because [01:29-01:38; C] Conceptual object: A com parison of techniques, from two im plied ch aracter viewpoints, PM (a pilot looking down on the stabilizer trim indicator) and instructor (pilot flying). By using the w ords "the Boeing way,” PM refers to the earlier discussion th at established the contrast between his company's technique of entering a stall recovery m aneuver using back pressure on the yoke only (no trim ) and the "Boeing way” that involves trim m ing as the air­ plane slows on the stall entry. Fram ing the topic as "Its realistic the Boeing way” constructs an im plicit com par­ ison betw een the techniques. The instructor knew this, and the m ovem ent of his right thum b m odels the action that PM would take as a pilot flying w hen he trim s the airplane. The entire conceptual schem a was clear at the pause before the w ord "Because.” Possible projections

included elaborating on either the realistic or the n o t real­ istic m ethod. Thus, the instru cto rs gesture is an iconic representation of an anticipated spoken description of the realistic m ethod. This case is interesting because the gesture seems to have a relationship to an anticipated spoken representation th at never actually occurred. We could even say th at the gesture is positioned and form ed to facilitate the production of a verbal elem ent w ith w hich it could be both tem porally concurrent and sem antically congruent. The gesture also has a relationship of m utual elab­ oration to the concurrently produced spoken w ord "Because.” This relation is sem antically com plem entary (metonymic), because the gesture represents a cause (trim m ing) for the effect (realism ) th at is the basis of the difference in the com parison schema. It soon becam e clear th at trim m ing was not the aspect of the com parison schem a that PM w ent on to elaborate, and the instructor quickly abandoned the trim m ing gesture. This gestural m ism atch m ay have happened for one of two reasons. First, PM s projection of a reason for Boeing realism could have been illustrated w ith either a feature of the Boeing technique or by a feature of PM s Companys technique. In choosing to m odel a feature of the Boeing technique, the instructor m ay have simply m istaken which continuation PM was projecting. However, the situ­ ation could be even m ore interactive. A second reason for the m ism atch is th at PM may have also been projecting a feature of the Boeing technique, but once this had been created by the instructor in the collaborative construc­ tion process, PM was free to provide the other m eaning­ ful completion. This interpretation relies on som ething

PM: But a, it’s realistic the Boeing way. (0.5) Because, ah [I makes trim gesture] ~— ---- -----PF: Hmmm. PM: We always manage to keep our trim ... [I nods continuously] I:

Uh. huh. [nods co ntin uo us ly]

PM: ( ) you know, forward out of habit. [/ nods continuously]

Transcript 2.5.

HUTCHINS AND NOMURA

38 PM: It's very really difficult [ models pushing the yoke [I stops modeling nose up trim]

to get Ah, (0.5) back to normal (0.2) [right hand offer shape]

nose down [models pushing the yoke ]

PF: To ah:::: to recover from [looks toward and flicks right fist toward PM]

PM: because [ 1 you have to push [models pushing the yoke again] [I nods and points at PM with his right index finger]

Transcript 2.6. w ith the left thum b. This coherence of gesture indicates th at the im agination of com ponent actions, such as th ru st changes and trim adjustm ents, involves the whole situation of the body in the flight deck, not ju st im agin­ ing the control th at is to be m anipulated.

Case 6: You have to push [01:45 - 01:52; S]

Figure 2.3. The 737NG trim wheel and stabilizer trim indicator as seen looking down from the vantage of the left pilot’s seat. Up on the page is forward in the airplane.

like the G rices (1981) m axim of quantity. Because the instructor had already illustrated the distinctive feature of the Boeing way, PM could increase the inform ativeness of his contribution by describing the distinctive feature of his company's procedure: “We always m anage to keep our trim forw ard, you know, out of habit.” PM can refer to this as keeping the trim “forw ard” because the trim in dicator is m ounted on a horizontal surface at either side of the center console. On th at indi­ cator, airplane nose-dow n trim is forw ard and nose-up trim is aft (Figure 2.3). Notice th a t w hen talking to PM, w ho w ould occupy the right seat in the sim ulator, the in stru cto r m odeled the trim action using his rig h t thum b. The yoke-m ounted trim sw itch is on the outb o ard h o rn of each control yoke. Thus, for a pilot in the right-hand seat (co-pilots seat), the trim sw itch will be u n d er the right thum b. Later in the sam e discussion, the instru cto r m odeled pushing the th ru st levers u p w ith his right hand. This gave his gesture an im plicit body location in the left seat (captain’s seat), and his subsequent gestural reference to trim was m ade

Conceptual object: To recover from stall attitude, push the yoke forw ard to cause nose-down pitch attitude. This was constructed from the PF character viewpoint. The instructor created a role-playing narrative in w hich he m odeled an inattentive pilot trim m ing into a stall. As the instructor finished his narrative, he contin­ ued to m odel the application of nose-up trim . PM began the following utterance over the end of the in stru cto rs narrative. This complex example integrates seven gestures and five spoken elem ents. A full inventory of the relations am ong these elem ents is beyond the scope of this c h a p te r11. All of the spoken elem ents and three of the gestures refer to the core conceptual object being constructed. Of the other four gestures, one refers to a previously developed conceptual object, one solicits agreem ent from another speaker, and two provide assessm ents of other speaker’s conceptual project. Let’s look first at the three push gestures produced by PM. While saying “It is very really difficult,” PM modeled pushing the yoke forward. PM repeated the yoke-pushing gesture while saying “nose down.” Finally, he said, “because you have to push,” accom panied by a third pushing gesture. Each of the pushing gestures modeled pushing the yoke forward and all are semantically congruent w ith the spo­ ken words “to push” th at occur at the end of the utterance. PM thus produced two anticipatory gestures followed by a 11 In a set of twelve elements (five spoken and seven gestures), there are sixty-six pair-wise relations. Working out which of these relations are actually experienced by any of the participants is a difficult methodological problem. It cannot be done using the kinds of data we have collected here. It may be possible to probe for this experience in experimental settings using brain imaging techniques.

COLLABORATIVE CONSTRUCTION OF MULTIMODAL UTTERANCES

39

I: once those engines, [cupped hands at side below shoulders] they are under slung engines. [two beats with cupped hands at side below shoulders] right? The engines, these. [arms extended out above previous engine gesture location] P F : (unintelligible) [fingertips of both hands rotate up quickly] — I: So. it's gonna. [bends forward bringing wing gesture down]

sling this airplane up. [entire body and arms come up again]

Transcript 2.7.

third one that was produced sim ultaneously with the talk it elaborated. There are three content nodes represented in the speech stream . Each bears a different sem antic rela­ tion to the conceptual content of the push gestures. The pilot action required to accomplish the recovery is repre­ sented by the spoken fragment, 'you have to push.” This spoken element bears a congruent relation to the push gestures. Pushing the yoke forward causes a nose-down pitch attitude represented in the spoken fragm ent "nose down.” This spoken element bears a complem entary (metonym) relation to the push gestures. The recovery itself is represented by three spoken fragments: "Its very really dif­ ficult,” "back to norm al,” "To ah::: to recover from.” These spoken elements bear a semantically complem entary (syn­ ecdoche) relation to the push gestures. In the beginning of this case, while the instructor was producing an iconic gesture as follow-on to his previ­ ous narrative, PM changed the subject. The instructor stopped his trim m ing gesture after PM said "difficult.” At this point, he seem ed to recognize the topic shift. The unexpected topic change created a relation of incongru­ ence betw een gesture and the concurrent speech. This was not w ithout m eaning, however, because the align­ m ent of conceptual projects is an indication of m em ber­ ship in a shared com m unity of practice. This was the second tim e th at the instru cto r had anticipated a p ro ­ jection of PM s utterances th a t was not consum m ated (the first happened in case 5). The conceptual projects of instru cto r and PM seem ed less well aligned th an those of the instructor and PF. This so rt of interaction pattern m ay give rise to a feeling of uncooperativeness for w hich it is difficult to articulate an explanation.

Case 7: Underslung engines [02:19 - 02:27; C] Conceptual object: Airplane dynamics, airplanes w ith engines m ounted under the wings tend to pitch up w hen th ru st increases. The instru cto rs gestures were con­ structed from a character view point taking the speakers body to be the airplane. P F s gestures were constructed from an observer viewpoint above and behind the wings, facing forward. Like the previous example, this one is so complex th at a full analysis is not possible here. In this case, all b u t one of the spoken elem ents and all of the gestures p artici­ pate in the construction of the conceptual object. We can simplify the discussion som ew hat by noting that the con­ ceptual object has two principal parts: the location of the engines under the wing, and the pitch-up m om ent cre­ ated by increasing th rust on engines th a t are so located. The instructor constructs the engine location by himself. The resulting pitch-up m om ent is collaboratively con­ structed by PF and the instructor. "U nderslung” describes a relationship betw een engine and wing. To create the relationship, the in structor used his body to enact the key parts of the airplane. The instru cto rs first cupped-hands gesture was a relatively sim ple iconic representation produced concurrently w ith the sem antically congruent words "those engines.” The gesture was idiosyncratic and would have been quite am biguous if taken in isolation. The w ords and gesture m utually elaborated each other. The w ords resolved the referent of the gesture (hands are engines), and the gesture contributed positioning inform ation (the two engines are located in an im agined space here) th at was not present in the words. W ith the engines now located

HUTCHINS AND NOMURA

40

in an im aginary body-based space, the instructor elabo­ rated on th eir location, sim ultaneously em phasizing the cupped-hand gestures while saying “they are underslung engines/' This gesture and spoken fragm ent have a con­ curren t com plem entary relation; the gesture anchored the engines in a space, and the w ords im plied som ething else (a wing) th at h ad not yet been explicitly represented. The instru cto r then extended his arm s out to the sides of his body, giving explicit representation to the previously im plied wing, and said, “the engines, these." This gesture was positioned in space above the previously depicted location of the engines. Even though the space im plied by the previous gestures and talk was com pletely invis­ ible and imaginary, it endured as a resource th at could be exploited by subsequent m eaning-m aking activities. These w ords and gesture had a com plem entary sem antic relation (gesture depicted the wing while speech referred to the engine) and were tem porally concurrent. At this point, the construction of the location of the engines with respect to the wing was com plete. The fact th at the space th at was constructed by earlier actions could later give m eaning to new gestures dem onstrates th at this discus­ sion of pair-wise relations is fundam entally incom plete. We have picked out w hat appear to us to be the m ost significant relations, b u t o u r description rem ains partial because all of the elem ents of this complex sem iotic held have im p o rtan t sem antic and tem poral relations to one another. In the context of the discussion of the need to apply m axim um thrust, the in stru cto rs m ultim odal con­ struction of the location of the under-wing location of the engines projected a pitch up in response to a rapid increase in thrust. PF used his two hands to m odel the ro tatio n in the pitch axis caused by the increasing thrust on the two engines (see T ranscript 2.7). His enactm ent was quite specific, show ing the two engines and the torque th a t they would apply to the wings of the airplane w hen th ru st was increased. Simultaneously, he said som ething th a t we have n o t been able to reconstruct. PF's gesture m ay have had congruent sem antic relations w ith two spoken elem ents, one produced concurrently by PF him self and the other anticipated in the speech of the instructor. The instructor continued to develop his nar­ rative, saying “So, it's gonna" while bending at the w aist w ith his arm s still extended to his sides. PF seem ed to recognize this as p rep aratio n for a full-body stroke. A m om ent later, as the in stru cto r sw ept his body and arm s upw ard, PF flicked his fingers up again and said, “tend to, yeah." This gesture by PF is sem antically congruent w ith an anticipated, b u t n o t yet produced, description by the in stru cto r of the airplane pitching up. This gesture is tem porally concurrent and sem antically com plem entary (m etonym ) w ith PF's ow n w ords “tend to." PF perform ed this gesture in synchrony w ith the in stru cto rs full-body upw ard stroke. Thus in addition to relations w ith spoken elem ents th a t were produced before, concurrently with, and after the gesture, P F s gesture also has a tem porally

concurrent and sem antically congruent relation to the gesture produced by the instructor. Both gestures p ro ­ vided an iconic representation of the pitch-up event, but they were rendered from slightly different view points.12 PFs utterance fragm ent “tend to, yeah" has a tem porally concurrent and sem antically com plem entary (m eto­ nymic: cause and effect) relation to the in stru cto rs first full-body gesture. The in stru cto rs second sweeping fullbody gesture was produced concurrently with his own, now eagerly anticipated, verbal description of the pitch up event, “sling this airplane up." It is evident th at w hen m ultiple authors speak and ges­ ture together, the relationships of m utual elaboration proliferate. The extent to w hich participants becom e con­ scious of this wealth of m eaning is currently unknow n. We suspect, however, th at the im pression of com plex­ ity created by exam ining the relations am ong sem iotic resources one relation at a tim e is som ew hat misleading. From the participants' point of view, a single conceptual object em erges and the m any relations am ong the ele­ m ents from which the object emerges fit naturally into the fam iliar structure of the conceptual object.13

DISCUSSION The participants are engaged sim ultaneously in two kinds of projects: They are enacting conceptual objects of interest (w hat they are talking about) and they are con­ ducting a social interaction. Even though these projects are analytically separable, in action, they are woven into the sam e fabric. This was evident in case 6 where three of seven gestures m odeled conceptual content, w hereas the other four gestures accom plished speaker positioning in the interaction. Surely pilots can im agine their w ork w ithout speak­ ing or gesturing. However, when they speak and gesture, the process of im agination becom es observable. This is im portant for the participants because it allows them to collaboratively construct conceptual projects. It is criti­ cal for us as analysts because it enables us to record and analyze the process of conceptualization. Gesture, talk, printed words, and m aterial objects all have different representational affordances. Im agining an activity by sim ultaneously talking and gesturing about it produces a richer representation than is produced by 12 It could be argued that gestures that have the same referent but are rendered from different actor viewpoints should be regarded as semantically complementary rather than congruent. At this time, we do not have a strong view on the matter. Simply posing the question highlights the possibility that semantic congruence is a continuous rather than discrete function. 13 A metaphor may help to make this idea clear. When a point is added to a chart, it immediately acquires precise spatial rela­ tions to every other one of a potentially infinite number of points already on the chart. This explosion of relations does not pose any problem for the navigator because the new relations are now potential and available. They can be easily accessed, but there is no need to attend to any except the ones that are relevant to the task at hand.

COLLABORATIVE CONSTRUCTION OF MULTIMODAL UTTERANCES

either talk or gesture alone. In addition to m odeling specific actions, m any of the observed gestures pre-supposed specific flight deck roles, the seat occupied while perform ing the im agined action, and the fine details of the bodily m otions of the pilot. Such details are rarely represented linguistically in our data. The coherence of gestural enactm ents indicates th at the im agination of com ponent actions involves the whole situation of the body in the flight deck, not sim ply im agination of the control that is to be m anipulated. The richness and spec­ ificity of the p ilo ts shared knowledge of the flight deck environm ent is evident in the rapid shifts in viewpoint implied by the gesture sequences. Pilots transition seam ­ lessly from character viewpoint to observer viewpoint, and am ong m ultiple vantage points as observers. One way to bring relations of m utual elaboration into focus is to notice w hat does not appear in talk. For exam ­ ple, the control yoke, the trim switch, and the thrust levers play central roles in the interaction, yet these con­ trols were never m entioned in the verbal utterances p ro ­ duced by the instructor and students. The controls are brought forth as im plied elem ents in an im agined world of culturally m eaningful action. The w ords "you have to push” could apply to m any controls in the flight deck. That these words describe an action taken on the control yoke is established by their relation of m utual elabora­ tion with p articu lar gestures. Gestures m ay enter into relations of m utual elabora­ tion with m any oth er sem iotic resources in the activity system; w ritten m aterials, objects, bodies, talk, and even other gestures. Gestures are com plex m ovem ents. W hich aspects of m ovem ent are taken to be relevant in the cur­ rent m om ent of discourse depends on how the gesture is m utually elaborated by o th er sem iotic resources. For example, recall the last gesture in case 1. The words "retract speedbrake” say nothing about how the retrac­ tion of the speedbrake is accom plished. The speedbrakes are panels on the wings. W here is the activating con­ trol? How is the control operated? The instructor held his right fist upright in front of his body at elbow level. As he moved his hand forw ard his w rist rotated down slightly. If this gesture were to occur alone, even in this context, its m eaning would probably be m isunderstood. Viewed w ithout sound, the gesture could easily be seen as m odeling a pilot in the right seat pushing the right horn of the control yoke forward. But the gesture co­ produced with the words "retract speedbrake” in this context brings forth an unam biguous whole. A pilot seated in the left seat of the flight deck uses his right hand to grasp the raised speedbrake handle and push it a few inches forw ard and down. Details of the m otion that did not seem im portant w hen viewed w ithout sound now jum p out. The speedbrake handle rotates around a hinge at its base, and this detail is show n in the gesture as the slight rotatio n of the wrist. F urtherm ore, details of the gesture th at should be ignored fade away. In the airplane, the speedbrake handle is adjacent to the pilots

41

right thigh. A gesture that perfectly m odeled speedbrake retraction would be perform ed below the pilots waist. But the surface of the table intervenes in the in stru cto rs local space, preventing him from lowering his hand fur­ ther. In m utual elaboration w ith the talk, the height of the gesture can be disregarded. This is a rem inder th at even seemingly simple gestures may be extremely com ­ plex. W hat is m eaningful and w hat is not, w hat should be attended to and w hat should be disregarded as noise, depends on how the gesture is construed. And the level of detail th at can be achieved in the construal depends on the depth of knowledge that the participants have about the dom ain of discourse. It is not just the words and ges­ ture th at m utually elaborate each other. The words and the gesture enact or bring forth a m eaningful action in a know n world. In the presence of the talk, an am biguous body m otion becom es a detailed m odel of a m eaning­ ful action. This example dem onstrates the productivity of pilots using speech and gesture to im agine interaction with their fam iliar flight deck environm ent. In the dom ain of professional pilot training, the par­ ticipants use gesture to represent activities, objects, and events w ith respect to w hich all of the participants have thousands of hours of experience. Extensive em bodied experience results in rich representational potential. R epresentational potential is realized in the enactm ent of the concepts in word and deed. Som e of the m ean­ ingful flight deck actions are enacted so often and so distinctively that the gestures derived from the actions attain the status of conventions in the community. The "retract speedbrake” gesture produced by the instructor is not so widely used as to be considered a convention. Conventional status depends on the specificity of the ges­ ture and its relations to o ther forms in the ecosystem (H utchins & Johnson, 2009). Nothing else th at is done on the flight deck looks like holding two th ru st levers (with a characteristic hand sh ape14) and pushing them forw ard in a vertical arc th at m odels the arc of the th ru st lever qu ad ­ rant. This character viewpoint gesture contains elem ents of both path and m an n er The specificity of the gesture also depends on the standardization of the flight deck. T hrust levers and throttles are nearly universal in tra n s­ port aircraft. Considering th a t virtually every airline pilot experiences the th ru st levers in the sam e way, and th at the bodily m otions associated w ith m anipulating the th ru st levers are distinctive, this m otion has gained the status of an iconic convention in the pilot community. Control yokes are not as widely distributed as th ru st levers (hav­ ing been replaced by side sticks in Airbus airplanes), b u t are still present in m ost airplanes and are understood by all pilots. The presence, position, and activation of m any other controls are m ore variable across the w orlds air­ plane fleets, and so, although the m anipulation of these 14 The heel of the hand against the knobs, three middle fingers over the knobs, thumb and pinky on the opposite ends of the row of knobs where the autothrottle disconnect buttons are located.

42

controls can be m eaningfully enacted by pilots in context, they do not stand as interpretable context-independent iconic representations. We have seen th at the pilots use talk, gesture, and other sem iotic resources to im agine their dom ain of discourse. We do not think this is a m atter of visual im agination followed by linguistic and m o to r activation. Rather, talking and gesturing are a m eans of im agining (Alac & H utchins, 2004). It has long been know n th at the visual and m otor systems co-activate each other (Smith, 2005; Spivey, 2007). One m ight say th a t they m utually elabo­ rate each other. Goodwin (1994, 2007) coined the p h rase “environm en­ tally coupled gesture” and showed how gestures can enter into relations of m utual elaboration w ith elem ents of a culturally m eaningful physical world. P henom ena in the w orld are highlighted by and acquire m eaning from ges­ tures enacted in coordination w ith them . Simultaneously, gestures acquire m eaning from the elem ents of the phys­ ical w orld w ith w hich they are coordinated. Of course, environm entally coupled gesture is pervasive w hen pilots w ork together on a flight deck (H utchins & Palen, 1997; H utchins, M iddleton, & Newsome, 2009). M any of the gestures we observe in the pre-sim ulator briefing m u tu ­ ally elaborate physical elem ents of the briefing setting. B ut w hat of the gestures th at refer to the absent flight deck? The fact th at pilots have so m uch experience of this setting changes the dynam ics of these processes. Once it has been invoked in speech or gesture, the entire flight deck becom es available (in im agination) as an envi­ ro n m en t to w hich subsequent gestures can be coupled. The sam e processes th a t are at w ork in m eaning m aking w ith environm entally coupled gesture are at work here, except th a t these gestures both bring forth the im agined environm ent and are coupled to elem ents of th at im ag­ ined environm ent. As we saw in the case of retracting the speedbrake, a gesture can selectively highlight elem ents of an im agined environm ent, while the im agined envi­ ro n m en t sim ultaneously draws attention to and gives m eaning to subtle details of the gesture. G esture provides evidence th at im agination can ru n ahead of talk (Schegloff, 1984). In case 6, PM m ade three yoke-pushing gestures b u t did not verbally describe the p u sh action u ntil the th ird gesture, seven seconds after the first p u sh gesture w as produced. The first two push gestures anticipated the sem antically congruent spoken words. They were produced concurrently w ith sem an­ tically com plem entary elem ents of a verbal pream ble th at contextualized the p ilo ts stance w ith respect to the recovery m aneuver (its difficult) and w ith respect to the effect of the push (nose-dow n attitude). The third push gesture was produced concurrently w ith the words “to p u sh .” One consequence of repeating the gesture is that it kept the m ain poin t active while the verbal pream ble was delivered. That is, the pilot was clearly im agining the p ush action seven seconds before he got around to describing it verbally. The syntactic constraints of lan­ guage im pose sequential order on the articulation of

HUTCHINS AND NOMURA

conceptual elements. Gesture that anticipates o n es own talk is a constituent of this pre-articulatory im agination. Before doing this analysis, we would have guessed th at gestures th at follow the production of sem antically congruent words (as seen in case 2, for example) would be the m ost likely tim ing relation for collaboratively constructed m ultim odal utterances. Gestural follow-on assum es th at the listener inhabits a conceptual world th at is constructed in response to w hat the speaker has already said. Som etim es, however, gestures in collabora­ tively constructed m ultim odal utterances occur concur­ rently w ith the w ords they elaborate. In case 7, the PF and the instructor executed perfectly synchronized, b u t m or­ phologically distinct, enactm ents of a sudden pitch-up attitude. PFs gestures were perform ed in anticipation of the in stru cto rs subsequent m etaphorical description of the pitch-up event. The cross-speaker production of such m ultim odal elem ents in precise tem poral and conceptual alignm ent requires jo in t participation in the em bodied construction of this key conceptual element. It is fur­ th er evidence th at the participants jointly inhabit the world they im agine in interaction. Sim ultaneity of cross­ speaker gesture and talk in collaboratively constructed utterances is evidence of a shared activity and aligned expectations. This relation indicates that the speakers inhabit a shared conceptual w orld that is constructed in parallel. As in single-speaker utterances, gestures in collaboratively constructed m ultim odal utterances often precede the spoken elem ents to w hich they b ear sem an­ tic relations. The production of utterances in w hich one speakers gestures anticipate the conceptual projections of another speakers w ords provides strong evidence th at speakers can inhabit a shared im agined world. The details of such im agined w orlds are built up incre­ m entally as the sem iotic resources of the setting are m ar­ shaled in interaction. W hen PM said (in case 4), “Our procedure ju st trim out at flap five speed,” he evoked an im agined w orld of a pilot flying preparing for the m aneu­ ver. The w ord ‘ju st” signals the absence of the further trim m ing below flaps 5 speed th a t the previous discus­ sion led one to expect. The in stru cto rs next character viewpoint gesture show ed th at he had entered the im ag­ ined role of pilot flying created by PM. The instructor filled the projected conceptual hole by enacting the next p art of the maneuver. He said, “and then” while modeling pulling back on the yoke. Not all conversational projections are consum m ated. In case 5, PM introduced a conceptual schem e (a com ­ parison) th at could be developed in either of two ways. The instructor produced a gesture th at com m itted to one projection of w hat PM had said. PM went on to articulate the other projection. We have no evidence concerning PM s original intentions, but his action does suggest th at in the dynam ic process of co-authorship of ideas, par­ ticipants m ake choices in real tim e based on the shifting direction of the developm ent of the conceptual object. The occurrence of collaboratively constructed m ul­ tim odal utterances indicates th a t the pilots treat the

COLLABORATIVE CONSTRUCTION OF MULTIMODAL UTTERANCES

developm ent of the conceptual object as a shared p ro ­ ject. The properties of this ecosystem create particular cognitive roles for gestures. In the cognitive ecology of flight training, som e gestures seem to be pre-enactm ents of actions th at will be taken later in flight. We stress that w hen a behavior has m ore th an one function, it m ay be th at m any functions are served sim ultaneously. The pilots' bodies are a key resource in the process of conceptualizing their world and the actions they take in it. Conceptualization is not only m ultim odal, b u t m ay also be a collaborative project. The range of possible relations of m utual elaboration am ong sem iotic resources is extremely rich in collaboratively constructed m ultim odal utterances produced by experts engaged in consequential activ­ ity in a culturally constructed setting. Meanings emerge from juxtapositions of gestures and words with m aterial artifacts, with ones own body and the bodies of others, with ones own words and the words of others, and with ones own gestures and the gestures produced by others.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Access to the field site was arranged through, and data collection was supported by a contract with, the Boeing Flight Deck Concepts Center. B arbara H older served as contract m onitor. W hitney F riedm an created the cartoon representations of the video fram es. We are grateful to Charles Goodwin and Susan Goldin-M eadow for read ­ ing early drafts of the p aper and providing expert advice. Any errors th a t rem ain are o u r own. Funding for the data analysis was provided by NSF aw ard #0729013, "A m ulti­ scale fram ew ork for analyzing activity dynam ics,” Jam es Hollan, Edw in H utchins, and Javier Movellan, principal investigators. Finally, we are especially grateful to the m any pilots and instructors w ho have participated in our research.

REFERENCES Alac, M., & Hutchins, E. (2004). I see what you are saying: Action as cognition in fMRI brain mapping practice. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 4 (3), 629-661. Clark, H. H. (1992). Arenas of language use. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Goodwin, C. (2007). Environmentally coupled gestures. In S. Duncan, J. Cassell, & E. Levy (Eds.), Gesture and the Dynamic Dimensions of Language (pp. 195-212). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Goodwin, C. (2006). Human sociality as mutual orientation in a rich interactive environment: Multimodal utterances and pointing in aphasia. In N. Enfield, & S. Levinson (Eds.), Roots of Human Sociality (pp. 96-125). London: Berg Press.

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Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthro­ pologist, 96 (3), 606-633. Goodwin, C. (1979). The interactive construction of a sen­ tence in natural conversation. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology (pp. 97-121). New York: Irvington. Goodwin, C., Goodwin, M., & Yaeger-Dror, M. (2002). Multimodality in girls' game disputes. Journal of Pragmatics, 24 (10-11), 1621-1649. Grice, P. (1981). Presupposition and conversational implicature. In P. Cole (Ed.), Radical Pragmatics (pp. 183-198). New York: Academic Press. Hutchins, E. (2010). Cognitive ecology. Topics in Cognitive Science, 2, 705-715. Hutchins, E. (2011). Enculturating the supersized mind. Philosophy Studies, 152, 437-446. Hutchins, E., & Johnson, C. (2009). Modeling the emergence of language as an embodied collective cognitive activity. Topics in Cognitive Science 1, 523-546. Hutchins, E., & Palen, L. (1997). Constructing meaning from space, gesture, and speech. In L. Resnick, R. Saljo, C. Pontecorvo, & B. Burge (Eds.), Discourse, Tools, and Reasoning: Essays on Situated Cognition (pp. 23-40). Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. Hutchins, E., Middleton, C., & Newsome, W. (2009). Conceptualizing spatial relations in flight training. Proceedings

of the 15th International Symposium on Aviation Psychology (pp. 384-389), Dayton, OH. Hutchins, E., Nomura, S., & Holder, B. (2006). The ecol­ ogy of language practices in worldwide airline flight deck operations: the case of Japanese airlines. Proceedings of the

International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction in Aeronautics (pp. 90-96), Seattle, WA. Jacoby, S., & Ochs, E. (1995). Co-construction: An introduction. Research on language & Social Interaction, 28 (3), 171-183. Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. New York: Cambridge University Press. Langewiesche, W. (1990/1944). Stick and rudder: An explanation of the art of flying. New York: McGraw-Hill. Maynard, S. (1986). On back-channel behavior in Japanese and English casual conversations. Linguistics, 24, 1079-1108. McNeill, D. (2005). Gesture and thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schegloff, E. (1984). On some gestures’ relation to talk. In J. Atkinson, & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action (pp. 266-298). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, L. (2005). Action alters shape categories. Cognitive Science, 29, 665-679. Spivey, M. (2007). The continuity of mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Yngve, V. (1970). On getting a word in edgewise. Papers from the 6th Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistics Society (pp. 567-578). Chicago: Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago.

Formal Structures of Practical Tasks: A Resource for Action in the Social Life of Very Young Children Gene H. Lerner, Don H. Zimmerman, and Mardi Kidwell

INTRODUCTION Before children are able to speak, they encounter an interactionally organized social w orld (Goffman, 1964, 1983; Schegloff, 2006) - a w orld they m ust engage well before productive linguistic ability becom es an available interactional resource. Early-appearing form s of com ­ m unicative action are carried out through visible body behavior, including gesture, gaze, body posture, and the deploym ent of objects, as well as through non-verbal and proto-verbal vocalizations. These pre-verbal m odes of conduct are the resources for com posing orderly and recognizable actions in interaction w ith others. In addi­ tion to these body-behavioral and vocal resources for com posing com m unicative action, young children also m ake use of the actions produced by oth er participants (both peers and adult Caregivers) as a context for the com position and placem ent of th eir own contributions. This chapter explores the structure of th a t context - the activity context - and how th at structure serves as an interactional resource for the actions of very young chil­ dren. W hile there is no doubt th at language is beginning to figure into how very young children und erstand and respond to others, in this chapter we focus on how the observable conduct of others - and in p articu lar the for­ m al sequential stru ctu re of th at conduct - furnishes very young children w ith the interactional resources for par­ ticipation in the social life of the species before their own language use has becom e the dom inant m ode for com ­ m unicative action.1 In a series of investigations into the social life of twelve- to thirty-m onth-old children and their Caregivers in three infant-toddler day-care centers, we have begun to exam ine the com plex structures of engagem ent very young children exhibit in interaction w ith peers and adult Caregivers. In o u r initial investigation (Lerner & Zim m erm an, 2003), we showed th a t young children can exhibit an aw areness th a t th eir actions are observable 1 Investigations along these lines that show how language use is employed in the social lives of young children can be found in the work of Tony Wootton (e.g., 1997, 2007). 44

by others, and further we found th at even at an early age, young children count on having their own conduct treated as actions in a recognizable course of actions and th at they can exploit this fundam ental feature of social life in a variety of ways. In addition, Kidwell and Zim m erm an (2006, 2007) dem onstrate th at very young children can use a nearby Caregivers actions for posi­ tioning their own actions targeted to another child (or an object): They can position their actions so as to be seen and attended to by the Caregiver or so as not to be seen or attended to by them . Furtherm ore, Kidwell (2005) has shown th at young children can m ake use of two distinct gazing practices of their Caregivers (a passing glance or a fixed stare) as actions th at differentially foreshadow sub­ sequent Caregiver action. In this chapter, we continue o u r investigation of these structures of engagem ent by developing an analysis of the "activity context" for com m unicative action in inter­ action. We do so by exam ining an extended excerpt from a field recording m ade at an infant-toddler center in which an adult Caregiver is serving a m eal to a young child, Charlene (age fifteen m onths), as two other chil­ dren, Ryan (fourteen m onths) and especially L aura (six­ teen m onths) attem pt to join in.2 Our analysis centers on L auras m om ent-by-m om ent contingent treatm en t of the conduct of the adult Caregiver who is serving breakfast to Charlene. We describe the design and especially the placem ent of L auras actions - showing how her actions are at first placed to fit into the structure of the ongoing activity at the beginning of a "task-transition space" as each task in the m eal service com es to possible com ple­ tion, and then how later they are placed in a m anner th at moves away from this position. It is in the precise place­ m ent of her actions and in its changing com position th at her practical, situated grasp of the em ergent sequential 2 Although we focus on a single case of mealtime interaction in this report, our analysis of it has been informed by an examination of additional cases in the same day-care center. We make reference to some of these other cases in the course of our discussion. We do so, in part, to suggest that our findings are not case-specific (or child-specific).

45

f o r m a l structures of p r a c t ic a l ta s k s

structure and trajectory of the ongoing m ealtim e activ­ ity is revealed. O ur aim here is to describe the form al structures of practical tasks to w hich she is d em onstra­ bly oriented, as well as the m ethods she uses by refer­ ence to these structures of action. We will show how these structures of action and m ethods for producing action are em ployed repeatedly over a series of attem pts by L aura to induce the Caregiver to include her in the ongoing activity - or to p u t it m ore plainly, to induce the Caregiver to give her some food to eat, too.3 O ur focus on the activities of very young children may appear to m ake studies of childhood developm ent rel­ evant to our study. However, from our perspective, the m ain th ru st of developm ental studies has been to docu­ m ent and provide a tem poral fram e for the em ergence of cognitive abilities. Research in this area routinely treats the interactional context as transparent, and merely a vehicle to expose m ental processes (see e.g., Nelson, 1986). W ootton (2006) notes th at Vygotskyan research is perhaps the m ost proxim ate tradition th at features the exam ination of childrens interactional practices. However, he goes on to state, “The prim ary interest of the Vygotskyans is how to account for som e facet of the child's psychological or linguistic development: for exam ­ ple, the em ergence of higher m ental functions in the case of Vygotsky (1986), language and speech act acquisition in the case of B runer (1983), theory of m ind in the case of Tomasello (1999)" (Wootton, 2006:196). Certainly, the interactional dom ain rests on a foun­ dation provided by the evolved neural m echanism s of the h um an brain. Yet, the positing of cognitive abilities should surely conform to the actual requirem ents of the observable interaction order and participation in it - for example, the structurally afforded ability to recognize, project, and contingently em ploy unfolding structures of action in interaction with others. W hatever cognitive capacities are found to underw rite the interaction order, the specification of the elem ents of this dom ain requires a close and system atic analysis of naturally occurring interaction addressed to the m anifold contingencies of everyday life, and the social-sequential structures that enable h um an interaction. Very young children are the subjects of o u r investigation then; however, our object of study is not their developing “m ental life," b u t ra th e r th eir p articipation in the pre­ existing orderly social life of the species. To paraphrase Goffman (1967), we do not investigate children and their m om ents, but ra th e r m om ents and their children. As far as we can see, there is little in the literature th at treats the details of toddler em bodied conduct in interaction in a m an n er that m aintains its situated “integrity" (to use Schegloff's [2005] term ) and aim s at describing the con­ textual resources th at enable toddler p articipation at the 3 For comparison, see Wootton (1994) for an analysis of practices employed by a very young child in order to avoid food she is being given.

level of its actual situated production on a case-by-case and m om ent-by-m om ent basis. But see W ootton (1994, 1997) for an im portant exception - and for work with young m em bers of another social species th at has some resonance w ith our investigation, see Byrne's (2006) dis­ cussion of “behavior parsing." B runer and his collaborators (B runer & Sherwood, 1976; R atner & Bruner, 1978) do exam ine interactional gam es (e.g. “appearance-disappearance" and “peek-aboo") played by adult caregivers with very young chil­ dren. These games entail routines th at involve repeated production of ordered phases that provide resources for the child to respond in appropriate ways and at appropri­ ate m om ents in the unfolding game. B ut unlike playing a game with a child, the m ealtim e routine we examine was not designed to engage L aura (the child we will focus on) in any way. Laura's appositely placed and designed inter­ ventions are sequentially specified attem pted solutions to a com m onplace dilemma: How does she join an activity in which she is not a ratified p articipant (and in w hich she is apparently not entitled to participate). This case thus affords a glimpse of how conduct of a very young child exploits the orderliness of a m undane routine to press her appeals, rath er th an participation in the ro u ­ tine course of an activity in w hich the child is the star participant.

THE MEALTIME SETTING AND ROUTINE In this episode, an adult Caregiver is serving breakfast to Charlene at a small, low table on an enclosed porch, while L aura and Ryan (who apparently have already eaten breakfast) look on. The table abuts a railing that is used as a “staging area" where the food and other m eal-related items have been placed out of reach and out of direct sight of the children. (See Figure 3.1a.) The Caregiver is stationed on her knees directly opposite the railing and facing it. Charlene (who is being served) comes to sit on the side of the table to the Caregiver's right, and L aura comes to sit on the side of the table to the Caregiver's left. Ryan w anders in and out of the scene, although m uch later in the episode he does use Laura's chair once she vacates it. (See Figure 3.1b.) Laura, although present at the table, is not (yet) a ra t­ ified participant in the m eal service designed on this occasion for a single recipient, Charlene. This poses the interactional problem of how to join in an ongoing activity. As we shall see, Laura's Two-pronged solution couples precisely placed appeals with a kind of “anticipa­ tory recipiency"; the form er is launched as tasks com e to com pletion, w hereas the latter is returned to as each next task (e.g., bibbing, hand washing, being served food) is im m inent. Accordingly, our analytic focus will be on the features of the activity context - th at is, the sequential structure of the m eal service tasks - th a t Laura's conduct is dem onstrably oriented to as the Caregiver prepares Charlene and serves up her food.

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46

3.1a. The location of the food staging area on railing before the meal service begins.

3.1b. The arrangement of the children and Caregiver as the meal service begins.

Figure 3.1. Food staging area and meal service table. In this incident, the m eal service takes a routine, epi­ sodic form th at furnishes L aura w ith repeated oppor­ tunities to indicate, pursue, and even dem and th at she be given food (too). F or the m ost part, the Caregiver retrieves item s such as a bib, w ashcloth, and food con­ tainers from a tray on th e railing one by one, distributing each item before returning to the railing to retrieve the next one. This basic task structure of “retrieve, distrib­ ute, and re tu rn to retrieve a next item ” provides L aura w ith opportunities to seek inclusion, and later to dem on­ strate her displeasure a t not being included. As we shall see - and anticipating o u r detailed exam ination of these object-based m anual tasks - L aura is oriented to both the trajectory of the m eal service as it unfolds item by item, and at a finer level of granularity, to each item s phase structure of “retrieve, distribute, and re tu rn to retrieve a next item .” We will show th at each task (bibbing, w ashing up, serving a food item ) is constituted by a form al task stru c­ ture th at includes a recognizable task com pletion and thus furnishes an opportunity for intervention as each task is ending and a next is com m encing. Of particular interest to us are the ways in w hich these task transitions figure into how L aura first produces w hat m ay be term ed sequence-prospective actions w hen inclusion in the m eal activity is still a nascent possibility, and later, sequenceretrospective actions w hen it becom es ap p aren t th at this possibility is about to be, o r has already been, foreclosed. We dem onstrate th at h e r orientation to the sequential structure of the individual tasks entailed in serving a m eal to Charlene furnishes L aura w ith repeated oppor­ tunities to seek inclusion in the m eal service, and later

to register displeasure th at she has not been included. Describing the positioning of L au ras interventions will allow us to locate the episodic and form al phase structure of the Caregivers actions as a resource for action - that is, as an oriented-to, sequentially structured constituent of the interaction order.

Setting the stage To briefly set the stage for the analysis, we begin by not­ ing that the Caregiver has called Charlene to the table (“[Come] Charlene. Come 'n sit dow n on the chair.”), but th at all three children (Charlene, Ryan, and Laura) come to the table.4 Laura, who is nearest, sits down on an avail­ able chair first, then Ryan arrives, b u t is physically barred 4 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to examine in detail how summoning a particular child results in all three children com­ ing to the table. We will just note that Laura has been gazing toward the railing while the Caregiver uses a clipboard stationed near the food tray and then follows the Caregiver the three steps to the table before the summons is issued. Laura, who is near­ est the table, then sits down on the closest chair right after the summoning utterance is completed and the Caregiver has knelt down by the table. Moreover, Ryan is in the direct line of the Caregiver s gaze (directly in front of Charlene) when the summons is produced. The fact that this table is repeatedly used and ori­ ented to as a locus for eating, that food has already been stationed near the table, and the mere fact that the Caregiver has knelt by the table may all figure into the multiple arrivals. (Of course, for children of this age, the mere presence of their primary Caregiver at floor level can act as a magnet.) Also relevant can be what Shatz (1978a, 1978b cited in Garvey, 1984) has identified as an “action bias" in young childrens comprehension of adult speech, so that the “action part" of the Caregivers utterance (“come" or “come and sit down") may be what is most salient and actionable.

FORMAL

47

structures of p r a c t ic a l t a s k s

by the Caregiver from sitting in the seat designated for Charlene. (As she does this, the Caregiver states, 'Tm saving it for Charlene. She's going to have breakfast here Ryan.”) Finally, Charlene arrives and is seated at the table. At this point, Ryan begins to w ander off crying and the Caregiver (while attending to Charlene) indicates th at the m eal service is exclusively for Charlene w hen she states, “You two will have snack in a little while. You already had a big breakfast.” Here the Caregiver, by addressing not only Ryan (who is crying and has been stopped from sit­ ting down) b u t also L aura (who is sitting quietly by the table), shows th at she understands L auras presence as constituting a nascent move to participate in the m eal ser­ vice. Being seated at the table is also an action resource for these children - th at is, it is som ething to do as the first step in getting food to eat, and in having been accom ­ plished, displays the child's interest in and readiness for eating.5 In this case, although Ryan has been barred from the table, Laura has, in fact, successfully taken the first step in preparing to eat by seating herself by the table albeit on a chair th at is not (yet) facing the table. Before turning to L auras interventions (which will occupy the rem ain d er of this report), it is w orth p o in t­ ing out the way Ryan responds to the Caregivers actions. W hen he has been blocked from sitting down and told the meal service is not for him , he does not pursue par­ ticipation as L aura does, b u t begins to cry and w anders off. Here we see a contrasting course of action to the one we will show L aura taking. He accepts the Caregivers response as settling the m atter (for him ) - as an adequate and at least for now sequence-ending rejection of his attem pt to p articipate in the m eal service. R ather than pursue his attem p t to be included, he sim ply displays his displeasure at being excluded and exits.6 He thereby ra ti­ fies th at exclusion by evaluating the Caregivers response, rath er th an pursuing an alternate response from her. On 5 There is evidence that these children treat it in this way. For exam­ ple, in one case (“971216 Two Services") as a tray full of meal ser­ vice items is brought out to the porch by a Caregiver and placed on the railing, Charlene gets up off the floor (where she is cuddling with another Caregiver) and walks directly to the table and sits down, after which the first Caregiver says to the second, “Charlene knows whats happening" and the other responds, “yeah." In another case, a child seats herself at the table even though there is nothing as yet on the railing, but an offer of a drink has been made. Going to the table is then treated as a response to the offer. In this case (“980115 Sit and Point"), Charlene is seated on a Caregiver's lap (apparently attempting to get her to read a book). In response, the Caregiver tells her that she won't read a book now as another child is about to have snack, and that she is “going to have some juice (.) or milk, (1.2) you thirsty?" In response to this question, Charlene gets up from the Caregiver's lap, walks over to the table, and sits down. In response to this move, the Caregiver states, “Yeah, I take that as a yes'.” Moreover, Charlene immedi­ ately points to the (empty) railing upon sitting down. 6 Somewhat later, after all the food has been served, Ryan does make another bid to participate by returning and pointing directly to Charlene's food and uttering "(ee-) (.) dah da:h". He seems to be indicating his interest in the food (presumably because he wants some), but the Caregiver treats his interest as simply an occasion to identify the items of food by name - thereby responding in a fashion that parries the request import of the action.

the other hand, as the m eal service begins, Laura has been allowed to rem ain seated by the table, and to do so w hen Ryan has been physically barred from a chair at the table. As we shall see, L aura eventually comes to take a stance sim ilar to Ryans, b u t not until a series of addi­ tional attem pts are m ade to build on her initial success to becom e a ratified diner.

SERVING CHARLENE In the following sections of this report, we describe the sequential structure of the m eal service, how th at struc­ ture furnishes repeated and distinct opportunities for participation by the not-yet-ratified diner, Laura, to claim entitlem ent to, prom pt participation in, and eventually display her displeasure w ith the ongoing m eal service for Charlene.

First retrieval: The Bib - and Laura's first appeal In this section, we describe how L aura produces actions th at m ake relevant her status as a would-be participant in the m eal service as another child, Charlene, is being readied to eat. At this point, the m eal service is ju st begin­ ning and thus the opportunity for L aura to be readied as a participant is still a possibility built into the structure of the sequence (the Caregivers earlier statem ent, “You two will have snack in a little while. You already had a big breakfast.” notw ithstanding). With Charlene seated, the Caregiver extends her own arm s and body upw ard tow ard the staging area on the railing to retrieve the first item (the bib). Both L aura and Charlene w atch as the Caregiver settles back dow n on her knees and brings the folded bib into w hat can be term ed a “setup position.” This position, directly in front of the Caregivers body at chest-level, is used to operate on m ost items. L aura looks on as the Caregiver unfolds and drapes the bib over Charlene. (See Figure 3.2a.) Ju st as the Caregiver begins to fasten the bib - that is, ju st as the bibbing task is reaching its possible com pletion L aura launches h er first overt appeal. L auras appeal has two phases. First, w ith the Caregiver engaged in fastening the bib behind Charlene's neck (and thus w ith her gaze directed away from Laura) L aura raises her left hand in a point tow ard the railing w ith her head arched back, gazing in the direction of the p o in t.7 (See Figure 3.2b.) The upw ard trajectory of h er hand ges­ ture is accom panied through its full trajectory by a squeal 7 Note that Laura does this even though she had not seen the bib being retrieved from the railing. The railing is a common place for such items to be placed before meal service, and children orient to the railing (in apparent anticipation of eating) even before food is brought out. So, for example, there are cases of children point­ ing to the railing area while seated at the table before food has been brought out, as happens in one of the cases we mentioned in Note 5 ("980115 Sit and Point"). As we mentioned, as soon as Charlene sits down, she points to the (empty) railing. In response to this, the Caregiver states, “It's not here yet, Gail will bring it in a moment."

48

LERNER, ZIMMERMAN, AND KIDWELL

3.2b. Laura points and gazes at the food staging area.

3.2c. Laura repositions her arm and splays her fingers in a reach toward the food staging area as she gazes at the site of Caregivers action.

3.2d. Laura looks down at her chest.

Figure 3.2. First appeal. (“AEHH:n"). At this point, h er hand, head, and body are all oriented upw ard, and her gaze, aligned w ith her point, is directed to the top of the railing - th at is, to the stag­ ing area w here the m eal service item s are kept. Second, once h er gesture reaches its apex, she begins to shift her gaze away from the railing and back tow ard the site of the bibbing activity. At the sam e time, L aura also swings h er pointing hand farth er in the direction of the railing. Thus, h er gaze-directional and gesture-directional shifts diverge - briefly going in opposite directions. Then, as she gazes tow ard the site of the Caregiver s action, Laura splays h er fingers into w hat has been term ed a “noneffortful reach” (Bruner, Roy, & Ratner, 1982), while at the sam e tim e voicing the possible proto-w ord "BAeh? baeh!”. (See Figure 3.2c.) In this way, L auras appeal moves from a configuration of a vocal alert, pointing hand (that indicates w hat she wants), and gaze occu­ pied solely w ith the target of h er appeal to a configura­ tion of reaching h an d (that suggests an attem pt to get it) plus gaze and vocalization directed at h er recipient.

This adjustm ent to her action both upgrades the appeal and pursues uptake of it by her Caregiver. Although the original gestures onset is accom panied by a squeal th at could sum m on the gaze of the Caregiver and is pursued w ith a m ore complex vocalization, the Caregiver displays no visible response to L auras appeal.8 Laura w ithdraw s her raised han d ju st as the Caregiver moves upw ard for the retrieval of a next item from the porch railing. The Caregivers upw ard trajectory reveals a fully bibbed Charlene to L auras gaze. L aura then looks down at her own chest - at the place w here bibs are placed. (See Figure 3.2d.) This is evidence th a t for Laura, a participant-in-w aiting, inclusion in the m ealtim e 8 Given the Caregiver's earlier admonition, it is probably safe to assume she very likely understands the import of the squeal and proto-words without looking at Laura's embodied actions directly. Persisting unperturbed with a line of action - and thereby refus­ ing to ratify its sequential import - is one method for managing competing conduct. (See Jefferson [2004:49-50] and Schegloff [2000:30] for discussions of this practice when applied to simulta­ neous talk in conversation.)

FORMAL

structures of p r a c t ic a l ta s k s

should involve (or should have involved) her receiving a bib. She then looks back up tow ard Charlene, and after following C harlenes already upw ard gaze, both children track the lowering of the next item (a w ashcloth) by the Caregiver to the (chest-level) setup position. W hat can be m ade of this sequence of actions? Laura positions her actions by reference to the ongoing task (bibbing Charlene). It is ju st as the Caregiver is about to finish fastening the bib th at L aura initiates her appeal. In a sense, her analysis of the Caregivers action-so-far, as approaching the end of the task, anticipates its term ina­ tion. She does not appeal for w hat Charlene has, but for an item of her own. This m om ent betw een the Caregiver's successive involvements with Charlene constitutes a task transition space th a t furnishes Laura w ith an opportu­ nity to press the Caregiver to include h er in the meal service.9 L au ras appeal is an attem pt to be included: 1) positionally (just before the Caregivers next m ealtim e task begins); 2) body-behaviorally (through a point and a reach, and through gaze); 3) vocally (through a sum m on­ ing squeal and possibly a locally intelligible proto-w ord associated with the meal); and 4) ecologically (indicating a place, and thereby the m eal-relevant item s th at belong to th at place). In summary, L au ras intervention is posi­

tioned by reference to completion o f the prior task, while composed by reference to a projected next task.

Second retrieval: the Washcloth - and Laura's Second appeal In her second attem pt, L aura com poses her appeal from its beginning in a way that is specifically oriented to gain­ ing - and confirm ing - the recipiency of the Caregiver for her actions. Having tracked the m ovem ent of the next item, a washcloth, from the railing to the chest-level setup position in front of the Caregiver, L aura w atches as she unfolds it and offers it to Charlene w ith both hands. How Charlene handles the w ashcloth seems to hgure into Laura's next actions. After using the w ashcloth, C harlene drops it w ith a kind of flourish: She raises h e r hands above the w ash­ cloth w ith palm s down, w hile gazing dow n at it. (See Figure 3.3a.) She then holds this p osition - hands sta ­ tioned above the discarded w ashcloth, looking dow n at it for a m om ent (about 0.4 sec) - until the Caregiver reaches for the w ashcloth and pushes it to the edge of the table th at abuts the railing. For L aura (and the Caregiver), Charlene's release of the w ashcloth and the spreading of her hands seem to be a decisive display of 9 The use of the task transition space by a not-yet-served child is not unique to this case. So, for example, in the following case from another mealtime ("980120 Point for Food”), one child is served a dish of food and then just as the Caregiver returns to the railing that is, in the task transition space - a second child who is seated at the table points upward toward the railing. This is followed by the Caregiver retrieving another dish of food and (in this case) presenting it to the second child.

49

com pletion. Virtually sim ultaneously, as the Caregiver begins reaching tow ard the w ashcloth, L aura begins to raise her left hand, while turning h er gaze tow ard the Caregiver's face (which is not obscured as it was at the beginning of the first appeal). As Laura's han d is raised, her directly upw ard-pointing gesture swings not tow ard the staging area on the railing, but tow ard the Caregiver, positioning her gesture w ithin the Caregiver's line of sight. (See Figure 3.3b.) Then, as the Caregiver begins to move forw ard and up tow ard the railing to retrieve the next item , L aura adjusts h er upw ard-pointing ges­ ture by m oving h er han d up and tow ard the porch rail. As she adjusts her p o int w ith the Caregiver's m ovem ent, L aura also produces an o th er vocal appeal, thereby ad d ­ ing an audible elem ent to h er appeal. In other w ords, she shifts the position of h er p o int and adds a vocali­ zation to it as the Caregiver moves tow ard the railing w ithout having acknow ledged the appeal. Having had no response to the first appeal, the second appeal seem s designed specifically for this purpose. T hat is, the sec­ ond appeal is com posed from its outset to be seen by the Caregiver, even at the expense of not actually p o in t­ ing in the direction of the item s on the railing she is apparently seeking. Moreover, L aura begins this point, not by gazing at the railing as she did at the beginning of the first appeal, b u t by im m ediately gazing tow ard the Caregiver's face. Laura's actions here still constitute an “optim istic" intervention, one designed prospectively to appeal to the Caregiver (for m eal service). Sim ilar to her first inter­ vention, this intervention is placed at com pletion of Charlene's w ashing-up and it is aim ed at w hat happens next - th at is, it is aim ed at eliciting w hat should happen next and the Caregiver treats it in ju st this way. Here, as the Caregiver rises to retrieve the next item (and as L aura lowers her point), she states, “This is for Charlene, Laura." L aura continues to look upw ard tow ard the site of the Caregiver's action on the railing, as does Charlene. Thus, having com pleted h er intervention, Laura retu rn s to a w ait-and-see position, continuing to look upw ard tow ard the site of action on the railing. In so doing, L aura assum es the em bodied stance of a possible bene­ ficiary w aiting for the next item in just the sam e m an n er as Charlene does. (See Figure 3.3c.) To sum m arize, first, there is an observable com pletion to the w ashing-up activity as Charlene shows she is done, and then both L aura and the Caregiver sim ultaneously treat the task as complete. L aura uses this opportunity to produce a next appeal to be included in the meal service. Importantly, this is not done in com petition w ith the Caregiver's attention to Charlene, but is fitted to activ­ ity com pletion (here w ashing up). H er intervention is prospective in th at it prom pts a next action in the ongo­ ing course of action. And after producing the appeal, L aura then returns to w hat we m ight term “anticipatory recipiency" - th at is, to a w ait-and-see stance tow ard the unfolding action. Finally, the Caregiver treats Laura's

LERNER, ZIMMERMAN, AND KIDWELL

50

3.3a. Charlene spreads both hands, dropping her wash cloth with a flourish.

actions as a plea for food by m aking explicit th at the next item will be for Charlene alone. L auras first two appeals occurred at the com pletion of a m eal service task; the integrity of the tasks them ­ selves (bibbing and hand w ashing) were respected. So far her appeals have been confined to the transition space, launching the intervention as the task was com pleted and term inating it as the Caregiver moved to retrieve a next item from the staging area on the railing. Then dur­ ing the retrieval phase in w hich a next item is brought to the table, L auras conduct parallels Charlenes - that is, the actions of the would-be and ratified m eal participants converge in a dem eanor of anticipatory recipiency. This could be said to constitute L au ras optim istic period th at she will, perhaps, find herself included in the meal service as the next item arrives.

Third retrieval: Charlene's Dish - but no appeal

r

-

'

I

■k "

i

i. ‘ I

3.3b. Laura points toward the food staging area and produces a vocalization while gazing at Caregiver.

3.3c. Laura and Charlene watch the next retrieval. Figure 3.3. Second appeal.

In turn, the Caregivers use of the bib and the w ashcloth consisted of several steps: First the item was retrieved and then it was deployed. Moreover, th a t deploym ent term inated w ith a recognizable com pletion (e.g., fasten­ ing the bib or discarding the w ashcloth), after w hich a retu rn for a next item was im m ediately produced. The transition from task com pletion to return for next item constituted an oriented-to task-transition space for L aura s interventions - interventions that did n o t disrupt the task at hand because L aura placed them precisely at the com pletion of one task and before the retrieval of an item for a next task of the m eal service. In this section we present evidence th at accounts for the absence of an appeal by L aura in term s of the absence of a structurally provided opportunity to intervene. Here we suggest th a t the retrieval and use of the next item in the m eal service (a dish) is com posed in a m an­ ner th at does not furnish an opportunity for interven­ tion. This adds evidence th at com plem ents ou r claim that recognizable com pletion of a task is consequential for intervention. The dish retrieval is unique am ong the retrieval sequences in that there is not really a distinct “distribution phase”: The retrieval is all th a t is involved before returning for a next item (food to p u t into the dish's com partm ents). Minimally, the dish m ust be placed in front of Charlene, b u t this entails a m inim al adjustm ent to the retrieval itself. Moreover, in this instance, there is a “rush-through” to the next retrieval thereby all but pre­ cluding an intervention by L au ra.10 The placem ent of the dish follows a “retrieval, distri­ bution, and retu rn for next item ” trajectory th a t does not 10 This type of accelerated action that rushes through a transi­ tion space is not unique to this episode (or to manually realized action), and in fact was first described by Schegloff (1987) for conversation. In conversation, a speaker can speed up the tempo of their talk across the transition space so as to begin a next TCU before a next speaker can begin - thereby, in effect, depriving them of a transition space to begin speaking.

FORMAL s t r u c t u r e s o f p r a c t ic a l ta s k s

51

•\ I .. 3.4a. Caregiver lowers dish with both hands. Figure 3.4. No place for an appeal. occasion an appeal - or even a move to begin an appeal. In this case, the Caregiver first retrieves the dish from the railing w ith h er left hand, b u t as she brings it down, she shifts to a tw o-handed grasp about halfway to the table. (See Figure 3.4a.) She next brings the dish to the table w ith both hands. Then, ju st as the dish touches the table, the Caregiver releases her left hand and then rath er quickly reaches up, thus beginning the retu rn for a next item. (See Figure 3.4b.) Note th at Laura, as well as Charlene, have tracked the dish retrieval visually, first looking up at the end of the w ashcloth sequence and then following the trajectory of the dish w ith their gaze. However, before L aura has an opportunity to intervene as she did at the com pletion of the bibbing and w ash-up tasks - the Caregiver quickly moves to retrieve the next item. L aura does look up to w here the Caregivers left hand is going, b u t the hand is alm ost at the railing before Laura begins looking up. Moreover, the placem ent of the dish is carried out in a m an n er th at obscures the com ­ pletion of the dish retrieval task as a discrete course of action: The Caregiver does not re tu rn to her knee­ sitting position, no operation is perform ed on the dish other th an its placem ent, and the re tu rn for next item (by h er left hand) is begun before the dish placem ent is com pleted by h er right hand, and the left h a n d s retu rn seems hurried. Thus, the tran sitio n from one task to the next is obscured (because the retu rn for a next item is begun before the com pletion of the distribution of the dish) as well as rushed through. There is no opportunity to launch an appeal, and no appeal is launched. THE TRANSITION FROM APPEAL TO THE

EXPRESSION OF DISPLEASURE In this section we exam ine how L auras actions, previ­ ously fitted prospectively to the ongoing m eal service, now begin to assum e a m ore aggrieved and retrospec­ tive character, changing eventually into an u n restrained

3.4b. As Caregiver finishes placing the dish with her right hand, she quickly raises her left hand to begin the next retrieval.

expression of displeasure as the Caregiver finishes serv­ ing food to Charlene. As we will see, L aura changes both the com position and the placem ent of her interventions.

Fourth retrieval: A food container - and an extended appeal As the next task in the m eal service, the Caregiver retrieves and opens a plastic container and spoons m ost of its con­ tents into one of the three com partm ents of C harlenes dish. This takes m ore th an ten seconds to complete, and Laura quietly watches the distribution. Laura follows w ith her gaze as the Caregiver draw s the container and lid back up to the setup position and replaces the lid. (See Figure 3.5a.) Just as the Caregiver closes the lid on the container, L auras left hand reaches up, fingers initially splayed and then form ing into a point as the lid of the container is firmly closed w ith an audible snap. The point is in the direction of the railing, while L aura s gaze moves from the container in the setup position to the Caregiver s face. As she raises her hand, and while looking directly at the Caregiver, Laura produces a three-pulse stu t­ tered call (“uh- uh- uh-”)- (See Figure 3.5b.) Then as the Caregiver once again reaches tow ard the railing (using a tw o-handed retu rn in w hich she transfers the just-closed container from h er left han d to her rig h t hand, so th a t both hands are raised to the railing), L aura once again w ithdraw s her pointing gesture. As the Caregiver moves upw ard and as L aura w ithdraw s her gesture, she also shifts her gaze from tracking the Caregivers m ovem ent to the staging area on the railing. (See Figure 3.5c.) Up to this point, w hat she has done during this task-transition space parallels her prior attem pts, albeit with perhaps a som ew hat m ore distressed vocal appeal . 11 11

It is not that such multi-faceted appeals are always ignored or rejected. So, for example, in the following case from another mealtime ("971216 Successful Appeal"), Laura, who is currently eating, appeals for more food by standing with a splayed-finger

LERNER, ZIMMERMAN, AND KIDWELL

52

3.5a. Caregiver begins to place lid on food container as Laura watches.

3.5b. As the lid is closed, Laura points to the food staging area and produces a stutter call while continuing to gaze at Caregiver.

3.5c. As Caregiver returns the food jar to the food staging area, Laura retracts her gesture and looks upward.

3.5d. Laura does not track the next retrieval but abruptly shifts her gaze to Charlene before producing a next vocal burst.

Figure 3.5. An extended appeal. Now things begin to change. W hile continuing to gaze tow ard the staging area L aura begins a second four-pulse stuttered call (“uh- uh- uh- uh-”) ju st as the container is placed back on the tray - here for the first tim e producing elem ents of an appeal not early in the transition space (as in the first two interventions), b u t at the point the task tran sitio n space is about to close (with the possible retrieval of a next item ). As the Caregiver continues with som e preparation at the railing, this stu tter call then seg­ ues into a three-pulse vocal b u rst of w hat m ight be char­ acterized as nascent crying (“uhHUH- huh- huh-”). It is here, for the first tim e, th at L aura does not return fully to anticipatory recipiency while the Caregiver retrieves a next item from the staging area. By contrast, note that Charlene does continue w ith anticipatory recipiency by again gazing upw ard to the site of action and then reach pointing upward toward the staging area, while producing a vocalization and gazing at the attending Caregiver. In response, she is indeed given more food to eat.

tracking the in-tandem retrieval of the next two items. Laura does not track this retrieval, but abruptly shifts her gaze from the railing to Charlene before producing a next vocal burst. (See Figure 3.5d.) Because the Caregiver engages in some form of prep­ aration at the staging area, rath er than im m ediately bringing down a next item, the transition space between com pletion of the previous task and the retrieval of the next item is prolonged, and Laura's vocalization is extended into th at space as w ell . 12 It is during this 12

This type of appeal extension into a prolonged transition space may also be what occurs in the First Appeal, when the Caregiver, after coming to a possible completion of the bibbing task, then adjusts the position of the bib - as a non-projectable expansion of the task. In that case, Laura produced an appeal with gaze and gesture pointed toward the railing, but she then looks back toward the site of the bibbing task. Seeing that the Caregiver has not yet begun a return for a next item, Laura then expands her appeal and then moves to anticipatory recipiency just as the Caregiver withdraws from the bibbing and begins her return to the railing.

53

f o r m a l structures of p r a c t ic a l t a s k s

continued p reparation th at L au ras vocalizations (now produced w ithout an accom panying point or reach ges­ ture) begin to take the shape of a com plaint cry, thus adding elem ents of a sequence-retrospective stance - and thus beginning a transition from actions th at constitute a practical hope for inclusion to those th at express displea­ sure at not being included . 13

Fifth retrieval: A second food container - and Laura's expression of displeasure As the m eal service continues, L au ras conduct (in the way it is positioned and com posed) begins to take on fea­ tures of a grievance. W hen the Caregiver returns from the railing, she places a partially filled glass of milk before Charlene w ith her right hand, while at alm ost the sam e m om ent bringing down a baby food ja r to the setup posi­ tion w ith h er left hand. R ather th an tracking the retrieval of the item s as w ith the Caregivers previous retrievals, L aura abruptly drops her gaze to Charlene just as the Caregiver begins to lower h er arm s from the railing. (Note again th at Charlene does track the retrieval of the item s as before.) Then, before the Caregiver sets the milk down next to C harlenes dish, L aura produces another cry burst (“hu hu:h.") while gazing, not at the Caregiver, but directly at Charlene. This short cry is not positioned by reference to the progressive realization of the retrievedistribution-return sequence, b u t rath er is an expression of displeasure - of having been left out - th at continues on from h er own p rio r b u rst of crying. It is positioned after h er own p rio r vocalization, rath er th an htted to the ongoing task structure. We see here the continuing em er­ gence of a m ore retrospective orientation to the course of action - w ith L aura now producing a negative affective expression aim ed at her exclusion. W hen the milk is placed in front of Charlene, both Laura and Charlene gaze at it and both then tu rn their gaze to the opening of the baby food jar. L aura then con­ tinues gazing at the ja r as it is moved into place to em pty its contents into C harlenes dish. However, ra th er than waiting until this task nears com pletion, L aura launches into a single, loud, and protracted cry b u rst ju st as the first spoonful is dished u p . 14 (See Figure 3.6a.) Moreover, It is one thing to not receive a bib or a washcloth; it is quite another matter to not receive any food - the ultimate aim of her appeals. Thus, it is not immaterial that it is here that Laura "changes her tune.” 14 She actually prepares for this intervention a bit before the actual beginning of the distribution. As the Caregiver’s spoon approaches the jar for the first time, Laura seems to take a big preparatory in-breath (with her shoulders rising). This preparatory conduct occurs in the immediate lead-up to the food distribution. Note that such preparatory conduct also paved the way for some of Laura's earlier interventions. For example, she shifts posture and stance just before she produces her first appeal as Charlene's bib is attached. In the present case, her preparation occurs in what may be termed the pre-beginning of the distribution, while in the earlier case of the bibbing, the preparation occurs when comple­ tion of the task is imminent - that is, at its pre-completion. Taken 13

this vocalization is not accom panied by a point to the staging area (or even to the site of the dishing up). This long cry, begun ju st as spooning up of the food begins and not at the end of the distribution phase as was the case w ith earlier interventions - constitutes a full-fledged expression of strong displeasure at being excluded from the meal service. On its com pletion, and as the Caregiver picks up the lid from the table and closes the jar, she says, “°You're gunna have 0 snack in a little while Laura, you've already had breakfast." (See Figure 3.6b.) The Caregiver's utterance draws Laura's gaze from the now-full dish ju st as the lid reaches the ja r (at the word “snack"). L aura first looks tow ard the Caregiver's face as she speaks and then shifts to w atch as the Caregiver finishes closing the lid on the jar, b u t L aura neither begins an appeal at the com pletion of this task nor does she track the Caregiver's subsequent move to the railing. Rather, she returns her gaze to Charlene eating as the Caregiver returns the ja r to the railing. In short, there has been no appeal for a next item, b u t an intervention designed to express her displeasure and htted to the beginning of the distribution phase of the task, and thus placed while th at task - the “com plainable m atter" - was in full swing. We now tu rn to the com pletion of the m eal service by the Caregiver and the further change in Laura's conduct th at is occasioned by it.

Concluding meal service to Charlene Having fixed her gaze on Charlene, L aura only retu rn s her gaze to the Caregiver as she drops dow n from the railing em pty handed. Moreover, this tim e the Caregiver does not retu rn to her kneeling position from which she has prepared Charlene and served up the food; rath er the Caregiver changes to a cross-legged sitting position th a t can be understood to m ark the end of the service phase. As the Caregiver sits down (i.e., during the transition), L aura produces a p air of staccato cry vocalizations and then, once the Caregiver is fully seated, she shifts into con­ tinuous crying, broken only by in-breaths and by m om en­ tary attention to others' actions (e.g., the Caregiver again adjusting Charlene's bib or Ryan returning to the table). (See Figure 3.6c.) The Caregiver, once seated and after the first long wailing cry burst, says to Charlene, “Don't listen to her Charlene." The Caregiver is no longer deal­ ing w ith the crying as an appeal for food, b u t as a possi­ ble distraction to the now -eating C harlene . 15 By the tim e the Caregiver deposits the second ja r on the railing, returns empty handed, and then sits dow n together, the importance of these preliminarily placed actions is that they indicate a clear orientation to imminent but not-yetproduced task beginning and task completion, and thus show Laura to be projecting these places from the task-so-far - that is, before their fully fledged realization and not just on their actual occurrence. 15 After about forty seconds of wailing, the Caregiver does again turn to Laura and says, “I'm sorry if that upset you Laura. You already ate. You can eat again in a little while.”

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3.6a. Laura launches a loud, protracted cry as the first spoonful is dished up.

LERNER, ZIMMERMAN, AND KIDWELL

(thereby punctuating the com pletion of the m eal ser­ vice phase of the m ealtim e routine), L auras actions are no longer fitted to the structure of the m eal service in a m anner designed for inclusion. All that is left to her is the expression of distress and displeasure, w hich looks backw ard to her exclusion from the now-com pleted m eal service. The move to a m ore or less continuous bout of crying seem s fitted not only to the com pletion of a task, b u t to the recognizable com pletion of the m eal service itself. Here crying furnishes its ow n occasion for sub­ sequent bursts once the possibility of task-occasioned opportunities are no longer available - at least for the m om ent. Finally, we can again note th at L auras sequence-ret­ rospective expression m atches Ryans initial response to having been physically b arred from participation at the table. He accepted th at as a denial (at least for the tim e being) and moved directly to an expression of dis­ pleasure, whereas Laura, who was able to seat herself at the table (albeit sideways to it), persisted in h er appeals through m uch of the m eal service.

Charlene eats breakfast: Two additional structurally occasioned nascent appeals

3.6b. Caregiver closes the food jar and tells Laura You're gunna have0 snack in a little while Laura, you've already had breakfast.”

3.6c. As caregiver sits, the food service concluded, Laura pro­ duces continuous crying. Figure 3.6. Expression of displeasure.

While Charlene continues to eat h er breakfast with the Caregiver still supervising, there are two additional con­ tributions by Laura th at apparently constitute a retu rn to a prospective stance. Our claim has been th at the prospective interventions have been coordinated w ith the task structure of the m eal service. How then do we account for these interventions th a t occur after meal ser­ vice has been com pleted? In the first case, a nascent appeal seems positioned by reference to an o th er type of organization th at itself has a com pletion: the episode of co-present engage­ m ent itself. About five m inutes after Charlene starts eat­ ing, L aura rises from the Caregivers lap, w here she had been seated for awhile, and leaves the table area (hav­ ing calm ed down). (See Figure 3.7a.) As she departs, she does m ake another fleeting attem pt at m eal service: she produces a brief point tow ard the staging area to her left, while gazing directly at the Caregivers face to her right and sim ultaneously producing a vocalization w ith appeal intonation (“dah^”). (See Figure 3.7b.) She th en contin­ ues to look to the Caregiver for a response for about 1.5 seconds, and th en departs w hen the Caregiver does not take her own gaze off Charlene or offer any other indication of registering Laura s appeal. In the second case about a m inute later (and with both Ryan and L aura having left the table area), the Caregiver again assum es a kneeling position to retrieve additional m ilk for Charlene from the staging area after h er cup has tipped over. After she retrieves the milk container and pours a sm all am o u n t into C harlenes cup (see Figure 3.8a), both Ryan and Laura re tu rn to the table area as she returns the m ilk container to the staging area on

FORMAL

55

structures of p r a c t ic a l t a s k s

If

3.7a. Laura rises from caregiver's lap. Figure 3.7. Departing appeal.

3.8a. Caregiver retrieves milk from the food staging area and refills Charlene's glass. Figure 3.8. A nascent reprise.

the railing . 16 As L aura comes to the table, she looks to the staging area as the container is placed there and continues to gaze in th at direction until she reaches the table - even after the Caregiver has w ithdraw n her arm . (See Figure 3.8b.) By contrast, as Ryan arrives, he looks to Charlene as she drinks from the newly filled cup 16

Note that Ryan had momentarily returned to help with the spilled milk, but had already left the table area again - after accidentally knocking the empty cup onto the floor.

3.7b. Laura points toward the food staging area (arrow) simul­ taneously producing a short vocalization while gazing directly at Caregiver's face.

3.8b. When Caregiver returns milk to the food staging area, Laura returns, gazing upward all the while, but arrives after the return is completed.

and then w ith Charlene occupied drinking, he attem pts to take som ething from her dish (but is stopped by the Caregiver ) . 17 H ere we have a brief resum ption of the 17

This is consistent with Ryan's earlier return to the table area (shortly after the meal service phase ended): He came up to the table and pointed to the food on Charlene's dish while saying “(ee-) (.) dah da:h". There, as in the present instance, Ryan indi­ cates an interest in Charlene's food (which the Caregiver deflects by naming the food, "oatmeal, pears, and pancake") and not, as in Laura's case, an interest in being served next.

56

m eal services retrieve-distribute-return phase structure and it is here th at L aura retu rn s to the table, looking to the staging area, b u t perhaps having arrived too late to m ount another appeal. To sum m arize, in both of these cases, Laura's actions are occasioned by and fitted to an ongoing course of action: h er own departure in the first case and the resum ption of m eal service in the second case.

CONCLUDING REMARKS As Goffm an (1983) rem inds us, occasions have their own orderliness. And as the corpus of conversation-analytic research has show n empirically, conduct in interaction cannot be fully appreciated w ithout a rigorous explica­ tion of the sequential environm ent th at form s the activity context for everything th a t happens in interaction - even seem ingly unilateral action (e.g., Goodwin, 1987). In this chapter we have explicated one child's sequential analysis of the unfolding activity context th at served as a resource for her participation. In one sense this is a “single-case analysis"; however, in ano th er sense, because of the repeated interventions, we have been able to build our analysis across m ultiple instances of sequentially related interventions. O ur analysis has show n how the unfolding m ealtim e routine can form a highly structured task-based activity context for the actions of very young children. Describing the placem ent of Laura's interven­ tions, including changes in th a t placem ent, allowed us to locate the episodic and form al phase structure of the Caregiver's actions as a resource for action - th at is, as an oriented-to, sequentially structured constituent of the interaction order. O ur analysis dem onstrates an orientation to task com ­ pletion as a locus for particip atio n by an excluded p artic­ ipant, w ith each next com pletable task furnishing a next opportunity to p articipate - or at least an opportunity to appeal for participation. The tasks entailed in serving a m eal to Charlene furnish L aura w ith repeated structur­ ally given opportunities to first seek inclusion in the m eal service and then later on to register displeasure th at she has not been included. That is, the serving routine's task structure of “retrieve, distribute, and retu rn for retrieval of a next item" - and especially w ithin th at structure the recognizability of task-specific com pletion - p ro ­ vided L aura with repeated opportunities to participate. In particular, Laura's interventions were placed at the beginning of the tran sitio n space created by a move to possible com pletion of one task and w ith it the projected beginning of a next. Thus, L aura first intervenes at those places w here the Caregiver's next action m ight tu rn out to include her in the meal service, and thus her initial interventions have a sequence-prospective character. As each transition space was closed dow n - by the Caregiver returning to the food staging area for the next item L aura assum ed a w ait-and-see anticipatory recipiency

LERNER, ZIMMERMAN, AND KIDWELL

th at stretched through the retrieval and distribution phases of the next task. As the Caregiver's meal service for Charlene con­ tinued w ithout Laura having been included at several opportunities, there was a change in her conduct, both in its com position and in its placem ent from sequenceprospective to sequence-retrospective. The move to sequence-retrospective actions begins with short com ­ plaint cries placed late in the transition space th at were thereby still som ew hat oriented to a next task because they were produced before the next distribution. Laura's actions then changed markedly. First, they changed to a loud and prolonged single cry bu rst placed at the begin­ ning of the distribution phase, and then to continuous crying occasioned by and fitted to com pletion of the m eal service phase itself (as the Caregiver sat down to super­ vise Charlene while she ate h er breakfast). Continuous crying was then carried forward across a long stretch of the meal. Moreover, her visual tracking of the retrieval and distribution phases was also abandoned as p a rt of her shift to sequence-retrospective participation. Importantly, it was this visual tracking th at allowed the precision placem ent of her appeals and the return to “anticipatory recipiency," and thus by abandoning visual

tracking o f the Caregivers conduct, Laura surrendered such visibly-available opportunities for participation. One can recognize at a glance that the Caregiver is serving food and serving it to a particular child, but this is too coarse an understanding to participate in interac­ tion. Rather, participation requires a m uch finer appreci­ ation of emerging opportunities to participate inform ed not so m uch by identification of the activity as by the recognizability of em ergent structures of action-in­ progress. While L aura may well have a practical appre­ ciation of meal service as a routine, it is the progressive realization of th at routine as situated action in a course of action th at furnishes a locally constituted form al scaf­ folding for intervention at task com pletion. Similarly, the Caregiver's subsequent return to the railing furnishes an occasion to now w ait for possible service. Here again, projection of a next task from its nascent beginnings (reaching up tow ard the setup area) furnishes a locally produced occasion for the retu rn to a wait-and-see antic­ ipatory recipiency. Given th at the em ergent structure of the m eal service is m ade m anifest as a sequence of recognizable tasks-sofar, it does not seem necessary to posit th at Laura, or any other toddler, relies on a detailed cognitive repre­ sentation of the overall organization of the m eal service routine. Rather, L aura can be understood to have a situ­ ated practical grasp of the routine-so-far. This requires a capacity to (know how to) operate w ithin the emerging routine, rath er th an a capacity to consult a cognitive rep ­ resentation of it. Laura, like other toddlers at the day­ care center, has been repeatedly engaged in m eal service activities. She has a practiced, procedural grasp of the

FORMAL s t r u c t u r e s o f p r a c t ic a l ta s k s

em ergent routine and can employ this situated grasp to design and im plem ent actions fitted to its unfolding realization. It seems to us that very young children only require the in situ practiced capacities required to rec­ ognize, in each particu lar case, the form al structures of the in-progress actions th at recurrently fill their socialinteractional world and the practical skills to participate in each context-specific realizations of those structures of action as they are progressively realized and as each next elem ent in its progressive realization projects a next constituent of that structure. R esearch into early childhood cognitive developm ent m ight profitably explore p oints of con tact betw een cog­ nitive and interactional concerns. Certainly, the inter­ actional dom ain rests on a foundation provided by the evolved h u m an brain and the cognitive capacities thus afforded. Yet, as we suggested at the beginning of this chapter, the positing of cognitive abilities should surely conform to the actual req u irem en ts of the observable in teraction order and p articip atio n in it th a t research such as this can establish em pirically - for exam ple, the interactional ability described herein to recognize, p ro ­ ject, and em ploy unfolding stru ctu res of action from the naturally situ ated behaviors of others. W hatever cogni­ tive capacities are found to u nderw rite the interaction order, the specification of the elem ents of the in terac­ tion ord er requires a close and system atic exam ina­ tion and independent analysis of naturally occurring interaction addressed to the m anifold contingencies of everyday life. However m undane the meal service, and however simple the tasks that constitute it m ay appear, this is a sequentially organized, locally realized practical activity with an em ergent stru ctu re that provides the resources for the recognition and production of actions relevant to it. And it may seem quite rem arkable th at very young chil­ dren, very early on in their encounter w ith the structures of action found in their toddler social world, can employ a finely tuned appreciation of such routines-in-progress. It is here, in the course of and in the service of action in interaction th at hum ans routinely recast the structural projectability of practical tasks-in-progress from co-pres­ ent conspecifics' conduct as the “goals” and “intentions” of their producers. It m ay be here th at these anthropo­ m orphic inferences take th eir original (and m ost prox­ im ate) practical form (cf. Jefferson, 1989; Byrne, 2006); and it m ay be here, at the p oint of production of culture in action, th at w hat is glossed as socialization takes place in and as conduct situated in these m ost quotidian con­ stituents of hum an social life. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The videotaped extract exam ined here is p a rt of a large corpus of recordings from the Very Young C hildren Project at UC Santa B arbara, w hich was originally supported by

57

grants from the Vice Chancellor for Research's “Research Across Disciplines” initiative. We are grateful to Pat Clancy, Tom Wilson, and Tony W ootton for their helpful com m ents on an earlier draft of this chapter.

REFERENCES Bruner, J. S. (1983). Child’s talk: Learning to use language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bruner, J. S., Roy, C. & Ratner, N. (1982). The beginnings of request. In K. Nelson (ed.) Children’s Language (Vol. Ill, pp. 91-138.). New York: Gardner Press. Bruner, J. S. & Sherwood, V. (1976). Peekaboo and the learning of rule structures. In J. S. Bruner, A. Jolly & K. Sylva (eds.) Play, Its Role in Development and Evolution (pp. 277-285). New York: Basic Books. Byrne, R. W. (2006). Parsing behaviour. A mundane origin for an extraordinary ability? In N. Enfield & S. Levinson (eds.) The Roots of Human Sociality (pp. 478-505). New York: Berg. Garvey, C. (1984). Children’s talk. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goffman, E. (1964). The neglected situation. American Anthropologist 6 6 :6 , 133-136. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Doubleday Anchor. Goffman, E. (1983). The interaction order. American Sociological Review 48, 1-17. Goodwin, C. (1987). Unilateral departure. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee, (eds.) Talk and Social Organization (pp 206-218). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Jefferson, G. (1989). Letter to the Editor Re: Anita Pomerantz epi­ logue to the special issue of sequential organization of conver­ sational activities. Western Journal of Speech Communication 53, 427-429. Jefferson, G. (2004). A sketch of some orderly aspects of overlap in natural conversation. In Gene H. Lemer (ed.) Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation (pp. 43-59). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kidwell, M. (2005). Gaze as social control: How very young chil­ dren differentiate "the look” from a "mere look” by their adult caregivers. Research on Language and Social Interaction 38:4, 417-449. Kidwell, M. & Zimmerman, D. H. (2006). "Observability” in the interactions of very young children. Communication Monographs 73:1, 1-28. Kidwell, M. & Zimmerman, D. H. (2007). Joint attention as action. Journal of Pragmatics 39, 592-611. Lerner, G. H. & Zimmerman, D. H. (2003). Action and the appearance of action in the conduct of very young children. In P. Glenn, C. LeBaron & J. Mandelbaum (eds.) (2002). Studies in Language and Social Interaction (pp. 441-457). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Nelson, K. (ed.) (1986). Event knowledge: Structure and function in development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ratner, N. & Bruner, J. (1978). Games, social exchange and the acquisition of language. Journal of Child Language 5, 391-401. Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Recycled turn beginnings: a precise repair mechanism in conversation’s turn taking organization. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (eds.) Talk and Social Organization (pp. 70-85). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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Schegloff, E. A. (2000). Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language in Society 29, 1-63. Schegloff, E. A. (2005). On integrity in inquiry... of the investi­ gated, not the investigator. Discourse Studies 7:4-5, 455-480. Schegloff, E. A. (2006). Interaction: The infrastructure for social institutions, the natural ecological niche for language, and the arena in which culture is enacted. In N. Enfield and S. Levinson (eds.) Roots of Human Sociality. New York: Berg. Shatz, M. (1978a). Children's comprehension of their mothers' question-directives. Journal of Child Language 5, 39-46. Shatz, M. (1978b). On the development of communica­ tive understandings: An early strategy for interpreting and responding to messages. Journal of Cognitive Psychology 10, 271-301.

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Tomasello, M. (1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wootton, A. J. (1994). Object transfer, intersubjectivity and third position repair: Early developmental observations of one child. Journal of Child Language 21, 543-564. Wootton, A. J. (1997). Interaction and the development of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wootton, A. J. (2006). Children's practices and their connections with "mind”. Discourse Studies 8:1, 191-198. Wootton, A. J. (2007). A puzzle about Please: Repair, increments, and related matters in the speech of a young child. Research on language and Social Interaction 40:2&3, 171-198.

Elements of Formulation N. J. Enfield

Recognizing others' goals in the flow of interaction is complex, not only for analysts b u t for participants too. This chapter explores a sem iotic approach, with the utterance-in-context as a basic-level unit, and where the interpreter, not the producer, is the driving force in how utterances com e to have m eaning . 1 We first w ant to know how people extract m eaning from others' com m unicative behavior. We can then ask w hat are the elem ents of p ro ­ ducers' form ulation of com m unicative actions in antici­ pation of how others will interp ret th at behavior. A good account of the elem ents of form ulation should fit naturally w ithin a general account of com m unication. It should be com patible not only w ith an understanding of linguistic m eaning but of m eaning m ore generally. Also, it should naturally incorporate effects of context, including culturally defined types of activity structure (Levinson 1979, Goodwin 1994, 2000), the sequen­ tial contiguities of token interactions (Goffman 1981, Atkinson and H eritage 1984, Schegloff 2006), and the physical settings of those interactions (Goodwin 2000, 2006, LeBaron and Streeck 2000). In the kind of account we are after, it should be clear from the outset th at utter­ ances and th eir p arts are b o rn fitted into com m unica­ tive sequences and social contexts (D uranti and Goodwin 1992). O ur aim cannot be to characterize the u tterance as an isolated structure, presum ing th at it m ay later be slot­ ted into a context. The u tterance is inherently em ergent w ithin a contingent sequence, pointing on the one hand a step back in tim e to its social-contextual-psychological m otivation (that w hich brings it about) and on the other hand a step forw ard to its social-contextual-psychological consequences (that which is b rought about by it). An account of the elem ents of form ulation should not lim it its scope in advance to any p articu lar m odality or type of sem iotic form (e.g., segm ental phonetics versus 1

Terminology: An “interpreter” perceives and comprehends a sign, whether they are a hearer, listener, viewer, reader, addressee, receiver, etc. A “producer” carries out a controlled behavior that is taken by someone to be a signifying act, whether this behavior be speaking, gesturing, writing, smiling, looking in a certain direc­ tion, etc.

postures of the hand or face) or any particular type of sem iotic function (e.g., referential versus poetic versus phatic functions, describing a visual im age versus refer­ ring to a person versus expressing disappointm ent). This is because speech, hand m ovem ents, pen-on-paper m arks, facial expressions, and all other perceptibles can potentially be m obilized for a sim ilar range of com m uni­ cative functions. A simple exam ple is the possibility for complex m orphosyntactic constructions to be realized either in speech (as in spoken language) or equally well in hand m ovem ents (as in sign language). But of course, there are asym m etries in the functionality of different types of form. For instance, hand m ovem ents are bet­ ter th an speech at conveying fine distinctions in size and shape of objects. We should ideally be able to capture this broad flexibility of form in com m unicative form ula­ tion, while also capturing observed asym m etries in how types of form tend to m ap onto types of function.

OVERVIEW OF THE CHAPTER To understand how m eaning is m ade in hum an in terac­ tion, we have to take an interpreter's perspective. This is because all m eaning requires an interpreter, while a producer or “sender" is optional. If I see a black cloud, I take it to m ean rain, b u t the cloud is n o t black for me. Or if I find John's fingerprint on the m urder w eapon, 1 take it to m ean he is the killer, but he is unlikely to have touched the w eapon in order for m e to com e to this conclusion. So, if we intentionally form ulate a com ­ m unicative action, we do it presupposing a “recipient." Form ulating, therefore, is always prospectively fitted to a presupposed or anticipated interpreter (Goodwin 1979, Sacks and Schegloff 2007/1979, Clark 1996).12 Our a n a ­ lytic task is to spell out the possibilities for an interpreter's 2

This allows that a producer can minimize effort toward appropri­ ate design, given the efficacy of low-cost heuristics (Gigerenzer et al. 1999). While such heuristics may be locally egocentric (Barr and Keysar 2004), what allows them to work is that they tend to result in communicatively adequate interpretations, as defined by success in dyadic interaction. 59

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constructive attrib u tio n of m eaning to an utterance. In other words: W hat pow ers of interpretation do produc­ ers presuppose of their interpreters and thereby exploit w hen form ulating utterances? The form al signs th at an interpreter m ay encounter are of m any types, as are the concepts these signs stand for. And there are distinct m odes of standing-for that may hold betw een a sign and the idea to w hich it is connected (Peirce 1955). The resulting logical possibilities yield a fram ew ork for system atically describing ways in which interpreters m ay attrib u te m eanings to signs, and in tu rn to how m ultiple sem iotic com ponents are regarded sim ultaneously in the interpretation of richer, internally complex signs called utterances. Taking the u tterance as a basic-level u n it of forward progress in sequences of social interaction (Stivers and R obinson 2006), a neo-G ricean argum ent says th at any sign is open to be interpreted as an attem p t to elicit rec­ ognition of com m unicative and inform ative intention. This kind of form al signification is elliptical insofar as an interp reter can infer a larger, rich er message, filling in w hat a producer has seen fit to om it (Levinson 1983: chapter 3, Sperber and Wilson 1995). The process is operative even for the sim plest utterances - e.g., Hello? upon picking up the phone. Even the m ost reduced utterances are com posite utterances in w hich m ultiple signifying acts are taken - as one - to index a single, enriched, utterance-level inform ative intention. In the phone pick-up example, a token of /IibIao/ is not ju st a recognizable token of the w ord “hello,” b u t is produced w ith speaker-specific phonetics, and w ith an intonation contour th a t paralinguistically m odulates its m eaning. Different form al com ponents of the utterance each stand for p art of a larger idea th a t a producer conveys with that utterance. In the rest of the chapter, I try to flesh out these thoughts. The account begins w ith an in terp reters task of figuring out w hat a speaker is trying to say.

MEANING IS ATTRIBUTED, NOT RECEIVED M eaning arises w hen som eone takes a sign to stand for som ething (Peirce 1955). Seeing bear prints in the snow, I take it to m ean th at a b ear has walked there. As observer, I discern a connection betw een the p rints and the event th at brought them into existence. This is the one constant in com m unication: an in terp reters role in attributing m eaning to a perceptible phenom enon. This prim acy of interpretation drives the logic of com m uni­ cation in the natural world: The efficacy of a signal is determ ined by the interpretative propensities of its target (Owings and M orton 1998). Yet in linguistic com m uni­ cation especially, it seem s natu ral to think of m eaning as “sent” by one and “received” by another. As Reddy (1979) has argued, this is a m istake. To com m unicate is not literally to send a m essage b u t to m ake public the m eans (as “in structions”) for an o th er person to build an

adequate understanding in response (cf. Keller 1998). As Mead (1934) argued, this understanding is not a direct response to a stim ulus, but to w hat a stim ulus stands for. To understand the m eaning of a sign is to respond to a sign in a way th at makes sense as a response to an out-of-view object 3 to which the sign points or projects, that is, som ething not present in the sign itself. Take the bear prints example. A h u n ters resolve to m arch on in the b ears direction makes sense as a response n o t to the prints b u t to the out-of-view object for which the prints stand - the presence of a bear in the vicinity. In the bear prints example, it is clear that the inter­ preter is doing the prim ary sem iotic work, b u t I w ant to stress th at this applies whenever m eaning is made. The interpreter drives the process. W hen a producer or “sender” is involved, he does not ju st design a message, but necessarily designs it for a discerning interpreter. Consider, then, w hat it is that a sign producer presup­ poses of an interpreter. Consider the sem iotic m eans by w hich we, as interpreters, derive understandings of our rich, m ultim odal surroundings. Through m eaningim bued residence in the world (Kockelman 2006), we read our environm ent, as revealed in the ways we respond to it. W hen we see som eone heed an affordance (e.g., stride on flat ground), we see th at they have read their environ­ m ent in a certain way. W hen we see som eone employ a piece of technology (e.g., ham m er a nail, ascend a flight of stairs), we see th at they have read their environm ent in a certain way. W hen we see som eone respond to a spoken utterance (e.g., answ er a question), we see th at they have read their environm ent in a certain way. The sense of “environm ent” in these examples moves from natural to built to social. W hereas a natural affordance (e.g., of the terrain) m ay determ ine w hat is possible, a function (e.g., of a tool) is a product of a designers inten­ tion, not ju st w hat can be done w ith it, but w hat is meant to be done with it. So, I can anticipate th at you will not be surprised w hen I use a ham m er to bang in a nail. On the other hand, I can anticipate th at you will be surprised if I use the ham m er to stir a casserole (despite it being effective for that purpose). Spoken utterances have the sam e norm -regulated, built-in designers intention that instrum ents do. The public natu re of m eaning in the sense just described enables us to “com m it to others' in terpré­ tan ts” (K ockelm an 2007; cf. M ead 1934) w hen publicly carrying out actions, or just w hen inhabiting p u b ­ lic environm ents (Goffm an 1963). We know how our actions will be taken by others, and this is how our com m unicative actions are shaped. The p o in t is cru ­ cial for understanding m ultim odality in the sense that includes physical, spatial surroundings as potentially m eaningful (Goodwin 2000, 2006). M utually aware of 3

I use "object” in the technical sense of Peirce ( 1955) and Kockelman (2005), to refer to whatever a sign is taken to stand for. It does not necessarily refer to a concrete object, and will often refer to an idea or concept.

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a rich environm ent with affordances and functions, co­ inhabitants can anticipate each other's in terpretations of th at environm ent, thereby m aintaining a relatively sym m etric attitude (cf. M ead 1934, Schutz 1970, Hanks 2005, K ockelm an 2006), or degree of com m on ground (Sm ith 1980, Clark 1996). With this com m on ground in view, interlocutors draw o u r atten tio n to m om entarily relevant features, then exploit our know n interpretative propensities in order to bring about the social outcom es for w hich they are aim ing (w hether it be getting som e­ one to pass the salt or defending the accused in a court of law; Goodwin 1994).

inherent to hum an com m unication and cognition gener­ ally (Liszkowski 2006, Tomasello et al. 2005). The move is thus a starting point, a tem plate on which signs in interaction are elaborated. On the one hand, the move is a brick for larger structures, building up and out, into conversational sequences and other kinds of coherent discourse structure (Halliday and H asan 1976, Schegloff 2007). At the sam e time, it is an exoskeleton for inter­ nal sem iotic complexity, building down and in, yielding phrasal distinctions, m orphosyntax, inform ation struc­ ture, and logical sem antics. As m eaning unfolds, moves divide and com bine like cells in a growing organism.

t h e r e is a b a s i c - l e v e l u n i t f o r

MOVES ARE BUILT FROM MULTIDIMENSIONAL SIGNS, COMBINED

COMMUNICATIVE ACTION IN SEQUENCES: THE MOVE In any com m unicative setting, o u r richly m ultim odal flux of im pressions is given order by the directing of m utual attention, in 'pulses" m arked off in the flow of space and time, yielding sequences of contingent social action (Schegloff 2007). These pulses of m u tu ­ ally attended social actions are called moves, following Goffman (1981). A move can be defined as a u nit co n tri­ bution of com m unicative behavior constituting a single, com plete pushing forw ard of an interactional sequence by m aking som e relevant social action recognizable (c.g., requesting the salt, passing the salt, saying Thanks w ith a smile). A spoken u tteran ce is one type of in stan ­ tiation of the move (cf. Searle 1969). With this basiclevel status, the verbal move will be hom ologous with usage-based gram m atical units such as the clause (Foley and Van Valin 1984), the intonation unit o r breath-group unit (Chafe 1994, Pawley and Syder 2000), the tu rn-con­ structional u n it (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974), the grow th point (McNeill 1992), the com posite signal (cf. Clark 1996, Engle 1998), and the utteran ce as m ulti­ m odal ensem ble (K endon 2004). But w hatever its phys­ ical form, the move is a single-serve vehicle for effecting action socially. An im portant argum ent in favor of the move's basiclevel status is its role in the acquisition of com m unica­ tive skills in children. Before they learn their first words, children m aster the move. A line of research in develop­ m ental psychology has identified the onset of the pointing gesture as a w atershed m om ent in the developm ent of hum an social cognitive and com m unicative capaci­ ties, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically (Bates et al. 1975, Bates et al. 1987, Liszkowski 2006, Tomasello 2006). As a species of move, pointing is the prototype, both in the sense of original p recursor and com m on denom inator (Kita 2003). Pointing exemplifies the kind of addressed jo in t attentional behavior th at underlies any increm ent of hu m an interactional sequence. The pointing gesture is m astered by prelinguistic infants (at around twelve m onths of age) and is the hrst type of move that unequivocally displays the sort of shared intentionality

W hat are the m aterials from which moves are con­ structed? In line w ith the them e of this volume, they are constructed from m ultiple sem iotic resources in concert. They draw from the body, from extensions of the body, from m eans of inscription (diagram s, drawings), and from the physical and artifactual surroundings (Streeck and M ehus 2005). Because the term "multim odality" is interpreted in so m any ways, it is useful to begin by dis­ tinguishing betw een sensory m odalities on the one hand (general m odes of input as defined by gross distinctions in physiology of the interpreter; eyes, ears, nose, etc.) and sem iotic dim ensions on the other (cf. the notion of "channels" proposed by R uiter et al. 2003). A sem iotic dim ension is any independently variable com ponent of perceptible form. Multiple sem iotic d im en­ sions can vary independently w ithin a single modality. "Gesture," for example, is not a single dim ension in this sense , 4 because gestures are constructed from m ultiple sem iotic dim ensions. For example, a hand m ovem ent may be definable in term s of a set of independently var­ iable features like speed, acceleration, placem ent, and m ovem ent in three spatial dim ensions - pitch, yaw, roll and m ore (Talmy 2006), any one of w hich may be varied to m odulate the m eaning of the whole. The same can be said for m odes of graphic signifying. And speech, too, is not em bodied on a single dim ension. In speech, pitch and segm ental phonetics are both part of a single au d i­ ble stream , but each can be varied independently of the other. A single w ord pronounced w ith different pitch shapes is interpreted differently, describable in one lan ­ guage as a difference in intonation, in an other as lexical tone. There are also dependencies betw een dim ensions. For instance, you cannot move your hands w ithout m ov­ ing them in a certain direction, w hether the direction chosen is relevant or not to w hat is being signified; or, to speak entails speaking with a certain pitch and loudness; or, to be physically co-present entails th a t one's body is visible in a p articu lar posture. 4

Nor does it represent a single modality because it is not the only thing that is visible when someone is talking.

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Because m eaningful sem iotic dim ensions can be inde­ pendently varied w ithin a single com m unicative move, the analysis of com posite utterances needs to m ake very m uch finer sem iotic distinctions th an we are accus­ tom ed to. Categories like vocal/speech versus m anual/ gesture versus graphic/diagram s are too coarse. Any sub­ dim ension of any one of these (speed, acceleration, ori­ entation, color intensity, hue, saturation, pitch, loudness, phonation, etc.) is a distinct sem iotic instru m ent in itself, a distinct type of signifying form th at m ay be wielded w ith a distinct com m unicative purpose. We now tu rn to the m echanism by w hich any one of these dim ensions m ay be taken to be a sign in itself.

SEMIOTIC PROCESS IS THE BASIS FOR INTERPRETING UTTERANCES Before asking how signs com bine, we first define the core n atu re of the phenom enon of interest - m eaning. The claim here is a Peircean one, th at m eaning is a three-part process, not a tw o-part relation (Peirce 1955, Colapietro 1989, P arm entier 1994, K ockelm an 2005, inter alia). A sign has the potential to cause an act of interpretation th at brings into view an otherw ise out-of-view com po­ n ent to w hich the sign points (Peirces “object”; i.e., the signs m eaning or “signified” com ponent; cf. M ead 1934). For example, laying m y knife and fork dow n in a certain way allows you to “see” th at I am done eating, even if there is food still on the plate. The knife-and-fork cus­ tom is a public sign th a t gives access to w hat is otherw ise inaccessible - my intentional state. Like any sign, the cus­ tom is a potential instrum ent for getting others to bring into view the intended m eanings of moves. The event of bringing-into-view som ething stood-for is a defining p art of the sem iotic process in w hich any sign is em bedded. Defined in this way, a sem iotic process has three com ­ ponents: 1 ) sign (signifier, publicly accessible), 2 ) object (signified, “pointed to ,” inferred b u t not actually in the sign itself), and 3) in terp rétan t (response to signifier, w hatever constitutes an interpretation of its m eaning). By contrast, Saussure s sign is a dual category, a perceptible signifier fused to a conceptual signified. This sim ple twopole form at captures an intuition th at the sound of the w ord tree (or any perceptible sign, irrespective of m odal­ ity) can stand for the notion “tree,” and therefore convey this n otion in com m unication (Langacker 1987: 11, 76). B ut this is too simple. Even w hen we acknowledge the standing-for relation as a com ponent in its own right, the S aussurean sign does n o t yet acknowledge the discerning m ind w hose act of interp retatio n is w hat brings the rela­ tion of standing-for into existence. W ords cannot m ean w hat they m ean independent of the m inds th at treat them as having those m eanings. As Peirce p u t it, a sign has m eaning because it “stands to somebody for som ething in som e respect or capacity” and “creates in the m ind of th at person an equivalent sign” (Peirce 1955: 99). W hen we behold the S aussurean sign, o u r m ind is a third node

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of the diagram , supplying a response to the noise [tjfi:] or to the visual image tree th at takes it to stand for the idea “tree,” and perhaps, a tree. In sum, m eaning is there not because a sign stands for an object, but because a m indful interpreter takes a sign to stand for an object by supplying w hat Peirce called an interprétant. There is no space here for a full anatom y of this p ro ­ cess, b u t we m ay ask how the task would be approached. It would entail explicating a typology for each individ­ ual elem ent of the process. W hat are the possible types of sign, object, and interprétant? W hat are the possible types of relation betw een these? These questions have been raised and to an extent answ ered by Kockelm an (2005, 2006), and I will say only a few w ords about them here. Types o f sign . As discussed already, signifying m aterials from w hich moves are constructed may be analyzed into distinct sem iotic dim ensions. In the aural modality, we can independently m odulate m eaning by varying pitch, loudness, rhythm , timing; w ithin this, in the dom ain of hum an vocal signals, we can vary phonation (voiced, non-voiced, breathy, etc.), vowel quality, segm ental artic­ ulatory distinctions (place and m anner of articulation), identity qualities (e.g. who the speaker is, w hether it is a m an, wom an, child), transient state qualities (e.g. w hether speaker is drunk, tired, excited), and more. In the visual modality, we can independently m odulate m eaning by varying values like in-m otion versus still, punctuated versus persistent, acceleration in m otion, direction of m otion, path of m otion, m anner of m otion, shape, sym ­ metry, position along three spatial dim ensions, and more. For each of these m any distinct dim ensions, we m ay then assess their relative status on a n um ber of assess­ able properties, such as their persistence (im agine a cline from stop consonants to vowels to hand gestures to sand draw ings to p rin t on paper to stone inscriptions), their controllability (e.g., linguistic phonetic structures m ore controlled, facial expression less), their affordances for different types of ground (visual m edia are m ore read ­ ily taken to be iconic by a vision-foregrounding species). These are the kinds of dim ensions that could yield a fine­ grained anatom y of the logical possibilities for com pos­ ite utterance form ulation. Types o f object. The object of a sign - w hat we take a sign to stand for - can be m any things. An object m ay have intension (type reference, concepts in the m ind) and extension (token reference, things in the world; Ogden and Richards 1923: 11, Carnap 1947: 203, Lyons 1977: 96, 174ff). Like other com ponents of the sem i­ otic process, an object can be a token or a type. W hen I say Hes a Manx, pointing to an individual cat, my com ­ posite action incorporates a w ord Manx and an entity, the cat. The use of the word Manx itself is complex in structure, incorporating a signifier (token [mærjkhs] of type /mærjks/), and a signified (the actual cat as token of the type 'Manx cat'). Turning from sim ple referen­ tial expressions (word m apping onto thing), there are

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further complexities in the kinds of object th at a full proposition m ay have. One type of internal complexity is topic-com m ent structure. A proposition, as em bod­ ied in a move, will topicalize or them atize som ething (or presuppose such them atization) and then say som ething about it (H avrânek 1964). A second type of internal complexity is inherent in the displacem ent th at is one of the defining features of language (H ockett 1960), nam ely the articulation of relations betw een speech event and nar­ rated event (Jakobson 1971), giving rise to a complex set of deictic specifications such as tense, spatial reference, and social indexicality. Fleshing out the possibilities of types of object at the level of moves is the extensive sub­ ject m atter of propositional sem antics. Types o f interprétant. How we react to a sign, and in so doing give it m eaning, can be in several kinds of form. Kockelman (2005) describes four types, elaborating on Peirce (1955): An energetic interprétant is in the form of an action (e.g., you hand me the salt in response to my request); a representational interprétant is in the form of some symbolic response (e.g., I say Hes a Manx in response to your question What sort o f cat is that?); an affective interprétant is in the form of some uncontrolled feeling or sensation (e.g., I blush in response to your flat­ tering words); an ultim ate in terprétant is an entirely p ri­ vate cognitive response th at does not necessarily beget further response. In other words, we can create m eaning­ ful responses through anything we do, say, feel, or think. The latter two are relatively inaccessible. Fleshing out the possibilities for types of in terprétant at the level of moves is the extensive subject m atter of research on talk in interaction (Goodwin 1981, 2000, Atkinson and Heritage 1984, Streeck and M ehus 2005, Schegloff 2007, inter alia), being prim arily concerned w ith ways in which moves form chain-links in progressive interactional sequences, a move having a double identity: first a response to a prior move, second a p rio r to a responsive move. Types o f ground. Underlying the three com ponents of a semiotic process are four key types of relation: relevance (sign-interpretant relation), orientation (interpretantobject relation), ground (sign-object relation), and the relation betw een orientation and ground (Kockelman 2005). Of these, we know m ost about the distinctions in types of ground, th at is, the possible ways a sign can stand for an object. Peirces fam ous answ er was that there are three. First, the relation is iconic w hen a sign is taken to stand for an object because it has perceptible qualities in com m on with th at object. Second, the relation is indexical when a sign is taken to stand for an object because it has a relation of actual contiguity (spatial, tem poral, or causal) with that object. Third, the relation is symbolic w hen a sign is taken to stand for an object because of a norm in the com m unity th at this sign shall be taken to stand for this object. It is im portant to realize that these three types of ground are not exclusive, b u t rath er co-occur. In the bear p rin t example, the print in the snow is both iconic ar*d indexical. It is iconic in th at it resem bles the shape

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of a b ears foot and because of this it stands for a bears foot. It is indexical in th at (a) it was directly caused by the b ears foot at th at place (thus standing for an event of stepping), and (b) th at the foot of the bear is in contiguity with the whole bear (thus standing for the bear).

UTTERANCE MEANING COMES FROM INTERPRETING MULTIPLE SIGNS AS WHOLES The sem iotic process and its elem ents furnish a virtual chem istry for interpreting utterances, and therefore for guiding the form ulation of utterances intended by p ro ­ ducers to be interpreted. A typically m ultim odal, m ultidi­ m ensional utterance will consist of num erous signs in a unified composite: for example, words and m orphem es, some m orphosyntactic arrangem ent of these, some con­ figuration of the hand, som e m ovem ent of the arm in a certain direction and at a certain speed, some deploy­ m ent of the artifactual environm ent, and m uch m ore besides (Goodwin 2000, K endon 2004, in ter alia). How are the m eanings of individual com ponents of com posite utterance interpretatively unified? Interpreters do not calculate the m eaning of a com pos­ ite utterance by literally tallying up the m eanings of its com ponents (Grice 1975, Engle 1998). Instead, the ele­ m ents of a com posite utterance are understood with ref­ erence to a single, global construal (McNeill 1992). How is this done? As a first step, we appeal to G rices idea th at a com m unicative action is at the very least an attem pt to m ake ones com m unicative intentions recognizable (Grice 1989). As the neo-Gricean argum ent goes, com m u­ nicative form ulation presupposes interpreters' inferential capacities to overcome the bottleneck problem of having fast com prehension by hearers yet slow articulation by speakers (Levinson 2000). Producers' effort is m inim ized by exploiting interpreters' inferential capacities. Speakers typically do this by making explicit far less th an they actu­ ally w ant (and expect) to convey. In most, if not all, cases, the explicit, perceptible com ponent of an utterance bears a part-whole relation to the intended message. Not ju st any piece of behavior is counted as p a rt of a currently-under-w ay move. Interpreters' attribution of intention behind a producer's move is guided by a com ­ m unicative presum ption for interpretation: "This person is trying to say som ething'' (and, by im plication, trying to do som ething by m eans of w hat they are saying). An interpreter can discern w hich behaviors are a p a rt of w hat a producer is "giving" and which behaviors he is merely "giving off" (Goffman 1963: 13-14, Kendon 1978, 2004). Com m unicatively m eaningful actions are d istin ­ guished from m erely practical, incidental ones . 5 Through this process of filtration, a giant field of potential signs is narrow ed dow n to a handful of actual signs. On the 5

This is not to say that practical actions do not give off information in a semiotic sense. If you scratch your nose while talking, one interprétant is to conclude that your nose must be itchy, but I need not regard this behavior as being part of what you are saying.

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basis of the rem aining, currently relevant com ponents of the behavior and the setting, an interpreter then works tow ard an enriched interpretation of w hat they hgure m ust be com m unicatively intended. This turns not only on a process of filtration, but on an accom panying p ro ­ cess of unification, a coherent integrating of those signs th at are taken to belong together. The belonging-together of signs w ithin a com posite needs itself to be signihed in som e way. This is typically done by iconic-indexical devices such as spatial sym ­ m etry and tem poral alignm ent. For example, a hand m ovem ent intended as p art of w hat a speaker is saying will be closely aligned in tim e w ith the relevant, m ost closely related speech (McNeill 1992, 2005).6 Some types of signs are inherently to-be-attended to (e.g., conven­ tional symbols such as words), w hereas for others, their relevance requires overt signaling. For instance, eye-gaze m ay be used as a pointer, b u t need not be (cf. Streeck 1993, 1994). W hen it is so used, this needs to be signaled, diacritically (e.g., by raising the eyebrows or jutting out the lips; Enfield 2009). Or an artifact can be employed sem iotically w hen describing anoth er artifact (as in It looks like that), and in th at sort of case the link will need to be m ade explicit - for example, by pointing with the index finger at the rig h t m om ent. Research in gesture studies and related fields has been concerned with relations between constituent signs w ithin a single com posite move, a string of words together with a series of hand movements. More im portant, however, are their presum ed or actual com m on relation to a third entity, the informative intention of the utterance. The challenge for an interpreter faced with a com posite utterance is to recover the relevance of each constituent sign to a single object of th at move as a unified sign-vehicle, this object being the m oves inform ative intention. Given m ultiple signs, the possibilities for a single object are constrained by triangulation on th at object. That is, they m ust each relate in some way to the overall m eaning of the move. Although m any have argued for a “'reciprocal'' relation between words and gestures (Kendon 2004:174; cf. McNeill 1992, Goldin-Meadow 2003), we can view the speechgesture problem as an instance of a m ore general ques­ tion. We can characterize relations of association among co-occurring signs, in pursuit of a general account of how any set of signs may be taken to coherently combine. A recu rren t type of structure of a com posite utterance is the w eather-reporter configuration, a triad of symbolindex-icon, or we m ight say label-pointer-exem plar or word-linker-entity. This is like the earlier He’s a Manx example, w here a symbolic, representational type com ­ p onent (in speech) is linked to a token exem plar (in the setting) by an index (in gesture). The two linked com ­ p onent signs co-elaborate a move-level inform ative 6

Note, however, that body movements of various kinds, which would not normally be regarded as gesture (e.g., shifting in one’s chair), are nevertheless temporally regulated in some way with relevance to the speech, with diagrammatic relevance to dis­ course structure (Kendon 1972).

intention. In this example, the words are a guide as to how the recipient is m eant to construe the interpreter's act of draw ing his attention to this token (the speaker m ight otherw ise have said That’s Muggles or He belongs to John). This kind of com posite utterance has all the elements: The indexical com ponent draws a recipients attention to a them e and links a characterizing proposi­ tion to it, directing the interpreter's window of attention and guiding the interpretation. In the examples we have seen, the conventional-sign com ponent of a com posite utterance seems to be the m ost constraining type of com ponent. This is because conven­ tional signs such as words are by definition types or tokens of types, whereas non-conventional signs like hand ges­ ticulations are m ostly singularities, that is, tokens but not tokens of known types (at the relevant level of their "ref­ erential" value). Words com m it m ore narrow ly to w hat they should be taken to stand for, and it is the assum ption of a relation of relevance between speech and gesture (the assum ption that the speech is p art of w hat you are saying; Kendon 2004) that constrains our interpretation of the sign-carrier that is the gesture, or indeed some other per­ ceptible behavior, or thing in the physical surroundings.

CONCLUSION W hen signs com bine to form unified moves, each signcom ponent stands in some way for a single, total inform a­ tive intention. In social interaction, an interpreter's task is approached like any other problem -solving exercise. If the stream of input includes linguistic structure, this structure is always em bedded in a coherent com posite of com m unicative physical behavior: not ju st w ords and gram m atical constructions, b u t prosodic features, hand gestures, bodily orientation, direction of eye-gaze, physi­ cal artifacts, the spatial setting, and so on. E ach elem ent has its own representational affordances. Linguists do not deny the co-presence of these non-linguistic inputs; it is just th at w hen they entertain the idea, it is usually to acknowledge it and move on with business as usual, presum ing that m ultim odality can be dealt w ith as an add-on to m ore central, sem antic, and gram m atical con­ cerns. But if we take m ultim odality seriously, we entirely rethink the putative prim acy of language in m eaning m aking (Enfield and Levinson 2006: 28). So, in exploring elem ents of form ulation in the m ul­ tim odal reality of social interaction, we should not ask "W hat does speech do?" or "W hat do gestures do?" or "W hat role does the environm ent play w hen m eaning is made?" We will arrive at these questions by asking m ore general ones: For any given com m unicative behavior, w hat are the resources through which an interpreter can recognize an inform ative intention behind th a t behavior? W hat is the distribution of sign functions and modes of m eaning across different types of sim ultaneously present inform ation? How is an interpreter's attention focused and how is their understanding then m anipulated? By beginning with an interpreter's task, we see the goal of a

ELEMENTS OF FORMULATION

prod u cers plan, and by regarding the two in concert, we come at last to the heart of a sign’s design.

acknow ledgments

The approach adopted here owes a great deal to Paul Kockelman (e.g., 2005, 2006), whose extensive input in personal com m unication I acknowledge w ith thanks. I am also grateful to the Max Planck Society and the ERC (HSSLU Project) for its support of this work. REFERENCES

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The Changing Meanings of Things: Found Objects and Inscriptions in Social Interaction Jürgen Streeck

It is com m on p ractice in the disciplines th a t study h u m an com m u n icatio n th a t categorical distinctions are draw n betw een the various m edia, sym bol system s, and m odalities of com m unication. Thus, one com m only distinguishes betw een spoken and w ritten com m uni­ cation, betw een w riting and draw ing, w riting and ges­ ture, and betw een in stru m en tal and sym bolic acts. But these clear-cut distinctions are ab stractions. They posit only canonical uses of the m edia and m ake it difficult to describe sym bolic activities th a t fall "in betw een” the categories and m erge com ponents from m ore th an one or th a t are the pro d u cts of "non-canonical” enactm ents of practices. Social in teractio n is full of such hybrid, non-canonical acts. Social in teractio n is a vociferous process, always hungry for stuff out of w hich signs, symbols, and scenic arran g em en ts can be m ade, and it often ap p ro p riates for its ow n p urposes o th er props such as objects on the table, o r m ediated practices such as w riting, diagram m ing, o r doodling. Moreover, in the course of social interaction, physical objects often accu­ m ulate situ ated m eanings over tim e - m eanings over and beyond those w ith w hich they en ter the scene, b u t w hich they m ay retain th ro u g h o u t and beyond the cur­ ren t encounter. This com plexity of com m unication in a w orld largely m ade up of h u m an artifacts has as of late com e into view. R esearchers studying com m unication in the w orkplace (Drew & H eritage, 1992; H utchins & Klausen, 1996) as well as hum an-m achine com m unication (Suchm an, 1987) have suggested th at "talk and activity in such a setting m utually stru ctu re each o th er in ways th at require a rethinking of some of the basic fram ew orks for the analysis of h u m an in teractio n ” (Goodwin, 1993: 1). It is of particu lar im portance to take account of the fact th at quite often in such settings, "m eaning” and "infor­ m ation” are not only inherent in linguistic and em bod­ ied com ponents of the com m unicative process - talk and gesture - b u t are distributed across a variety of places and rep resen tatio n systems (Lynch & Woolgar, 1988), w hich include internal as well as external knowledge

representations . 1 Meaning therefore does not only flow through symbols and expressive forms that make up our ancient and prim ary tools for com m unication, and it is not only contextualized by the m aterial environment; rather, the environment, through the interpretive uses the participants make of it in their situated activities, becomes a component of the process of comm unication. States of artifacts retain memories of local interaction (Hutchins & Klausen, 1996: 28). In this process, the minds of the interactants interact with the minds of previous genera­ tions that are embodied in m aterial culture . 2 Among the mediated and symbolic activities that are often carried out alongside social interaction are ones that involve inscrip­ tions - writing, diagramming, calculating, and so on. Inscriptions are as im portant in the business world as they are in science labs; in fact, writing in the Western hem i­ sphere appeared for the first tim e as an accounting system in the context of trade - in the function of "external m em ­ ory storage” (Donald, 1991; Schmandt-Besserat, 1996). 1

2

Among the scholars who have argued for a “distributed” view of meaning making are Hutchins (2006) and Ingold (2000), who have emphasized that human symbolic activity begins with gath­ ering meaning from the environment rather than depositing it in it. Much of the initial and continuing motivation of this line of research has been provided by anthropologists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists who have studied human cognition at work in real-life settings such as grocery stores (Lave, Murtaugh, & de la Rocha, 1984) and suggested that the human mind is not only located in individual brains but also in environments, which, after all, are themselves largely human-made (Norman, 1993b). Cognition therefore ought to be studied as a situated activity in which individual skills and knowledge interact with (a) skills and knowledge in other individuals, and (b) mind as it is embodied in artifacts. The “unit of analysis” of this approach is the "cultur­ ally constituted functional group rather than an individual mind,” and it describes cognitive processes by tracing the movement of information through a system,” which includes “the organiza­ tion of the tools in the work environment” (Hutchins & Klausen, 1996: 15). The approach is known as "distributed cognition” or “socially shared cognition” (see Bruner, 1990; Hutchins, 1995, 2006, and this volume; Norman, 1993a, 1993b; Resnick, Levine, & Behrend, 1990; Scribner, 1984). For views of gesture informed by this view, see Becvar, Hollan & Hutchins (2005) and Streeck (2009).

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STREECK

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This chapter describes articulations of speech, ges­ tures, objects and th eir arrangem ents, and graphic signs. In the first part, I describe how things becom e situated symbols. The p articip an ts' actions and conversation are interw oven w ith m aterial objects and arrangem ents th at becom e, both physically and w ith respect to the m ean­ ings th a t they em body for the parties, products and external m em ories of these very actions and conversa­ tion. Things th at en ter the interaction as 'ju s t things” becom e com ponents of scenic arrangem ents in w hich social m eanings are em bodied. The things explored in the first p art of the chapter are prefabricated: They exist p rio r to the scene. In the second part, I exam ine artifacts th at are created in situ : graphic m arks m ade on a sheet of paper. In both sections, both the making of the artifacts (the handling and arranging of objects, the m aking of graphic m arks) and the products of these m akings are relevant. The process of m aking is drama­ tized (Goffman, 1959), and the artifacts, once they have been m ade, altered, or arranged, endure, em bodying over tim e socially significant senses in ways th at ephem ­ eral speech and gesture usually do not. The m aterial for this study are two episodes from a business negotiation betw een two G erm an entrepre­ neurs. Antpöhler, the ow ner of a com pany w ith approx­ im ately one hundred employees th at produces cookies, and Destrooper, the ow ner of a firm th a t m arkets his products, have com e together to flesh out a new m arket­ ing plan: In addition to selling the cookies th at A ntpöhlers com pany produces in large quantities and sells to w hole­ salers, they w ant to directly m arket sm aller quantities of top-shelf cookies to hotels and restaurants. The idea is th at these establishm ents m ight sell single units (e.g., a florentine) along w ith cups of coffee. The advantage of this strategy, besides reaching a new segm ent of the m arket, w ould be th a t it m ight w ork during the sum m er season, w hen people in G erm any do not tend to eat cook­ ies in large quantities. However, such direct-m arketing requires an entirely new negotiation of the term s of trade because it involves a m uch less advantageous labor-profit ratio on the distributor's side. D estrooper needs to get a larger share of the profit th an he usually does, and w hat is at issue here is: how m uch.

FOUND OBJECTS We enter the negotiation after Antpöhler, the m anufac­ turer, and Destrooper, the m arketing m an, have concluded the strategic planning phase of the negotiation and are en route to the profit-calculation phase. In betw een these two stages they com pare A ntpöhlers cookies with ones m ade by the com petitors, w hich D estrooper has brought along. In a previous publication (Streeck, 1996), I have described how one of the cookies produced by the com ­ p etitor is dem onstratively test-eaten by A ntpöhler and in the process transform ed into a sample (Goodm an, 1978),

Figure 5.1. Antpöhler inspects competitor cookie.

Figure 5.2. Antpöhler test-eats competitor cookie. th at is, an object th at comes to represent the com peti­ to r’s line of products (Figures 5.1 and 5.2). The cookie becom es a local convention, an index - a m aterial object w ith inherent m aterial properties, but w ith additional, locally elaborated senses. W henever it is used or referred to during the fu rther course of this negotiation - for example, as a tool used in gestures or as a target of p o int­ ing gestures and gaze - it is filled, not only w ith cream , b u t w ith situated m eanings. This entirely m undane scene dem onstrated how hum an action and its objects and tools becom e inter­ twined: Actions such as sam pling, probing, exploring, and talking about not only establish the intrinsic qual­ ities of things, b u t also inscribe intersubjective qualities on them . At the sam e time, through the ways in w hich he dram atizes his m undane acts, the businessm an estab­ lishes him self as an expert-eater, as som eone dem onstra­ bly capable of teasing out the qualities of an edible object through its skilled incorporation - as a professional (Goffman, 1959: 30-34). The interlocutor's analogous response confirm ed this double transform ation - of the agent and his object: After Antpöhler has finished eat­ ing the cookie, D estrooper picks up the alum inum bag

69

the c h a n g in g m e a n in g s o f t h in g s

American m arket.” W hat the bag contributes to the m ulti­ m odal utterance is the m eaning of "freshness” that is car­ ried over from its prior exploration: In other words, the conveyed meaning is "without the quality th at the foil has come to represent - freshness - you have no chance to get into the American market. (Transcript 5.1)” 1

A

Wenn Sie den Amerikanern zum Beispiel If you don't guarantee to the Americans for exam ple

2

nich garantieren daß die Ware mindestens sechs Monate hält, that the product stays fresh for at least six months, bag discarded

____ I___ I I Figure 5.3. Destrooper inspects competitor aluminum bag.

3

(. ) haben Sie keine Chance (.) y o u ’ll have no chance at all

4

D

reinzukommen to get in ( )

5

A

überhaupt in den Markt zu kommen. to even get in the market.

Transcript 5.1.

Figure 5.4. Destrooper fondles competitor aluminum bag. that contained it, subjects it to system atic haptic explo­ ration, or "active touch” (Gibson, 1962), and then solicits A ntpöhlers assessm ents of the intrinsic and functional properties of the co m petitors bag - which in the p ro ­ cess turns into an index of the durability of florentines, both A ntpöhlers and those m ade by the com petition (Figures 5.3 and 5.4). It is this alum inum bag and the small box that con­ tains it that I now w ant to focus on. These objects become implicated in another type of collaborative action that, prim a facie, seems to be of a purely functional kind but at the sam e tim e achieves interaction-organizing ends. First D estrooper puts the alum inum bag away. Antpöhler fondles it and picks it up, idly, w ithout any overt purpose. He puts it down and picks it up again, all the while talking about w hat his com pany does to guarantee that its cookies rem ain fresh for at least six m onths. The bag thus rem ains in play as a generic index to the topic of the conversation that was hrst launched by its exploration. Eventually, the bag is discarded. However, it is p u t away in a gestural fash­ ion: Antpöhler, who is still holding it, m akes a dismissive gesture with it that is coupled with the phrase "no chance” (in line 3 below) in the clause "no chance to get into the

In this sequence, then, the m eaning th a t the object has acquired in the course of this interaction is m ade to artic­ ulate with the m eaning of the concurrent utterance. It is incorporated in a gesture, which is itself but a com ­ m unicative m odulation of an instrum ental act: R ather than ju st putting the bag down, Antpöhler constructs the trajectory of his act so th at it acquires the form of a dis­ missive gesture (a quick dow nw ard wave). This is a very econom ical way of com bining m ultiple resources to gen­ erate a single complex action/utterance. But the object then becom es im plicated in yet an other transform ative act, in which its extrisinc, form al (esthetic) features are extracted. This transform ation begins w hen A ntpöhler puts the alum inum bag away. He puts it atop a stack of discarded cookie boxes th at Destooper has arranged on the table. While this stack is m ade up of "behavioral residue” (Gosling, 2008), it is conscientiously arranged (Figure 5.5). Psychologists tend to think about the ways in w hich people arrange objects in piles, stacks, rows, and so on in individualistic, dispositional term s. The neatness of a pile betrays the acto rs "conscientious­ ness” (Gosling, 2008: ch. 2). However, w hen two or m ore people collaborate, the m aking of stacks, piles, and o th er arrangem ents can serve as a code, a set of practices th a t draw on inventories of structural and representational possibilities. Observe the following sequence then, w hich comes off as a neat p air of pairs. First, Antpöhler puts the alum inum bag on the stack of boxes (Figure 5.6); then, D estrooper rearranges it so th at it is flush with the rest of the stack (Figure 5.7); Antpöhler adds another bag (Figure 5.8), and D estrooper aligns it again (Figure 5.9). At the sam e time, they m ark the com pletion of this phase of their interaction by an exchange of ju n ctu re m arkers, so and gut ("good”), Transcript 5.2.

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70

Figure 5.6. Destrooper rearranges aluminum bag.

Figure 5.7. Antpöhler discards second aluminum bag.

6

D

Naja gut, lassen wer's. So!

Figure 5.8. Destrooper rearranges second aluminum bag.

Allright, let's forget about it. Now!

7

A

Gut! Good!

Transcript 5.2. This is a scenic sym bol for the com pletion of the activity, the topic, and the phase of the negotiation. The cerem ony is interlaced w ith a speech act sequence th at form ulates this sense. In this regulatory, ritual-like sequence, certain features are abstracted from the cookie packages that b ear no intrinsic relationship at all to the topic of the con­ versation. Now, the affordances for esthetic actions that the cookie boxes offer are extracted: the square shape, the availability of several of a kind, and the like. These features are selected by the action th at is perform ed with them : Simply, D estrooper extracts th eir squareness by m aking them flush. We can represent this by a simple diagram (Figure 5.9). The action-sequence in w hich the pile is arranged enacts a relationship of p arity and cooperation, w hereas the enduring arrangem ent of the boxes in a neatly organized stack is a residue, a m onum ent of interactional closure. Aesthetic features of the boxes and bags are abstracted,

and instrum ental (instrinsic) m eanings as well as locally established indexical references th at the object has previ­ ously acquired (reference to their maker, i.e., the com peti­ tion, to freshness, and so on) are tem porarily suppressed. We can represent the entire history of transform ations of the alum inum bag by another diagram (Figure 5.10). A ntpöhler now engages in a solem n expression of g rat­ itude to D estrooper for showing trust in his company,

Figure 5.9. Gestalt closure in the arranging of boxes and bags.

71

the c h a n g in g m e a n in g s o f t h in g s

action imrm

pnrnaxy

r

inspection

oom/ezsation

gesture

piling up

if

L**~-

semiotic function I— containex

sample---- *- topic - rnaxkéï mieaningiul - discourse baton

linage

Figure 5.10. Transformations of an aluminum bag. 1

A

Herr Destrooper. M ister Destrooper

2

A

Ich danke Ihnen auch für das uns und unserem Hause Let m e thank you for the trust yo u have sh o w n in us and our company,

3

entgegengebrachte Vertrauen?

Transcript 5.3.

while sim ultaneously enacting another scenic symbol of com pletion (Transcript 5.3): He takes a sheet of paper th at is on the table and neatly folds it in the m iddle. In this fashion, som ething th at does not in itself call for closing is transform ed into a scenic display of closure. Here, too, aesthetic features of the object are extracted and applied to convey a sense of the cu rren t situation. It is im portant to note that in these successive transfor­ m ations of m undane objects, their prim ary m eanings and intrinsic features are usually retained: Cookies are cookies, and bags and boxes do not cease to be containers. Prim ary and locally established features and senses can alternate, or articulate one another, or com bine to complex predi­ cations. Different situationally acquired m eanings of the sign can be invoked at different times to anchor referen­ tial expressions or structure and give images to different aspects of the situation at hand. We have seen the alum i­ num bag becom e a sample, a topic-marker, a gesture tool “full of local m eaning/' as well as a com ponent of a com ­ plex construction in which it participates in p art as “just another square." This shifting m ultiplicity of intrinsic and pre-ordained features, locally acquired senses, aesthetic and symbolic affordances, and conceptual and referen­ tial functions is characteristic of all objects that become implicated in collaborative, symbolic action. INSCRIPTIONS A family of practices th at are often enacted along­ side social interaction involves the m aking of inscrip­ tions - writing, diagram m ing, calculating, and so on. Inscriptions have received a great deal of attention, in p articu lar am ong ethnographers of scientific practice 3

who have argued th at “the m ost pow erful explanations [of scientific practice] ... are the ones th a t take w riting and imaging craftsm anship into account" and distin­ guish them from lay practices in term s of “m odifications in the way in w hich groups of people argue w ith one another using paper, signs, prints and diagram s" (Latour, 1990: 22). Each established system of inscription - say, alphabetic writing, arithm etic, technical draw ing - has its own constitutive and regulative rules (D’Andrade, 1984) th at enable and define intelligible expressions th at can be form ed from the com ponents of the system. But w hen they are used in social interaction, these rulesystems often give way to local considerations and sym ­ bolization needs, yielding expressions th a t are given local interpretations, rath er th an interpretations that could be “deduced” from context-free rules of the “system." During their conversation, the two businessm en p ro ­ pose, reject, counterpropose, and write dow n num bers besides other graphic m arks th a t they m ake . 4 The stage for these graphic perform ances is a single sheet of paper th a t A ntpöhler initially places on the table in front of himself, as he readies his body and pen for the m aking of inscrip­ tions. At one level, the sheet - along w ith the established cultural practices for m aking graphic m arks - serves p ri­ m arily cognitive functions: As cognitive artifacts5, graphic m arks facilitate the tasks of calculating and record keep­ ing. At another level, both the particular fashion in which these m arks are m ade and the symbolic structure th a t is gradually assem bled on the sheet serve rhetoricalinteractional functions. Furtherm ore, beyond the m arks th at they m ake in pursuing their accounting tasks, the participants also m ake m arks on this sheet of paper th a t have no functions in solving the instrum ental task, b u t are exclusively occasioned by the process of interaction. The m aking of these signs is of p articu lar im portance to us because it is squarely situated in betw een several canonical practices, drawing, writing, and social interac­ tion. Finally, an im portant feature of inscriptions is w hat Latour has called “im m utability" (Latour, 1990): After they have been com pleted, they do n o t disappear (as 4

3

Amann & Knorr-Cetina (1990); Knorr-Cetina (1981); Latour & Woolgar (1986); Lynch (1985); Lynch & Woolgar (1988).

5

We only examine Antpöhlers penmanship; that of Destrooper cannot be recovered from the videotape. Norman (1993a).

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72

spoken w ords and gestures do), b u t rem ain on the scene as tacit rem inders of previously established senses, avail­ able to be revisited, rem em bered, and changed. After the episode of testing cookies produced by Ant­ pöhler s competitors has come to completion, Destrooper, the m arketing man, requests that they move on to discuss­ ing profit margins: "So, dann lassen Se mal zum Preis kommen!" he says, "Alright, lets talk prices then!” Having removed the objects used in their prior activity, Antpöhler now positions himself in a fashion that indicates readi­ ness for writing: A pen in hand, he has a sheet of paper in front of him. In response to Destrooper s request, he says: 1

A

Ja ( - - ), ich hatte eingangs schon erwähnt daß unsere Ware Well,

2

per Kilo verkauft wird, ( - - ) und das Kilo dieser Ware is sold by the kilo

3

and a kilo of the product

das gesamte Florentinersortiment ( - ) kostet ( - ) the entire assortm ent of florentines

4

Figure 5.11. Antpöhler writes numbers.

I had initially m entioned already that our product

costs

fümfunzwanzich Mark ( - ) und zwanzig Pfennig ( - - ) brutto, twentyfive marks

a

and twenty Pfennige

gross.

]

(1: writes "25, 20 brutto")

Transcript 5.4. As he utters "füm funzw anzich M ark ( - ) u nd zwanzig Pfennig ( — ) b ru tto ”, A ntpöhler w rites "25,20 b ru tto ” in the top left corner of the sheet (Figure 5.11). This inscrip­ tion m ay serve several purposes: As A ntpöhlers exter­ nal memory, for fu rth er calculations, or as a m ark that is visible and therefore shared by the two participants. A ntpöhler com m its an abstract quantity to a m aterial and enduring interaction record and thus preserves it for fur­ th er cognitive, interactive, and graphic tasks. Inscriptions allow us "to p u t the w orld on p ap er and to think about the w orld in term s of those representations” (Olson, 1994). The n um ber becom es a m aterial entity th at can be m anipulated and operated on along w ith other m ate­ rial entities. L atour writes: "Realms of reality th at seem far ap art (m echanics, econom ics, m arketing, scientific organization of work) are inches apart, once flattened out onto the sam e surface. The accum ulation of draw ­ ings in an optically consistent space is ... the 'universal exchanger th at allows work to be planned, dispatched, realized” (Latour, 1990: 54). M any arithm etic operations (addition, subtraction, calculating percentages, etc.) are greatly facilitated by inscriptions, w hich can therefore be regarded as "cognitive artifacts” (N orm an, 1993a). It is in this capacity th at the inscription th at is thus begun is later expanded and used. This instance, how ­ ever, also constitutes a "non-canonical case.” As he dem ­ onstrates the financial im plications of the dem ands that D estrooper m akes on behalf of the distributor, Antpöhler writes "50 °/o u n d ern eath "25,20,” draws a line, and writes "33%” u n derneath (Transcript 5.5). The graphic m arks are arranged as if in an addition schem a. B ut no figures are "really” added here. Rather,

w hat Antpöhler dem onstrates is this: Given his own p ro ­ duction price of 25,20 D eutschm arks and D estroopers request to receive 33 percent of the sales price, he m ust add 50 percent to his production price in his calcula­ tion of the sales price. The addition schem a is used in a dem onstrative, "as if” fashion: To add 33 percent "from the top,” I have to add 50 percent to my price. The schem a, in other words, serves persuasive or rhetorical purposes: It simply visualizes the steps of a calculation. Goffman (1959: 30) has called this type of enactm ent "dram atic realization.” Small behavioral m odulations or "re-keyings” (Goffman, 1974: ch. 2) can m ark the difference betw een "doing” and "staging” an act, th at is, turning it into a "perform ance.” The difference is one of focus and type of attention. "Staged” acts involve an elem ent of selfreferentiality: The actor dem onstrates aw areness of the m an n er in w hich he or she acts, at the sam e tim e w orking tow ard draw ing the audience's attention to this 1

A

Wenn ich Ihnen jetzt ( - ) und Sie signalisieren ja If I now give you

2

and what you signal is

dreiunddreißig Prozent ( - ) von oben dreiendreißign Drittel thirtythree percent

from the top thirtythree and a third

wenn ich das richtig in Erinnerung habe

3

if I remember this correctly rL

4

Mhm.

D

Mhm.

5

A

das wären fünfzig prozent Aufschlag? ( - ) r 1 H J that w ould be fifty percent added It

6

D

Hm. Mm.

7

A

Dann verblieben mir hier r 2L

i

J

then I would be left here with

8

beziehungsweise ( - ) Sie hÄtten ihre dreiendreißig Prozent

3l 1 or rather

4[

1

you w ould have your thirty three percent

(1: writes "50%"; 2: draws line; 3: points to D.; 4: writes "33%")

Transcript 5.5.

THE

manner. Som etim es, even a brief gap in a turn-at-talk - a minim al delay in the utterance of a w ord - can suffice to dem onstrate self-referentiality and self-awareness and attract attention to the word (or its delivery). These sm all but interactionally im plicative distinctions in the conduct of social and instrum ental action deserve m uch m ore scrutiny than they have previously been given and I am able to give them h ere . 6 Here, they function to prepare the scene, set the stage for the perform ance, and establish a connection betw een inscription and interac­ tion. Once this nexus is established as a fram ew ork for the conversation, symbols and actions that m ight other­ wise appear incongruent or unintelligible becom e coher­ ent, relevant, and m eaningful. At the sam e time, they establish the sheet that A ntpöhler has in front of him as a stage on w hich im portant symbolic exchanges can take place. T hroughout this episode, A ntpöhler inscribes num bers on this sheet in a fashion so th at the sheet is partitioned into two equal, vertical halves. This p arti­ tion becom es a m ediating structure, an interface for the interaction. The social and econom ic relations betw een the two parties are spatialized, and this spatialization is given perm anence through the arrangem ent of graphic marks on a sheet of paper. So far, a graphic interface - an external, visible, and therefore jointly accessible stru ctu re - has em erged as a by-product of the participants' instrum ental actions. The fashion in which these activities are carried out is adapted to local interactional circum stances, and the m arks that result from them and th at rem ain in the interaction space of the encounter are m ore th an the residue of calcula­ tions: They em body locally constituted social m eanings for the parties. In the context of face-to-face interaction, operations such as taking notes, calculating, and draw ­ ing involve m ore than the p u rsu it of cognitive or in stru ­ mental goals: Inevitably, to the extent to w hich they are visible to both parties, the actions th at constitute them also participate in the interactional and socio-symbolic negotiation of the encounter, and it is not uncom m on that the p articipants deliberately draw on their inherent symbolic potential to achieve purely interactional ends. In the described case, the social-organizational potential of the cognitive-instrum ental actions th at are carried out stems from the fact th at these actions are makings , that is, productions of enduring m aterial entities th at persist in the space of the interaction beyond the activities for which they were m ade and in which they originally fig­ ured. In o ther words, the social potential is inherent in the activities' products. One of the m ost ubiquitous and versatile com ponents of inscriptions is the line. In the context of arithm etic operations, (straight) lines indicate sum m ation or the com pletion of som e operation, am ong oth er possibilities.

6

73

c h a n g in g m e a n in g s of t h in g s

Goffman (1974) provides numerous important distinctions between different “keys” in which action and interaction can be conducted.

Lines reveal the dual nature of external cognitive opera­ tions with particular clarity: They are m aterial, visible, and enduring products of m otor acts, and these m otor acts themselves can be executed in different ways - they can be accentuated, formalized, or embellished. On sev­ eral other occasions during this negotiation of profit m ar­ gins, Antpöhler draws a double sum m ation line. This act is gesturalized, comes off as a "dram atized inscription" (Latour), m ade w ith considerable effort and aplom b. This is one example: 1 2

A

Wir müßten ihn also auf (- ) achtundzwanzig Mark anheben We would have to raise it to twentyeight marks ( - ) damit Sie ( - ) eine Spanne von dreiunddreißig Prozent haben.

d

1

so that you

get a margin of thirtythree percent.

(1 : draws double line)

Transcript 5.6. The locally conveyed sense of this inscription derives from its sim ultaneous participation and place w ithin two concurrent activity systems: the calculation and the conversation. While it is m ade w ithin an appropriate slot in the sequence of actions th a t together constitute the w ritten calculation, nam ely after all num bers have been w ritten down, before the end-result is inscribed, the line is also coupled w ith a spoken w ord - the (formal) second person-pronoun Sie - w hich bears the m ain accent of the sentence and is delivered w ith em phasis: We thus perceive the draw ing of the double line as a gesture of em phasis. The gestalt of this graphic m ark conveys a sense of parity, equality, fairness. Here it is m ade w ithin the context of a linguistic act in w hich the speaker explains w hat he w ould need to do to m eet the dem ands of the other. While the graphic act has a place in the activity "calculation" and is gesturalized and m etaphorizes parity, its placem ent in the tu rn conveys the sense "parity for you.” W hat happens here can be described as a blending 7 of two symbol- and activity-systems (or practices): A (behav­ ioral and/or symbolic) u n it th at belongs to one activ­ ity system and is used (or m ade) in line w ith the rules and requirem ents of this system sim ultaneously fulfills a function in another symbolic realm , w hich relates not to the instrum ental activity, b u t to the interaction and the social relationship th at is negotiated in and through it. A graphic m ark belonging to the specific inscription practices th at are used for arithm etics (e.g., the su m m a­ tion line) is produced in such a fashion th at it and the act of m aking it also serve as m arkers w ithin the ongo­ ing dialogue. A com ponent of the system "inscription" (or "arithm etics") is recruited for a secondary job w ithin the activity "gesture," specifically "interactional" or "dis­ course-organizational gesture." Typically in cases like this, the in stru m en tal or cog­ nitive system or practice supplies raw m aterials for an 7

Compare Hutchins's (2005) adaptation of Fauconniers (1997) term.

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74

in teractio n al system (in this case, gesture). It is suf­ ficient th a t the cognitive-instrum ental system is a cti­ vated (i.e., m ade relev an t in and for th e in teractio n at hand); once it is, its co m ponents can m ake cam eo ap p earan ces in the realm of so cial-in teractional sym ­ bolization. "B lending” tw o p ractices m eans th a t a m eaningful gestalt is projected from one system onto the other, u n related one: W hereas the system s or p ra c ­ tices are p artly fused in the given case (a su m m atio n line is a "n atu ral” ju n c tu re m arker), the system s (a rith ­ m etics, gesture) are fu ndam entally sep arate and n o t intrinsically related. This is different, for exam ple, from cases w here inscrip tio n s - for exam ple, d iagram s - are interpreted w ithin a n o th e r system , for exam ple gestures (Ochs, G onzales, & Jacoby, 1996): In th e latter case, th ere is an in trin sic relatio n sh ip betw een the two uses of the system , and one p ractice elaborates p ro d u cts of th e other. After A ntpöhler has w ritten dow n a few num bers, as he explicates the problem s posed by D estrooper s request and outlines his own counterproposals, occasionally, while he u tters a num ber, he points to a location on his sheet. Som etim es, he u tters a n u m b er and sim ultaneously points to one th at is actually there on the sheet; at other tim es, he points to "virtual” num bers. He "pretends to point,” if you will. Or, to p u t it differently, he schem at­ ically incorporates com ponents of a currently activated activity system into th e visual-gestural d ram atization of talk. For example, he m ay try to m ake an argum ent m ore persuasive by pointing to a n u m b er th a t "m ight as well have been w ritten.” At oth er tim es, A ntpöhler w rites a n um b er or a w ord in the air as he utters it. This is the case in T ranscript 5.7. 1 2

A

und ich gebe Ihnen diese dreiunddreißigndrittel Prozent J 1 Kondition... ... and I give you these thirtythree and a third percent commission...

(1: 'writes" '33 1/3" in the air) Transcript 5.7. Although this perform ance (and others of the sam e kind) am ounts to little m ore th an a gestural ornam ent, it also seem s to betray a cultural belief am ong professionals w ho routinely work w ith inscriptions, nam ely th at w hat is w ritten down som ehow has an enhanced ontological status. F or A ntpöhler an d his counterpart, this practice is so h abitual th at it even perm eates their talk during tim es w hen no actual inscriptions are m ade: The habit asserts itself in gestures of writing. The m ost intricate exam ple of such blendings of activity and gestural systems occurs during A ntpöhler s utterance of a "big w ord” - a com plex business term , vertretbarer Kostendeckungsbeitrag, w hich literally m eans "accept­ able contribution tow ard covering the costs” and m ight be translated as "cost-return-ratio.”

1

A

2

Bei achtundzwanzig Prozent behalte ich ( - ) unter Umständen At twentyeight percent I potentially keep einen ( - ) vertretbaren ( - ) Kostendeckungsbeitrag ( - ) und

J

an acceptable 3

] 2[

cost-return ratio

]

and

auch einen vertretbaren Gewinn. also acceptable profits. (1, 2: draws two long lines in the air.)

Transcript 5.8. As he utters this phrase, A ntpöhler makes a tw o-part gesture: a sequence of two horizontal long lines draw n in the air. The production of each unit coincides pre­ cisely w ith the uttering of one word. The visual gestalt is unequivocal, and so is the activity system from w hich the gesture is taken: A ntpöhler "underlines” the w ords and thus m akes them out as words th at are w ritten som e­ where. In his enactm ent, he appears like som eone who reads a file and underlines w hat is im portant. Thus, he lends the weight of w ritten docum ents to his w ords as he speaks them . He enacts an inscription-based rhetoric in his em bodim ent of speaking. The bodily practice of m ak­ ing graphic annotations on a w ritten text serves as the m odel for his dram atization of speaking. Once the repertoires and practices of writing and draw­ ing have been mobilized for socio-symbolic uses, the pos­ sibilities for fabricating gestural symbols from them are endless. We understand gestures not only by virtue of their visual forms, but also in term s of their "fit” with a slot w ithin an unfolding action sequence, as well as with the spoken words with which they are coupled. Highly abstract, rudim entary movement components can there­ fore index a broad, diverse, and polym orphous range of meanings. The same is true for graphic marks th at are pro­ duced in gestural fashion in the course of an interaction. Made in the way of gestures on a surface, they can function descriptively, rhetorically, and in various other capacities. We have already encountered instantiations of the m ost basic of all graphic m arks - the straight line. In those instances, the line figured as p art of an established practice b u t was produced in gestural ways so that it sim ultaneously served purposes of interactional symbol­ ization. In other cases, lines are draw n in the m anner of iconic gestures. Several times in the process of explain­ ing the operations of his com pany (in attem pts to dem ­ onstrate th a t his interlocutors requests are unrealistic), A ntpöhler draws a line on his sheet to symbolize "opera­ tion” or "production” (in German: Betrieb). 1

A

Wenn ich den Betrieb in eine zweite Schicht fahre ( - - )

J

1

If I have to drive the operation in a second shift,

2

hab ich einen ganz anderen Kostendeckungbeitrag. I have a totally different cost-return ratio.

(1 : draws a long line on the sheet.) Transcript 5.9.

the

c h a n g in g m e a n in g s o f th in g s

75

In the conditional clause (line 1), the verb (fahren, "drive") highlights the dynam ic ch aracter of a busi­ ness: it is in m otion, "driven." The root of the noun (Trieb, "drive") m atches this sem antic profile (Betrieb can denote "company" or "enterprise," b u t also "com­ motion"). The graphic gesture w hich A ntpöhler m akes as he utters Betrieb enhances this sem antic gestalt: It represents A ntpöhlers com pany as an ongoing operation that is perpetually in m otion; it stresses continuity. Only one am ong the m any possible aspects of the basic sign "line" is thus activated: A line could also m ark a b o und­ ary, for exam ple (and thus sym bolize distinction, sep­ aration, and so on). By draw ing a long line, A ntpöhler produces a graphic and thus enduring representation of the continuous production process th at is at the heart of his company. That the significance of the line as a representation of the "operation" is intersubjectively shared am ong these parties is revealed in an instance in w hich D estrooper points w ith his pen to the line on A ntpöhlers sheet, as he refers to the production process. This comes about in a two-stage enactm ent, im m ediately after Antpöhler concludes one of his proposals. D estrooper initiates a counterproposal w ith the preface: "Ja halt, dann m achn wers doch so" - "Well hold on, then lets do it this way." As he utters this preface, he m akes a circular, left-handed gesture w ith an extended index hnger, pointing first to A ntpöhlers, then to his own segm ent of the table. The gesture visualizes a connection and thus suggests coher­ ence and equivalence betw een the two plans. Then, with his right hand, D estrooper picks up his pen, holds it at one end so th at it form s a long baton, moves his hand far into A ntpöhlers transaction segm ent, and points to the line on his sheet, alm ost touching it w ith the tip of the pen. It arrives there exactly as he u tters the word

Produktion. 1

D

Ja: halt, dann mach-was doch so:, dann kann ich

J

] 2[

Well hold on, then let's do it this w ay,

2

3

]

then I can

in den Zeiten wo Sie die Produktion nich ausgelastet haben,

31

]

during times

w hen you're not running at full capacity

J

1

this m eaning over time. In another segment, in con­ trast, it is strictly the m otor act of draw ing a line, w hich enhances and supports the verbal form ulation; the result­ ing sign is of no im m ediate relevance (although it m ight take on relevance if it is revisited later). W hen he rejects a counterproposal by Destrooper, Antpöhler draws a quick line while he utters the idiom atic phrase, über die Bühne ziehen, literally "to drag across the stage," w hich is a highly figurative way of saying "to get som ething done," "to carry out a plan," or sim ply "to do som ething." Here, the m otor enactm ent corresponds to the literal m eaning of "drag"; the line rem aining on the sheet has no signifi­ cance for the interaction. 1

A

Gut ( - - ) Sie können sich vorstellen daß wir für diese Monate G ood

2

you can im agine that during those m onths

( - ) eigene Aktivitäten ( - ) im Partnerbereich Detmolt ( - ) w e w ou ld like to carry out our o w n activities in the Detm olt area

3

äh schon über die Bühne ziehen möchten.

J

1

(1: quickly draws a short line)

Transcript 5.11. A particularly interesting example occurs in the course of a conditional clause in Transcript 5.12 below. Here, the linguistic form ulation is congruent w ith the action of putting som ething on paper. A ntpöhler in this utter­ ance claim s th at even D estroopers hypothetical and playful dem and to get a new car from Antpöhler could be feasible if they got the appropriate retu rn s "on paper," th at is, "on the books." This m etonym y is com m on in the business world. But here it nicely congrues w ith the local act of draw ing a line on paper. As he utters Umsätze ("returns"), Antpöhler draw s a line. The noun and the gesture are produced sim ultaneously and jointly p artic­ ipate in the figuration of "return.” The linguistic form u­ lation not only congrues w ith the gestural inscription; it also reflexively exposes it as an act of p utting som ething on paper. The phrase "on paper" connects to the act and the content of the talk. If the term were not reserved for another m eaning, we could call this a double-bind.

( - ) versorg ich Sie mit äh öh mit Aufträgen. provide you w ith uh uh orders.

1

A

Au:ch das ließe sich rechnen. Even that might add up.

(1: makes circular gesture with left hand; 2: lifts right hand; 3: takes pen; 4: points to "production-line" with tip of pen)

Transcript 5.10. This action dem onstrates th a t the m eaning of the line as a representation of "production," "enterprise," "opera­ tion" is now shared by both parties. An inscription com prises b o th an act (inscribing) and a graphic m ark th a t results from it (e.g., a line); either aspect can be foregrounded in a given context. In the given examples, w hereas the draw ing of the line is a m otor-sign conveying a specific sense, the m ark resulting from the act em bodies the sam e m eaning, b u t it retains

2

Wenn wir die dementsprechenden Umsätze ( - ) aufs Papier kriegn

,[

1

2[

]

3[

1

If we get the appropriate returns on paper.

(1: readies hand for drawing; 2: slowly draws horizontal line; 3: rapidly draws vertical line)

Transcript 5.12. But Antpöhler subsequently finds him self dissatisfied with the m etaphor "on paper," pointing out that the issue is not simply to get the return on the books or on paper, but rath er to feed them back into the ongoing cycle of produc­ tion. Antpöhler constructs a complex, highly m etaphorical image - production, product, sales, and new orders are

STREECK

76

figured as a “turning wheel” - and supports his evocative account with several gestures, the last of which is a circu­ lar m otion corresponding to the turning of a wheel. 1

A

Beziehungsweise nich nur auf's Papier,

2

sondern in die Produktion, daß die Produktion produziert, ( - ) 2[ 1 3[ 1 but into the production,

3

]

,[

Or rather not only on paper.

that the production produces,

daß Sie dann diese Produktion verkaufen ( - ) that you then sell the product

J

1

gestures but, instead of being derived from a locally acti­ vated activity system, belong to a broader cultural vocab­ ulary of graphic signs. For example, as he prefaces one of his proposals, Antpöhler draw s an arrow on his sheet of paper; it points to the location where he is about to w rite down num bers. 1

A

Der zwei: te Weg ( - - ) is eine noch ganz andere Überlegung.

d

The second way

]

is an entirely different thought.

(1: draws arrow) 4

daß dann wieder nachgeordert wird und

5[

1

Transcript 5.14.

that new orders come in and

5

dieses wunderschöne Rad sich dreht.

6[

that this wonderful wheel keeps turning.

]

(1: draws quick "negation line"; 24: small, unspecific gestures; 5: points to line on sheet; 6: makes 'turning' gesture)

Transcript 5.13. Here, then, the act of inscribing a gesture leads to self­ correction, both of the verbal form ulation and of the visual act: The turning of a wheel is presented as a b et­ ter im age th an getting returns “on p ap er” (and the cor­ responding draw ing of a line). All of these exam ples of graphic gestures are iconic and m etaphorical signs at the sam e time. To visualize “p roduction” by a sim ple line is an abstract, not very descriptive, strategy. B ut m any “iconic” or descriptive gestures are sim ilarly abstract - form al m inim ization is in the n ature of gestural im agery (cf. Arnheim, 1969; Streeck, 2008). On the other hand, in som e cases, the ges­ tural im age is directly - and ra th e r literally - related to the m eaning of a w ord or phrase, b u t then the phrase is a m etaphor (e.g., über die Bühne ziehen). Once again we see how situated m eaning is fabricated through the com bining of a very simple, locally available form (i.e., a line, a circular gesture), the m eaning(s) of concurrent or adjacent linguistic signs, and the sequential context of the enactm ent. Despite the differences in the ways in w hich they relate to and com bine w ith the m eaning of w ords spoken in the dialogue, all of the gestural inscriptions th at I have exam ined in this section are affiliated w ith the content of talk. However, gestures can also relate to the pragmatics of com m unication: They can visualize speech acts, direct the interlocutors attention, project u tterance structures, address turn-taking tasks, and so on. Gestures th at serve these functions have been called rhetorical, pragm atic, or interactive gestures (Bavelas et al., 1992; Kendon, 2004: chs. 11, 12; Streeck, 2006; 2009: ch. 8 ). I have exam ined cases of secondary pragm atic-gestural uses of com ponents of instrum ental activity system s above, for exam ple the gesturalization of sum m ation lines. One also finds instances of inscriptions th at serve as pragm atic

The draw ing of an arrow focuses attention on a spe­ cific region of the sheet, and in this context prepares and indexes an im m inent next phase of the shared activity, for example the offering of a Plan B. There are m any instances throughout this negotiation w here m inim al graphic m arks such as a quick and short diagonal line, two lines crossing one another, or a checkm ark - signs th at in som e cases are actually m ade, in other cases only sim ulated above the sheet of paper - serve discourseorganizational purposes. Their uses are not m uch differ­ ent from the pragm atic uses of lines th at I have previ­ ously examined, and I therefore do not pursue them any further.

SEMIOTIC BRICOLAGE Looking at a single negotiation betw een two Germ an entrepreneurs, I have exam ined instances of (the m aking of) graphic m arks th at fall som ew here betw een gestures and signs th at belong to some culturally established sign system. I have suggested th at these graphic signs repre­ sent a situated hybridization of symbolic and instrum en­ tal and/or representation practices: Units th at prim arily “belong to” w riting sim ultaneously participate in a figu­ rative, non-canonical fashion in the system “talking-in­ interaction.” The results are hybrid acts/m arks that serve instrum ental and socio-symbolic purposes at the sam e time. To understand how these acts/m arks function, I m ust take their hybridity or “in-betw een-ness” seriously, because it is the ways in w hich com ponents of the two systems are blended - the figurative possibilities of one system once its com ponents are projected onto another th at is at the heart of the logic of these sym bolizations. We have seen th at these acts/m arks - “real” or “sim u­ lated” inscriptions - can support both the content and the rhetorical order of talk: Inscriptions can be the equivalent of iconic or descriptive gestures, but they can also con­ tribute to the social organization of talk. G esturalizations of instrum ental and representational acts th at belong to systems like accounting, record keeping, arithm etic, and so on can figure prom inently in the dram atic realization of talking-in-interaction.

THE

77

c h a n g in g m e a n in g s of t h in g s

There ap p ear to be few differences betw een graphic gestures and gestures m ade w ith the naked hands. Rather, varieties of w riting and draw ing, along w ith the circum stance th at the speaker has a pen in hand and a sheet of p ap er in front of him, are sim ply locally available resources out of w hich sym bolic gestures are fashioned. Social in teraction, I have said in the beginning, is a vociferous process, always hungry for symbolic m aterial th at can be used w hen a creative sym bolization m ust be achieved. And yet, w hat d istin ­ guishes sym bolic inscriptions from "ordinary" gestures is that they leave traces, th a t they are, in a m ore literal sense, "m akings" or "m oldings" - th a t th eir products endure: W hatever is m ade rem ain s on the scene and can potentially be used again, o r modified, elaborated, and em bellished. B ecause they rem ain on the scene after the m om ent in w hich they are produced, inscriptions and "m onum ents" such as piles, stacks, or arran g em ents of objects can becom e targets or com ponents of furth er symbolic acts. I have not attem pted to system atize and classify these phenom ena betw een action, gesture, and inscription, nor to arrange them in a taxonomy. And I doubt that this is possible. W hat I have found, rather, are num er­ ous instances of bricolage (Lévi-Strauss, 1966) in which locally m eaningful signs are fashioned from locally avail­ able m aterials, or by extending a sign beyond its canoni­ cal realm of application and projecting it onto a different dom ain. It m ight very well be th at this is the canonical fashion in which symbols are invented in social interac­ tion, and it m ay very well be representative of the ways in which the hum an brain symbolizes (Deacon, 1997). No m atter w hether we study language or gesture or representations th at involve m aterial things, we always face the h um an propensity for incessant sym bolization and thus deal, not with dead matter, b u t with living processes, not w ith "ergon" b u t "energeia"(Hum boldt, 1988 [1836]). W hen we need to symbolize som ething, hum ans take whatever m aterial comes their way. It is the transfer, the schem atic projection, that counts, because it is w hat we call "making sense.” Making sense has a lot to do with making, because sense needs m aterial forms. Among the entities th at have form s and th a t are capable of generat­ ing images are words, things, hand shapes, and m arks on paper, and one respect in which they differ from one another is how long they rem ain on the scene as social facts.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Versions of parts of this chapter have previously appeared in Human Studies (Streeck, 1996) and Journal °f Pragmatics (Streeck & Kallmeyer, 2001); perm ission to republish was granted by the editor-in-chief of Human Studies and by Elsevier Science. I wish to thank W erner

Kallmeyer for his contributions and Charles Goodwin for his insightful com m ents on a prior version of the p re­ sent chapter. REFERENCES

Amann, K., & Knorr-Cetina, K. (1990). The fixation of (visual) evidence. In M. Lynch & S. Woolgar (Eds.), Representation in Scientific Practice (pp. 85-121). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Amheim, R. (1969). Visual thinking. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bavelas, J., Chovil, N., Lawrie, D. A., & Wade, A. (1992). Interactive gestures. Discourse Processes, 15, 469-489. Becvar, L. A., Hollan, J., & Hutchins, E. (2005). Hands as mol­ ecules: Representational gestures used for developing theory in a scientific laboratory. Semiotica, 156(1), 89-112. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. D’Andrade, R. G. (1984). Cultural meaning systems. In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture Theoiy. Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion (pp. 88-121). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deacon, T. Q. (1997). The symbolic species: The co-evolution of language and the brain. New York: W.W. Norton. Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the modem mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Drew, P, & Heritage, J. (Eds.). (1992). Talk at work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fauconnier, G. (1997). Mappings in thought and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gibson, J. J. (1962). Observations on active touch. Psychological Review, 69, 477-491. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis. New York: Harper & Row. Goodman, N. (1978). Ways of worldmaking. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Goodwin, C. (1993). Perception, technology and interaction on a scientific research vessel. Unpublished paper. Revised version: (1995). Seeing in Depth. Social Studies of Science, 25, 237-274. Gosling, S. (2008). Snoop. What your stuff says about you. New York: Basic Books. Humboldt, W. V. (1988 [1836]). On language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hutchins, E. (2005). Material anchors for conceptual blends. Journal of Pragmatics, 37, 1555-1577. Hutchins, E. (2006). The distributed cognition perspective on human interaction. In N. J. Enfield & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Roots of Human Sociality (pp. 375-398). London: Berg. Hutchins, E., & Klausen, T. (1996). Distributed cognition in an airline cockpit. In Y. Engeström & D. Middleton (Eds.), Cognition and Communication at Work (pp. 15-34). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge. Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knorr-Cetina, K. (1981). The Manufacture of knowledge. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

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Latour, B. (1990). Drawing things together. In M. Lynch & S. Woolgar (Eds.), Representation in Scientific Practice (pp. 19-67). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lave, J., Murtaugh, M., & de la Rocha, O. (1984). The dialec­ tic of arithmetic in grocery shopping. In B. Rogoff & J. Lave (Eds.), Everyday Cognition. Its Development in Social Context (pp. 67-94). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966). The Savage mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lynch, M. (1985). Art and artifact in laboratory science: A

study of shop work and shop talk in a research laboratory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Lynch, M., & Woolgar, S. (Eds.). (1988). Representation in scien­ tific practice. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Norman, D. (1993a). Things that make us smart. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Norman, D. A. (1993b). Cognition in the head and in the world: An introduction to the special issue on situated action. Cognitive Science, 17, 1-6. Ochs, E., Gonzales, R, & Jacoby, S. (1996). “When I come down I'm in the domain state": Grammar and graphic representa­ tion in the interpretive activity of physicists. In E. Ochs, E. A.

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Schegloff, & S. Thompson (Eds.), Interaction and Grammar (pp. 328-369). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Olson, D. (1994). The World on paper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Resnick, L., Levine, J., & Behrend, S. (1990). Socially shared cog­ nition. New York: American Psychological Association. Schmandt-Besserat, D. (1996). How writing came about. Austin: The University of Texas Press. Scribner, S. (1984). Studying working intelligence. In B. Rogoff & J. Lave (Eds.), Everyday Cognition. Its Development in Social Context (pp. 9-40). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Streeck, J. (1996). How to do things with things: Objets trouvés and symbolization. Human Studies, 19, 365-384. Streeck, J. (2006). Gestures: Pragmatic aspects. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Second Edition, volume 5 (pp. 71-76). Oxford: Elsevier. Streeck, J. (2008). Depicting by gestures. Gesture 8(3), 285-301. Streeck, J. (2009). Gesturecraft. The manu-facture of meaning. Amsterdam: Benjamins, B.V. Streeck, J. & Kallmeyer, W. (2001). Interaction by inscription. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(4), 465-490. Suchman, L. (1987). Plans and situated action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Choreographies of Attention: Multimodality in a Routine Family Activity Eve Tulbert and Marjorie H. Goodwin

IN T R O D U C T IO N :

MULTI MODALITY

IN

DIRECTIVE/

RESPO NSE T R A JE C T O R IE S

Family life like oth er institutions is orchestrated through the organization of activities in space and time. Getting children to do som ething entails moving them from one activity to another, often sim ultaneously to a new space. Directive/response sequences (Fasulo, Loyd, & Padiglione, 2007; C. Goodwin, 2007b; M. H. Goodwin, 2006; Klein, Izquierdo, & Graesch, 2009), including accom panying gestures th at help bodies tow ard the activity-appropriate spaces, constitute a basic resource for accom plishing such activity. In this chapter, o u r focus is on practices for organizing a routine activity all Am erican children are obliged to do: brushing their teeth. W hereas others have investigated the gram m atical forms and accounts that are used by family m em bers to get som ething done (Blum-Kulka, 1997; Ervin-Tripp, 1982), o u r fundam ental concern is the em bodied “chore­ ography” of childrens attention in structuring an every­ day activity. Although each child's lifeworld may appear natural to the children th at grow into it, o u r analysis leads us to consider it a com plex achievem ent (Schegloff, 1987) requiring sustained p aren tal w ork in organizing children's active engagem ent. Family life seem s to depend on certain ecological arrangem ents of attention, choreographies of events, orientations tow ard objects, and tim ings of m ovem ents through space th at are repeated and patterned each day. We first consider how family m em bers create alignm ents in participation fram ew orks so th at they can attend to the directive and display a cooperative stance tow ard it. This m ay entail dislodging children from com peting or concurrent activities, and bounding off activities so that children can h ear and attend to a directive in a focused way. We exam ine the complex and m ultim odal sem i­ otic resources th a t parents draw on w hen they attem pt to shift children's attention from one activity to another. In som e examples, parents' verbal directives and phys­ ical postures are conjoined an d m utually reinforce one another; in other examples, activities overlap in tim e and

in space, creating complex com peting dem ands on chil­ dren's attentional attunem ent. Next, we exam ine how participants move their bodies through physical spaces in order to carry out a course of action, m aking use of artifacts and features of the architecture of the house th at are appropriate to the p articu lar task at hand. These “topographies” of an activity show how routines entail a training of routine bodily m ovem ent vis-à-vis concrete objects and architectures (such as the bathroom sink). Alternative types of stances tow ard the activity are p os­ sible and displayed through the body; interlocutors can either choose to willingly participate in ways that display their engagem ent or refuse to cooperate in the course of action. Carrying out the activity in a way that builds autonom y requires long-term engagem ent in the setting. R ather th an creating a broad distinction betw een chil­ dren's learning through “in ten t participation” training (Rogoff et al., 2003) and explicit verbal training, we find children learning through hybrid and shifting com bina­ tions of teaching styles and m ethods. Children learn both by being in the m idst of ongoing activity and through careful parental m onitoring and verbal and non-vocal assessm ent, as a m ore expert person entrains the novice's body to conduct the activity. Exam ining how the sam e routine is differently structured, perform ed, com m ented upon, and critiqued, we can locate the activity of toothbrushing w ithin larger projects for the form ation of fam ­ ily identities.

DATA AND APPROACH The examples in this study are draw n from video reco rd ­ ings of naturally occurring interaction in families w ho were p a rt of UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Fam ilies (CELF) project. O ur m ethods com bine ethnographic research - including questionnaires providing basic income, ethnicity, and family inform ation and sem istructured open-ended interviews concerning social n e t­ works, health and well-being, educational practices an d goals, children's perspectives on work and family - w ith ethno-archeological tim ed observations (“tracking”) of 79

TULBERT AND GOODWIN

80

family m em bers, locations, and activities, photographs of space and m aterial objects, floor plans, video hom e tours m ade by family m em bers, psychological studies of horm ones indicating stress, and video recordings of n a t­ urally occurring interaction. A pproxim ately fifty hours of interaction were collected in each family over a w eeks time. Video-ethnographic m ethodology m akes it possible to record m undane talk (Goodwin, 1981), physical ges­ tures and action (Goodwin, 2000), and routine activities, all w ithin the household settings w here people actually carry out their daily lives (Ochs, Graesch, M ittm ann, & Bradbury, 2006). The present project is p a rt of a larger project in which we com pared the day-to-day organiza­ tion of physical routines of thirteen fam ilies , 1 studying the very different ways th at families orchestrated sim i­ lar activities, such as clearing the table, getting children dressed and ready for school, or shepherding children tow ard bedtim e. O ur approach for u n d erstan d in g the way th at toothbrush in g is choreographed across different fam ilies draw s on both phenom enology and studies of em bodied com m unication. The phenom enological ap proach we draw from includes W illiam Ja m e ss (1961) w ritings on the stream of consciousness and the form ation of a tte n ­ tion an d S ch u tzs (1970) concept of the "life-w orld/’ th at is, the ro u tin e and com m onplace social, cultural, lin­ guistic, and physical w orld of daily ro u n d s into w hich children are socialized. Phenom enology provides a useful set of perspectives for analyzing how a child's atten tio n al stream can becom e trained, p atterned, and directed thro u g h everyday activities. Studies of em bod­ ied com m unication analyze how situations of ap prentice­ ship are m ultim odally constructed, m aking coordinated use of objects and constructed spaces, physical ges­ tures, and verbal com m u n icatio n (C. Goodwin, 2000, 2007a; H eath, 1992; H eath & Luff, 1992; K oschm ann & LeBaron, 2002; K oschm ann, LeBaron, Goodwin, Zemel, & D unnington, 2007; LeB aron & Streeck, 2000; M ondada, 2007; Streeck, 2008). Building on the concept of the lifeworld, we exam ine instances of toothbrushing to consider the ways th a t young people in concert w ith o thers develop th e ir ow n p ractice of h ab itual ro u ­ tines w ithin larger fam ily p a tte rn s of using household space and tim e.

ALIGNMENT TO RELEVANT PARTICIPATION FRAMEWORKS In the following brief example we exam ine how partici­ p ants achieve two different form s of spatial-orientational arrangem ents for the accom plishm ent of action (C. Goodwin, 2007a): 1) a face-to-face orientation betw een interlocutors, and (2 ) an orientation to the structure of architecture of the house w here the activity of toothbrushing takes place. 1

The names used for families in this study are pseudonyms.

In preparation for attending a picnic, Paula Randolff is fixing her seven-year-old daughter Cynthia's hair into two ponytails while Cynthia is playing "one potato, two p o tato” with a comb. W hen M other finishes with Cynthia's hair, she puts down a rubber band on the coun­ ter and closes off the game activity with the term "Okay” (Beach, 1993). She then issues a directive: "You need to brush your teeth again.” W hen Cynthia continues counting on h er comb, M other then (Transcript 6.1, line 3, fram e A) produces the w ord "you” articulated w ith a term inal glottal stop, which comes across as a cut-off - a p erturbation that can func­ tion in conversation as a request for gaze from a hearer (C. Goodwin, 1981). She next (line 4, fram e B) produces her explicit sum m ons to attention - "Listen” - while lift­ ing Cynthia's chin, positioning Cynthia's body vis-à-vis her own so th at 1) Cynthia can attend to w hat her m other has to say, and 2) she can inspect Cynthia's m outh closely (fram e B). The two achieve a m utual facing form ation as Mother, in line 5, critiques her toothbrushing activ­ ity: "You didn't brush your tongue very w ell . ” 2 In response to her m other's critique, Cynthia protests with "Mama. I di::d.” (lines 6-7) and takes up an align­ m ent th at expresses seriousness tow ard the task at hand, as displayed by her facial gesture, with raised eyebrows (fram es C and D). Following the protest, M other care­ fully positions Cynthia tow ard the m irror so that she can closely observe the actions that Mother, as expert, perform s on her m outh (fram e E). This is all achieved through careful choreography of the activity. Streeck (2009:210) argues th at in studies of em bodied cognition and social interaction, in cognitive linguis­ tics, as well as in m icroethnography, there has been a lack of attention to the "the paradigm atic im portance of intercorporeality,” including contact, care, and love. He argues th at this quality of interaction "clearly ... rep re­ sents a form of corporeal intersubjectivity, ('intercorpore ité' in M erleau-Pontys (1962) term ), th at is unlike other forms of em bodied relatedness.” In toothbrushing activ­ ity we see how bodies are linked to other bodies while doing things together. In th at bodies of Mom and Cynthia are in close prox­ imity, Mom has firsthand access not only to the sights of Cynthia's body, b u t also to her smells. M om appeals to her own sensory experience of Cynthia's body as a way of justifying the claim s she m akes about h er daughter's tooth and tongue care with her utterance "Because your breath stinks” (line 19). Despite initial objections (lines 6-7) to her m other's characterization of h er to o th b ru sh ­ ing, Cynthia allows her m om to both position her body tow ard the m irror and sink used for toothbrushing and to give her explicit instructions on how to brush h er teeth, describing how and why Cynthia m u st brush h er

2

Data are transcribed using the Jefferson system developed for conversation analysts described in Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974).

CHOREOGRAPHIES

81

of a t t e n t io n

an ecological account of skilled practice, one that considers the p ractitio n ers bodily movem ent, as it constitutes a “movement o f a t t e n t io n as a person works, ''he watches, listens, and feels/' Ingold (2001:135) argues th at responsiveness of this sort "under­ pins the qualities of care, judgm ent, and dexterity." Both aligning children's attention in space and closing down concurrent activ­ ities involve fully em bodied m ultim odal moves and trajectories of action, the "intercorporeal dim ension of hum an life" (Streeck 2009): the way th at gesture, talk, and em bodied action organize co-presence am ong participants. This is quite evident in the next exam ple of a young child's toothbrushing, this tim e from the Walters fam ­ ily. Ten-year-old Leslie expertly coordinates her little sister Roxanne (1.5 year) through toothbrushing by closely following her sis­ ter's physical cues, by narrating the unfold­ ing sequence of events, and by creating a close physical form ation, w here Roxanne can attend w hat her sister does. On a weekday m orning, the two girls sit on their p arents' bed w atching televi­ sion. Leslie tu rn s to her sister and says, "Roxanne, ju st stay here.=okay? Roxanne, I need to- go- I need to b ru sh my te e th ." (Transcript 6.2, lines 4-6) W hen Roxanne turns her body slightly tow ard Leslie, Leslie quickly asks, "D'you w anna com e and brush your teeth w ith me? Okay, let's go brush our teeth" (lines 8-9, 12) while shifting off of the bed and offering h er arm s for Roxanne to clim b in to. Leslie, a highly attu n ed caregiver, hnds ways to include her sister in routine activities.

((Cynthia is scraping a comb against a brush as Mom is taking out her barrets)) Mom :

1

2 Cyn : Mom :

3

4 5

Cyn :

6 7

Mom :

8

Okay. You need to brush your teeth again. °Eleven, twelve, r thirteenYou- yListen, ((moves Cynthia's face to orientation)) You didn't brush your tongue r very well. LMama. I di::: d. 'Kay. Turn around. I'll help you.

((turning Cynthia))

9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Mother: Cynthia: Mother: Cynthia: Mother: Cynthia: Mother: Cynthia: Mother: Cynthia: Mother: Cynthia: Mother: Cynthia: Cynthia: Mother: Cynthia: Mother: Cynthia: Mother:

Huh? I did brush my tongue. Well, then you didn't brush your teeth good, Cynthia. Yes I didNO. YOU DIDN'T. How you know. Because I can tell. How. Because vour breath stinks. No it doesn't. Yes. It doe(hhh)s. No it doesn't. Yes it does. Boo. Doesn't ((breathes)) Don't smell anything. Trust me.

((breathes into hands)) Don't smell anything. Okay. That's alright. ( ) my hand Come on, Boo. You got to hurry up because Mommy still has to get dressed.

Transcript 6.1.

1 2

gums, w here to brush (so as n o t to miss h er new teeth coming in), and the am ount of tim e needed for brushing (at least a m inute and a half) (see Appendix for full tra n ­ script). Through gesture and language, M om organizes Cynthia's body in space so th at Cynthia can learn the cor­ poreal dim ensions to which she needs to attend: smell of her breath, the position of her m outh for brushing, and so on. Through this example we see how a young child is apprenticed into the activity of dental care step by step. Ingold (2001:135), discussing the developm ent of com ­ petence, argues th at hum an know ledgeability depends not on innate capacities and acquired com petence, but rather on skill. He argues (Ibid.) th at w hat we need is

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Leslie

( ( O n p a r e n ts ' b ed w it h t v o n L e slie is m a s s a g in g R o x a n n e 's le g s a n d a r m s . R o x a n n e , h a s b o ttle in h e r m o u th ) )

Roxanne, just stay here.=okay? Roxanne I need to- goI need to brush my teeth. (1.6) D'you wanna come and brush your and brush your teeth with me? (1.2) Roxanne: ((m o v e s to w a r d L e slie )) Okay. Let's go brush our teeth. Leslie: ( ( s ta n d s R o x a n n e u p o n b o th fe e t) )

Go!

Transcript 6.2.

( ( e x te n d s a r m s to R o x a n n e ) )

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W hen they arrive in the bathroom , Leslie moves a sm all stool for Roxanne to stand on before positioning Roxanne on top of it, and guiding her to face the sink. She then requests th a t Roxanne give h er the bottle she has in h er m outh, and puts it on the shelf adjacent to the sink. She thus frees both h er sisters hands and directs h er attention tow ard the new task, closing one activity in order to begin another. Stepping on the edge of the b a th ­ tub, she retrieves from the cabinet the objects th at the two will need for brushing teeth. Leslie carefully narrates each step of the unfolding activity for Roxanne, as if she is turning the pages of a children s book.

1

Leslie:

2

3 4 5

Could I see the bottle Roxie? (0 .6 ) Could I see it- Please? (0 .8 )

6

7 8

((Leslie lifts Roxanne onto small stool and turns her body to face towards the sink))

Roxanne: Leslie:

((gives bottle to Leslie)) Thank you.

11

((sets bottle on shelf)) ((climbs on bathtub rim to get tooth paste and toothbrushes from cabinet))

12

H ere's your toothbrush Roxanne?

9 10

13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Roxanne: Leslie: Roxanne: Leslie:

20 21 22

Roxanne:

23 24 25

Leslie:

((hands Roxanne toothbrush)) ((takes toothbrush)) A nd your Tiger?

((drops something)) °Oops! ((looks towards Tiger)) ((steps down to floor with objects)) Okay. So, ((turns on water)) ((puts Roxanne's toothbrush under running water.)) ((extends toothbrush to toothpaste Leslie is squeezing from tube)) Thank you Roxanne. Could you say you're welcome?

Transcript 6.3. T hroughout the sequence, Roxanne carefully m onitors each of h er sisters actions. After Leslie has m oistened her sisters toothbrush, Roxanne holds it out to her sister, w aiting for toothpaste to be applied (lines 22-23). At the age of eighteen m onths, Roxanne is already able to show her fam iliarity with the steps of this routine, and her role as a novice, through h e r production of the correct phys­ ical gestures. H er older sister thanks h er for this small gesture of holding the b ru sh out (line 24). After the to oth­ paste has been applied, Roxanne puts the bru sh in her m outh, m aking a slow chewing gesture w ith h er m outh and moving the handle of the b ru sh in a laggard rhythm . Behind her, Leslie vigorously brushes, filling the space w ith the fast-paced noise of her action. After she has readied the toothbrushes, Leslie creates a nested form ation around h er younger sister, physi­ cally em bedding R oxanne in h e r ow n perform ance of the

Figure 6.1. Sisters brushing teeth in a nested formation. activity (see Figure 6.1). Roxanne can feel the rhythm ic m ovem ents of her sisters body behind her and listen to the quickly paced scrubbing m otion of her sister s b ru sh ­ ing. Although she cannot yet perform the task herself, and does not know how to spit, she is surrounded by the sound and feeling of the expertly perform ed activity. In w ords and gestures, Leslie carefully turns her sisters physical attention tow ard the activity and th en guides her through its com pletion.

CREATING BOUNDARIES AND ORCHESTRATING ATTENTION Though toothbrushing is basically the same set of actions across families (uncapping toothpaste, brushing, spitting, rinsing), we found an incredibly wide range of variation in the way that the activity was organized in relationship to other activities. In some families, children are explicitly directed to end one activity before they begin another. In other families, they m ight be handed a toothbrush while they are engaged in competing activities. Choreographies of childrens attention, through and betw een sets of everyday activities, are critical for the sm ooth flow of family life. It is possible to carry out m ul­ tiple courses of action sim ultaneously (Good, 2009), b u t we find th at appropriate accom plishm ent of to o th b ru sh ­ ing requires th at com peting activities be p u t aside so th at there is only a single focus of attention. In this way, we m ight wish to consider not only the activities themselves, b u t the interstices betw een activities - how one activity is closed and another opened, or the ways various activities overlap and concatenate in time. Schegloff and Sacks (1973) find that speakers on the phone draw on a rem arkably sim ilar stock of knowledge for how to end conversations. Routinely interlocutors

83

c h o r e o g r a p h ie s of a t t e n t io n

make use of the sam e conversational machinery, actions such as “Okay,” or “Well,” w hich signal th at the p artici­ p ant is passing the opportunity to open up a new topic, signaling th at the conversation is com ing to a close so that no new topics are taken up in conversation. A per­ vasive problem in interaction ap art from phone calls is closing dow n one activity in order to launch another. In looking at closings of the activities before toothbrushing, we found th a t parents also have routine ways for attem pting to shift childrens attention to new tasks. These m echanism s for m oving attention between activities are as physical as they are verbal. K endon (1985: 237) discusses the im portance of establishing and m aintaining form s of spatial-orientational arrangem ents for sustaining a com m on orientational perspective. He argues, “By co-operating w ith one an o th er to sustain a given spatial-orientational arrangem ent, they can dis­ play a com m onality of readiness” (Ibid.). P articipants in interaction have choices for how they position their bodies and talk to the task at hand, show ing either align­ ment, disengagem ent, or protest. We will now exam ine a p articu lar exam ple to see how m other Paula R andolf actively reconfigures the ecol­ ogy of the physical space h er daughters, Michelle and Cynthia, are inhabiting as she enters the room to ask them to brush th eir teeth and get ready for a picnic. As she approaches h er children, she carefully bounds the current activity, creating a new focus of attention with her announcem ent: “Come on guys. You guys' clothes are ironed.” (lines 1-2). M other sum m ons their attention with “Come on guys.” and provides a justification for a next course of activity, as getting ready in this family depends on clothes first being ironed.

Boundary marker

Boundary account

Okay Kei. Okay. Okay.

You're done organizing. Time to brush your teeth. Time to turn it off. Sorry guys. We gotta go. It's time to go to bed. You guys' clothes are ironed.

Come on. Come on guys.

W hen the children do not im m ediately get up and leave the com puter monitor, Mom th en walks to w here the girls are seated and tu rn s off the m usic video. She prevents any possibility of th eir attending to the m o n ito r they had been watching. W ith a series of directives th at take the form of im peratives she provides a list of activities that m ust now be undertaken: “Come on. Go:. B rush tee:th, get dre:ssed, Come on guys.” (lines 8-11). Here, her ver­ bal cues (“com e on”) are in alignm ent w ith her postural stance and her rearrangem ent of the activity space by turning off the m usic video. In this way, she issues w hat we will call a “conjoined directive” - h er physical and verbal actions w ork together to create a sense of force.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Mom: Michelle: Cynthia: Michelle: Mom:

Cynthia:

((Mom enters the room as Michele (10) and Cynthia (6) are watching a video)) Come on guys. You guys' clothes are ironed. Okay. [She's going. [We have to wait((shuts down the program on video monitor)) Sorry. Come on. Go:. Brush tee::th. Get dre:ssed. Come on guys. I'll be- brush my teeth right now. ((rushes off to the bathroom))

Transcript 6.4. In these examples, we see how a p a re n ts directives are both attem pts to get children to do som ething and to stop doing som ething else. Across a range of sequences w hen children are told to close off one activity and p re­ pare for a next, sim ilar practices are used. “Come on,” like “Okay,” functions as a boundary m arker or brack­ eting device to propose closing up the current activ­ ity. Following the bracketing form ulation, a boundary account occurs, either referring to the activity that m ust be term inated (“You're done organizing.” “Time to tu rn it off.”), or projecting a next activity (“Time to brush your teeth.”; "We gotta go.”; “It's tim e to go to bed.”), or index­ ing the m ovem ent into a new activity given the com ple­ tion of tasks preparatory for th at activity (“You guys' clothes are ironed.”) More indirect form s m ention the tim e of day, projecting upcom ing activities. The following occurs during dinner as the m other is attem pting to launch “getting ready” activities: “Alright. (4.0) It's twenty m inutes to eight. Even though it doesn't feel like it.” M ore direct forms, w here no vis-à-vis facing form ation is established, take the form of scream ed bald im peratives: “JONAH! STOP! IT'S OVER!” Generally, w hen parents use these verbal boundaries in a way that is conjoined w ith physical and gestural m arkers of a new activity (e.g., creating a fac­ ing form ation and pointing to a new space), children are m uch m ore apt to comply. Across families, we observe patterned ways that direc­ tive-response sequences unfold; children can respond to a parent's directive in a n u m ber of ways: with com pli­ ance (Transcripts 6.1-4, 6.9-10), negotiation (Transcript 6.7), or refusal (Transcripts 6 .6 , 6 .8 ) (Aronsson & Cekaite, 2007; M. H. Goodwin, 2006; Klein et a l, 2009). We will now exam ine a participation fram ew ork in w hich no clear delineations of the boundedness of activities are established. N EG O TIA TIO N D URING A C T IV IT Y THAT IS NOT CLEARLY BOUNDED

Som etim es, com peting activities are arranged in such a way that they overlap in space and time, creating a fur­ ther challenge for parents trying to elicit com pliance w ith

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84

shifts tow ard self-care activities. In such instances, the "social choreography" (Aronsson, 1998) of an attentional shift - or who m aintains the right to shift another's atten ­ tion - is critical. In the next exam ple with the Goodson family, we see a very different p attern for arranging chil­ d ren s attention to activities. R ather than brushing teeth occurring in its own tim e and space, brushing teeth is initiated on the living room couch during anoth er activity - TV watching. On a week­ day m orning, eight-year old Hailey and four-year old Jason sit and w atch a reru n of “S tar Trek" with Father. Glancing at his w atch, Mr. Goodson initiates the routine w ith “Time to get your tooth brush" (Transcript 6.5, line 1). However, instead of the children moving, he him self perform s a series of actions for them and even onto his childrens bodies (lines 7-11). He gets Jaso n s shoes and puts them on his feet. He brushes Jaso n s hair. He fetches two toothbrushes and sets them on the coffee table as the Star Trek conversation continues. In Transcript 6 .6 , as the children and their father dis­ cuss various alien types and locations on the space ship, F ather (line 5) positions the tooth b ru sh in H aileys line of regard while saying “Here." (line 7) Hailey, however, waves away her fath ers hand (line 6 ) and moves her hand from h er lap to h er m o u th (line 9), avoiding any action w hich w ould be a reciprocal action to h er father’s gesture of offering the toothbrush, and rejects it stating, “Mm mm, no. I don’t w ant it." (line 8 ) Jason likewise rejects his father’s offer (lines 16-17). Though F ather provides a recycling of his directive by tapping Jaso n ’s shoulder (line 18) and saying “Come on." (line 19), he quickly retracts the toothbrush and holds it upright, as Father too gets involved in w atching the show (Figure 6.2a). He offers w hat we call a “disjunctive" directive - his physical posture and subsequent action does not align with the im perative to begin a new task, b u t rath er contradicts it; the force of the directive is weakened. After two m inutes of silent w atching, hnally, Father brackets off the activity w ith “Okay. We gotta go.” (Transcript 6.7, line 1, Figure 6.2a) and “Sorry guys. (1.6) Time to tu rn it off." (line 5), though he does n ot establish a facing form ation w ith his children. Jason next physically turns his body into the couch in a posture of com plete resistance to the attentional shift tow ard toothbrushing (See Figure 6.2b, Transcript 6.7, lines 12-13), and Dad

1

Father:

Time to get your tooth brush.

((looking at watch))

2

3 4 5 6

7

Jason: Father:

8

9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Father: Hailey: Father: Hailey: Father:

Jason I'm going to get your shoesW haf d you take your shoes off for. W here'd you put 'em. They're in Hailey's room, ((points))

((Picks up some shoes under table & carries them to Jason's room; picks up Jason's shoes from Hailey's room Gets two toothbrushes from bathroom, puts them on table)) You know w hat they just said? What. That's their famous saying. (0.4) That- resistance is futile. Is he remembering, or he's hearing it. No. That's hisThat's what's happening On the ship right now.

((puts shoes on Jason's feet))

20

Transcript 6.5.

1

Jason

Is that them? Are thev in the big ship or the little ship. Dadda, are they in the big ship or the little ship.

Father Hailey: Father: Hailey

((presents tooth brush to Hailey)) ((waves away Father's hand))

2

3 4 5 6

7 8

((puts hand to mouth))

9 10

Father

11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Here. Mm mm, no. I don't w ant it. Yeah, we have to. We gotta brush We gotta go. ((looks at watch)) Remember I told you?

((gives Hailey toothbrush)) We can only see a few minutes? Here, ((holds out toothbrush for Jason)) Jason: Father:

20

((continues looking blankly at tv, hands at mouth)) ((taps Jason's shoulder)) Come on. ((retracts toothbrush and holds it upright on knee))

Transcript 6.6.

Figure 6.2. Body alignments in toothbrushing call-to-action.

CHOREOGRAPHIES

has to pull Jason off the couch (Figure 6.2c, Transcript 6 7 , lines 17-18). Faced with this new problem , Father strikes ano th er bargain with Jason. He offers him a piece of gum in exchange for his engagem ent in the attentional fram ework of getting ready (lines 20-25). The television rem ains on during this negotiation sequence. R ather than getting com pliance w ith his directive, a long bar­ gaining sequence ensues. In this instance we see a complex negotiation of tim e and attention betw een the two children and their father. Here, the television show becom es its own field of activ­ ity, the public focus of attention, a distraction, with the activities of getting ready organized around its atten ­ tional dem ands. F ather faces the challenge of moving the childrens attention from one activity to another. Unlike the p aren ts definitive position of control in Transcripts 6 . 1 - 2 , however, who organizes the use of tim e and who controls the objects of attention is unclear. 1

Okay. We gotta go.

Father:

2

3 4 5 6

7

Children: Father: Father: Hailey: Jason:

8

9 10

Hailey: Father

11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Sorry guys. (1.6) Time to turn it off.

((begins brushing teeth on couch)) NO: I'M NOT-

((moaning, buries head in couch)) ((Hailey leaves for the bathroom)) We gotta go. I told you Jason. A few minutes.

((head on couch as Dad taps his shoulder))

Father:

(Figure B) Hail, go get the pair of shoes you wanna wear. Also. ((sighs)) Let's go. We gotta go.

((pulls Jason from couch)) (Figure C)

Jason: Father:

((returns to position on the couch))

Jason:

A piece of gum?=

°Jason, do you want a piece of gum?

((extends gum hand))

21 22

((puts brush in front of Jason)) ((immobile they watch television)) ((gets up from couch)) (3.0)

Jason: ->

->

Father: Jason: Father: Jason: Father: Jason: Father: Jason: Father: Jason: Hailey: Father: Jason: Father:

Transcript 6.7.

85

of a t t e n t io n

((reaching towards the hand with gum)) =Ssh. ((puts hand to mouth in "sh" gesture, retracts gum)) A piece- = ((reaches towards Father's hand with gum)) =We've gotta brush your teeth. Hold me. ((whining)) Come on. ((walks away to bathroom)) Give me it. ((whines)) Come orr Give me it. ((whines)) Come here then. That's just a w ra p // per! ((off camera)) Daddy, I want a cookie first. There's no cookies. Go- give me it. Let me hold it in my / / hand. You gotta brush first.

((holds Jason's shoulder and shepherds Jason from hallway into bathroom)) Brush.

In this example, we see how the sequencing of activities in tim e is a complex matter. Here one activity rem ains open as a sim ultaneous attem pt is m ade to physically cho­ reograph children into a new task. In this sequence, there were no efforts to bound off the activity of toothbrushing from a previous one. At m om ents, children are the pas­ sive recipients of getting ready. In other m om ents, they are expected to take charge of the activity. Father enters and exits the fram e of the television world, at points aban­ doning the directive sequence to w atch T.V. himself. He is m et with a gesture of physical defiance as Jason curls into a semi-fetal position on the couch (Figure 6.2b). He finally stands up and pulls Jason from the couch, attem pting a physical choreography of his sons attention by placing his hand w ithin his sons corporeal experience (Figure 6.2c), pulling him to an upright position. Jaso n s resistance to the activity shift allows him to attem pt to negotiate with his father for a rew ard of gum. Placing his hand on Jaso n s back, Father shepherds (Cekaite, 2010) Jason from the hallway into the bathroom . In these examples we see the complex interaction betw een participants' physical bodies, th eir alignm ent of gaze, and household objects (sinks, television sets, com puter m onitors) in the conduct of a routine activity. Clearly different types of m oral actors are co-constructed through displays of reluctance and resistance, in contrast to willingness, to carry out routine courses of action.

RESISTANCE TO ALIGNMENT TOWARD THE TASK AT HAND In studying children's enskillm ent tow ard toothbrushing, we find th at the way th at parents and children handle objects constitutes an im portant sem iotic modality. If a paren t hands over an already prepared toothbrush, th a t act in itself m ay constitute a kind of directive; if a child puts the toothbrush away in the right place, it is a dis­ play of autonomy, skill, and alignm ent. The child's way of using the object, in other words, dem onstrates their shifting role in the organization of the task as they take on greater and greater levels of skill and autonomy. In a third family, the Alice Posner-Travis Gold family, we see a contrasting way in w hich directives, family roles, and objects are organized in the toothbrushing activity. On a Saturday morning, the family is getting ready to attend Jonah's soccer game. Father brushes his own teeth at the bathroom sink. He is preparing brushes for Jonah (8 ) and Dylan (2.5), an activity he routinely does. Meanwhile, the two boys are playing in the bedroom a few feet from the bathroom door. In this m om ent, Father has the task of redirecting the children's attention away from their roughhousing game and toward the task of brushing teeth together. He uses a m itigated directive form, a ques­ tion, followed by an imperative: "'Dylan you w ant your uhtoothbrush here? Come here. Dylan!" (lines 4-5) However, when he delivers the directive, he is not in an alignm ent vis-à-vis his interlocutors. The children continue their play, and Father brings toothbrushes to the boys' room .

TULBERT AN D G O O D W IN

8 6

((Dad brushes teeth in bathroom, puts toothpaste on children's brushes, while children are in bedroom))

1 2

3 4 5 6

7

Father: Dylan: Father:

Dylan you want your uh- toothbrush here? Come here. Dylan! What, ((continues to play with Jonah)) Come here. Come here.

8

((comes out of bathroom with toothbrushes))

9

Okay. Pardon, ((to researcher in hall)) (0.6)

((boys continue roughhousing on bed))

10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Father: Jonah:

((puts blanket over Dylan))

22

Father: Jonah: Father: Jonah: Jonah: Dylan: Father:

23 24 25

Dylan:

20 21

Okay, ((enters bedroom)) [Here's toothbrushes. [Hey. ((to Dylan)) You need a bandage. Here. [Turn around, ((touches J's shoulder)) [Here's a big bandage, ((covers Dylan)) Turn around.=Turn around. Turn around.

((releases self from Father, sits on bed facin^D)) (Poppy's) on your back, ((covers and patsD [I don't want a bandage.=

[((removes J's hand from blanket, stands over J. pushes his chest, gives J toothbrush)) Open. NO ::::((groans))

Transcript 6 .8 . As F ath er presents the toothbrushes (Transcript 6 .8 , line 9) to the boys they ignore him and continue their play (lines 13-17). F ather has to physically remove Jo n a h s h an d from the blanket play w ith Dylan and push his chest backw ard to get him to orient tow ard the activ­ ity (line 22-23); dislodging Jonah, he hands him the too th b ru sh as he says "Open.” (line 24). Jonah displays his oppositional alignm ent tow ard the activity by provid­ ing a groaning "No:::::” w hen Dad hands him the tooth­ b ru sh (line 25). The directive sequence provides a fram ew ork in w hich the next actions, ignoring or o utright refusal, are taken up as stances tow ard the proposed activity. In this sequence, F ather moves from requests - highly m itigated form s of directives - to bald im peratives. His first directive to get the activity underw ay is fram ed as a question: "Dylan you w ant your uh- to o th b ru sh here?” (Transcript 6 .8 , line 4) This initial action leaves the action up to the child to carry out o r not, ra th e r th an telling him to do it. He then provides a sum m ons w ith "Come here. Dylan!" (line 5) and "Come h ere. Come h ere.” (line 7), b u t it is he who goes to the childrens room to deliver the toothbrushes. The directive th at he issues contradicts the em bodied trajectory of this m ovem ent. Moreover, the directive was issued w ithout first establishing a fram ew ork for m utual orientation. Although F ather employs a series of direc­ tives, he is never able to create an alignm ent where the children attend to him through m utual gaze or body orientation. The children actively oppose the creation of a fram ew ork of m u tu al orientation. Eventually each boy takes a toothbrush, b u t the brushing is done w ith­ out m om ents of concentrated assessm ent o r m onitoring from Father.

In this family, F ath er is the one w ho handles th e to o th ­ brushes while the boys are playing; in so doing, he takes basic responsibility for the task. He issues verbal direc­ tives th a t co n trad ict his actions ("come here” vs. taking the to o thbrushes to the children). There is no atten ­ tion by Jo n ah to the to o th b ru sh until F ather achieves a p o stu re of physical dom inance over him (lines 22-23). Each tu rn unfolds as a series of oppositional gestures to the acceptance of the course of action the to o th b ru sh implies: Father readies brushes —»F ather com m ands the boys to come tow ard the sink and brushes/ Boys refuse —»Father then brings the brushes to the boys' room / Jonah rem ains turned away from F ather —► F ather com m ands Jonah to tu rn in space attem pting to create F-form ation/ Jonah rem ains turned the other way Father pushes Jo n ah s chest away from com peting activity and puts the tooth­ brush into his hand and m outh/ Jonah refuses. In this instance, as in other directive sequences in this family (Goodwin, 2006), F ath ers request becom es an opportunity for refusal and resistance. A ttention to the object of the toothbrush only happens through a posture of physical dom inance; verbal directives have no force, and Jo n a h s toothbrush is not really his own, but his fathers. The way th at the F ather moves the toothbrush exhibits a clear orientation to parents adapting to the child's preferences (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984).

TOPOGRAPHIES: PATTERNS OF ATTENTIO N IN THE USE OF ARCHITECTURE A N D OBJECTS

C. Goodwin (2010: 118) w rites th at the environm ents in w hich participants act are com posed of interactions betw een actors and m ultiple sign systems: Like things, language secretes structure into the world that creates environments that position actors, and serve as the point of departure for subsequent action__ The interlocking properties of these environments [are] found to be crucial to the practices of apprenticeship through which actors, things and communities mutually constitute each other by making possible forms of interaction that produce both cognitively rich, competent members of a community and the things that are both the focus of the work of the community, and animate its discourse. Both language ("Go brush your teeth”) and things (i.e., a toothbrush left on a sink) depend on each other, and in apprenticeship situations actors m ake constant attem pts to move others' attention and create m om ents of joint attention - using language and other m odalities to high­ light different aspects of the activity and its objects (C. Goodwin, 2007a). We consider the force of any parental directive, therefore, to be the result of the superim posi­ tion of signs (Agha, 1997), both in the present m om ent of the activity and in the way th at the interaction has been practiced, patterned, and choreographed in past m om ents of the fam ilial lifeworld. Directive-response sequences are achievem ents created through orientation

CHOREOGRAPHIES OF ATTENTION

to the built environm ent (the house with its designated locations for self-care activities) as well as the in-situ use of language, em bodied action (body postures and align­ m ents) (M. H. Goodwin, 2006). We are thus interested in the complex interrelationships betw een speech, objects, and physically em bodied roadm aps of how the activi­ ties of enskillm ent (Ingold, 2001) unfold in the physical space of the house. R esearch in the field of language socialization also theorizes this intim ate connection betw een architecture, object, and com m unicative process. Ochs's (1988) study of Sam oan childrens language developm ent, for exam ­ ple, points out how different gram m atically m arked form ality registers of language are highly linked to the spatial organization of households. Children learn how to speak appropriately for the spaces th at they inhabit in a given environm ent. C. G oodw ins (1999, 2000, 2003) research on the im portance of gesture and spatial relationships in learn­ ing situations shows how objects-in-action are physically connected to larger dim ensions of context through ver­ bal and gestural com m unication. A ch ildrens hopscotch court provides a “m aterial a n c h o r' (H utchins, 2005) for a kind of play; an archeologists M unsell ch art is a con­ ceptual device th at organizes certain ways of attending to the m aterial qualities of the soil. Seen in this light, we m ight im agine the U.S. house­ hold space as a conceptual framework as well as m ate­ rial space th at integrates the physical stru cture of the environm ent for the som ew hat choreographed, som e­ w hat im provised series of activities th a t m ake up daily life. The p ath from kitchen to b ath ro o m to bedroom is a habitu ated course of action through space th at m akes up the activity sequence “bedtim e." An array of objects on a b athroom coun ter (soap, spray bottle, toothpaste holder) is not only a set of im plem ents, b u t a m aterial index for a set of self-care activities - “getting readys” perform ed in a tem poral grouping (face w ashing, h air brushing, toothbrushing). We can thus speak of topographies of bodies in m ove­ ment, or well-traveled paths through architecture that relate to practiced sequences of activities. The study of a family's routine uses of architecture and objects points out how spaces, and the objects in them , can be used as a deliberate socialization resource for p atterning activ­ ities and providing a physical grounding for the flow of attention (Latour, 1996; Lave, M urtaugh, & Rocha, 1984). M ovements through space, and the ways in w hich objects and their uses are patterned, becom e im portant for the socialization of attention. In our study we observed basic differences in how par­ ents organized the routine of toothbrushing w ith respect to the key objects involved. In some cases, adults or sibling caretakers assisted the child and undertook the activity in concert with others, so th at children could eventually do it themselves. The way th at parents struc­ ture the interaction betw een the child and the object

87

(toothbrush) sets up a basic stance tow ard the task. Is the child willing to entrain his or her actions into the requests of the m ore expert person or is it a task th at is literally forced on the child? The following examples from the Rich A lbert-Frederick Callihan Family will serve to illustrate processes of attending to objects in a task trajectory. As F ather and his son Andrew are fixing the blanket of Andrew's bunk bed, F ather asks, “Do you w ant to urn- So go brush your teeth.=Okay?'' (Transcript 6.9 lines 1-2).W hen Andrew cannot im m ediately find his toothbrush upstairs (as his other father has rem oved the old ones), he sets out to locate where his toothbrush is while singing (lines 3-6). Andrew carries out a very rich ensem ble of actions in response to the directive. These include not simply a ver­ bal response, but m obilizing his body, building on his knowledge of where in the house to locate a toothbrush, and, w ithout hesitation (or prodding), carrying out a course of action. This entails sliding dow n the banister to go to the dow nstairs bathroom . 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Father: Andrew: Andrew:

Father: Andrew: Father:

Do you want to umSo go brush your teeth.=Okay? ((starts to bathroom while Father cleans up)) ((hums, sings)) Brush teeth, brush my teeth. Let's see. My toothbrush isn't up here. I have to go downstairs, ((sings)) ((slides down banister to go to downstairs sink)) You're going downstairs to brush vour teeth? Yeah. That's the only place where my toothbrush is. Okay.

Transcript 6.9. In the following m ap (Figure 6.3), from the AlbertCallihan family hom e, we track six-year-old Andrew as he travels from his bedroom , to the upstairs bathroom , down a banister, to the dow nstairs sink (as seen in the footprints from right to left in the diagram below). We find th at Andrew im m ediately m obilizes his body to travel through space in o rder to carry out the course of action one of his fathers has presented to him; ra th e r th an displaying reluctance or refusal, his physical m ove­ m ents connote cooperation and alignm ent w ith a familyoriented activity. Moreover, we see th at he has m astered the sequence of activities th a t occur in a p articu lar phys­ ical environm ent. He takes out his electric to o thbrush from the m edicine cabinet and moves it like a toy tra in across the rim of the sink from one side to the other, he uncaps the toothpaste, puts it on his brush, and p ro ­ ceeds to brush his teeth. He then spits, rinses his face, and dries his face w ith a p ap er towel from a dispenser on the right wall of the sink, in m uch the sam e way th a t he does on other days as he gets ready for school o r for bedtim e. A ndrew know s this com plex sequence of actio n s for accom plishing the activity because his body has been entrain ed into the w illing carrying out of the

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ro u tin e activities associated w ith to o th b ru shing. Not only is th ere a dim ension of know ing the sequence of actions; there is a m oral d im ension to his perfor­ m ance as he d em o n strates his stance of alignm ent and engagem ent. A ndrew s father joins him at the sink to m onitor and assess the activity. Although Andrew is the one who controls the objects of toothbrushing, his father is the one w ho com pletes the activity fram e through his copresence in space.1 1 Father:

2 3 4 5

Andrew: Father: Andrew: Andrew:

((after 15 seconds of brushing Father appears

Did you get the back ones? Uh huh. Did you get behind them? Uh huh. ((brushes for one minute, spits twic rinses electric toothbrush))

6 Father: Good jo(hh) b. 7 Andrew: ((shakes the toothbrush, dries it with a paper towelI))

8 Father: You gonna wipe off your face too? 9 Andrew: ((wipes off face)) Is that better? ((shows teeth for inspection.))

10 Father: ((nodding)) That’s better. 11 Andrew: ((smiles and leaves for kitchen)) Transcript 6.10.

In a hushed voice, Father (line 8 ) asks Andrew, “You gonna wipe your face off too?” Andrew dries off his face and asks, “Is that better?” (line 9) W ithout prom pting, he then bares his teeth for inspection (see Transcript 6.10). Andrew s father nods (line 10), and Andrew smiles widely as he leaves for the kitchen. In this m om ent, we can see how the silent presence of Andrew s father creates a patterning of the unfolding sequence of the routine. His questions (lines 1, 3), assess­ m ent (“Good jo(hh)b.”, line 6 ) and prom pt (“You gonna wipe off your face too?” line 8 ) display his m oni­ toring of the event. F ath ers sustained stillness in a facing form ation against the perpendicular wall creates an audience for his sons com pletion of the task. W hen Andrew receives confirm ation (line 10) th at he has successfully com pleted toothbrushing to his fathers satisfaction, he leaves for the kitchen and takes up a new activity. In this trajectory of actions, we can see how sixyear-old Andrew is in the process of developing a high level of skill and autonom y for attending to and com pleting the task at hand. Although he undertakes the activity m uch on his ow n volition, it is still u n d er the guidance of his father. Andrew integrates m om ents of play into the task, b u t in a way th at supports the overall trajectory of the activity qua object. He slides dow n the b an ister

CHOREOGRAPHIES o f a t t e n t i o n

fowafd the toothbrush, hopscotches over the tiles on the kitchen floor toward the sink, and then an im ates the toothbrush, m oving it toward the toothpaste. The basic sequence of the activity thus unfolds as a flowing series of linguistic and gestural moves between Father, Andrew, and the toothbrushing objects. Each of these m om ents is a turn of attention th at unfolds as part of the com pletion of an overarching objective set out in the first directive. Father Gives Directive —> Andrew Finds the Tool Andrew Completes the Activity —> F ather Checks the Activity —> Andrew Leaves After Dad says “So go b rush your teeth. = Okay?” w ith­ out hesitation, Andrew is able to align his attention with his toothbrush and the action of toothbrushing across several m inutes of tim e and a large m ovem ent across household space, w ithout a single distraction. He car­ ries out the action in an environm ent w here F ather is actively involved in m onitoring of the activity, so that if he is doing the activity wrong, he can correct m istakes that occur. Such a fram ew ork of m onitoring perm its the developm ent of autonom ous action. In this series of action, language, m ovem ent through household space, and the handling of physical object are all coordinated into a quickly unfolding choreography. Here we also see a clear dem arcation of social and familial roles that is dem onstrated and reinforced by who handles the object, when, and for w hat purpose. In everyday toothbrushing, Andrew is the one who uses the object. In this whole sequence of actions, Andrew is the only participant who handles his toothbrush. His respon­ sibility for his own “tools of the trad e” is a dem onstration of his alignm ent w ith the task and his sense of agency and goodwill in complying w ith a directive. The study of a family s routine uses of architecture and objects points out how spaces, and the objects in them , can be used as resources for enskillm ent. Objects and spaces provide a physical grounding (or “m aterial anchor”) for the flow of childrens attention. In the Albert-Callihan family (Transcripts 6.9-10), a brief m ention (“go brush your teeth”) creates a transfer of agency from F ather to his son. Andrew then takes full responsibility for the objects and the actions that ensue. By way of contrast, in the Posner-Gold family (Transcript 6 .8 ), F ath ers request becomes an opportunity for refusal and resistance. Attention to the object of the toothbrush only happens through a posture of physical dom inance; verbal directives have no force, and Jo n a h s toothbrush is not really his own, but his father's. Looking at these two families, we m ight ask how the toothbrush is em bedded in local ecologies of the activ­ ity - if the toothbrush is handed to the child or the child handles it himself. Initiating and organizing the key objects of the task create an em bodied sense of agency and skill (Transcripts 6.9-10); the ability to control the key objects of the task is p a rt of the shifting social role

89

of the child, signifying the ontogenesis of autonom y and agency. Participants in the Posner-Gold (Transcript 6 .8 ) or Goodson household (Transcript 6 .5-6. 6 ), by way of contrast, have their bodies acted on by parents. They are seldom positioned in cooperative stances, visible public displays that “one is organizing one's body tow ards oth­ ers and a relevant environm ent in ju st the ways necessary to sustain and help construct the activities in progress” (C. Goodwin 2007b: 70). These examples of the three families - Albert-Callihan, Goodson, and Posner-Gold - taken together, also point out that activities have spatial topographies, like the floor p attern of a dance. The m ovem ent of children respond­ ing to directives displays the affective tenor of their involvement in the task: joyful com pliance (Transcripts 6.9-10) accom panied by hopscotch jum ps across the floor and slides dow n banisters, or reluctant tugs of w ar (Transcripts 6.7-8). Topographies for how spaces are tra ­ versed in routine ways becom e both a physical and con­ ceptual ground for the com pletion of an activity. In these cases, we see alternative arrangem ents for the organiza­ tion of space in activity - topographies m ay be routinized and ritualized, or invented anew each tim e the activity is done, or organized through speech instead of physically aligned joint attention. These patterns for how bodies, objects, and spaces are arranged interactionally point to larger questions for how routines of family life create and structure children's attention.

C O N C L U S IO N

Analyzing form s of intercorporeality (M erleau-Ponty 1962) in this p ap er we have exam ined how fam ilies build fram ew orks th at allow for the close coordination of action in order to carry o u t the work of m undane and routine activities of th eir everyday life, the positioning of th eir bodies so th at they can not only see b u t also hear and at points sm ell and feel the signs th at the o th er in terlocutor is producing. We also see how families use these moves as the point of dep artu re for subsequent action. In exam ining a topographic m ap of activities, we explored som e of the ways th a t fam ilies can collaboratively configure form s of m u tu al m onitoring of ongo­ ing processes of carrying o u t of the activity. We saw how a six-year-old could accom plish all aspects of the toothbrushing routine, including positioning him self for inspection by his Father, w ho carefully observed and com m ented on the activity. In other fam ilies, however, there is not the sam e engagem ent to setting up fram e­ works of m utual attention (as parents an d children m ay be in different spaces), or p aren ts m ay n o t be successful in dislodging the atten tio n of their children from com ­ peting activities (m edia, roughhousing, eating, etc., b u t usually m edia). W hen the Posner-Gold children resist, F ath er brings the to o th b ru sh to the child's room. Active rearran g em en t of Jason Goodson's body occurs w ith

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physical m aneuvering, F ath er pulling him off the couch or shepherding him to the b ath ro o m sink after p ro m ­ ises of gum . A range of different alignm ents is thus possible in response to directive sequences. In the Albert-Callihan Family, w ith only the slightest h in t th a t an activity should be undertaken, Andrew responded im m ediately and em barked on undertaking the task th at he was called to do. W here new action sequences are bracketed off from p rio r ones, through elim inating com peting distractions, and w hen co-participants willingly position themselves in facing form ations tow ard o n es interlocutors (rather th an tow ard a com peting focus of attention, such as a siblings body or a television program ), we find children aligned tow ard the task at hand, and see successful com ­ pletion of a p a re n ts directive. In other situations, even though children m ay recognize the force of the types of signs they are given, they m ay system atically refuse to act on them or p u t them selves in the types of arrange­ m ents th a t are required to perform the actions th at the parents are attem pting to initiate. We propose th a t a m ultim odal investigation of direc­ tive trajectories is absolutely essential to any study of p aren tin g strategies. R ath er th a n typologizing form s of fam ilies (B aum rind, 1989), com paring fam ilies of different social classes (Lareau, 2003), neighborhoods (Kusserow, 2004), o r trad itio n s of learning (Rogoff, P aradise, M ejia Arauz, Correa-Chavez, & Angelillo, 2003), we investigate closely the p ractices through w hich p aren ts and children align th e ir bodies, th eir em otions, and th e ir actions as they em bark on getting any ro u tin e done in the household. P arents' attem pts to socialize children to move th ro u g h various phases of activity, and to a tten d to artifacts and bodily postures th a t crucially shape involvem ent in activity, requires th a t they give form to the phases of action th a t m ake up the sequence th ro u g h closing dow n one activity to get to another. They also m o n ito r children's interaction w ith artifacts and evaluate th e ir practices. In o u r data, we observed th a t assessm ent is essential if children are to learn w hat is an expected d em ean o r and alignm ent tow ard the activity, and w hat constitutes ap propriate steps in the process of actualizing the com petent com ­ pletion of actions. By exam ining the superposition (Agha, 1996) or con­ textual configuration (Goodwin, 2000) of signs, we p ro ­ vide a fully em bodied notion of directive trajectories. We can exam ine th e force of the m ultiple sign systems building action in concert w ith each other, through the sim ultaneous deploym ent of intonation, gesture, body positions, touch, the distribution and handling of objects, and of course, language itself. By incorporating an eth­ nographic view and attending to the repertoires of forms of m ultim odal sign exchange visible in a family, we can u n d erstan d the adaptive and com plex creative hybridity of styles of parenting th at adap t to ever-changing ho ri­ zons of action.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study is p a rt of an interdisciplinary, collaborative research endeavor conducted by m em bers of the UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Fam ilies (CELF), u n der the direction of E linor Ochs. CELF is generously supported by the Alfred P. Sloan F oundation program on the W orkplace, W orkforce, and Working Fam ilies, headed by K athleen C hristensen. We are indebted to the w ork­ ing families who participated in this study for open­ ing th eir hom es and sharing th eir lives. We gratefully acknowledge the p articipation of S arah B arbod, Tana Craighead, C hristina Gonerko, Alisa Gonzales, Lourdes de Leon, and Ryon Nixon in the Bluefoot S em inar w here these ideas evolved. E rin Mays and K atrina Laygo p ro ­ vided th eir artistic talents in the rendering of images for this paper, and we are very appreciative of th eir work. We w ould also like to acknowledge our appreciation for com m ents from Charles Goodwin and Jurgen Streeck on an earlier draft.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Mom: Cynthia: Mom: Cynthia: Mom: Mom: Cynthia: Mom: Cynthia: Mom: Cynthia: Mom: Cynthia: Mom: Cynthia: Mom: Cynthia: Mom: Cynthia: Cynthia: Mom: Cynthia: Mom: Cynthia: Mom: Mom: Cynthia: Mom:

Transcript app-a.

Okay. You need to brush your teeth again. °Eleven, twelve, [thirteen[You- yListen. ((moves Cynthia's face into orientation)) You didn't brush your tongue [very well. [Mama, IdLxL "Kay. Turn around. I'll help you. ((turning Cynthia)) Huh? I did brush my tongue. Well, then you didn't brush your teeth good, Cynthia. Yes I did. NO. YOU DIDN'T. How you know. Because I can tell. How. Because vour breath stinks. No it doesn't. Yes. It doe(hhh)s. No it doesn't. Yes it does. Boo. Doesn't ((breathes)) Don't smell anything. Trust me. ((breathes into hands)) Don't smell anything. Okay. That's alright. ( ) my hand Come on. Boo. You got to hurry up because Mommy still has to get dressed. Cheese. Goo::d. Good, good, good, good. Does that hurt? ((brushing Cynthia's teeth)) Mm-mm Cheese. Goo::d. Don't forget when you brush your teeth you have to not only brush your teeth. but brush your gums.

CHOREOGRAPHIES

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

Cynthia: Mom:

Cynthia: Mom: Michelle: Mom: Michelle Mom: Michelle Mom: Mom: Michelle Mom:

Cynthia: Mom: Cynthia: Mom: Cynthia: Mom:

Cynthia: Michelle Mom:

of a t t e n t io n

Not hard, just soft. Gently. Because your gums are dirty, too. Okay? Open. Understand? Mm-hm. And then don't forget to brush behind these new teeth that are coming in. And brush those- the gums. ((mouth full, wants to spit)) Go ahead. I don't think someone brushed their teeth very well. Cheese. Is she gonna start getting cavities, Mommy? Maybe not because she has sealant on her teeth. What does that mean? The dentist seals your teeth so that you can't get cavities. Oh. But you still have to brush and everything so you don't have problems. Ah. There's pretty teeth coming in. Look it. I see them. They're coming in kindaYou know what you're supposed to brush your teeth for like at least a minute. minute and a half I think. At least. Not just ((moves brush back and forth)) spit. Wait, Cynthia. Wait. ((spits)) You're gonna get it on you clothokay now stick that tongue. ((makes noise)) Stick it out again. ((makes noise)) Good. I'm gonna try to go back as far as you can without (.) gagging. Open. There we go. Good. Okay. Now you can rinse. ((hands cup to Cynthia)) Here. Try not to get it on your shirt. So lean over the sink. ((gargles)) ((taking picture with camera)) Say cheese. Let me see. Oh, beautiful. Let me smell.

Transcript app-b.

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Some Functions of Speaker Head Nods Hiromi Aoki

INTRODUCTION The visual m odality of com m unication is no doubt an indispensable resource for participating in face-to-face social interaction. Through gaze, for instance, p artici­ pants constantly m onitor and som etim es regulate each o th ers actions to guide th eir own subsequent actions (Bavelas, Coates, & Johnson, 2002; C. Goodwin, 1979, 1980; M. H. Goodwin, 1980, 1997; M. H. Goodwin & C. Goodwin, 1986; Kendon, 1967). This study investigates the role of another type of visual modality, nodding, in Japanese face-to-face conversation. Specifically, I will analyze the use of speaker head nods, th at is, nodding provided during utterance production by the participants who assum e the role of speaker. I argue that speaker head nods in Japanese com ple­ m ent and som etim es heighten the m onitoring and regu­ lating functions of gaze. In particular, by proffering head nods, speakers explicitly m ark the points w here recipi­ ents' differentiated actions are relevant, and such actions invite im m ediate responses from recipients. Because speaker head nods have scant sem antic content, they do not specify the kind of response that speakers are look­ ing for from recipients. Therefore, it is up to recipients to figure out the appropriate form s of p articipation for the m om ent through the sequential and activity con­ texts in w hich speaker head nods occur. Through the use of speaker head nods, speakers are thus able to m oni­ to r recipients' cu rren t understandings of the em erging course of activity. Speaker head nods regularly co-occur w ith devices of other com m unicative m odalities that have the sim ilar function of eliciting recipient responses. Thus speaker head nods may be seemingly redundant, but as will be show n in the following analysis, the use of speaker head nods on top of other eliciting devices strengthens requests for responses and successfully elicits responses. Hence speaker head nods are often found in attem pts to regulate recipients' actions w hen speakers are facing recipients' disalignm ent with the ongoing activity. The use of speaker head nods is initiated not only by speakers

for a m onitoring purpose b u t also as a consequence of recipients' actions. Through exam ination of the use of speaker head nods, this study m akes a contribution to the m ultim odality research th at uncovers an intricate process of interaction in w hich participants' actions are aligned and negotiated through sim ultaneous use of m ul­ tiple com m unicative m odalities th at m utually elaborate each other (e.g., C. Goodwin, 2000).

PRIOR RESEARCH ON SPEAKER HEAD MOVEMENTS On the one hand, head nods have been studied as recip­ ient actions (e.g., D ittm an & Llewellyn, 1968; M aynard, 1989; Stivers, 2008), and on the other hand, a few attem pts have been m ade to investigate if there is any system atic way in w hich speakers move their heads dur­ ing their speech. Kendon (1972) exam ined the p atterns of body m ovem ent in a speaker in relation to the hierar­ chical organization of co-occurring speech segments. He discovered th at body m ovem ents are also hierarchically organized, and different body m ovem ents correspond with speech units of the equivalent level in the hierarchy. H ead m ovem ents were found to distinguish the speech units called “locution" from one another. Locutions are units that integrate prosodic phrases, th a t is, the sm allest groupings of syllables produced un d er a single in to n a­ tion contour. At the beginning of a locution, there tends to be a change in the position of the head, and at the com pletion of the locution, another head shift is likely to occur. K endon explains th at these head m ovem ent patterns depend closely on the discourse function of the utterance. The locutions th at are distinguished by these m ovem ents tend to function “to move the substance of the discourse forward" (p. 193). The head m ovem ents of those locutions whose prim ary function is a com m entary on the discourse or a parenthetical rem ark exhibit con­ trasting patterns. A series of experim ental studies was conducted by H adar and his associates to investigate the relatio n ­ ship betw een head m ovem ents and various features of 93

94

co-occurring speech. R ather th an defining head m ove­ m ents by conventional labels, such as head nods and head shakes, they classified head m ovem ents into four types by the frequency, am plitude, and direction of m ove­ m ent: narrow, rapid m ovem ent; ordinary m ovement; wide, slow m ovem ent; and p ostural shift. The general finding in Hadar, Steiner, Grant, and Rose (1983a) th at speakers' heads move during their speech and rem ain still during pauses and in listening periods was further explored in the subsequent studies. H adar et al. (1983b) exam ined prosodic features of co-occurring speech and found th at speakers' head m ovem ents are closely associ­ ated w ith m ajor peaks in loudness in th eir speech. The shift in head posture was regularly found after pauses betw een sentences o r clauses b oth in tu rn-internal posi­ tions and betw een tu rn s (H adar et al., 1984), and head m ovem ents observed in such jun ctu res are distinct from those found w ith speech disfluencies (Hadar, Steiner, & Rose, 1984). While H ad ar and colleagues acknowledged a potential role for head m ovem ents in interaction, their approach isolating the phenom ena from the interactional contexts did not allow them to explore th a t possibility. As can be seen, the focus of the previously m entioned studies was on speakers' head m ovem ents, and very lit­ tle was revealed ab o u t speaker head nods in particular. M aynard (1989) is probably one of the earliest studies in w hich the functions of speaker head nods were spe­ cifically investigated. She reported several different com ­ m unicative functions of speaker head nods based on the exam ination of speakers' head m ovem ents in Japanese conversation. Speaker head nods were analyzed based on their locations relative to the co-occurring speech unit, w hich she refers to as “Pause-bounded Phrasal Units (PPUs)'' (p. 24).1 According to M aynard, in the position away from the PPU boundary, a succession of speaker head nods serves as a rhythm -taking device, and w hen a speaker head nod co-occurs w ith a stressed m ora, its function is understood as em phasis. A speaker head nod th a t occurs w ith the last m ora of speech m arks either a clause boundary o r tu rn com pletion. During a pause betw een PPUs, a speaker head nod serves to fill a turntran sitio n pause or to claim the next turn. Based on the findings from the exam ination of Japanese conversations, M aynard analyzed the use of speaker head nods in Am erican English conversations as well. It was found th a t Am erican English speakers use speaker head nods m ore frequently for em phasis and less frequently to m ark a clause boundary or tu rn com pletion. The uses of speaker head nods as a tu rn claim, turn-transition filler, and pre-turn claim were also observed in Am erican English conversations, ju st as frequently as in Japanese conversations.

1 Pause-bounded Phrasal Units (PPUs) are phrases that are typically accompanied by “pause-predicting tone and/or pause-warning decreased speed, along with occasional stressed, rising intona­ tion” (Maynard, 1989, p. 25).

AOKS

Szatrowski (2000) analyzed Japanese conversations to explore how gaze, nodding, and aizuchi “backchannel utterances'' are interrelated. She found that Japanese speakers use d ire c t gaze and head nods to request their recipients' aizuchi and head nods. A retu rn of gaze alone is not taken as a n adequate response, and the progress of the ongoing talk is delayed until the speaker receives the recipient's aizuchi and head no d s .2 In her subsequent study, Szatrow ski (2003) com pared this finding with the use of gaze, head nods, and backchannel utterances in an Am erican English conversation. It was found th a t the use of direct gaze a n d head nods to request a backchannel utterance and n o d s by the recipient was less frequent in Am erican E nglish. The speaker's direct gaze alone is m ore often responded by the recipient's head nods w ith no backchannel utterances. In McClave's (2000) exam ination of head m ovem ents in American E nglish conversations, on the o th er hand, it was discovered th a t speaker nods recurrently prom pt backchannel feedback. Contrasting w ith Szatrowski's (2003) finding, elicited backchannel feedback can be ver­ bal responses, h ead nods, or both. W hile speaker nods can independently elicit a response, they are frequently found to co-occur w ith m anual gestures th at also func­ tion as requests for a response (McNeill, 1992 cited in McClave, 2000, p. 870). It is also of special interest to this study th at McClave reports th at it is “up-and-dow n nods" th at prom pt backchannel feedback (p. 869). As will be show n in the following analysis, Japanese speakers also use this type of h ead nods along with regular head nods exhibiting dow nw ard head m ovem ents only. As in Szatrow ski (2000, 2003) and McClave (2000), the present study explores the interactional functions of speaker head nods. My data, however, reveal th at w hat speaker h ead nods p rom pt is not lim ited to backchannel feedback. In the following, I will dem onstrate th at speaker head nods explicitly m ark the points w here recipients' differentiated actions are relevant, and such speaker actions elicit recipients' im m ediate responses th at align w ith the em erging course of the activity. P R E L IM IN A R Y A N A LY S IS

The data for this study consist of nine video-recorded casual conversations am ong friends or family m em bers w ho are native speakers of Japanese. A six-minute seg­ m ent was random ly extracted from each conversation for an analysis. Em ploying the m ethodological fram e­ w ork of conversation analysis, this study offers a detailed analysis of the sequential and activity contexts in w hich speaker head nods occur. As a prelim inary, this section offers an analysis of the distributional pattern s of speaker head nods in relation to participants' gaze directions and co-occurring speech. 2 Similarly, Kita and Ide (2007) claim that Japanese speakers use resources such as head nods and final particles to elicit aizuchi.

SOME FUNCTIONS OF SPEAKER HEAD NODS

95

Table 7.1. The distribution of speaker head nods

Table 7.2. The distribution of th e tw o form s of

am ong different patterns of participants' gaze

speaker head nods

Mutual gaze

Speakers only

Recipients only

228 (53.3%)

92(21.5% ) 52(12.1% )

Neither

Total

56(13.1% )

428

Regular nods 108 (47.4%)

Stretched nods

Total

120 (52.6%)

228

71 S a t o k o : s- sugokuna::i? incredible-NEG

"Isn't it incredible?" Transcript 7.1a.

Aiko:

Satoko:

°ouchi ni home at

^1

todoku [mon na no [ka. delivered [NML COP SE [Q [((brings gaze to Masami.))

"((Is it the case that gifts)) are delivered to the home?" [ [ 16

Masami:

[nn. [RT

["Yeah." 17

(0.3)

71 18

Masami:

M

yappa kaisha ni wa todoku yo ne:. as.you.know company at TOP delivered IP IP

"As you know, ((gifts)) are ((also)) delivered at the office, aren't they?" Transcript 7.7. recipient responses, are also often observed w ith speaker head nods. A question now arises if speaker head nods indepen­ dently elicit responses from recipients. Let us consider Transcript (7.7). Here, Satoko is expressing h er disbelief th at som e vendors who do business w ith h er com pany have gifts delivered to her co-workers' hom e. Just prior to this segm ent, she w onders how vendors come to know her co-workers' hom e addresses. M asam i responds to this, in line 1 , th at they would dare to ask for their clients’ addresses to send gifts because they w ant to take orders,

but Satoko does not show any sign of agreem ent w ith M asami (lines 2, 4, & 5). After M asam i m akes a self-deprecating com m ent in an attem pt to justify her opinion, Satoko quietly utters, fol­ lowing a long period of silence, ouchi ni todoku mon na no ka "Is it the case th at gifts are delivered to the home?" in line 15. The interrogative particle ka is typically used in self-addressed talk, but this utterance is not heard as such by Masami. Rather, she treats Satoko's talk to be addressed to her and provides a relevant response (lines 16 & 18). Close exam ination of Satoko's visual conducts

AOKI

98 1

T ae :

demo (0.4) sonnani (.) bikkurisuru hodobut that.extent surprised as

"But (0.4) ((it's not)) so surprisingly-" 2

Mom :

< [iya: atashi [bikkurishichau. [no I [surprised [((lateral head shake))

[ "No. I'm surprised." [ 3

[oishii. [delicious

Tae :

[ "((It's)) delicious." 4

[

(

1 . 1)

[ ((Tae and her mother are looking at each other chewing cheese.))

ü 5

Tae:

[oishii. [delicious [((having another bite of the cheese))

[((It's)) delicious." [ [71 NJ

6

Mom:

[oishii n da kedo:, [delicious SE COP but

[((It's)) delicious, but"

Transcript 7.8. reveals th a t it is through visual m odalities th at M asam i understood Satoko's u tterance not as self-addressed talk b u t as addressed to her. As indicated in line 15, Satoko tu rn s h er gaze to M asam i in the m idst of h er utterance and produces a stretched nod as she com pletes her utterance. To this, M asam i overlaps h er response w ith the last m o ra of Satoko's utterance while synchronizing h er head nod w ith the dow nw ard m ovem ent of Satoko's stretched nod. It seem s to be th at this precise placem ent of h er response was a result of M asam i s close m onitor­ ing of S atokos head m ovem ent. This exam ple effectively dem onstrates th at speaker head nods can independently function to elicit recipient responses w ithout the assis­ tance of oth er eliciting devices. It seem s th at speaker head nods not only operate in conjunction with devices of o th er m odalities to elicit recipient responses, b u t also strengthen elicitation. This can be dem onstrated in Transcript 7.8. Ju st p rio r to this segm ent, Tae's m o th er com plained th a t the cheese they were eating was too salty. Line 1 is Tae's response to her com plaint. As indicated by the contrastive particle demo “but” and the adverb sonnani “th a t extent,'' w hich is used in a negative construction, Tae is evidently disagreeing w ith h er mother. Projecting Tae's disagreem ent, the m o th er does not let h er finish h er utterance, insisting th at she was surprised a t the saltiness (line 2). The m other's iya: atashi “No, I" m akes Tae project h er m other's opposition and insist on h er position by assessing the cheese as delicious before h er m other's tu rn com pletes (line 3). Following this, Tae's m other ju st looks at Tae while chewing cheese, im plicitly refusing to display h e r agreem ent. Pursuing the m other's agreem ent, Tae repeats the p rio r assessm ent, b u t this tim e, w ith a regular nod (line 5). The use of a regular nod here m akes Tae appear strongly dem anding the m other's agreem ent.

This instance dem onstrates not only that speaker head nods strengthen requests for recipient responses, but also th at the use of speaker head nods is not always initiated by speakers b u t emerges as participants negotiate each other's actions. We have so far examined the use of speaker head nods in turn-final positions. Instances in w hich speaker head nods co-occur with the devices that elicit recipient responses were presented as evidence for the contribution of speaker head nods to this function. It is still possible, however, that recipient responses are prom pted simply by the sequential implicativeness of utterances; therefore, speaker head nods do not function to elicit responses. In the next section, I will explore this possibility by exam­ ining the use of speaker head nods in turn-internal posi­ tions, where sequential implicativeness may still operate but seems weaker com pared to tu rn completion.

SPEAKER HEAD NODS IN THE VICINITY OF TURN-INTERNAL PROSODIC UNIT BOUNDARIES While one participant is engaged in extended talk, other participants are seen to be not ju st listening b u t interm it­ tently providing som e kind of feedback w ithout interfer­ ing with the talk-in-progress. This kind of recipient action is known widely as backchannel activities, and it has been reported in previous studies th a t speaker head nods are employed to elicit backchannel feedback both in American English and Japanese conversations (Kita & Ide, 2007; McClave, 2000; Szatrowski, 2000, 2003). Exam ination of my data also supported this finding and fu rther revealed th at w hat speaker head nods elicit in Japanese casual conversation is not any backchannel feedback 7 b u t 7

The term "backchannel" or aizuchi encompasses a wide variety of recipient feedback. According to Yngve (1970), for instance, head nods, vocalizations such as uh-huh and yes, sentence com­ pletions, and short comments and questions are considered to be backchannel feedback.

SOME FUNCTIONS OF SPEAKER HEAD NODS

99

specifically the use of the response token

nn, the single head nod, or the com bina-

nj

Aiko :

Satoko: da kedo

(

0 . 2

)

N 6

Sumi:

u:nto INJ

[rooketsuzome daka no somemono y a t t e , [wax.dye SOF GEN dyeing do-CNJ [((turns her gaze on W a d a ) )

"Well, she does wax-dyeing or that sort of thing, and" Transcript 7.12. & C. Goodwin, 1986; Hayashi, 2003). W hile a speaker is involved in a w ord search, the recipient does not actively participate in the search but lets the speaker produce the searched-for w ord alone, by simply displaying his or h er heightened attention to the speakers actions and the ongoing activity through the continuous gaze; this stage of w ord search is called a "solitary search" (M. H. Goodwin & C. Goodwin, 1986, p. 63). The speakers gaze aversion during a solitary search indicates th at the speaker is not expecting the recipient's participation. As now can be expected in such a con­ text, speaker head nods tend to be absent during soli­ tary searches. This is illustrated in (7.12), in w hich Sum i is telling the others about various form s of art th at her daug h ters friend's family creates. In line 1, Sum i conveys th at the g randm other does weaving with the iconic ges­ ture th at seem s to depict a textile hanging, and addresses her talk specifically to Kono by moving her body and gaze tow ard her. Kono and W ada then follow Sumi's talk w ith displays of recipiency (lines 2-3). As Sum i produces the next prosodic u n it in line 4, she diverts h er gaze from Kono and stares into midair. In addition, her once anim ated hand and body freeze at the end of the prosodic unit. Sumi's engagem ent in a solitary search is visibly apparent, and the recipients are closely m onitoring this shift in her action. Although the prosodic u n it boundary is m arked with a high-rising ter­ m inal pitch contour, the recipients are ju st paying close attention to Sumi's solitary w ord search instead of dis­ playing recipiency (line 5). Notice Sumi's use of speaker head nods. Just before she engages in a solitary search, she uses a regular head

nod on the last m ora of the prosodic u n it in line 1 , and the recipients respond to it w ith displays of recipiency. D uring the solitary search, however, Sum i does not employ head nods, as she does not look at any of the recipients. In doing so, she is displaying th at she is focus­ ing on the search and not looking for any response from the recipients. In line 6 , as she comes out of the search, she displays th at she is now ready to receive responses from the recipient by not only bringing her gaze to W ada b u t also by m arking the prosodic unit boundary w ith a regular head nod. Shifts in activity th at change the rele­ vance of recipient responses are reflected precisely in the use of speaker head nods and the recipients' alignm ent with it.

SPEAKER HEAD NODS SN THE MIDST OF PROSODIC UNITS Finally, I will exam ine the use of speaker head nods in the m idst of prosodic units. As described earlier, speaker head nods in this position can be found less frequently than those in turn-final positions or turn-internal p ro ­ sodic un it boundaries. However, exam ination of speaker head nods in this position offers further dem onstrations of their function to elicit recipient responses. Speaker head nods in the m idst of prosodic units typically co­ occur with stressed words, as found in M aynard (1989). Transcript 7.13 illustrates such an occurrence of speaker head nods. Here, Sum i is telling the others disgustedly th at her daughter receives phone calls only from boys. In line 1 , the pitch of her voice is significantly raised, and she pronounces the word bakari “only" w ith extra stress

AOKI

102 ^ : : : : : : :

1

->

Sum i :

[ (NA: : :nna)

> [otoko ba

Yoko:

2 K ei: Transcript 7.14.

< [> ic h ijik a n g o to ni< [gohyaku en [m ashi. [ p e r .h o u r f o r [500 yen [ in c r e a s e [ [ ( ( l e f t hand i n d i c a t i n g ' f i v e ' ) ) ["((They'll)) charge ((you)) 500 yen per hour additionally." [ [*l [*l

Speaker head nods can independently add prom inence to the co-occurring word. In the next transcript, Sumi tells the others Murai : th at h er daughter w ent to Mexico in the past w inter in line 1. She then adds an increm ent °nn. Wada : RT th at provides additional inform ation, th at "Uh-huh." is, the duration (ikkagetsu “one m o n th ”) and 71 71 ^1 the m ore specific tim e (fuyuyasumi “w inter 4 Sumi: ikkagetsu [gurai
please

LEL

c o a g u la ttio n #

fig ass2

#fig 15 -->t (2+.7)

10

assl 1 1 LEL 12

assl

+activ. coag

c o a g u la tio n (+3.3)

+activ. coag

Figure 15.14. Initial position of the camera (1. 3).

Transcript 15.16. (5.21).

(ass2) (Figures 15.14, 15.15). D issecting is visibly a col­ lective action, every m em b er of th e team co n trib u tin g to its achievem ent in a d istrib u ted way: The surgeon m an ip u lates th e hook, th e first a ssistan t m anipulates the coagulating pedal a n d the p e a n u t grasper, w hich p roduces a ten sio n in th e tissues th a t enables the h o oks dissection; the second a ssistan t holds the cam era and follows th e action, m aking its relevant environm ent visible (Figure 15.15); th e sam e a ssista n t also holds the liver retractor, w hich is visible in th e u p p er p a rt of the im age. This com plex distribution of tasks is m ade audible in instructions such as the ones analyzed here, b u t is m ore generally m ade publicly visible by the rearrangem ents of the hook and by the skilled way in w hich the assistants follow it - w ithout instructions, b u t in a way th a t is intel­ ligible-witnessable for m em bers of the audience having a “professional vision” (Goodwin, 1994) of the operation (here the very fact th at the coordination w ith the cam era assistant is m ade explicit is related to a change of the focus of the cam era, w hich is repaired in the repeated instruction).

Retrospective/prospective orientations after and before the series Often, the end of the series is also the p o in t w here a tra n ­ sition occurs to another activity - explaining - or tow ard

Figure 15.15. Zoom of the camera (1. 7-9). another anatom ical region, m anifested by the movem ents of the hook and/or a spatial description/instruction. Before and after the “coag” series, the previous and the subsequent talk m ake describable, intelligible, and accountable the series to com e/just achieved, such as in the following case: A first series of “coag,” ending w ith “okay,” is followed by a retrospective description of w hat has been achieved in the previous dissection (“the first m obilisation of:: the: liver is good,”). The following TCU has a prospective ori­ entation, m aking explicit the tasks to be achieved in the subsequent dissection (“and now we w ant absolutely to

(0.7 ) co a g , (3.4) co a g (2.3) coag (2.0) coag (2. 2) coag (1.3 ) okay, i th in k t h a t (0.4) t he f i r s t m o b i l i s a t i o n o f : : t h e : l i v e r i s g o o d , a n d now we w a n t a b s o l u t e l y t o h a v e t h e la n d m a r k , and f o r ( 0 . 3 ) f o r t h e r i g h t s i d e , t h a t ' s t h e r e a s o n why ( 0 . 3 ) t h e r i g h t s i d e i s e a s i e r t h a n t h e l e f t o n e , ( 0 . 5 ) t h e landm ark i s v e r y e a s y t o : f i n d , f o r i t ' s t h e v e n a c a v a , ( 0 . 4 ) and h e r e we s e e t h e v e n a c a v a , s o : ( 0 . 4 ) we a r e g o i n g ( t o b e g i n t h e d i s s e c t i o n ) o f t h e v e n a c a v a , ( . ) c o a g u la tio n (0.7) a ls o very slo w ly , (1.9) c o a g u la tio n (0.5)

Transcript 15.17.

CONCURRENT COURSES OF ACTION

219

have the lan d m ark /' “we are going to begin the dissection of the vena cava"). This explanation projects the account­ ability of the following “coag" instructions and opens up a new series. This organization shows th at even w hen “coag" is designed as being an “exclusive" action, absorbing the attention of the surgeon and not intertw ined w ith other ongoing activities (versus the o th er case, w hen “coag" is designed as an “em bedded" action), it is preceded and followed by the explanation, w hich gives it a particu ­ lar intelligibility. In this sense, the surgical action and its dem onstration are never separated, b u t are m utually configuring each o th ers intelligibility. Even if “coag" is an instruction first of all directed to the surgeons team , it is publicly available for the overhearing audience: It is a way of enhancing the visible and audible ch aracter of the surgeon s action. In this sense, alternating betw een series of instructions and m om ents of retrospective and p ro ­ spective explanations m akes the organization of the oper­ ation in various “steps" or “phases" m ore accountable. Sum m ing up the analyses of this first part: The excerpts show th at “coag" is not reducible to a sim ­ ple verbal expression, but it constitutes a complex web of actions. It is collectively perform ed by the team, and has a distinctive sequential form at, constituting a paired instructed action, in which the instruction is followed by the instructed action. The latter does not m erely realize the request but relies on the skilled and situated interpre­ tation of the here, now, and how of the action to be per­ form ed. Moreover, “coag" has a syntagm atic order: It can com bine with other instructions; it can be organized in a series, closed by a term inal “okay"; it can be preceded/ followed by a retrospective/prospective account, integrat­ ing that p articular move w ithin the logic and order of the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

LEL HER LEL

procedure as a whole. This description of the activities perform ed by m eans of “coag" enables us to understand the ordered ways in which it can be designed as an exclu­ sive action or as an action intertw ined w ith the dem on­ stration of the operation.

"COAG" AS AN EMBEDDED ACTION As we saw in the previous section, “coag" can be designed as an exclusive action, absorbing the attention of the sur­ geon and carried on alone, w ithout other actions apart from coordinated instructions to the team . But as I have already observed, it can also be designed to be carried out w ithin other types of activities: This section analyzes the m ethodical ways in which “coag" is intertw ined w ithin the ongoing explanatory activity.

Timed modes of coordination between dissection and demonstration The ways in which “coag" is inserted into the explana­ tion show not only the finely tuned coordination betw een talk and operating procedure, but also the contingencies affecting this coordination. The dissecting procedure has its own orderly sequentiality and timing. Timing of the procedure and tim ing of the talk are m utually adjusted: This m eans that they can be perfectly synchronized, or that one can adapt to the other - depending on the con­ tingencies of both talk and surgery, and on the kind of hierarchization between both that is locally defined by the surgeon. In the following fragm ent, various tem poral relations are observable betw een the unfolding of talk and the sequential organization of the dissection:

so the f l : r s t ste p , (.) coag (0.4) °terrific® i s : to , (.) co n tin u e the d is s e c t io n , ( .) c o a g u l a t io n , ( 1 . 3 ) and th e m o b ilis a tio n , (0.8) c o a g u la tio n (1.8) o f (.) the l i v e r , (.) c o a g u la tio n . ( 0 . 9 ) and to go v e r y ( 0 . 2 ) co a g ( 1 . 1 ) v e r y s lo w ly fo r ( .) c o a g u la t io n ( 1 . 2) i t h in k i t i s v e r y im p o r ta n t to h ave th e lE S s b lo o d ( .) p o s s i b l e ( 0 . 2 ) c o a g u la tio n (1.9) c o a g u la tio n (0.6)

Transcript 15.18a. (2.52; simplified transcript). In stru ctio n s can be in serted in various positions w ith in talk. These p lacem ents can be b e tte r u nd ersto o d if related to th e ir tim ed p ro d u c tio n w ith in the su rg i­ cal action, consisting of a series of m ovem ents such 1 1

LEL

2 3 4 5

6 7

8

HER LEL

as positioning the hook, using it in o rd e r to dissect, m oving it back, and repositioning it for th e next move. These relevant details ap p ear in the following refined m ultim odal transcript:

so the fI :r s t step , (.) coag (0.4) ° te r r ific ® is : to, (.) co n tin u e the d is s e c t io n , ( .) c o a g u l a t io n , ( 1 . 3 ) and th e m o b ilis a tio n , (0.8) c o a g u la tio n (1.8) o f (.) the liv e r , (.) c o a g u la tio n . ( 0 . 9 ) and to go v e r y ( 0 . 2 ) co a g ( 1 . 1 ) v e r y s lo w ly fo r ( .) c o a g u la t io n ( 1 . 2) i th in k i t i s v e r y im p o r ta n t to h ave th e lE S s b lo o d ( .) p o s s i b l e ( 0 . 2 ) c o a g u la tio n (1.9) c o a g u la tio n (0.6)

Transcript 15.18b. (2.52; multimodal transcript).

220

MONDADA

In this excerpt, Lelacq describes the p u rsu it of the dis­ section of the liver, trying to avoid any bleeding. This description is done while Lelacq goes on with the dissec­ tion itself, w hich is achieved through the repeated posi­ tioning, tension, and activation of the coagulating hook. As a consequence, the instructions “coag” or “coagula­ tion” are inserted w ithin the dem onstration talk. These insertions are positioned in a tim ely way, taking into account the sequential and increm ental organization of talk, b u t also of the surgical procedure. The excerpt m akes visible and audible different m odes of temporal organization betw een talk and surgery: - A finely tu n ed sy n ch ro n izatio n can be achieved betw een the p ro d u ctio n of the u n it of talk preceding the in stru c tio n (1, 3) an d the gesture p rep arin g the coagulation: At the end of the first unit, w hich p ro j­ ects m ore to com e (1), L elacq has com pleted the ade­ quate p ositioning of th e hook; durin g the sm all pause th a t follows, he uses th e hook and u tters th e in stru c ­ tion; d uring th e next pause, the assistan t activates the c o agulation and the su rgeon com pletes the dissection sequence. The sam e h ap p en s line 3. In these cases, “coag” o r “coag u latio n ” is placed at a specific tim e at the end of a p ractical un it, between one TCU and the follow ing one o r betw een the first p a rt of a com pound u n it and its second p art. - But w ithin this tim ed coordination, the surgical ges­ ture can also be slightly anticipated relative to the ongoing talk: in the subsequent two instances of “coagulation” (4-5), Lelacq completes the positioning of the hook and begins to use it before the u n it is com pleted (in the middle of “m obilisa:*tion,” 4, and in the m iddle of “of (.) the:* liver,” 5). In these cases, the instruction is inserted in the middle of the unit. - This anticipation and the consequential placem ent of “coag” can be achieved very early (6) and in this case talk is suspended in favor of the dissection. Line 6, Lelacq

encounters a small lateral dot of blood and coagulates it; he then goes back to the hepatic parietal ligament he was following in his dissection, while continuing the same syn­ tactical construction (“and, to go very (0.2) coag (1.1) very slowly,” 6-7). - B ut dissection can also be delayed relative to talk. The last syntactical u n it of the excerpt (“i think it is very im p o rtan t to have the lESs blood (.) possible” 16-17) is com pleted before the in stru ctio n is inserted: Dissection is suspended - the tension of the hook, already m axim al on “ve*ry im p o rtan t” (16), is m ain tain ed until the coag­ ulation - w aiting for the talk to be com pleted. In short, this fragm ent shows various tem poral orga­ nizations of the co o rd in atio n betw een talk and surgical action: At the beginning, both are synchronized, then dissection com es before talk and talk is suspended in favor of dissection; finally, talk is p rio ritized an d dissec­ tion is suspended in o rd er to secure talk com pletion.

Positions of inserted instructions within talk: "Coag" inserted b e tw e en units of talk In the previous excerpt we observed th a t instructions are inserted w ithin talk at different sequential-syntactical positions. Although relating to the surgical procedure, “coag” is placed w ithin the ongoing talk in a way that exploits the boundaries of clausal gram m atical struc­ tures or m ore elem entary syntactical constituents: The very position at which “coag” is inserted provides for a sense of the speakers orientation to elem entary units of talk. A first configuration is characterized by “coag”’s inser­ tion between units of talk: The surgeon gives instructions at sequential positions th at achieve the parsing of the ongoing explanation into units. The first fragm ent given at the beginning of the chapter is an instance of this configuration:

13 14

b u t W“ s o w e ( 0 . 7 ) w e f o l l o w c o a g u l a t i o n ( 2 . 2 ) ok a y , i th in k ( 0 . 6 ) t o u t d ou cem en t, v e r y s l o w l y . ( 1 . 6 ) n o : n , i t ' s n o t , ( 1 . 3 ) s o : w- ( 0 . 4 ) c o a g , ( 1 . 6 ) b u t t h a t ' s th e tim e o f th e d i s s e c t i o n s o : , (0.4) c o a g , ( 0 . 2 ) we d o n ' t l o o s e t i m e , ( 1 . 3 ) b e c a r e f u l , e u h ( 0 . 5 ) on s e r a p p r o c h e , ( 1 . 6 ) un p e t i t p eu t r o p de b r i l l a n c e .

15 16 17 18

(3.3) coag (4.0) oké: (0.9) coag (1.5) o h : : , s (0.9) s u r p r i s e d , y o u know t h i s m o r n in g w h en i h a v e s e e n t h e p a tie n t, ( 0 . 3 ) in l a t e r a l euh d e c u b itu s sh e was ( 0 . 3) so : f a t, ( 1 . 1 ) co a g b u t euh ( 0 . 5 ) i t ' s e a s y .

9

10 11 12

LEL

go d o s e r

a l i t t l e b i t o f too sh in y s u r f ac e i'm

Transcript 15.19. (7.20; second part of Transcript 15.1). In this excerpt, the surgeon is dissecting an area that presents some difficulties regarding the identification and recognition of possible veins. The talk form ulates the action and the vision of the surgeon, com prising his local guesses and surprises: His invitations to proceed carefully and slowly are not general but rath er specifically occa­ sioned by and adjusted to w hat he is doing; this is also the case of line 11, when “no:n, its not,” concerns the surgeon

(not) finding a vein while the assistants peanut displays the anatom ical field, or line 15, w hen “oh::,” is uttered as a bit of fat pops up from the dissected point. The dem on­ stration takes here the form of a (re)discovery of the pro­ cedure and of its contingent steps m ore than of a generic surgery lesson. The insertion of “coag” orienting to the boundaries of the units of talk does not ju st accom plish the dissection,

CONCURRENT COURSES OF ACTION

221

and does not just m ake visible the work of the surgeon for the audience, but does the extra work of structuring and segm enting talk into practical units - units designed for practical purposes, w hich can correspond to turnconstructional units (as in “but th a ts the tim e of the dissection so:, 12) but also to com pound units (Lerner,

c o a g u la tio n

(1.1)

you

see

1996) or to bigger “packages" such as narratives (e.g., the m icro-narrative following the “oh::," 15-18). The “size" and inner complexity of these units is deeply related to time: tim e of the utterance on the one hand, tim e of the surgical action on the other. Here both coincide. O ther instances of this phenom enon are the following:

t h a t we g o v e r y v e r y

slo w ly

(.)

c o a g u la tio n

(3.1)

Transcript 15.20.

c o a g u la t io n ( 0 . 6 ) and so i t can be d a n g e r o u s. r a i s o n why i g o v e r y s l o w l y . (.) coag

(0.6)

that's

th e

Transcript 15.21.

and now, ( . ) we h a v e e h f o u n d ( 0 . 3 ) t h e : l A : s t p e l l i c u l e , (0.3) c o a g u la tio n (0.9) t h a t ' s th e in f e r i o r p e l l i c u l e o f th e a d ren a l g la n d ,

(.)

coag

Transcript 15.22.

coag

(1.0)

s o we h a v e

tim e,

(0.3)

coag,

(0.7)

here

is

a good p la n ,

(1.9)

coag

(2.5)

Transcript 15.23.

coag

(1.8)

you

see

once

a g a in

how i t ' s

im p ortan t

to

have

a good

e x p o sitio n

(0.3)

coag

Transcript 15.24.

coag

(1.4)

h e r e we h a v e

a good p la n ,

(0.3)

coag

Transcript 15.25.

In all these cases, the instructions “frame" the unit, the latter taking place betw een two “coag": In this way, the instruction works as a way of delim iting units of talk.

c o a g u la tio n c o a g u la tio n

(1.6) (0.2)

ok é we w an t a b s o l u t e l y of the P o ste r io r w a ll,

A variant of this p attern show s again a flexible ori­ entation tow ard the possible boundaries of the units of talk:

to be (1.8)

in th e good p la n , c o a g u la tio n (0.6)

(0.4)

Transcript 15.26. (37.25)

c o a g ( 0 . 7 ) y o u know t h a t o n e o f : , ( 0 . 6 ) som e a c c i d e n t d e s c r i b e d , c o a g u la tio n \ (0.3) in the lit e r a t u r e , (0.5) coag (1.9)

(.)

Transcript 15.27. (47.12)

and we n e e d

a b so lu te ly

to

go

very

fa :r ,

(0.5)

coag

(0.2)

on

Transcript 15.28. (2.02)

we a r e g o i n g t o : ( . ) t o c u t h e r e a l s o t h e ( . ) e x - e x te r n a l p a r t coag (0 .8 ) o - o f th e g la n d ,

su p e r i o r and (1.3) coag

Transcript 15.29. (48.35)

the

r ig h t

si:de,

coag

222

MONDADA

C o a g " i n s e r t e d within u n i t s o f t a l k

In these cases, “coag” is inserted at the end of a possible com plete unit; after “coag,” the u n it is expanded by the addition of a prepositional phrase. Here the increm ent com pletes the unit and occasions a new position in which “coag” can be inserted, again at a com pletion point.

so we h ave

a;

a lw a y s

a::

zero

The cases where the insertion of “coag” is positioned within an ongoing unit of talk are quite rare. They are related to the constraints of the ongoing surgery (cf. supra, 4.1.) and all m anifest a norm ative orientation tow ard the boundary of the unit. This orientation can be displayed by a pro­ sodic m inim ization of “coag,” as in the following excerpt:

degree

< ° c o a g u la tio n °

( ( f a s t e r ) )> o p t ic .

Transcript 15.30. (9.16). “C oagulation” is u ttered here in a specific way, with a distinctive lower voice and at a faster pace: These p ro ­ sodic features show th a t although the inserted elem ent is placed in the m iddle of a noun phrase, its realization is oriented to this peculiar placem ent. Contrastively, the o rientation tow ard the com pletion of a u n it can also be displayed by exploiting a particular = s o : i th in k th a t (0.6) c o a g u la tio n la t e r a l p o s itio n i s (0.3) c o a g u la ti

Transcript “I think that” projects the second part of the compound TCU and the instruction is inserted between them. In the same vein, the copula, placed before the second insertion, projects maximally m ore to come; being separated from the copula, “wonderful” receives a very particular and prom i­ nent position. In these cases, the insertion of the instruction i t ' s a lw a y s v e r y im p o r ta n t to ( 0 . 4 ) good p ic tu r e , [ (0 .4 ) c o a g u la tio n

coag,

(.)

position of “coag,” w hich apparently violates its bound­ ary: The insertion of an extra elem ent in the m iddle of a noun phrase can be exploited in order to foreground the projected element. In this case, ra th e r than being prosodically and phonetically m inim ized, “coagulation” is fully pronounced:

th e id e a o f m ic h e l to l. (0.1 5) w o n d e r fu l.

put

the

T O tA l

.31. (38.20). in the middle of a TCU, at points of maximal projection, has the effect of highlighting the projected element. In a m ajority of cases, w hen “coag” is inserted in the m iddle of a unit, the incom plete pre-insertion fragm ent is repeated in a post-insertion position in order to be completed: > w ash

the

o p tic

(0.2)

a LO t o f

tim e

to

have

a

Transcript 15.32. (39.38=03). s o we: i t h in k t h a t t h e k ey o f th e ] s u c c e s s o f t h e o p e r a t i o n f o r t h e r i g h t s i : d e , ( 0 . 3 ) i s fir st of all, ( 0 . 2 ) a v e r y g o o d m o b i l i s a t i o n : o f : eh t h e l i v e r . ( 0 . 3 ) and f o r t h a t we : we open, (0.6) c o a g u la tio n , ( 1 . 4 ) we o p en t h e p e r it o n e u m j u s t u n d er t h e l i v e r , c o a g .

Transcript 15.33. (1.13). c o a g ( 0 . 7 ) y o u know t h a t o n e o f : , ( 0 . 6 ) som e a c c i d e n t d e s c r i b e d , ( . ) c o a g u l a t i o n . ( 0 . 3 ) lit e r a t u r e , (0.5) coag (1.9) i s eh (1.0) c o n fu :s io n , (0.4) c o a g u la tio n (1.5) coag (1.9) c o n f u s io n b etw een t h e : h ( 0 . 7 ) th e e a d r e n a l, a r t e r y ( 0 . 2 ) i n f e r i o r and ( 0 . 3 ) co a g ( 1 . 6 )

in

the

Transcript 15.34. (47.12). In the first excerpt, the conjunction “to ” is treated as inseparable from the verb th a t follows (“to w ash”). In the second, “o pen” is constructed as a transitive verb w hose object is strongly tied to the verb, w hich is repeated. H ere again the rep etition of a key action per­ form ed rig h t at th a t m om ent (the dissection achieved during the 0.6 seconds of pause literally “opens the peri­ to n eu m ”) highlights th e im portance of the gesture. In the third, “confu:sion” is repeated after a double in stru c­ tion, thereby focussing on a frequent risk encountered in this kind of operation. In these various positions - betw een units, after an expansion, and in the m iddle of a u n it - the insertion of “coag” exhibits the p articip an t s endogeneous orientation

tow ard the increm ental gram m atical organization of the tu rn in TCUs. INSERTION WITHIN EXCHANGES AND REORGANIZATIONS OF THE PARTICIPATION FRAMEWORK The sequential positions exam ined earlier concern frag­ m ents of Lelacqs dem onstration organized in long m ulti­ un it turns. However, there is an o th er environm ent where insertions of “coag” show the p articip an ts orientation to the relevance of its p articular position: w ithin alternating turns w ith the expert com m enting on the operation. Here are two instances of this particular sequence format:

CONCURRENT COURSES OF ACTION 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

LEL

223

co a g u la tio n (0.5) we c a n s e e t h a t v e r y n i c e l y (0.6) thank you j am es. (1.1) c o a g u la tio n .

HER LEL LEL

ro la n d

T ra n sc rip t 15.35. (5.20). 1 LEL 2 HER 3 4 5 LEL

c o a g [u la tio n [ t h a t ' s a w on d erfu l good p ic tu r e (0.8) than k s co a g .

c lo se

up r o l a n d ,

very

(0.4)

very

T ra n sc rip t 15.36. (6.30).

In these two cases, the adjacency p air consisting of a com plim ent by the expert and its acceptance by the sur­ geon is preceded and closed by "coag.” In this way, Lelacq positions the second "coag” a t the end of the adjacency p air - and not, for example, in the middle. Thus, the excerpts analyzed in the preceding sec­ tions show a system atic o rientation of the positioning of "coag,” taking into consideration units of different complexity, ranging from the TCU to the tu rn and to the adjacency pair. In this sense, the m ethodic placem ent of "coag” exhibits th at these units are indeed "emic” units, th at is, vernacular units oriented to by the p articipants in the course of the contingent organization of their action. The system atic sequential positions at w hich "coag” is inserted can be sum m arized in the following way. It can be positioned at all the significant com pletion points w ithin the TCU, the turn, and the sequence. W ithin the turn, it can display an orientation to the com pletion of a practical unit, being positioned after the com pletion of a TCU (exc. 19-25), and after a post-com pletion expansion realized by an increm ent (exc. 26-29). Even w hen "coag” is produced in the m iddle of an ongoing TCU, it still shows a norm ative orientation to its com pletion, being either uttered in a m inim alized way (exc. 30) or exploit­ ing this position to highlight the detached segm ent (exc. 31). Moreover, w hen it is placed w ithin the m iddle on a TCU, the last pre-insertion elem ent tends to be repeated 1 LEL

oké,

i

j u s t want

to:

(0.2)

bouge pas

after "coag” (exc. 32-34), showing again an orientation to the fragm entary character of the previous suspended unit. All these cases show an orientation tow ard the unit s com pletion: first by respecting it through the placem ent of "coag” betw een units, and secondly by opportunisti­ cally m inim izing or exploiting the placem ent of "coag” w ithin units. Moreover, an orientation tow ard m ore units assem bling m ore th an a tu rn is also diplayed by the posi­ tioning of "coag” at the end of an ongoing sequence of talk, after the com pletion of the second p air part. These system atic positionings show th at the order to the sur­ gical activity norm atively orients to the o rder of the talk activity.

Abandoning the (uncompleted) demonstration In the previously examined cases, "coag” is inserted in a way that maximally respects the sequential order of talk at var­ ious levels, both within the tu rn and within the sequence. The surgeon actively organizes both courses of action in order to make multiactivity possible and to coordinate different temporalities, by m aking them converging. But the order of surgery can also take over the order of talk: In these cases, turns are designed in such a way to exhibit the abandoning of the talk in order to give prior­ ity to the surgery. Talk is not only suspended but defini­ tively abandoned afterw ard. tan t,

d o n 't m o v e

2

c o a g u la tio n

(1.3)

c o a g u la tio n

(2.0)

so much

(1.6)

T ra n sc rip t 15.37. (16.58). 1 LEL 2 3

y o u know, f o r t h e L : E f t a d r e n a l e c t o m y , ( 0 . 7 ) we p r e f e r , ( . ) c o a g u l a t i o n ( 1 . 1 ) coag, (0.4) o fte n to take th e s c is s o r s , (0. 6) b u t f o r th e r ig h t one i th in k t h a t t h e h o o k , ( 0 . 2 ) h u h , ° ç a s a i g n e . 0 ( 0 . 4 ) °ta m p o n ,® ( 3 . 0 ) ( to u t) d ou cem en t, huh,

4

(1.2)

coag

(2.8)

coag

(1.1)

°it's b l e e d i n g 0

i

j u s t want

(0.4)

to

cle a n

°tampon°

(3.0)

(very)

my h o o k

(2.1)

((c le a r s

gently

th ro a t))

T ra n sc rip t 15.38. (12.50).1 1 LEL 2 3

and now, ( . ) we h a v e e h fo u n d ( 0 . 3 ) t h e : I A : s t p e l l i c u l e , ( 0 . 3 ) c o a g u l a t i o n (0.9 ) t h a t ' s th e i n f e r i o r p e l l i c u l e o f th e a d ren a l g la n d , ( .) coag (0. 9) w h ic h j u s t e h ( 0 . 5 ) com es fro m ( . ) ° d o u c e m e n t . ° ( 2 . 6 ) a n ( d ) , ( . ) y o u know - ,

4

yes

°gently°

i

need

a

little

tr a c tio n ,

(2.4)

coag

(2.5)

Transcript 15.39. (45.00).

coag

(2.1)

°oké°

coag

(1.6)

224

In all these cases, the abandonm ent of the projected talk occurs in an environm ent characterized by an incom ­ ing contingent event noticeable both on the video and in the organization of talk. In all the cases, • the suspended fragm ent is visibly incom plete, both from a syntactic and a prosodic point of view (“i just w ant to:” 37, “but for the right one i think th at the hook,” 38, “w hich ju st eh (0.5) comes from (.)”, fol­ lowed by an o th er attem pt to continue: “an(d), (.) you know-,” 39); • the suspended fragm ent is followed by an instruc­ tion given in French to the team (“bouge pas tan t,” 37, “huh, °ça saigne,0 (0.4) °tam pon,°” 38, ^ d o u c e ­ m ent.0” 39): the contrast betw een English and F rench m akes recognizable the contrast betw een the previous dem onstration talk addressed to the audi­ ence and the incom ing surgical em ergency dem and­ ing the attention of the team . • these instructions respond to an unforeseen - and possibly problem atic - event: The cam era is moving too m uch, som e blood is spilling, the tissues held by the p ean u t are slipping, and the operative field has to be rearranged. These events are massively visible on the screen, and this contributes to the accountability of the fact th a t the em ergent talk is dropped. In view of these events, the surgical procedure again becom es the m ain course of action, dictating its own tem ­ porality and sequentiality: In this case, it is (re)designed as exclusive of o th er kinds of actions. CONCLUSION: THE SEQUENTIAL O R G A N IZ A T IO N OF M U L TIA C T IV IT Y

In this chapter, I have attem pted to reconstruct the praxeological g ram m ar of a p articu lar expression, “coag.” The m ethodical order in which this action is achieved reveals various coordination m odes characteristic of m ultiactiv­ ity, organized both by talk and by m ultimodality. The description of “coag” show s how it is possible to develop a “praxeological g ram m ar” of an action im ple­ m ented both linguistically an d m ultimodally. “Coag” rem inds of the prim itive language W ittgenstein im agi­ nes in his Philosophical Investigations (§ 2), constituted thro u g h the w ords “block,” “pillar,” “slab,” and “beam .” In his discussion of the A ugustinian theory of language, W ittgenstein describes the g ram m ar of these w ords not on the basis of the correlation betw een th eir sound and the corresponding im age in th e speakers m ind, b u t by referring to their actual use, in a p articu lar situation where a building has to be b u ilt - and for a specific pur­ pose. “Coag” w orks in the sam e way: O ur analysis is not focused on the linguistic form p er se b u t on the action it accom plishes. The two aspects cannot be separated here. As M.H. Goodwin (1996: 437) rem inds us, “U tterances are p arts of action chains w hich set in m otion a set of next actions th a t m obilize people” - see also Lerner

MONDADA

(1996, 238): “Turns at talk are designed for (and as a p art of) practical action in interaction. The structures of talk-in-interaction are social structures of practical actors, and the features of their talk then are features of practical action.” “Coag” achieves a com plex web of situ­ ated collective m ultim odal actions, and its praxeological gram m ar takes into account: • the linguistic expression which is a social action (here, an instruction); • the tim ely production of this expression; • its position in a sequential environm ent defined both by previous and subsequent talk and by the ongoing action; • the concurrent actions and other relevant events going on in the sam e spatial and m aterial context; • the co-occurring forms and com binations of forms defining particular sequential p atterns of action (e.g., series of “coag,” or term inal “oké,” etc.); • the sequence form at of the actions described (e.g., preparation/paired actions/post-actions). The description of “coag” not only suggests the im por­ tance of an interactional linguistics taking into account these features; it contributes to our com prehension of the endogenous definition of units of talk and action by the participants, of their orientation to them , of their m ethodical practices of designing units for all practical purposes, and of their locally and contingent ways of structuring their activities. This gram m ar appears to be both very unique and very general. It is unique in the sense th a t it is used by only one person, related to a very personal, idiosyncratic way of organizing a surgical move, coagulating with a hook. But it is general in the sense th a t its analysis reveals m ethodical ways of organizing action - such as the intertw ining of a word w ith not only an action but a sequential p attern of actions, the sequential positioning of th at action orienting to the sequential organization of the activity, its distribution in various configurations all showing the p articipants' orientations tow ard the organization of talk and action in units. This uniqueness and generality m ake “coag” an object th a t is w orth inves­ tigating, a “perspicuous phenom enon” th a t reveals both the specificities - the haecceities (Garfinkel & Wieder, 1992) - of the surgical action and the general features of situated action. The description of “coag” allows us to point to global fea­ tures of the organization of multiactivity, considered as: • a system atic organization of variously related activi­ ties achieved at the sam e time; • seen and dealt with in m em bers' perspectives as sim ultaneously going on and as raising problem s of coordination; • coordinated by participants orienting to gestaltic and em ergent boundaries of units (TCU, practical units, sequences, activities);

CONCURRENT COURSES OF ACTION

• organized w ithin a range of coordination regim es characterized by either an exclusive m ode or an em bedded mode. The em bedded m ode can be char­ acterized either by convergent tim ing or by divergent tim ing of parallel actions. In the form er case, we have a superposed synchronized convergent organi­ zation of both; in the latter case, a hierarchization am ong them , w here one is prioritized in relation to the other. These regim es are locally defined and can change in flexible ways. The study of m ultiactivity contributes also to our com ­ prehension of how the sequentiality of talk and action is organized. Sequentiality is a general principle governing

225

not only talk but also action (including actions done silently or actions th at are not m ainly structured by speech). Temporality of talk not only respects the sequen­ tial interactional order, but can also be constrained by the logic of other actions, to w hich talk can adjust. So, talk can be organized by aligning w ith the order of other actions. Conversely, however, talk can also im pose its tem ­ poral and sequential organization on other conduct. In multiactivity, talk and other actions can project parallel sequential constraints th at can be responded to sim ulta­ neously or successively. This shapes the definition of the relevant tem porality of m ultiactivity as a local achieve­ m ent, both system atically and contingently organized.

Transcript conventions Talk has been transcribed according to conventions developed by Gail Jefferson. An indicative translation is provided line p er line in italics. M ultim odal details have been transcribed according to the following conventions: ** ++ t t *—> *—>>

delim it descriptions of surgeons s gestures and actions. delim it descriptions of the assistants gestures and actions. delim it descriptions of the second assistants gestures and actions. gesture or action described continues across subsequent lines. gesture or action described continues until and after excerpts end.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS W ithout the help and support of the IRCAD (Institut de Recherche p o u r le Cancer de l'Appareil Digestif) of the Civic H ospital of Strasbourg, heldw ork and analysis of these data would have been im possible. My w arm est thank goes to Jacques M arescaux for having opened the doors of his lab and operating room for me. I also am m ost grateful to Elisabeth Keating for her revision of my English text and for h er stim ulating com m ents. BIBLIOGRAPHY B each, W.A. (1993). T ran sitio n al re g u la ritie s for 'c a s u a l’ “O kay” u sa g e s. Journal of Pragmatics, 19, 325-352. G arfinkel, H. (2002). Ethnomethodology’s program: Working out Dürkheims aphorism. B oston: R o w m a n & Littlefield. G arfinkel, H., & W ieder, D. L. (1992). Two in c o m m e n su ra b le a sy m m e tric ally a lte rn a te tech n o lo g ies o f social analysis. In G. W atson & R. M. S eiler (E ds.), Text in context: Contributions to ethnomethodology (pp. 175-206). N ew bury P ark, CA: Sage P u b lica tio n s.

— >* » —

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gesture or action described continues until the sam e symbol is reached. gesture or action described begins before the excerpt's beginning, gesture's preparation. gesture's apex is reached and m aintained. gesture's retraction. participant doing gesture is identified in small characters. w hen (s)he is not the speaker or w hen the gesture is done during a pause, the exact point where screen shot (figures) has been taken is indicated, with a specific sign showing its position w ithin tu rn at talk, com m ent.

Glenn, P. & K oschm ann, T. (2006). L earning to diagnose: P ro d u c­ tion of diagnostic hypotheses in Problem -B ased L earning tu to ­ rials. In M. Maxwell, D. Kovarsky, & J. D uchan (Eds.), Diagnosis as cultural practice (pp. 153-178). The H ague: M outon. G oodw in, C. (1981). Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers. N ew York: A cadem ic Press. G oodw in, C. (1994). P ro fessio n al vision. American Anthropologist, 96(3), 606-633. G oodw in, C. (2000). A ction a n d e m b o d im e n t w ith in situ a te d h u m a n in te ra c tio n . Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 1489-1522. G oodw in, C., & G oodw in, M .H. (1996). F o rm u la tin g planes: Seeing as a situ a te d activity. In D avid M id d leto n & Yrjö E n g e stro m (E ds.), Cognition and Communication at Work (pp. 61-95). C am bridge: C am bridge U niversity Press. G oodw in, M. H. (1996). In fo rm in g s a n d a n n o u n c e m e n ts in th e ir e n v iro n m en ts: P rosody w ith in a m u lti-activ ity w o rk setting. In E. C ouper-K uhlen & M. S elting (E ds.), Prosody in Conversation: Interactional Studies (pp. 436-461). C am bridge: C am b rid g e U niversity Press. H ayashi, M. (2005). Jo in t tu rn c o n stru c tio n th ro u g h lan g u ag e a n d th e body: N otes o n e m b o d im e n t in c o o rd in a te d p a rtic ip a ­ tio n in situ a te d activities. Semiotica, 156, 21-53.

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Heath, C. (1986). Body movement and speech in medical interac­ tion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heath, C., & Luff, P. (2000). Technology in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heath, C., Sanchez Svensson, M., & Luff, P. (2003). Technology and medical practice. Sociology of Health and Illness, 25, 75-97. Hindmarsh, J. and Pilnick, A. (2002). The tacit order of team­ work: Collaboration and embodied conduct in anaesthesia. The Sociological Quarterly, 43(2), 139-164. Hindmarsh, J., & Pilnick, A. (2007). Knowing bodies at work: Embodiment and ephemeral teamwork in anaesthesia. Organization Studies, 28(9), 1395-1416. Jefferson, G. (1973). A case of precision timing in ordinary con­ versation: Overlapped tag-positioned address terms in closing sequences. Semiotica, 9(1), 47-96. Jefferson, G. (1984). Notes on some orderlinesses of overlap onset. In V. D'Urso and P. Leonardi (Eds.), Discourse Analysis and Natural Rhetoric (pp. 11-38). Padua: Cleup Editore. Jefferson, G. (2004). A sketch of some orderly aspects of over­ lap in natural conversation (1975). In Gene H. Lemer (Ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation (pp. 43-59). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Koschmann, X, Le Baron, C., Goodwin, C., Zemel, A., & Dunnington, G. (2007). Formulating the triangle of doom. Gesture, 7(1), 97-118. Lemer, G. H. (1996). On the ''semi-permeable” character of grammatical units in conversation: Conditional entry into the turn space of another speaker. In E. Ochs, E. A. Schegloff, & S. Thompson (Eds.), Interaction and Grammar (pp. 238-276). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mondada, L. (2001). Intervenir à distance dans une opération chimrgicale: l'organisation interactive d'espaces de participa­ tion. Bulletin Suisse de Linguistique Appliquée, 74, 33-56. Mondada, L. (2003). Working with video: How surgeons produce video records of their actions, Visual Studies, 18, 1, 58-72. Mondada, L. (2006). Video recording as the preservation of fun­ damental features for analysis. In H. Knoblauch, J. Raab, H.-G. Soeffner, & B. Sehnettler (Eds.), Video Analysis (pp. 51-68). Bern: Lang. Mondada, L. (2007a). Multimodal resources for turn-taking: Pointing and the emergence of possible next speakers. Discourse Studies, 9(2), 195-226.

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Mondada, L. (2007b). Comment: Transcript variations and the indexicality of transcribing practices. Discourse Studies, 9(6), 809-821. Mondada, L. (2007c). Operating together through videocon­ ference: Members' procedures for accomplishing a common space of action. In S. Hester, & D. Francis (Eds.), Orders of Ordinary Action (pp. 51-67). Aldershot: Ashgate. Mondada, L. (2007d). Bilingualism and the analysis of talk at work: Code-switching as a resource for the organization of action and interaction. In M. Heller (Ed.), Bilingualism: A Social Approach (pp. 297-318). New York: Palgrave. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation f 1964-72] (2 Vols.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. A. (2002 [1975]). Home position. Gesture, 2(2), 133-146. Sanchez Svensson, M., Heath, C. and Luff, P. (2005). Revealing practice: Surgical training in operating theatres. In S. Gherardi & D. Nicolini (Eds.), The Passion for Learning and

Knowing. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Organizational Learning and Knowledge (2 vols.) Trento: University of Trento e-books. Schegloff, E. A. (1984). On some gestures' relation to talk. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action (pp. 266-296). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E. A. (2000). Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language in Society, 29(1), 1-63. Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8, 289-327. Sidnell, J. (2006). Coordinating gesture, talk and gaze in reen­ actments. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 39(4), 377-409. Streeck, J., & Hartge, U. (1992). Previews: Gestures at the transi­ tion place. In P. Auer & A. di Luzio (Eds.), The Contextualization of Language (pp. 135-157). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Suchman, L. (1996). Constituting shared workspaces. In D. Middleton & Y. Engestrom (Eds.), Cognition and Com­ munication at Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. London: Blackwell.

Pursuing a Response: Prodding Recognition and Expertise within a Surgical Team Alan Zemel, Timothy Koschmann, and Curtis LeBaron

SURGICAL INSTRUCTION IN THE OPERATING ROOM Discovering w hat a person knows or does n o t know about a p articu lar m atter can be interactionally tricky, espe­ cially in m edical settings w hen m atters such as patient well-being and the professional standing, competency, skill levels, and collegiality of the practitioners are rele­ vant to interlocutors (Ende et al., 1995; Pom erantz et al., 1995). In this paper, we consider how an attending sur­ geon uses talk, gesture, and the resources of the surgery to “discover" w hat a resident surgeon knows about the surgery they are about to begin. The attending creates opportunities for the resident to respond successfully to queries about w hat a m atu re AV fistula (a surgi­ cally altered vein for dialysis patients) could be. W hen the resid en ts responses are deem ed inadequate, rath er th an produce explicit assessm ents or corrections of such responses, the attending puts forw ard increasingly elab­ o rate know n-inform ation questions, elaborate both in term s of linguistic features and em bodied actions, in the tu rn slot w here an evaluation of the resid en ts response w ould be expected. Each iteration of the atten d in g s queries involves changes in the kinds of questions asked as well as increas­ ingly explicit use of m ultim odal resources. By w ithhold­ ing positive endorsem ent of a response in the third slot of an Initiation-R esponse-Evaluation (IRE) sequence (cf. M ehan, 1979), and instead offering another, m ore elaborate and gesturally com plex related question, the attending is able to implicitly convey th at the residents response is not adequate in som e manner. Thus, we con­ cern ourselves w ith how questioning actions in the third slot of an IRE sequence are constructed in term s of the lexical, indexical, and gestural sem iotic resources used to provide additional resources for the resident to p ro d ­ uce a satisfactory response and thus restore w hat M ehan (1979) term ed sym m etry betw een question and response. This is the phenom enon we investigate in this paper. According to M ehan (1979) sym m etry is a way of describing the production of an appropriate response to

an initiation act. W hen a student does not produce an appropriate reply to a teacher s initial query (or initiation act, as M ehan calls it), the “teacher-student interaction continues until sym m etry betw een initiation and reply acts is established. The initiator employs a n um ber of strategies, including (a) prom pting incorrect or incom ­ plete replies, (b) repeating, or (c) simplifying initiation acts until the reply called for by the original initiation act appears" (p. 55). In classroom settings, sim plification of som e sort m ay be a m ethod used by teachers to establish sym m etry betw een initiations and responses. In surgi­ cal settings, we are interested in w hat such “sim plifica­ tion" of initiating actions m ight look like. Sim plification m ay not always m ean “dum bing down" the question. It m ay m ean reform ulating a subsequent question in ways th at m ake explicitly available through various referential practices certain relevancies th at were left im plicit in a p rio r question. Ende et al. (1995) identified a num ber of strategies used in medical precepting to achieve symmetry when correc­ tions of m edical interns were relevant. These include (a) opening opportunity spaces for self-correction, (b) asking subsequent questions containing clues, (c) refram ing the question so that the wrong answ er becomes correct, and (d) treating wrong answers as possibly correct, but in need of further consideration. Medical precepting is not sur­ gery, but m any of the same considerations with respect to m aintaining the self-esteem of the practitioner in training, as well as adherence to “pedagogic norm s favoring discov­ ery learning and ... societal norm s favoring egalitarian­ ism and respect for individuals" (Ende et al., 1995, p. 228) seem to apply. In this chapter, we consider the ways th at symmetry is achieved w hen an attending surgeon m akes increasingly explicit in his questions those resources required to allow a resident produce an adequate response. We found that the attending w ent to great lengths to avoid explicit correction of the resident by producing questions designed with increasingly explicit em bodied referential resources until the resident was able to produce w hat the attending to be a satisfactory or, as M ehan would say, a symm etrical response to the his questions. 227

228

M ore generally, we look at the m ultim odal m eans by w hich instructional questions are pursued in a conse­ quential work setting. We show how the visual scene and p articipants' actions w ith reference to th at scene play a crucial role in the developed understandings of w hat they are doing together. T hrough analysis of videotaped data, we show how m ultim odal practices shape and enable organizational work, and we show how the organiza­ tional work shapes m ultim odal practices. Specihcally, we are looking at interrogative questions as a practice by w hich surgeons, in th eir em bodied interaction (the work they do on and in relation to a patient), use questions and gestures and pointing to accom plish the purposes of the teaching hospital (i.e., health care and pedagogy), which m ust be sim ultaneously accom plished even though they are som etim es in tension.

Ethnographic background O ur recordings of this surgery cam e from the Southern Illinois University Surgical E ducation Video Corpus. This is a collection of videotaped surgeries gathered over a decade at two teaching hospitals affiliated w ith a sur­ gical residency p ro g ram .1 The p articu lar surgery th at we exam ined involved creating an AV fistula in a kidney dial­ ysis p atien t s arm . Patients in hem odialysis clinics receive intravenous (IV) taps as a routine p a rt of their ongoing treatm ent. AV hstulas are created to provide a convenient place for vascular access. The fistula is created by sh u n t­ ing blood from an artery in the p atien ts arm or leg into an adjacent vein located n ear the skin. This has the effect of dram atically increasing both the blood volume and blood pressure in the vein. Over a period of time, the vein adapts to this change in volume and pressure by expand­ ing in both diam eter and length, a process th at vascular surgeons refer to as "m aturing." The swollen section of the superficial vein th en becom es the access p oint for the dialysis nurse and the entry poin t for the patient. In the case u n d er study, the patient had previously undergone surgery to create an AV fistula, b u t the vein had failed to m atu re following surgery. The surgery, which was observed and described here, therefore, was undertaken to rep air a defect created in the first surgery. Technically a fistula refers to a passage or opening betw een two organs or structures. In this case, it would presum ably refer to the passage created betw een a m inor artery and the cephalic vein. Participants use the term fistula, however, m ore loosely to refer to the structure produced by the creation of the passage betw een the two vessels, th a t is, to the m atured segm ent of vein. The thing referred to as the fistula, therefore, becom es w hat Star and G riesem er (1989) described as a "boundary object" th at is, an object th a t crosses functional (or other) b o und­ aries w ithin an organization, functioning as a resource for m ultiple activities and purposes. In this surgery, the 1

Further information can be found at this URL: http://www.siumed. edu/call/index.html

ZEMEL, KOSCHMANN, AND LEBARON

fistula is an object th at establishes a connection with and a boundary betw een vascular surgery and kidney dialysis by bringing together the work of the vascular surgeons and the work of the nurses in the dialysis clinic.2 The participants in the excerpts we exam ine are (1) the attending surgeon, an experienced vascular surgeon with ultim ate responsibility for the safe outcom e of the sur­ gery being perform ed; and (2) the resident, an advanced surgeon-in-training enrolled in a surgical residency program . In this case, the resident is doing m ost of the hands-on surgical work and the attending is supervising and assisting. This interaction in which the attending and the resident discuss w hat they are going to do in term s of future use (by som e dialysis nurse) occurs at the begin­ ning of the surgery, prior to m aking the first incision. An im portant datum about the patient, available to both the resident and the attending, was that this was a second attem pt at creating a fistula. The first attem pt had failed and the fistula had not m atured. Thus the m atured fistula was "conspicuously" absent from the p atien ts arm. As we will see, by asking about a fistula that had n o t m atured, the attending makes it relevant that resident acknowl­ edge its absence as a conspicuous fact of the case. Thus the attending is faced with the problem of asking about som ething that is not there for the resident to inspect.

ANALYSIS The phenomenon of interest The task of designing and fabricating an AV fistula causes the surgeons, in the words of Goodwin (2003), to invoke and deal with "the sim ultaneous relevance of m ultiple phenom enal scenes," nam ely the access site as it appears at the m om ent and the access site as it m u st appear at the future tim e of subsequent use. In building an AV fis­ tula, the surgeons work m ust anticipate and accom m o­ date future uses of the site by a dialysis nurse and the patient with a m atured fistula. The first instructional problem the attending faces in the conduct of the surgery is to determ ine w hat the res­ ident knows about the design-based n atu re of this sur­ gery. As we will see, when the resident fails to produce an acceptable response to the attending's first query, the attending continues to ask related questions, fram ed in term s of the projected future participation of the dialy­ sis nurse, and the future and as yet unachieved m atured 2

Many examples of such "boundary objects” can be seen in modern medical practice. Consider the practices of coordination employed by radiologists, surgeons, and pathologists in performing a simple breast biopsy. Prior to surgery, radiographic images are produced, which demarcate the regions of tissue in question. A barbed nee­ dle is sometimes inserted by the radiologist to provide guidance to the surgeon in locating and defining this region. When the sample of tissue is excised, the surgeon may attach sutures to the spec­ imen to display to the pathologist the orientation of the excised tissue with the patient's body. It is only this mass of nondescript tissue that makes the tortuous journey across the boundaries of these different communities of practice.

PURSUING A RESPONSE

229

state of the AV fistula itself. Thus, the attending spans tem poral, personal, and spatial deictic references in the course of producing a sequence of know n-inform ation questions that are designed to elicit from the resident an appropriate description of a m ature fistula, which is the design objective of the surgery. THE FIRST KNOWN-IN FORMATION QUESTION The sequence of interest to us occurs at the start of the surgery, after the patient has been anaesthetized but before any incisions are made.

TCG+00:03:11

Stenosis

Anastomosis

Figure 16.1. Stenosis and anastomosis

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Transcript 16.1.

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In lines 1 through 7, the attending asks the resident to articulate a noticing w ith regard to the fistula in term s of the current state of the p atien ts arm: “Now let (0.4) lets- lets jes looka- (.) look again the other thing I w anna show you here is you feel this bounding pulse b u t w hats the other thing you- you- you notice (0.9) cons- (0.6) con­ spicuously about (1.7) the fistula." The initial state of the p atien ts arm is show n in Figure 16.1. In asking his question, the attending indicates he has recognized and identihed th at there is (a) a “bounding pulse" at the sur­ gical site and (b) a conspicuous but as yet unm entioned “thing" about the hstula th at he expects the resident to also recognize and identify. First, the attending asks the resident to articulate a noticing th at is tem porally organized in term s of their shared and concurrent present, th at is, the attending and the resident together in the operating room , inspect­ ing the location on the p atien ts arm w here the surgical procedure is to be perform ed. In addition, the gestural work of tapping his finger on the site of the anastom o­ sis3 provides a specific orientation for lexical references in the attendings question. In constructing his question in this manner, the attending treats these referential resources as adequate for the purposes of providing the resident w ith the m eans to identify and articulate w hat the attending considers to be the conspicuous feature of the current state of the p atien ts arm . The first surgery had failed to produce a m atured hs­ tula, and it is the absence o f this fistula th at is conspic­ uously noticeable - at least to an expert. Asking about som ething that is not available for inspection presents the attending w ith a p articular set of difficulties. In order to m ake it possible for the resident to identify his refer­ ent, the attending cannot rely on lexical resources alone and makes use of the patient s arm as a sem iotic held of reference, tapping at the site of the anastom osis to make relevant a specihc current location to inspect for w hat is described lexically as “conspicuous." The w ork of the attendings hand on the p atien ts arm , coordinated with the production of the query, is designed to provide the m eans by which the attending can refer to the absence of a m atured hstula so th at the resident can locate that absence as a conspicuous feature of the p atien ts arm . The residents response at lines 10 and 11, “Well you c’n visualize it (.) you know exactly w here it ins:" occurs a full m inute (line 9) after the attendings question. That delay in initiating a response com bined with “Well" sug­ gests th at the resident considers (a) the attending s ques­ tion to be problem atic in some way, or (b) the production of an adequate response is som ehow problem atic. The nature of the residents difficulty is m ade evident in the way his response is constructed. The residents response,

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Anastomosis refers to the joining of two blood vessels. In this case, the patient had previously undergone surgery to produce a fistula, but a problem with the original anastomosis - a stenosis that constricted blood flow - prevented the maturation of the fis­ tula. This is a second surgery to correct the problem by creating another anastomosis that will allow a fistula to mature.

230

though related to the question, does not articulate w hat is conspicuous about the fistula. Instead it asserts that the fistula can be visualized and located on the patien ts arm . This approach offers certain advantages, including: • The respondent does not adm it to “not know ing” and thereby avoids explicit loss of face or an adm ission of incom petence o r dim inished com petence. • The respondent does not specifically challenge the “answ erability” of the question as asked or challenge the com petence of the questioner to produce an answ erable question. • The response m itigates assessm ent of the com pe­ tence of the respondent because the response does not address the question directly. • By reporting on w hat he does know, the respondent represents his ow n level of com petence. • The respondent, by offering w hat he knows about the m atter rath er th a n a response to the query, can be seen as im plicitly requesting som e kind of help th at w ould allow him subsequently to produce w hat could be seen as a p ro p er response by the questioner. Of course, a repo rt of w hat a respondent knows about a m atter m ay not always be treated or recognizable as a request for assistance. The questioner m ay p rom pt for an elaboration of w hat is known, or for an answ er to the question. In this case, the attending first affirms the knowledge claim s produced by the resident in overlap, Ri::ght (line 12) and th en upon com pletion of the resi­ d e n ts first utterance, Ri::ght (line 13). This acknowledg­ m ent of the response, followed by the 0.4 second pause at line 14, serves to imply th at the attending expects further elaboration from the resident. The resident recognizes that the attending w ants further elaboration at line 15 w ith his utterance, “A::nd uh:b,” fol­ lowed by the long 5.5 second delay at line 16. The subsequent elaborations at lines 17, “Its pretty its pretty superficial,” and 20, “Ts not protected by soft (0.3) e-uh subc'taneous [tissue or soft rtissue .snff,” again indicate w hat the resident knows about fistulas. However, the attending s responses at lines 19, “Well,” and 22, “°Uh huh° Wh- wha- what's the,” imply th at the resident has not answered the question about w hat is conspicuous about the fistula. In effect, the attending has offered the resident an opportunity to self­ repair. This leaves to the attending various possibilities at line 22. These include, b u t are not lim ited to: • explicitly topicalizing and assessing the adequacy of the resid en ts response; • treating the resident s repair as adequate by moving on to anoth er topic; • producing a m ore explicit or elaborate version of the initial query.

THE SECOND KNOWN-INFORMATION QUESTION The attending responds to the resid en ts first attem pts to answ er w ith another question. Sacks (1992) described

ZEMEL, KOSCHSVIANN, AND LEBARON

the phenom enon of question chaining w here a ques­ tioner, upon receipt of a response, offers another but related question in the next tu rn slot. Question chaining is a notable interactional procedure in IRE sequences because the follow-up question occurs in the th ird slot of the IRE sequence where an evaluation or assessm ent would be produced. Thus, a follow-up question in the third slot of an IRE sequence can be used and recognized as an im plicit assessm ent tool. This is w hat happens at lines 22 and following: Transcript 2: 03-24 (00:03:16;00-00:03:35;20) 20

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Transcript 16.2. At lines 22 through 26, the attending asks, “Why- whaw hat s the natural history of- of- of a fistula wha- whawha- what- w hat do we w ant to do:: (0.2) over time.' W ith this utterance, the attending produces an alter­ native and m ore elaborate lexical version of the first question th at includes additional resources to assist the

PURSUING A RESPONSE

resident in producing an adequate response. First, the attending indicates th at fistulas have a n atu ral history, specified as the developm ent of the fistula “over tim e.” Second, by coordinating talk and em bodied actions, the attending directs the resid en ts attention to the surgical site once again. In addition, the question is produced w ith respect to the patient s arm as a sem iotic field of ref­ erence (Goodwin, 2007). In term s of the talk, the attending produces a tw o-part query in lines 22 through 26. In the first p a rt of the query, the attending introduces the notion of a n atu ral history of the fistula. This is elaborated in the second p art of the query w here the attending asks w hat they would w ant the fistula to do over time. The sequential placem ent of the question in the third position of an IRE also serves to tie the question begun at line 22 to the question in the initial IRE sequence. W hat m akes the question begun at line 22 hearable as a reform ulation and expansion of the first question is not so m uch the lexical features by w hich the question was constructed, b u t rath er its location in the IRE sequence th at provides for its intelligibility as an im plicit assessm ent and thus a question tied to the p rio r query asked by the attending. As this question is asked, the attending placed his hand over the anastom osis, alm ost to the m arked location of the stenosis (m arked on the p a tie n ts arm by the ‘X' in Figure 16.3), in a way th at preserves its visibility to the resident (see Figure 16.3). This move relocates the p h e­ nom enal field from which the answ er to the attendings lexical query presum ably can be found. The gestural w ork m akes the stenosis and the anastom osis relevant resources in the visual field.4 It also directs the residents gaze and attention to the arm once again as a resource for describing the “natural history of the fistula.” The reference to a “n atu ral history” calls on the resident to describe how a m atured fistula would em erge over tim e on the patien t s arm , while sim ultaneously calling on the resident to inspect the current state of the p atien ts arm (no fistula) as a contrast to w hat would be expected (a m atured fistula). The use of gesture to constitute a p h e­ nom enal field on the p atien ts arm thus m akes it possi­ ble for the attending to produce the lexical query as a way of contrasting the current w ith the expected state of the p a tie n ts arm . This would n o t have been evident only from the lexical version of the query alone. The atten d in g s second question can be seen as a kind of simplification of the previous question, according to M ehan (1979). It reform ulates an d expands the first ques­ tion in a way th at explicitly highlights, through talk and em bodied actions, certain specific features of both the initial question and the surgical site to provide the resi­ dent w ith resources for producing an adequate response. The w ork of simplification, in this instance, involves m ore th an the expansion of lexical resources. It involves 4

The relevance of these anatomical phenomena for a competent observer is that the stenosis has prevented the maturation of the fistula from its point of origin at the anastomosis.

231

explicit gestural work to constitute a contrastive tem po­ ral orientation, to create a sense of w hat the p atien t s arm would be upon successful com pletion of the surgery with the arm in its current state. Once again, there are lengthy hesitations and accom ­ panying hesitation m arkers in the residents response utterance, “Uhh:::m we w annit (.) to:: (2.6) over tim e you w ant it to becom e a long term access fe:r dia:lysis so::” (lines 28, 30, and 31), th a t indicate ongoing diffi­ culty responding to this version of the attending s ques­ tion. The resident reports the function or purpose of the m atured fistula: “over tim e you w ant it to becom e a long term access fe:r diadysis so::” (lines 28, 30, and 31) b u t does not provide a description of w hat needs to happen to the fistula to allow for this long-term access, thus m issing the sense of contrast betw een w hat a fistula is supposed to do and w hat has actually happened to the patient. As the resident begins his response at line 28, the attending changes the position of his left hand over the anastom osis (see Figure 16.4), pulling his fingers back to the anastom osis, revealing the region betw een the anas­ tom osis and the stenosis - th at is, the region w ithin which the previously attem pted fistula should have but has not m atured. This slight shift in the position of the atten d ­ ings left hand m akes th at region of the arm a relevant location for the resident to consider in the production of a response. However, the resident does not m ake explicit use of the condition of the p atient s arm , invoking future use of the fistula rath er th an current state as the relevant consideration for organizing a response. In overlap w ith the residents stressed “so::” (at line 31), the attending slides his hand up the p atien ts arm over the anastom osis to the elbow joint of the p atien ts arm (see Figure 16.5) and over the site where the first fistula should have m atured. This action appears to m ark a tu rn transition relevant point in the interaction. In addition, the gesture suspends the previously oriented-to referen­ tial organization of the p atien ts arm in anticipation of its subsequent use during the attendings projected next tu rn at talk. The attending is “releasing” the patien ts arm from its previous use in the production of the prior ques­ tion, m aking it available for subsequent use.

THE THIRD KNOWN-INFORMATION QUESTION Given the residents reply to the second know n-inform a­ tion question, the attending faces the problem of w hat to do in the third position of an IRE sequence. Once again, the attending elects to produce another know n-inform a­ tion question: “We- w hat needs to occur in the fistula (0.2) ts in order to use it (0.5) in six to eight weeks” (lines 33 through 38). Again, the attendings query im plicitly indicates a problem w ith the residents p rio r response. The asym m etrical relation betw een the attending and the resident with respect to the m atter at hand makes rele­ vant a change in the organization of the attendings next (third) query. In the third question, the attending p ro ­ duces a far m ore elaborate em bodied referential action

232

in coordination w ith lexical reference to an explicit tim e fram e and to the usability of the fistula. As the attending begins the th ird know n-inform ation question, "We- w hat needs to occur in the fistula (0.2) ts in order to use it (0.5) in six to eight weeks,” he slides his hand over the length of the arm (Figure 16.6) bringing his finger to rest on the anastom osis (Figure 16.7). The attending appropriates the tem poral and usabil­ ity considerations introduced by the resident's prio r response in the design of this third question. Specifically, the attending expands the resident's p rio r reference to som e future tim e of use by explicitly specifying a tim e fram e of "six to eight weeks,” during w hich a fistula would be expected to properly m ature. Coordinated with the production of his question, the attending again uses his left h and to m ake reference to the location on the patient's arm w here the first fistula should have m atured and w here the one produced in the current surgery will be expected to m ature. This time, the attending's em bod­ ied referential w ork m akes elaborate use of the patient's arm , tracing the projected position of the as-yet-unform ed fistula as a locus of spatio-tem poral reference. These deictic actions, in coordination w ith the attend­ ing's talk, constitute various features of the patient's arm as noticeably relevant to the question and therefore to any response the resident m ight offer. The resident responds to the new version of the attend­ ing's question with, ".ts u::hm (0.8) you w ant thuh th'anastom osis to:: (0.3) ta he-al (0.9) u:::h.” Once again, ra th e r th a n produce a sym m etrical answ er to the attend­ ing's question, the resident offers a knowledge display, explicitly referencing the anastom osis, a structure p ro ­ duced p rio r to and required for the em ergence of the fis­ tula (see Figure 16.8). The resident's response is designed in the form of an answer, but n o t necessarily an answ er to the questions being asked. The resident's persistent though failed attem pts to answ er the attending's ques­ tion suggests at least two possible sources of trouble: (a) the resident u nderstands the attending's question but does not know the answer, or (b) the resident does not understan d the attending's question and therefore does n o t have sufficient resources to produce a sym m etrical answer. The hesitation m arkers ".ts u::hm ” and "u::h” and the tw o em bedded pauses of alm ost one-second d uration each indicate th at the resident is still having a problem w ith the attending's question. As we will see in the way the attending orients to the resident's response, the attending takes the position th a t the adequacy of his questions is the problem rath er th an the resident's ability to produce an answer. The attending's repositioning of his hands on the patient's arm (as the resident vocalized his hesitation m arker "u:::h” at line 42) m arks the beginning of the evaluation tu rn of the current IRE. R ather th an explic­ itly assess the resident's responses, the attending (lines 48 through 58) assesses his own questions as the source of the resident's troubles: "Us'ally (0.2) usually over tim e

ZEMEL, KOSCHMANN, AND LEBARON Transcript 3: 03-24 (00:03:31;00-00:03:43; 17) 33

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nWhy don’t we make that ( )okay< those are the three things that I can address w ith body contouring." If a patient is seeking breast augm entation, the breasts and their degree of ptosis (droop) will becom e the focal point.

To examine patients' bodies, then, plastic surgeons gaze at specific bodily areas. But, as illustrated in the surgeon's com m ent above, they also m ake contact with the body by touching it in particular ways (see Mirivel, 2008), m ost of w hich is perform ed with m inim al talk to desexualize the encounter and m anage patients' possible uncom fortableness (Giuffre & Williams, 2000). These activities are im portant for m aking possible the kinds of argum ents that follow. Transcript 18.1 shows how these activities are perform ed.3

Surgeon:

so what I’ll tell you (.) anytime you talk to a plastic surgeon, they’re gonna tell you everything that they can do: (.) what I try to do is I’m not trying to sell you anything, I’m just trying to educate you about what I can achieve.

4

Patient:

°okay°

5

Surgeon:

okay? ((places both hands on patients’ flank))

1

2 3

6 7

( 1 .0 )

Surgeon:

just °turn to the side for me here0

8

(5.0)

9

10

((The surgeon places right hand on upper side of patients’ left flank and squeezes fatty tissue))

11 12

((The surgeon moves right hand to the lower side of patients’ left flank and pushes excess fatty tissue upward))

13 14

Surgeon:

15

Surgeon:

16

Put your arms down to the side ( 10.0)

17 18 19

((The surgeon grabs excess fat on the patient’s abdomen with both hands and squeezes the fatty tissue))

Transcript 18.1. In this excerpt, the plastic surgeon prepares the client for upcom ing activities. He first proposes th at his subse­ quent activities are n o t designed to sell, b u t to educate. In doing so, he offers a fram ew ork for interpreting his forthcom ing activities: The p atien t should not think of his com m unicative actions as sales moves. Following this statem ent, he prom ptly investigates h er body by initiat­ ing contact with h er abdom en and positioning his hands

on both sides, thereby taking control of her body. He follows with a directive (line 7, “turn to the side for m e here"), which is popular in m edical consultations (e.g., Todd, 1984; West, 1993) and represents at least one way through which he conveys authority. 3 Thanks to Ross B urnham , an undergraduate student at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, for creating the line draw ­ ings presented in this chapter.

EMBODIED ARGUMENTS

257

There also are lengthy m om ents of silence during w hich the surgeon perform s significant em bodied work. After turning her body to the side, as well as moving his, he orients his gaze tow ard her flank (line 12). He then places his right hand below her arm p it on the right side of her body (his left hand is laying flat on her stom ach) and, configuring his hand to a C shape, pushes the excess skin upw ard several times. He then moves his right hand on her lower abdom en, close to w hat m any would label "love handles," and perform s a sim ilar action. Using his hand, he pushes the excess skin upw ard, releases it slightly, and repeats this process one m ore tim e (see fram e in line 12). After exam ining h er flanks, he moves her body again, this tim e in such a way that it faces him completely. Using both hands, he reaches for her abdom en (line 16). He then grabs onto it, using his fingers to p u t pressure on the excess fat, and squeezes it w hile moving it in an upand-dow n m otion. Then, using his fingertips, he touches 1 2 3 4

Surgeon:

5 6 7

what I would also do too: (.) is address this area too (.) ((both hands placed on the lower abdomen)) and this is the flanks (.) and I want to do:: (.) if you kinda look in the mirror there (.) you’ve got something that comes down straight=

((The surgeon moves his left hand and his right hand alongside and downward the patients’ flanks while touching the skin lightly))

8

Patient:

=uhm-uhm=

9

Surgeon:

=and then a prominence

10 11

12 13 14 15 16

her abdom inal wall and presses on it, repeating this tech­ nique several tim es as he moves down from the sternum to her belly button. The surgeons tactile-kinetic actions are p a rt of how surgeons analyze and interpret patients' bodies. To exam ­ ine her body, the surgeon scans and interacts w ith bodily areas the p atien t saw as a problem ; her request for body contouring, w hich includes liposuction and a tum m y tuck, cues w hich bodily areas need to be "improved." More im portantly, the surgeon, through his actions, brings to life her bodily flaws. By squeezing, m otion­ ing, or pressing on excess fat, he "proves" the existence of excess tissue and fat, and thereby confirm s th at her body has "flaws." As I argued elsewhere, these em bodied actions serve the larger project of "closing the deal" w ith new clients (Mirivel, 2008). But, through these actions, he also collects crucial inform ation to craft argum ents about w hat is "wrong" w ith h er body. Consider w hat happens next:

((The surgeon cups his hands slightly and moves them alongside the patient’s lower flanks. He repeats the motion around the area several times)) (.) and what I’d like to do is bring those in ((pushes skin back with both hands)) and really narrow that for you (.) so you’d really have a really really pretty waistline. Transcript 18.2.

The sequence of audible and visible actions th at occur in this m om ent is the focal interest of this study. An argu­ m ent, in its m ost basic form, is "a sequence of statem ents such th at som e of them (the premises) p u rp o rt to give reason to accept ano th er of them , the conclusion" (Audi,

1999). In this example, and as cued by the utterance "so," the argum ents final conclusion is: "so you'd have a really really pretty waistline." To p u t it simply, the surgeon m akes the argum ent that her body would be "prettier" if she underw ent surgery, w hich also presum es that the

258

MIRIVEL

▼

▼

Figure 18.1. Direction of the surgeon's gestural movements during the examination. cu rren t state of h er w aistline is a problem . To reach this conclusion, and in addition to using extrem e case for­ m ulations (Edw ards, 2000; Pom erantz, 1986), he m akes vocal and em bodied claim s. In line 2, he asks the p atient to gaze into the m irror behind him to evaluate h er own body, thereby inviting an activity th a t patients have perform ed in th eir m ost p ri­ vate m om ents (i.e., looking at o n es body in the m irror). In doing so, and considering his subsequent actions, he fram es h er body as “containing” the evidence for his claims. Notice how this is done. As he directs her to gaze at her own body, he also reaches for it with his hands, touching her silhouette slightly. Then, he utters: “you've got something that comes down straight and then a prominence" (lines 4-7). This utterance is a fac­ tual proposition. To support this assertion about her appear­ ance, and as seen in Figure 18.1, he simultaneously moves his hands alongside her body to accentuate her bodily shape. As he utters, “comes down straight," both hands, as seen in line 5, are positioned and moved alongside her flanks in a parallel fashion to highlight this aspect of her shape. Similarly, while uttering “prominence," he “cups" his hands slightly to make a rounded m otion around her “love handles." Using his hands, then, the surgeon imitates her body “in the air" by tracing and embodying her silhouette. The surgeons tactile-kinetic gestures serve m ultiple functions. First, they highlight a specific dom ain of scru­ tiny on h er body for subsequent analysis. Highlighting, as Goodwin (1994) described it, involves “m aking spe­ cific phenom ena in a complex perceptual field salient by m arking them in som e fashion" (p. 606). His hand m ovem ents also provide a coding schem e of sort. That is, by em bodying h er body flaws and describing them in this fashion, he shapes w hat she should see as well as how to interpret h e r own body. Finally, his em bodied

actions support his vocal claim; they serve as em piri­ cal evidence of her aesthetic problem (i.e., “straight" + “prom inence"). The surgeons dem onstration, however, does not stop w hen he em bodies factual claim s about her body. To further substantiate his argum ent, he also shows w hat her body could “look like" if she underw ent surgery. After pointing out her bodily flaw, he im m ediately sug­ gests w hat he would like to do, w hich is to narrow her w aist (lines 9-10). To drive his point, he uses bo th hands to push the skin and the excess tissue (i.e., the prom i­ nence on her waist) to m ake it disappear from h er field of vision. By m om entarily altering her physical appearance, he m akes visible and defines w hat a “pretty" waistline is. Of note is th at in describing h er new appearance as “pretty," he draws on socio-cultural m eanings of beauty, w hich are allegedly im bued in h er flesh. It clearly is a m atter of judgm ent w hether her w aistline is pretty or not, b u t his judgm ent is also argued through the percep­ tual lens of a culture th a t values a “narrow " waist. In this sense, his argum ent is culturally m eaningful. To craft argum ents, plastic surgeons draw on, and interact with, the hu m an body. T heir em bodied behaviors are m ore th an m icrobehaviors designed to accom pany talk. H eath (2002), for instance, showed how patients expressed their sym ptom s and suffering by also em body­ ing them . Through th eir gestures, H eath argued, patients “create a sense of th eir difficulties and encourage the doctor to witness, if only momentarily, the suffering they have incurred" (p. 598). Plastic surgeons visible actions, I would say, are m ore th an dem onstrative; they are prem­ ises designed to support the “truth" of a vocal claim. As seen in Transcript 18.3, the surgeon moves from com ­ m enting on her flanks to describing her abdom inal wall. In this excerpt, the surgeon m akes another argum ent w hen he suggests the surgical procedures th a t will elim ­ inate her “excess skin." The conclusion of his argum ent takes place in lines 3-4 w hen he says: “you'd be a great candidate for not only liposuction but also w hat we call a tum m y tuck." To support this larger claim, he first brings attention to her abdom inal area, both by vocally identi­ fying his move, b u t m ost importantly, by grabbing excess tissue w ith both hands and slightly m otioning the excess skin around her abdom en. In doing so, he activates her body for his forthcom ing claim: th a t she has excess skin. He proceeds w ith a factual statem ent ab o u t her body, an online com m entary (Heritage & Stivers, 1999), which functions to support his conclusive rem ark about her body: “You definitely have excess skin here" (lines 2-3). His vocal claim, then, “create[s] the conditions under w hich [his] own [forthcom ing] advice seem s appropri­ ate" (Starr, 1982, p. 14). But, it is not perform ed alone. While producing this utterance, and using the right hand, he reaches for the excess skin on h er abdom en, squeezes the fatty tissue slightly, and moves his hand in an up-and-dow n m otion for three seconds. Through this action, he creates a reaction, and the excess skin now jiggles in response to his em bodied behaviors. In

EMBODIED ARGUMENTS

1

Surgeon:

259

now this area here

2 ((With both hands, the surgeon grabs the excess fat on the lower abdominal wall))

3 4 5

Surgeon:

when we talked about the excess skin (.) you definitely have some excess skin

6 ((Using his right hand, the surgeon grabs and squeezes, and motions the excess fat on the patient’s lower abdomen))

7

8 9

10 11 12

Surgeon:

here (.) and that’s in- in reality I think you’d be a great candidate for not only liposuction but also what we call a tummy tuck

13

Patient:

uhm-uhm Transcript 18.3.

im p o rtan t ways, then, his tactile-kinetic actions substan­ tiate his verbal claim. His visible perform ance makes his argum ent possible. The verbal claim and its em bodim ent function together, b u t they serve as independent, albeit choreographed, prem ises of a m ore consequential argu­ m ent: because she has excess skin on her body, she not only needs liposuction, b u t also a tum m y tuck. To substantiate claims, plastic surgeons do not always need to squeeze or jiggle excess fat. For m astopexy (com ­ m only know n as a breast lift), for instance, they fre­ quently gaze at and lift the breast up to subsequently let it drop dow n on its own. This action becom es crucial w hen surgeons describe the concept of ptosis (m eaning droop) and its different grades. Som etim es, as seen in T ranscript 18.4, touching the body lightly also can bring a claim to life. In this m om ent, the surgeon first directs the patients' gaze tow ard h er abdom inal wall (line 1). As the patient gazes into the m irror, the surgeon reports w hat he sees to ju m p start his inductive argum ent. The conclusion takes place in line 8 w hen he says: “so w hat I do is a little bit of liposuction here and a little b it of liposuction there." His argum ent, then, is about w arranting the use of lipo­ suction on h er abdom inal wall. Because liposuction is a different procedure from a tum m y tuck, explaining the need for both surgeries is im portant. To w arrant his con­ clusion, he m akes two descriptive claims. First, he claim s th a t she has a “little bit of asym m e­ try" (lines 1 & 2). W hile p roducing this u tterance, he

uses both hands to tap and press on h er skin lightly. His left hand is placed on the rig h t side of h er abdom ­ inal wall while his rig h t hand is on the left (line 3). To m ake contact w ith the skin, he only uses his thum bs and index fingers. Interestingly, he m akes very brief tac­ tile contacts w ith the skin as he alternates th e pressure he places on h er abdom en from his left han d to his right hand, sw itching back and forth at least six tim es. His left hand also is placed slightly above her navel w ith the thum b aligning w ith it. His rig h t hand is placed below it. In the course of this utterance, then, the surgeon em bodies h er abdom inal asym m etry: he touches first above the belly b u tto n on his left, releases the pressure, and then touches below her navel on the rig h t side. R epeating these tactile-gestural actions several tim es m akes the asym m etry real. Similarly, and for his second claim (i.e., a lot m ore fat on the right of her abdom en), he touches the area on her right side, now using m ost of his fingers to slightly press on and grab the excess fatty tissue as he utters “fat." While his left hand is making contact with the skin, his right hand stays “in the air." Through this localized touch, then, he activates the “fat" on her right side, thereby also creating the experience of “m ore fat on this one side than on the other" (line 5). His subtle, finely choreographed, gestural-tactile actions, thus, substanti­ ate his utterances. By gesturing around, touching, or moving parts of patients' bodies, plastic surgeons stim ulate patients' bodily

260

MSRIVEL

1

Surgeon:

2

If you look here at your abdominal wall you actually have a litt::le bit of asymmetry

3 4 5 6

((The surgeon uses his left hand to touch the left side of the patient’s abdominal wall)) Surgeon:

and a lot more fat on this one side than the right side.

7

8

((Using his right hand, the surgeon touches and grabs briefly the right side of her abdominal wall))

9 10

Patient:

okay.

11

Surgeon:

and then (.) so what I do is a little bit of liposuction here

12

Patient:

okay?

13

Surgeon:

a little bit of liposuction there

Transcript 18.4. flaws. On som e occasions, surgeons work w ith a m uch sm aller dom ain of scrutiny, one th at makes difficult the kinds of gestural-tactile-kinetic m ovem ents seen in previ­ ous excerpts. For example, when patients seek blepharoplasty, a surgical procedure designed to remove excess fat, tissue, muscle, or skin on both upper and lower eye lids, the surgeons draw on another gestural resource to design their argum ents: the act of pointing. Goodwin (2003; also see Kita, 2003) m ade visible how "pointing provides 1

Surgeon:

2 3

resources for organizing as visible, public, interactive phenom ena the specific embodied practices (such as the ability to see relevant events) that constitute the work of a profession.” In m any contexts, participants use pointing gestures toward objects and phenom ena other th an them ­ selves. In the context of cosmetic surgery, because the patient s body is the m ain dom ain of visual and discursive focus, it also is likely to become the "target of the point” (Goodwin, 2003, p. 219). Consider Transcript 18.5.

but what I would do is get rid of a lot of that excess skin (.) what I would do on the lower lids is you have a f- moderate amount of excess skin, but most importantly you’ve got this fat

4 5

((The surgeon uses pen to point at the patients’ lower eyelid))

6 7 8 9

Patient: Surgeon:

okay= = It makes you look tkred and it makes you look sa:d so I would try to clean that up for you as well. Transcript 18.5.

EMBODIED ARGUMENTS

In this m om ent, the surgeon ends this sequence of action by suggesting w hat should be done to her lower eyelids: “[S]o I would try to clean th at up for you as w ell/' This statem ent reflects the conclusion of his argum ent. The other prem ises are designed to support the idea that the p atien ts lower eyelids need to be “cleaned u p.” In this interactive sequence, both the plastic surgeon and the p atient are actively involved. As captured in the dig­ ital frame, the surgeon gazes at the p atien ts face. But, the p atien t also joins the argum entative process as she exam ines her own face with a m irro r th at she holds with h er right hand. Both participants, thus, have access to the sam e dom ain of scrutiny: h er face. The fact th at the patien t can see h er own face is crucial to the process of persuading her. Because she has visual access to it, he can shape w hat she sees. The hrst prem ise of his argum ent occurs in line 3. At this time, the surgeon describes w hat he sees in her lower eyelids: “[M]ost im portantly, youve got this fat.” This descriptive statem ent m akes an em pirical claim about w hat he sees. The word “fat” is particularly consequen­ tial. As Kulick & Meneley (2005) noted, “fat is a threeletter w ord larded with m eaning [...] in contem porary N orth A m erican and Europe, the tone w ith w hich the w ord fat is uttered is often concerned, asham ed, alarm ­ ist, or condem natory. Fat, we are told, is b ad ” (p. 2). In a sense, and because appeals to fatness are cultural persuadables (Fitch, 2003), the use of the w ord fram es the excess skin und er h er eyes as a significant problem . In short, the w ord “fat” is a lens through w hich to perceive h er face. The claim th at is m ade about her lower eyelids is evi­ denced in the surgeons' em bodied actions. As he too gazes at her face, he uses his pen as an extension of his finger to point at her lower eyelids, w hich im m ediately localizes the bodily space of his commentary. He m akes the pointing gesture as he u tters the w ord “fat” (lines 3-4) until he ultim ately touches the “fat” with the pen. Like other examples presented in this study, his pointing gesture and touch function as a key prem ise in his argu­ m ent; it is designed to support his verbal, descriptive, claim. The p atien ts lower eyelid (i.e., h er body) is the data th at is used to build the argum ent. But, it is through the action of pointing at it as well as touching it th at the evidence comes to life. Subsequently, the surgeon interprets the “fat” below her eyes as cuing a m ore severe problem: “it makes you look tired and it makes you look sad.” This statem ent is, of course, an interpretive claim that labels what he sees. The claim, though, is made possible by his previous com ­ m unicative work. Having argued for the existence of fat both vocally and gesturally, he can now describe w hat it conveys about her. The skin und er eyes, then, is fram ed as a semiotic held im bued with interpretive meanings. When he describes w hat he sees, he also aligns w ith w hat patients already see. That is, patients seek blepharoplasty precisely because they believe that their appearance conveys sadness

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and/or tiredness. In im portant ways, thus, plastic surgeons' interpretive frameworks are im ported from a normative, cultural discourse about beauty and the body; it m atches patients' own interpretive frameworks. The persuasiveness of his audible and visible activities stems from the fact that both the surgeon's and the patient's interpretive fram e­ works align. The degree of persuasion that ensues from this kind of experience is well captured by Blum (2003), who reflects on her own visit with a plastic surgeon: This moment when your perspective intersects with or is overtaken by the surgeon s is crucial to the process of trans­ formation itself. He functions as the aesthetic expert, the one who plumbs the deepest secrets of faces and their potential beauty. If he tells you this and this will make you better look­ ing, it is difficult to resist your conviction of his privileged knowledge (pp. 7-8).

CONCLUSION

In this study, I sought to m ake visible how plastic sur­ geons m ake em bodied argum ents. My position is not simply that gestures, gazes, and tactile or kinetic actions take place while plastic surgeons m ake argum ents to patients. Visible activities are not a secondary order of action that derives m eaning from talk; instead, and as McNeill (1992, p. 3) put it, “gesture and language are one system .” W hat the analysis em phasizes is that plastic surgeons m ake argum ents with their whole bodies, w hich includes the talk they produce, to shape patients' ow n understandings of their bodies. As I see it, the essay challenges at least two assum p­ tions; th at the activity of “m aking an argum ent” solely is a discursive/linguistic accom plishm ent; and, perhaps worst, th at the visible behaviors that accom pany the sit­ uated, localized, practice of argum ent-m aking m erely com plem ent language use. The talk th at takes place clearly is im portant, but ignoring the work th at gets done through em bodied actions dism isses w hat arguing is about in some contexts of face-to-face interaction. Said tentatively, com m unicators can craft argum ents w ith their gaze, gestures, touch, and talk. To make em bodied argum ents, plastic surgeons m ake vocal and gestural, kinetic, and/or tactile claims th at are designed to describe patients' bodies. These descriptions are grounded in w hat seems to be “visible,” “touchable,” or “squeezable,” and thus create the appearance of em pir­ ical fact. These descriptions are not neutral, however, n o r are they inconsequential. As Silverman (2001, p. 122) rightly noted, laypersons and analysts alike can “skillfully m anage descriptions of events” and people in ways th at shape how others will see and understand the specific phenom enon in question. Goodwin & Goodwin (1997) m ade this process visible w hen they described the process through which the defense representing the police offi­ cers involved in the Rodney King trial constructed a new way of seeing the infam ous videotape: from brutal b eat­ ing to reasonable police action. W hen plastic surgeons

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describe patients' bodies, they too foster a way of seeing and interpreting bodily tissue. Describing a bodily area as “fat," “pretty," “prom inent," or as having “excess" skin is not a neutral representation of patients' bodily landscape; it is an interpretive judgm ent grounded in culturally and institutionally m eaningful coding schem es th at also align well with patients' own pre-diagnostic concerns. It is h ard to talk about the n atu re of argum ents w ithout considering their persuasive im pact. There is no way to know for sure w hether patients are persuaded by plastic surgeons' com m unicative perform ance, b u t it is reason­ able to claim th at plastic surgeons m ake persuasive moves (see Segal, 2005). Plastic surgeons' em bodied argum ents, I would say, are persuasive for several reasons. First, they draw on w hat Fitch (2003) described as “cultural persuadables." Some actions, Fitch explained, require “no persuasive appeal because the cultural prem ­ ises and norm s are so strongly influential" (p. 100). Our culture explodes with ways of thinking and talking about the hu m an body and its appearance; these form larger discourses th at form an interpretive repertoire, or “a cul­ turally fam iliar and habitual line of argum ent com prised of recognizable them es, com m on places and tropes" (Wetherell, 1998, p. 400; also see Potter & W ether ell, 1987) and can be used as resources for persuasion. The chapter, then, shows how cultural persuadables may infil­ trate institutional contexts such as cosm etic surgery and th at visible actions, like utterances, also can be persuad­ ables. Second, and because patients and surgeons oper­ ate w ithin a shared cultural fram e of reference, plastic surgeons' descriptions of the body m atch how patients already see and understand the problem s th at are em bed­ ded in their skin. Third, persuasiveness of the argum ents m ay be derived from its em bodim ent. As the body is used as a resource and object of com m entary and vision, it also is used as a live “artifact." Unlike a videotape, w hen the body is touched, moved, or squeezed, these actions also are experienced. As plastic surgeons touch patients' bodies, then, their m icrobehaviors are im m ediately felt. Finally, not only is it difficult to argue against w hat is being squeezed, touched, or m otioned, but it seems th at unlike verbal claims, em bodied ones cannot be counterargued. Patients, for instance, cannot deny the existence of fatty tissue or excess skin. They cannot move, touch, or gesture tow ard their bodies to argue for som ething (e.g., fat) th at does not exist. W hat is arguable for patients is w hether surgery is needed or desirable, a purchase w orth m aking or not. These four points, thus, explain the plastic surgeon's earlier statem ent that “squeezing a small excess o f tissue or fat or what have you ... really drives home the message." Even though m ost physicians touch the h u m an body during physical exam inations, the analysis reveals a practice th at m ay be seen as a problem . The wom en and m en w ho come for a consultation already are con­ vinced th at th eir body needs im provem ent or that it is “ugly"; they already are persuaded th at th eir body is

M1RIVEL

flawed. Nevertheless, surgeons draw on these insecurities and bring them to life, m aking them very real indeed. Through interaction, plastic surgeons confirm women's own assessm ents of their bodies and can thus construct a need for surgery. This chapter shows the considerable and sophisticated influence th at the surgeon m ay have on the patient's decision to proceed w ith surgery. Reflecting on w hether surgeons' em bodied argum ents in the context of cosm etic surgery consultations are reasonable or ethical should be the next question. REFERENCES

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Facilitating Tool Use in the Photography Studio Scott Phillabaum

INTRODUCTION M eaning in the photography studio does not emerge from talk alone, b u t is lodged w ithin the endogenous activities of actual photographers, and is m ediated and facilitated by the use of a n u m b er of professional tools. However, learning to use these tools is not a transpar­ ent operation, b u t m u st be accom plished in collabora­ tion w ith m ore proficient m em bers of the com m unity This chapter explores the ways in w hich m ore expe­ rienced photographers instruct novice photographers to “see” photographs in professionally significant ways through the sim ultaneous use of language, the body, and specific professional tools. C entral to this process is the practice of com parison, w hich relies on the interaction betw een language and the objects th at m ake possible such com parison. M uch of the w ork in visual studies focusing on p h o ­ tography and seeing has concentrated on how individu­ als view photographs as well as the public m eaning of photographs (Barthes, 1977, 1981; Berger, 1972, 1980; Bolton, 1989; Bürgin, 1982; Coleman, 1998; Kracauer, 1995; Sontag, 1977, 2002; Trachtenberg, 1990). O ther studies have focused on the artistic vision of individual artists (Chadwick & Courtivron, 1996; Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; John-Steiner, 1985, 2000), b u t have done so in ways detached from the actual activities in which artists engage on a day-to-day basis (for exceptions, see Murphy, 2004, 2005; Phillabaum , 2004, 2005; Streeck, 1993). Although these studies open a w indow to the practices of professional artists, they exam ine artistic vision as the m ental possession of the individual artist and som ething th at can be explored through self-reflection. This chapter aim s to rem edy this shortcom ing through an exam ina­ tion of the critical role played by language and interac­ tion w ith a set of professional tools in the developm ent of the professional vision of photographers. Although a p h otographer is ultim ately judged according to the final p rin t he produces, the use of a specific set of tools in p ro ­ fessionally significant ways defines m em bership in the photographic com m unity and m akes possible the work 264

by w hich the photographer is evaluated. Artistic vision is, thus, m ore th an an individual artists particular ori­ entation; it is a shared way of engaging in a set of p ro ­ fessional practices. Of utm ost im portance in m astering these professional practices is the ability to “see” rele­ vant phenom ena in a way appropriate for m em bers of this com m unity of practice. Because seeing as a photographer develops through interactions with expert m em bers of the com m unity th at depend on language and access to m aterial artifacts, see­ ing and learning are socially situated (Goodwin, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2010; Goodwin & Goodwin, 1996; H eath & Luff, 1996; Heath & Nicholls, 1997; Resnick, Pontecorvo, & Säljö, 1997; Säljö & Bergqvist, 1997). Moreover, access to a shared gestural space provides the specific m echanism through w hich linguistic form ula­ tions designed to guide novice photographers in seeing relevant phenom ena can be com pared to a particular real-w orld instantiation of th at form ulation. As research on cognition in a variety of professional settings has show n (Goodwin, 1979, 1980, 1986, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2000a, 2000b, 2001; Goodwin & Goodwin, 1997; Haviland, 1993, 1998; Kendon, 1972, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1990; McNeill, 1992, 2000; Streeck, 1993, 1994), access to both language and a com m on gestural space is central to shared professional understandings, and facilitates com parisons across modalities. This ch apter contrib­ utes to the ongoing conversation on professional vision by exam ining the role played by two tools in the educa­ tion of novice photographers. W hereas shared access to language, gesture, and m aterial artifacts is essential to learning to use these tools, it is the general practice of com parison that the tools m ake possible th a t is key to the developm ent of a shared professional vision.

THE DATA The data exam ined in this chapter were collected over a three-m onth period in three separate university-level photography studio classes. Consisting of videotaped recordings and transcriptions of naturalistic classroom

FACILITATING TOOL USE

interactions, the data cover a wide range of classroom activities and provide the m aterials necessary for m ak­ ing ethnographically grounded observations about the practices used by expert and apprentice photographers in the developm ent of professional vision. In addition, the videotaped record allows for a focus on aspects of the m eaning-m aking process not included in the segm ental stream of speech. Because a com plete understanding of how photographers com e to see as com petent com m unity m em bers cannot be derived from exam ining talk alone, the linguistic analysis is supplem ented with an explora­ tion of other sign systems th at photographers deploy as p a rt of their professional practices. PROFESSIONAL TOOLS IN THE PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIO

The contact print and the negative One of the first technical exercises th at photography stu ­ dents undertake is to produce a properly exposed print. Being able to do this, however, m eans also knowing how to use, and how to see, a num ber of professional tools. In the cu rren t data, w hich comes from a film -and-chemicalbased studio, one such tool is the photographic negative th at results from the p h o to g rap h ers practice of m aking pictures. Before proceeding, it should be noted th at the recent revolution in digital p h otography1 has introduced a n u m b er of changes to the ways photographers work. Forem ost am ong those changes are the professional tools th at have been elim inated from the process, such as the photographic negative. Although certain tools have been elim inated from the equation, sim ilar tasks continue to shape the w ork of the photog rap h er and digital photog­ raphy has introduced a new set of tools for perform ing these tasks. Even though the process used to produce a properly exposed p rin t is changing, the im portance of being able to produce such a p rin t extends across both film-based and digital photography. In film-based photography, the negative is perhaps the single m ost im portant product in the picture-m aking process because it represents the perm an en t repository of the original photographic image. A thousand prints can be m ade from a single negative, and although addi­ tional negatives can be m ade from one of these prints or from an original negative, n eith er will approach the original negative in quality.12 Moreover, the original neg­ ative is unique in th at it is the singular lasting represen­ tation of the actual m om ent that a given photograph was taken. In this sense, the negative is an im portant relic th at connects all subsequent prints to the actual m om ent The impact of digital photography on the way novice photogra­ phers are educated awaits future investigation. 2 This has changed with the digital revolution, as the photographic negative has been replaced with a binary computer file. Unlike analog negatives, digital hies can be reproduced exactly without degradation an unlimited number of times. 1

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of picture making. Finally, the photographic negative provides the raw m aterials for any print the photogra­ pher makes. Although one of the m ain functions of the photographic negative is to provide the raw m aterial for final prints, this is not the only use it has in the printm aking process. Prior to m aking any prints, the negative is exam ined and inspected to judge its adequacy for producing a print. One way to do this is by exam ining a sheet of negatives on a lightbox;3 another way is to m ake a contact p rin t and com pare the actual negatives w ith the exposures on the contact print. Because finding the proper exposure is only the first, and perhaps the least tim e intensive, step in producing a finished print, tools th at help expedite this process, such as negatives and contact prints, allow p h o ­ tographers to m ake better use of their tim e in the dark­ room , focusing instead on issues such as color balance, dodging, and burning4. Thus, knowing how to “read ” these two professional artifacts is im portant in order to enter the darkroom with an educated guess regarding exposure time. Photographers m ake contact p rints by placing a roll of negatives, which have been cut and stored in a transpar­ ent file holder, directly on top of a sheet of photographic paper, covering the negatives w ith a piece of glass (which holds the negatives snugly in place against the paper), and then exposing the paper. W hat results is a single piece of paper containing every image on the roll of film as a positive (Figure 19.1). Although the images have not been enlarged and are exactly the sam e size as the nega­ tives, it is easier for photographers to scrutinize positive images because th at is w hat th eir final im age will resem ­ ble. As the following segm ent will show, however, not all negatives on a roll of film require the sam e exposure and so not all images on the contact p rin t will be exposed appropriately (some m ay be too dark or too light). Using the contact p rin t and the inform ation about its exposure in conjunction with the photographic negatives provides photographers with the m eans to m ake profes­ sionally inform ed decisions about exposure. This abil­ ity, which forms an unconscious p art of a professionals work in the darkroom , m ust be learned along with how to “read” the tools used to m ake these decisions, and this learning depends on a m ultim odal interplay of the tools 3 A lightbox is an illuminated box of varying dimensions on which photographers place photographic negatives in order to bet­ ter view them. A viewing device called a loupe, which magnifies the images, is usually employed when viewing negatives on a lightbox. 4 Dodging refers to the practice of holding back exposure on part of a print by moving some object between the enlarger head and the photographic paper while making an exposure. This results in a lighter image in the area of the print from which light was blocked during exposure. Burning is the opposite procedure: After making an exposure, part of the print is exposed for addi­ tional time, resulting in a darker image in the area receiving extra exposure. Dodging and burning allow photographers to produce images that differ quite significantly from the "straight print” pro­ duced from the original negative.

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PHILLABAUM

Figure 19.1. A sample contact print. themselves (the contact p rin t and the negatives), linguis­ tic form ulations about the tools, and the presence of m ore com petent m em bers of the com m unity w ho can structure the environm ent so th at students are able to com pare an expert s linguistic form ulation w ith a particular instantia­ tion to th at form ulation in the real world. An exam ination of a specific interaction will m ake this clearer. Crucial to the analysis th at follows is the way th at language is linked to the environm ent through gesture, and the way th at this link m akes possible the sorts of com parisons th at shape a shared understanding of a set of professional tools.

Segm ent 1 As segm ent 1 begins, a student nam ed Julia has been working in the darkroom to produce a contact print. The contact p rin t contains two pictures of the sam e sub­ ject. However, because Julia used different exposures for each photograph, the two im ages do n o t appear identical on the contact print. W hen the interaction begins, Julia presents her contact p rin t to the lab assistant, Ed, for his professional exam ination, and then pulls out the sheet of negatives th at she is holding behind the contact print. Note the talk enclosed in boxes as well as th at connected by black lines. At line 1, Ju lia p resen ts h e r co n tact p rin t to Ed and req u ests his a tte n tio n th ro u g h a m u ltim o dal d irec­ tive. A fter securing E d s a tte n tio n th ro u g h the d irec­ tive “lookit", Ju lia focuses his eye gaze on a specific

region of the co n tact p rin t th ro u g h the sim ultaneous deploym ent of th e proxim al deictic term this an d a pointing gesture w ith a pen she is holding in her rig h t h an d (Figure 19.2) th at links the linguistic form ulation to the specific area of the co n tact p rin t th a t she w ants Ed to exam ine. Next, Julia uses the p en to identify two fram es on the co n tact p rin t, m oving the pen from one to th e o th er and stating th a t one is 'Very light,” and th a t the o th e r is "very d ark.” W hat is the significance of this com parison? It is uncom m on for all fram es on a roll of film to be equally exposed. Because a contact p rin t is m ade w ith a single exposure, it will usually show som e images as lighter or darker th an others. Knowing the proper expo­ sure for one fram e on the roll of film thus allows the p h o ­ tographer to estim ate exposures for o th er frames. If one fram e is properly exposed a t ten seconds, for example, then the photographer knows th at a lighter frame on the sam e contact p rin t will need to be exposed for m ore th an ten seconds and a darker fram e will need to be exposed for less time. Therefore, know ing how to use the contact p rin t in a professionally m eaningful fashion expedites the w ork of the photographer. W hat follows, however, reveals th at Julia is not attem pting to determ ine the expo­ sure of a different fram e on the contact p rint, but instead is learning to see the relationship betw een two tools, the negatives and the contact print, and the way th at they can be used in conjunction w ith one another.

FACILITATING TOOL USE

(1)

Thick -Thin

1

Julia:

2

Ed:

267

3 4

Julia:

5 6

Ed:

7

Julia:

8

Ed:

9

Julia:

10

Ed:

11

Julia:

[yeah. Transcript 19.1. Ed's dom ain of scrutiny. Placing these two professional tools side by side m akes public her confusion about the connection betw een the negatives and the contact print, and allows for Ed's talk th at follows. With both the con­ tact p rin t and the negatives th at produced the contact p rin t visible, Ed states at line 10, “that's /Tzicker, that's th inner", em ploying two com m on lexical item s - thick and thin5 - in a professionally specific fashion and tying them to two p articular fram es on Julia's sheet of nega­ tives through the pointing gesture he makes w ith his left hand and the use of the distal deictic term that. The way th at Ed instructs Julia in how to use the sheet of negatives and the contact p rin t differs from the com m on instructional practice of defining p articu ­ lar term inology and then providing specific examples of th at terminology. Instead, it relies on a num ber of sem iotic m odalities th a t m utually elaborate one another in im p o rtan t ways. First, there is the language itself in the use of the deictic term s this and that, w hich m arks a linguistic contrast betw een th eir different objects of reference. Moreover, there is a co ntrast betw een the lay­ m an's characterization of the two fram es as light and dark and the professional vocabulary of thick and thin.

As Julia says, “and if you're looking at this also:," at line 4, she pulls out the plastic sheet of negatives th at she has been holding behind the contact print, and places it side by side w ith the contact p rin t (Figure 19.3). W ith both the contact print, identified at line 1, and the sheet of negatives, identified w ith the deictic term this at line 4, Julia locates the relevant professional tools w ithin

5 In photography, a thick negative is a negative that has been heavily exposed. To produce a properly exposed print from such a negative will require more light than that from a normal neg­ ative, because the light from the enlarger will pass less readily through the negative. Similarly, a thin negative is a negative that has been lightly exposed. Producing a print from such a nega­ tive will require a shorter exposure, because the light from the enlarger will pass through the negative more easily.

268

PHILLABAUM

Figure 19.4. The viewing board. Figure 19.3. Comparing the contact print with the negatives. These w ords, however, do not float in thin air, but are tied to specific professional tools th a t m ake th eir deploy­ m en t possible. The presence of the contact p rin t at the outset of the in teraction provides the raw m aterials th at Julia uses to m ake public her understan d in g (or confu­ sion) abo u t exposure. Its ju x taposition w ith the sheet of negatives, also linked to language through the indexical this, provides Ed w ith the m eans to guide Julia in a p ro ­ fessional viewing of these tools. Thus, the messy task of understan d in g why one fram e is light and another is dark and w hat com m on term s like thick and thin m ean in a professional context is facilitated by the presence of the two tools th at can be com pared w ith one another and com pared to p articu lar linguistic form ulations, w hich can then be physically linked through pointing. In this interaction, Julia, a novice photographer, grap­ ples to und erstan d the relationship betw een the sheet of negatives and the contact print. She is learning w hat counts as a “thick” or a “th in ” negative, how to iden­ tify such a negative, and the effect th at it will have on exposure tim e. This professional knowledge, however, is not learned through lectures or assigned readings, but em erges in m ultim odal interactions w ith expert viewers and a set of professional tools. Through the use of the contact print, students in the photography studio learn to think about, look at, and adjust exposure in a photo­ graph. As such, it is a pow erful tool th at enables a range of individual and negotiated actions. It is the complex interaction of language, the body, physical artifacts, and the com parisons their co-presence m akes possible that contribute to shared professional understandings.

The view ing board and learning to see w h ite P hotographic negatives and contact prints are pow er­ ful tools for guiding photographers in the production of properly exposed p rints. The p roduction of a profes­ sionally adequate photographic print, however, involves

m uch m ore than simply achieving proper exposure. It also involves achieving appropriate color balance. This section explores the tools that photographers use to guide them in m aking decisions about color balance, and again reveals the production of a photograph to be a highly m ediated, extrem ely complex endeavor. Elsewhere (Phillabaum , 2004, 2005) I have explored instructor practices for guiding students in the develop­ m ent of a professional photographic vision. In this work, I explored how the student and instructors shared access to the students print was of central im portance in discus­ sions surrounding technical aspects of those prints, and that the instructor exploited this shared access in guiding the student in a professional viewing. This data focused on the ways in which expert viewers guided students in look­ ing at specific colors in their prints. The data presented in this section expands on this analysis by exam ining the tools that photographers use to assist them in a m ore gen­ eral practice of exam ining color in prints: com paring an area in a print that is m eant to be white w ith another object th at is white. Although a specific professional tool has been developed for this purpose and is discussed later in the chapter, the data show that any num ber of objects in the photography studio can be used for this purpose. Because color balancing a p rin t is a difficult process, students m ust learn how to look at a print in order to judge its color and m ust also learn how to use the profes­ sional tools available to them to do so. One such tool is the viewing board (Figure 19.4). The viewing board is a white, m agnetic board m ounted to the wall outside the room th a t houses the developer (the door to the room housing the developer is visible to the right of the viewing board in the image above). After retrieving their prints from the developer, students bring their p rints to the viewing board, affix those p rin ts to the board using the m agnets scattered about the board, and then evaluate their p rin ts and m ake decisions regarding how to m odify them . The basic technique for evaluat­ ing color balance in a p rin t involves looking at white areas in the print. Because the viewing board is a neutral w hite color, placing a p rin t on the viewing b o ard allows

FACILITATING TOOL USE

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students to juxtapose areas in th eir p rin t th at are m eant to be w hite w ith the w hite color of the viewing board, com pare the two "w hites,” w hich should ideally "m atch u p ” and resem ble one another, and thereby determ ine w hether or not the p rin t is properly color-balanced.6 Moreover, m agnets on the viewing m ake it possible for students to engage in "hands-free” viewing of prints, as they can tem porarily affix th eir p rin t to the viewing board. This viewing m ethod plays an im p o rtant role in evaluating color balance because the p h o to g rap h ers hands are free to m ake reference to different areas in the print. As a professional tool, the viewing board provides p h o ­ tographers with a powerful m eans for evaluating their prints, especially w hen students are working with p rin t sizes such as 30” x 40” where hnding a w hite space large enough for evaluating color is difficult. However, the viewing board is also hxed in place, is not portable, and can only be used in one location. If photographers wish to use the viewing board to evaluate their prints, they m ust do so in the space th at was chosen for the viewing board by som eone else. The viewing board thus both con­ strains and enables the work of photographers because they are only able to use the viewing board to evaluate p rints w here the board is m ounted and only w hen the viewing board is free of other photographer's prints. It also m eans th at photographers who prefer to evaluate th eir prints elsewhere - such in the hallway, the workroom , or any other space of their choosing - m ust do (2)

Too Green (lines 19-25)

21

Ed:

22 23

Anton:

24

so w ithout the help of the viewing board. However, the shared socio-historical knowledge th at color can be eval­ uated by com paring whites in the p rin t w ith som ething that is known to be white allows photographers to assess the color of their prints in a variety of physical spaces and frees them from the constraints of the physical loca­ tion of the viewing board.

Segment 2 One stand-in tool that exploits the professional under­ standings that shape the viewing board is the p rin t itself. Learning to use the p rin t in this way - as a m eans to evaluate color balance - em erges from the sam e sorts of m ultim odal interaction discussed in segm ent 1. At the beginning of this segment, a student nam ed Anton has ju st retrieved a p rin t he produced from the developer and is returning to the darkroom . Along the way, he encoun­ ters Ed, the lab assistant and expert printm aker, who is the m ost qualified individual to evaluate Anton s print. As this segm ent begins, Ed has instructed Anton in how to rem edy the im proper color balance. However, Ed has not instructed Anton in the professional practice of viewing the p rin t on the viewing board, nor has he draw n Anton's attention to any specific elem ents in the print. W hat fol­ lows reveals how students learn to focus on p articular parts of the p rin t in their evaluation of color balance and how the p rin t itself becom es a m eaningful professional tool. Pay special attention to the indicated lines by an arrow (at eight thousand five hundred, at eight thousand five hundred, I’m looking for eight eight (0.8) Eight eight? Is that a bid? (0.3) {SA 3 bids} Andrew eight eight fresh bidder

A: A: A:

A:

Transcript 20.6.1. Eighteen-century Bracket Clock.

The auctioneer receives a bid seven thousand pounds and turns tow ard the sales room assistant [SA 1] on his im m ediate right. He announces the current increm ent and invites him to bid at the next, namely seven th o u ­ sand two hundred pounds. As the auctioneer invites the bid at pounds, he gestures tow ard the sales room assis­ tan t [SA 1]. He holds his arm outstretched and hand out until he receives a response. The announcem ent, coupled with the gesture, serves to invite the sales room assistant to accept or decline the increm ent. H alf a second following the invitation, after he checks the increm ent over the telephone w ith the rem ote buyer, the sales assistant bids by nodding an d gestur­ ing tow ard the auctioneer. D uring the pause, the au c­ tioneer's hand rem ains outstretched for the du ratio n of the assistant's conversation w ith the buyer. As the sales assistan t bids, it is m om entarily raised up and down and then w ithdraw n. The auctioneer then announces the bid

Seven thousand seven two------------- Seven two seven five A:

in vite

h e ld

flip

Transcript 20.6.2. Eighteen-century Bracket Clock

GESTURE AND INSTITUTIONAL INTERACTION

285

“seven tw o.” The gesture, coupled w ith the an n o u n ce­ m ent, acknow ledges the bid. As he begins to voice the next increm ent, “seven five,” the au ctioneer tu rns to the second sales room assistant w ith hand o u tstretched to invite him to bid. The gestures consist of two distinct com ponents con­ nected by virtue of the hand and arm rem aining o u t­ stretched. In the first, the gesture with the articulation of the current and next increm ent invites the assistant to bid. In the second, the gesture w ith a vertical flip of the hand acknowledges the bid and then directs the incre­ m ent to ano th er sales assistant. In each case, the m ove­ m ent is repeated for each successive bid during the run. The first action of the gesture operates prospectively to invite a response, the second action operates retrospec­ tively to acknowledge the action th at has been produced. The two actions are tied together, the auctioneer keeping his arm outstretched following the invitation and rem ains oriented tow ard the potential bidder until the bidder has accepted or declined the increm ent. The auctioneers arm does not retu rn to a “hom e” or “rest” position (see Kendon 2004, Sacks & Schegloff 2002). In holding the arm outstretched and hand open in mid-flight, the auc­ tioneer preserves the opportunity to bid with a particular p articip an t and displays, to all those present, who holds the floor to m ake the next contribution. It is w orth adding that when the sales room assistant [SA 1] declines the opportunity to bid at “eight eight,” the outstretched arm and hand move directly to the sec­ ond sales room assistant w ithout the accom panying flip of the hand. The auctioneer does not produce the com po­ nent th at acknowledges and displays receipt of the bid. In som e cases, the two actions - the invitation and the acknow ledgm ent of the bid - are encom passed w ithin a single gesture. The gesture serves to establish, acknow l­ edge, and reveal the contribution of the potential buyer. In the previous fragm ent (Transcripts 20.6.1 and 20.6.2),

* Two thirrty:

we can see th at the two distinct actions accom plished by the gesture are separated by virtue of the gesture being held during the tim e it takes for the sales assis­ tan t to secure perm ission to bid on behalf of the rem ote buyer. W hen both participants are in the room , it is not unusual for the auctioneer to establish and sustain a m ore rapid ru n and escalation of price. It is w orthw hile briefly returning to the first fragm ent (Transcripts 20.1.1 and 20.1.2). It will be recalled that the auctioneer alternates between his left and right hand as he invites each participant in turn to bid. As one of the two protagonists bids, the auctioneer announces the bid, turns, and gestures tow ard the second participant. Consider the increm ents between “two thirty” and “two three four” and the accom panying gesture. After he has announced “two thir:ty,” the increm ent accepted by the bidder on his left, the auctioneer turns from his left to his right. The increm ent “two three tw o” is voiced as he turns from one bidder to the other, his ori­ entation arriving at the bidder on his right on the w ord “tw o.” As he turns, the auctioneer raises his right hand (containing the gavel) and gestures tow ard the bidder on his right. W ithin four-tenths of a second following the word “tw o,” he turns back across the room announcing the next increm ent, “two three four.” The gesture reaches its acm e (cf. Schegloff 1984) w ith the w ord “two.” It is held outstretched tow ard the bid­ der with the base of the gavel pointing upw ard in the hand for less th an tw o-tenths of a second. As the gesture begins to withdraw, b u t rem ains oriented tow ard the bid­ der, the hand is raised rapidly up and down. It is then w ithdraw n and placed on the podium . As it comes to rest on the podium , the auctioneer again produces a gesture to the bidder on his left with the left hand w ith “two three four.” The gesture th at accom panies the voicing of the increm ent “two three tw o” em bodies two distinct actions. The first invites the participant to accept the increm ent,

t

t

Two

three

Transcript 20.7.

286

the second - the flip of the hand, up and down, as the gesture begins to w ithdraw - acknowledges the bid as it is produced. The gesture is shaped w ith regard to the concurrent contribution of the principal recipient and in p articu lar his rapid acceptance of the next increm ent. The single gesture em bodies and accom plishes two distinct actions, prospectively eliciting a bid from the p articipants and retrospectively acknowledging th at bid. Moreover, it serves to display those actions not simply to the two p articipants w ho at th at m om ent are com peting for the goods in question, b u t to all those in the sales room . In turn, the acknow ledgm ent prospectively im pli­ cates a next action, inviting the buyer on the left to accept or decline the next increm ent, and so on. The auction­ eers shifting alignm ent tow ard the two bidders bridges these distinct b u t interrelated alternating sequences of action, through w hich each bidder is invited to confirm a price and the bid acknowledged as it is produced. One fu rther point should be m entioned. It will have been noticed th at the pauses betw een the announcem ents of increm ents by the auctioneer rem ain relatively stable at least for the duration of a run. The actual length of the pauses can vary betw een the sales of particular goods and runs and even betw een the two alternating buyers w ithin a ru n who m ay bid at a different pace. The voicing of the increm ents, the auctioneers gestures, and changes in orientation reveal and serve to encourage and estab­ lish a pace of bidding. Seemingly sm all changes in the pace of bidding by a particu lar participant appear to fore­ shadow w ithdraw al from the run, not at this increm ent, b u t at the increm ent after next. For instance, in the frag­ m ent (Transcripts 20.5.1 and 20.5.2) until eight thousand two hundred pounds, the gaps betw een bids are approxi­ m ately an eighth of a second. At there is a gap of roughly one and a half seconds before the m em ber of staff is able to confirm the bid from the potential buyer over the tele­ phone. At “eight eight/' th a t bidder fails to confirm the increm ent and w ithdraw s from the running. Auctioneers are sensitive to these seemingly slight “delays" in acknowl­ edging an increm ent, and no t infrequently begin to search the room for potential buyers to enter the fray once the current party w ithdraw s. Moreover, bidders and others w ithin the room may also be sensitive to these delays and draw inferences concerning the com m itm ent of a poten­ tial buyer to rem ain bidding for the lot in question; in other words, they reveal a certain vulnerability th at may be exploited in various ways.

DISCUSSION Auctioneers, in collaboration with potential buyers and all those who happen to be present w ithin the sales room , deploy a social organization, an interactional arrange­ m ent, through which price is system atically and tran s­ parently escalated until th e goods are legitim ately sold, or w ithdraw n, at the highest price. This interactional

HEATH AND LUFF

arrangem ent enables dem and to be expressed, displayed, and coordinated so that, for all practical purposes, goods achieve a fair price th at establishes a legitim ate value. The interactional arrangem ent is a turn-taking organi­ zation, an organization th at selectively allocates oppor­ tunities to bid to p articular individuals. Two bidders, and no m ore than two bidders, are established at any one time, and the inclusion of a new participant is local­ ized to a place at w hich one bidder w ithdraw s and a new bidder is identified. These opportunities are structured with regard to an increm ental scale th at rem ains stable, in m any cases, for the duration of the sale of the lot. The increm ental structure provides a vehicle for attributing set prices to individuals, irrespective of the specific values they m ay have in mind, and in projecting and coordinat­ ing the successive contributions of bidders. Auctioneers deploy an organization th at repeatedly creates com peti­ tion betw een two principal protagonists bidding at spe­ cific increm ents and thereby escalating the price of the lot until one bidder rem ains. The goods are then sold or w ithdraw n if they fail to achieve th eir reserve. Gesture and bodily conduct play a critical p a rt in the accom plishm ent of this organizational arrangem ent. They inform the very ways in w hich bidders are discov­ ered, discrim inated, and established and enable the cre­ ation of com petition betw een two principal protagonists at any one time. They enable the auctioneer to attribute increm ents, values to p articu lar individuals, and to suc­ cessively elicit and acknowledge bids. They inform the ways in w hich participants enter the bidding and exit the run. They help identify and reveal the source of par­ ticular bids and, in som e cases, serve to anim ate com ­ m issions and create com petition betw een absent buyers and participants in the room . They enable and reveal the identification of buyers and serve to system atically create and encourage opportunities for anyone present to bid. Gesture and bodily conduct underpin the deploym ent of this highly specialized turn-taking organization and inform the production of successive sequences of action through w hich bids are elicited, acknowledged, and jux­ taposed. If we disregard the visible aspects of the auc­ tioneer's conduct and prim arily focus on language and talk (see, for example, D argan and Zeitlin 1983, Kuiper 1992), we remove one of the principal resources in and through w hich bids are elicited, ascribed, and coordi­ nated and ren d er epiphenom enal the social interactional foundation to auctions and auctioneering. There is a long-standing interest am ong studies of talk in institutional settings in the ways in w hich the distribution of turns, sequential organization, and speaker-recipient alignm ent serves to establish and sustain the specific, form al characteristics of the activity and the relevant identities of the participants (see, for example, Drew and Heritage 1992, Heritage and G reatbatch 1991, M aynard 1988). The ascription and constitution of the identities of the participants in sales by auction are interesting in this

GESTURE AND INSTITUTIONAL INTERACTION

regard and m arkedly differ from the ways in w hich roles and responsibilities are established and em bodied w ithin m any other forms of institutional arrangem ent, including m ultiparty settings such as courtroom s and classrooms. As we have suggested, transparency, and in particular the ascription of p articular actions, nam ely bids, to particu­ lar individuals, is an essential aspect of the ways in which com petition is legitimately established and a fair value for goods achieved. However, it will have been noticed th at individuals are rarely, if ever, identified with regard to their nam e or institutional identity - indeed, the auction house and auctioneer go to som e trouble to preserve the anonym ity of bidders, buyers, and interested parties. In this way, the auctioneer, and the auction house, can avoid being seen or thought to favor any particular participant. The ways in w hich bids are ascribed to p articular indi­ viduals through gesture and orientation w ithin the ru n seem ideally suited to resolving these two alm ost co ntra­ dictory dem ands. On the one hand, bids are visibly and transparently ascribed, through gesture and bodily ori­ entation, to p articu lar individuals so th at the escalation of price can be seen to be grounded w ithin the timely contributions of specific individuals. On the other hand, the ascription of bids to p articu lar individuals through gesture and bodily orientation n eith er identifies the par­ ticipants in question, for exam ple by nam e, n or encour­ ages those w ithin the local m ilieu to tu rn and look at the individual in question. In other words, the source of a bid is revealed, but its revelation neith er encourages nor, in m any cases, affords the identification of the actual indi­ vidual who is putting the bids forw ard. This is one aspect of the “unique fingerprint” characteristic of this p articu ­ lar form of institutional activity - an aspect th at is sys­ tem atically accom plished through the interplay of talk and bodily conduct and including gestures th at sim ulta­ neously elicit and reveal actions while not encouraging those present to tu rn and look at particular bidders. In this regard, it is interesting to reflect on one or two of the key issues th at arise in social and econom ic stu d ­ ies of auctions and auction m echanism s, and to point to the ways in w hich they are founded w ithin the inter­ actional organization of the event. We can begin to see, for example, how the “neutrality” of the auction process, a neutrality th at is critical to the ability of auctions to determ ine value and exchange, is accom plished in and through the ways in w hich auctioneers m ediate the inter­ action of buyers and escalate the price in an ordered and tran sp aren t manner. The ways in which the ru n under­ pins the escalation of price, the system atic creation of successive opportunities for potential buyers to bid, the revelation of active participants, and th eir specific actions w hile preserving their anonym ity not only serve to expose the p articu lar contributions of different par­ ties, but enable the auctioneer to be seen to m ediate the contributions of others rath er th a n influencing or deter­ m ining the price of p articular goods. Belief or tru st in

287

the outcom e of auctions - both value and the legitim ate transfer of ow nership - is accom plished through the ways in which auctioneers elicit, juxtapose, and reveal bids and opportunities to bid, and gesture plays a critical p art in the creation, ascription, and legitim ate escalation of price. It is hardly surprising th at w ithin sociological studies of auctions we find a p articu lar em phasis on “per­ form ance” and “theatricality” considering th at the very foundation and legitimacy of sales derives both from the ways in w hich bids are elicited from particu lar individu­ als and how they are sim ultaneously rendered selectively visible. The actions of the auctioneer are w itnessed and witness-able to an audience th at may have little o r no interest in particular goods in question, b u t whose pres­ ence serves to legitim ize the interaction through which price is escalated and goods sold. Gesture features in the ascription, elicitation, and ordering of bids and provides resources to selectively reveal the action and interaction of the principal protagonists to the audience at large. In this and other ways, gesture and accom panying aspects of bodily conduct play a critical p art in the valuation and sale of goods w orth som e billions of pounds each year.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank all those auctioneers, assis­ tants, and buyers w ho so willingly allowed auctions to be observed and recorded, as well as those who m ore generally helped w ith the research. An earlier and m ore detailed version of this chapter was presented at Interacting Bodies/Corps et Interaction, Congress of the International Society for G esture Studies (ISGS), June 15-18, 2005, at the University of Lyon. We would like to thank all those who gave such helpful and interest­ ing com m ents and criticism s of the chapter w hen it was presented at the conference. We would also like to thank Anthony Morris, Stephen Pratten, Lorenza M ondada, John Haviland, David Silverman, Jon H indm arsh, Dirk vom Lehn, and Katie Best for th eir helpful com m ents and ideas concerning the observations and issues addressed in this chapter, and Adam K endon for his careful editorial suggestions. Charles Goodwin deserves special m ention in this regard for his detailed and insightful com m ents on an earlier version of this chapter. The research of w hich this chapter form s p art is undertaken as part of an AHRC-funded project (reference AR17441), the EU 1ST Fram ew ork VI project PalCom, and the EPSRC WINES Project, Utiforo. REFERENCES

Ashenfelter, Orley and Graddy, Kathryn (2002). Art auctions: A survey of empirical studies. NBER Working Paper No. 8997: National Bureau of Economic Research. Cambridge, MA. Atkinson, J. Max and Drew, Paul (1979). Order in court: The organization of verbal interaction: Judicial settings. Oxford: Macmillan.

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Beattie, Geoff W. (1978). Floor apportionment and gaze in conversational dyads. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 17, 7-16. Boden, Dierdre and Zimmerman, Donald H. (Eds). (1991). Talk and social structure. Cambridge: Polity Press. Boeck, George A. (1990). Texas livestock auctions: A folklife eth­ nography. AMS Press. Cassady, Jr., Ralph (1967). Auctions and auctioneering. University of California Press. Dargan, Amanda and Zeitlin, Steven (1983). American talk­ ers: Expressive styles and occupational choice. Journal of American Folklore, 96(379), 3-33. Drew, Paul and Heritage, John C. (Eds.). (1992). Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Duncan, Jr., Starkey and Fiske, Donald W. (1977). Face-to-face interaction: Research, methods and theoiy. New York: Wiley. Geismar, Haidy (2004). What's in a price: An ethnography of tribal art at auction. In Ash Amin & Nigel Thrift (Eds.), The Blackwell Cultural Economy Reader (pp. 289-306). Oxford: Blackwell. Goeree, Jacob K. and Offerman, Theo (2000). Competitive bid­ ding in auctions with private and common values. Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper. Goffman, Erving (1971). Relations in public: Microstudies of the public order. New York: Basic Books. Goodwin, Charles (1981). Conversational organisation: Interaction between a speaker and hearer. London: Academic Press. Goodwin, Charles (1994). Professional vision. American Anthro­ pologist, 96(3), 606-633. Goodwin, Marjorie (1995). Assembling a response: Setting and collaboratively constructed work talk. In Paul ten Have & George Psathas (Eds.), Situated Order: Studies in the Social Organization of Talk and Embodied Activities. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 173-86. Goodwin, Charles and Goodwin, Marjorie (1996). Seeing as situ­ ated activity: Formulating planes. In Yrjö Engeström & David Middleton (Eds.), Cognition and Communication at Work (pp. 61-95). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heath, Christian C. and Luff, Paul (2000). Technology in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heath, Christian C. (1986). Body movement and speech in medi­ cal interactions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, John C. (1984). Gaifmkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press Heritage, John (1997). Conversation analysis and institutional talk: Analysing data. In David Silverman (Ed.), Qualitative Research: Theoiy, Method and Practice (pp. 161-182). London: Sage. Heritage, John C. and Greatbatch, David (1991). On the institu­ tional character of institutional talk: The case of news inter­ views. In Dierdre Boden & Donald H. Zimmerman (Eds.), Talk and Social Structure (pp. 93-137). Cambridge: Polity Press. Jarvenpa, Robert (2003). Collective witnessing: Performance, drama, and circulation of valuables in the rural auction and antiques trade. Journal of Contemporaiy Ethnography, 32(5), 555-591. Kendon, Adam (1967). Some functions of gaze-direction in social interaction. Acta Psychologia, 26, 22-63.

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Kendon, Adam (1990). Conducting interaction: Patterns of behav­ iour in focused encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kendon, Adam (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Klemperer, Paul (1999). Auction theory: A guide to the litera­ ture. Journal of Economic Surveys, 13(3), 227-286. Kuiper, Koenraad (1992). The English oral tradition in auctions speech. American Speech, 67, 279-289. Kuiper, Koenraad and Haggo, Douglas C. (1984). Livestock auc­ tions, oral poetry and ordinary language. Language in Society, 13, 205-234. Kuiper, Koenraad and Tillis, Frederick (1986). The chant of the tobacco auctioneer. American Speech, 60, 141-149. Laffont, Jean-Jacques (1997). Game theory and empirical eco­ nomics: The case of auctions data. European Economic Review, 41, 1-35. Learmount, Brian (1985). The histoiy of the auction. Ivers: Barnard & Learmount. Maynard, Douglas W. (1988). Language, interaction, and social problems. Social Problems, 35(2), 311-334. Maynard, Douglas W. (2003). Bad news, good news: Conversational order in eveiyday talk and clinical settings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McAfee, R. Preston and McMillan, John (1987). Auctions and bidding. Journal of Economic Literature, 25, 699-738. Milgrom, Paul R. (2004). Putting auction theoiy to work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mondada, Lorenza (2001). Interactions et pratiques profes­ sionnelles: Un regard issu des studies of work. Studies in Communication Sciences, 2(2), 47-82. Perakyla, Ansi (1995). AIDS counselling: Institutional interaction and clinical practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reitlinger, Gerald (1982). The economics of taste. The rise and fall of picture prices 1760-1960 Volume I-1I. New York: Hacker Art Books. Rutter, Derek R. and Stephenson, Geoffrey M. (1977). The role of visual communication in synchronizing conversation. European Journal of Social Psychology, 7, 29-37. Sacks, Harvey and Schegloff, E. A. (2002). Home position. Gesture, 2(2), 133-147. Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff, Emanuel A. and Jefferson, Gail (1973). A simplest systematics for the organisation of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50(4), 696-735. Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1984). On some gestures in rela­ tion to talk. In J. Max Atkinson & John C. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 266-296). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Silverman, David (1997). Discourses of counselling: HIV counsel­ ling as social interaction. London: Sage Smith, Charles W. (1990). Auctions: The social construction of value. California University Press. Streeck, Jurgen and Kallmeyer, Werner (2001). Interaction by inscription. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(4), 35-56. Suchman, Lucy (1987). Plans and situated action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whalen, Jack, Whalen, Marilyn and Henderson, Kathryn (2002). Improvisational choreography in a teleservice work. British Journal of Sociology, 53(2), 239-259.

Musical Spaces John B. Haviland

In this com parative look at several kinds of m usical per­ form ance, I p resent various threads of an investigation in progress, on m usical perform ances and pedagogy in the first instance, but also on “entertainm ents” in general, on m astery and expertise, and the interactive structuring of space. I concentrate Erst on how the spaces in which m usicians play - the layout of the playing area, its phys­ ical characteristics and those of the instrum ents, and the bodies of the m usicians them selves - structure and are structured by m usical and para-m usical interaction, including w hat m ight be called “social stru ctu re.” I then consider m ultiple techniques m usicians in three differ­ ent traditions use to coordinate th eir actions. Finally, I exam ine some of the sem iotic resources - involving talk, non-speech sounds, both m usical and otherwise, bodies, and associated physical objects - these m usicians p u t to w ork for com m unicating musically, both in perform ance and in practice. In the study of interaction, a central analytic focus has been how participants coordinate w ith one another to accom plish “joint actions”(Clark, 1992, 1996) th at can­ not be achieved by individuals alone, requiring instead several participants (if not other entities as well) acting conjointly (H utchins, 1995). Conversational exchanges have this character, as do basketball games and tugs-ofwar, riding on a see-saw, carrying a piano up a flight of stairs, getting an ocean liner out to sea, and perform ing a string quartet. In joint action, not only are the coordi­ nated actions of m ultiple participants involved, but so too is the whole (w hether considered as result or p ro ­ cess) m ore than (in fact, qualitatively different from) the sum of its parts, usually in m ultiple ways, as any team player knows. The first violin p art does not constitute the string quartet; a single kill is not a volleyball game; and a m onologue is hardly a conversation. The appropriate coordination of different participants in joint action thus becom es a central condition for accom plishing some things in the h rst place, and interactive techniques for m anaging such coordination are integral to the activities, regardless of any individual skills th a t m ust be sim ul­ taneously employed. A gifted three-point shooter or a

virtuoso cellist can do nothing to win the gam e or play the quartet w ithout knowing as well how to integrate her skills with other players or m usicians. Although social life is built out of joint actions, and although coordination is a fam iliar p art of everyday expe­ rience, there are at least two im portant consequences of these facts that still seem insufficiently explored in an anthropology of action and com m unication, w rit large, and in the anthropological study of language in partic­ ular. First, ju st as individual skills will never be enough to accom plish joint actions, individual knowledge or cultural com petence is never a sufficient basis for social expertise. Specifically, in the case of language, “knowl­ edge of language” taken as an individuals m astery of gram m ar is a meager, perhaps even a m inor com ponent of w hat we m ight call true linguistic com petence, which implies using language to accom plish social ends. Second, and perhaps m ore consequential given the im portance accorded to a proposed general-purpose “turn taking system atics” (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974) in conversation, is the fact that the character of different joint actions can have determ inative effects on the coordi­ nation required. Not only do different joint actions require different sorts of coordination, b u t the m echanism s for achieving it may be differentially constrained by the actions themselves. As is well known, turn taking in crim ­ inal court is different from that in a university sem inar or a dinner conversation. Although one m ight still w ant to posit an unm arked turn-taking m echanism , or m ore gen­ erally w hat has been called an “interactional substrate” (M aynard & M arlaire, 1992; M aynard & Schaeffer, 2002; Schegloff, 2007), w hich takes on specialized forms for specialized activities, it is useful to examine the specific requirem ents for coordination (of which tu rn allocation is a single, particular instance) given by different activi­ ties. Moreover, coordination may rely on com m unicative m odalities largely unexplored in linguistics or in the study of conversation - uses of the body, or of objects, or of the overall environm ent of the activity th at the long-standing focus on speech m ight not lead us to consider. Given that music is at once highly com m unicative, inherently joint, 289

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and by n ature m ultim odal, m usical interactions seem a useful counterpoint to talk. My principal m aterial is draw n from two m usical "m aster classes” in a university setting, one involving a string quartet (Haviland, 2007) and the other a jazz com ­ b o .1 I take a furth er com parative look at ritual m usic in a M ayan Indian com m unity in southeastern Mexico (Haviland, 1967). There is a m inor tradition in studies of interaction linking m usical perform ance to spoken conversation (see Sudnow, 1978, 1979). The com pari­ son is also evidently explicit am ong som e m usicologists, especially students of jazz. B erliner (1994) writes, “[o]ne m etaphor likens group im provisation to a conversation th a t players carry on am ong them selves in the language of jazz” (p. 348), and his extensive interviews w ith jazz m usicians include m any explicit descriptions of im pro­ visation as conversation. Sawyer (2006) is m ore explicit still: “[T]he m ost im portant aspects of m usical creativ­ ity occur outside of the head of m usicians: they occur in m usical conversations and in interaction betw een m usicians” (p. 239). Still, the specifics of m usical coor­ dination in group perform ance - a topic of som e interest in m usic and perform ance theory, though often studied strictly from the point of view of the m usic itself - have received little attention from social scientists as an object of em pirical study, despite Schütz's classic early rem arks on the subject (Schütz, 1951).12 "Traditional” music, played in the m odern Tzotzilspeaking com m unity of Z inacantân, in Chiapas, Mexico, is descended from sixteenth-century Spanish choral ensem bles. The situation in Z inacantân is "a striking though not unique instance of the oral transm ission through about three centuries of originally w ritten partm usic” (H arrison & H arrison, 1968, p. 2). Zinacantec vob o r "string m usic” is now adays played exclusively to accom pany ritual. Its p ractitioners are increasingly scarce specialists who, according to local u n d erstan d ­ ing, acquire th eir m usical skills neither by practice nor from instruction, b u t in a dream as a su p ern atural gift from ancestral deities. In th e m ost com m on ensemble, 1

2

Some material presented here formed the basis for an oral pre­ sentation at the International Conference of the International Pragmatics Association, Riva del Garda, July 14, 2005, and a lec­ ture at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, April 2, 2009. I am grateful to colleagues on those occasions, and particularly to written comments from Charles Goodwin, Alessandro Duranti, Alessandra Fasulo, and Aaron Cicourel for suggestions and criticisms, only a few of which I have been able to address. This remains true despite many anecdotal references in Clark (1996) and a pilot study by Emanuel Schegloff (p.c.) almost two decades ago on “the double interactivity of the making of music by string quartets." There is a large related literature on jazz (see, for example, Duranti & Burrell, 2004), drawing on such treatments of jazz "conversations" as Monson (1996). There is also interestingly different yet related work on the communicative techniques of orchestra conductors (see Bram & Bram, 1998), which of course have been the subject of much study in musical theory, both aca­ demic and popular (e.g., Rudolf, 1969; Bowen, 2003, among many others).

HAVILAND

there are three instrum ents - violin, harp, and guitar and there is a strict hierarchy betw een the m usicians who play these instrum ents, from highest to lowest in the order given. The hierarchy has various expressions,3 but here the m ost im portant fact is this: The violinist "leads” the ensemble. Specifying exactly w hat "leading” m eans will be one of my first concerns. For the m ost com m on rituals, there is a fixed cycle of five sonetik "songs” (or six, given that the first tune, batz’i son "true song,” both begins and concludes each cycle), although neither the length of time devoted to playing each tune nor the exact accompanying lyrics seems to be pre­ dictable in advance, depending instead on a variety of extra m usical factors. Furtherm ore, although there are observ­ able stylistic and individual differences in how each song or each instrum ental part is played, the Zinacantec theory of the m atter is that there is just one right way to play the tunes, and that either a person knows how to play them (in which case he4 is ajvabajom "m usician” > vob "music”) or not (in which case he is not). W hat differences there are between m usicians are considered by m ost Zinacantecs to be m atters of knowledge or mastery: how well one knows how to tune or play specific instrum ents, or m ake them "speak the songs well”; for how m any different kinds of rituals one knows the proper music and songs (given that for specialized rituals there are also additional specialized tunes); how authoritative one is in m atters both musical and extra-musical (given th at a central virtue of a m usi­ cian is his expertise in ritual detail), and so forth. From my earliest experience as a fledgling an th ro ­ pologist in 1966, I have been an apprentice jvabajom in Zinacantân trying to acquire fragm ents of such exper­ tise. My first exhibits are draw n from a perform ance by a Zinacantec string trio playing at a cerem ony to m ark the first anniversary of the death of a senior Zinacantec man, who him self had had a distinguished career in the ritual hierarchy, and for whose funeral com m em oration it was thus appropriate to have vob "music.” I have spent m any years learning from Zinacantec musicians, and my observations about the m usical tradi­ tion stem from this research. I explore two further kinds of musical perform ance, w ith m aterial drawn from two videotaped "m aster classes.” At the invitation of Prof. Leila Falk, of the Reed College Music Department, on February 6, 2 003,1 filmed a m aster class in which a young 3

4

“The violin player at a ceremony, though he may be a younger man than some of his fellow musicians, outranks the others with regard to such things as position at the table at ritual meals, posi­ tion when praying before the altar, and drinking order. The violin player, too, is assumed to be the musician who knows best the music and the musical procedure. It is he who leads the music and who sets the other people singing. It is he who stops any particu­ lar stretch of playing. It is he who speaks for the musicians when they are addressed as a group, or are required to act as a group. Thus, in any event in which musicians, as a class, are assigned a definite place in the hierarchy of participants, it is the instrument ranking - not some other sort of ranking - which determines how musicians stand within that place” (Haviland, 1967). Zinacantec stringed-instrument musicians are exclusively male.

MUSICAL SPACES

291

F ig u re 21.1. Zinacantec musicians playing violin, harp, and

guitar, seated.

F ig u re 21.2. Zinacantec musicians in procession.

professional string quartet (see Figure 21.3) led a class with a string quartet com posed of undergraduate students. The participants involved agreed to let m e videotape the class, w hich included two fragm entary perform ances by the stu­ dents and a series of interactive m usical dem onstrations and discussions. The professional m usicians focused their com m ents on the historical background of the quartets the students chose to perform and explicitly on aspects of coordination in ensem ble play. Before the class, they also had a short rehearsal for a concert the following day. Subsequently on N ovem ber 18, 2004, I filmed a quite different m aster class. Students at Reed College had organized a presentation by a visiting jazz group, led on the day by a cornet player from New York, w hich gave a com bined perform ance/lecture/jam session at the Reed College Student Union. H ere the em phasis was on

im provisation, on at least an ideology of openness and lack of form al constraints, b u t also on m utual atten ­ tion and em erging discipline in perform ance. The group began w ith a single piece, then broke for discussion w ith several short dem onstrations in answ er to student ques­ tions, and the afternoon ended w ith a joint jam session.

COORDINATION AND SPACE Obvious differences among these three kinds of m usic emerge simply from how the m usicians are arranged in space. The structuring of m usical perform ance spaces is linked to acoustic facts about instrum ents and w ho can hear whom, to certain perform ance traditions, and to form al properties of the m usic itself (for example, its relationship to a score or a conductor). The way the m usi­ cians arrange themselves in space in turn affects the kinds of sequencing and coordination problem s th a t arise.

HAVILAND

292

The seating order for both the Zinacantec m usicians and the string quartet is given by strict tradition. The lin­ ear seating order, from left to right, as viewed from in front, puts the Zinacantec violinist - the highest-ranking m usician - at the left, w ith the second-ranking harp in the m iddle (the violinists left), and the low est-ranking guitar to the extrem e right. In Zinacantec society, seating posi­ tion is alm ost always a function of rank. (H igher-ranked people sit at the “head” of a table at a form al meal, for example, and the table is oriented so th at the “head” is preferably to the east. The m ost senior person sits at the easternm ost end of the n o rth side of the table, so that the high-to-low rank also follows a left-to-right sequence. In a church, ideally the m usicians also sit w ith the vio­ linist to the right of the harpist, but in the easternm ost position; in fact this is the seated arrangem ent show n at the cem etery in Figure 21.1. The standard seating order for m usicians is an expression of a conceptual ranking of the instrum ents themselves: The fact th at the higherranked instrum ents “speak the tunes” better than the low er-ranked ones, th at accordingly higher-ranked m usi­ cians have m ore responsibility for perform ing the m usic because th eir instrum ents are m ore im portant, and so on.5 W hen people dance to the m usic, they face the m usi­ cians in a line, w ith the highest-ranked dancer opposite the violinist. W hen Zinacantec m usicians m arch in p ro ­ cession, the rank order is again fixed (see Figure 21.2): The guitarist goes first, followed by the harpist, with the senior violinist taking up the rear - a standard spatial expression of hierarchy in m ost Zinacantec ritual proces­ sions. (People n o t explicitly ranked m ay straggle behind or ru n ahead, b u t for those p articipants who have spe­ cific, usually nam ed ritual roles, the higher your rank the farther back you walk.) Similarly, w estern string quartets norm ally sit as illus­ trated in Figure 21.3, w ith the first violinist on the left closest to the audience, facing the violist, w ith the second violinist and cellist from left to right at the rear. One sup­ poses th at this seating arrangem ent, w hich is a kind of m iniaturized version of the stan d ard layout of a sym phony orchestra, puts the principal soloist of the quartet - the first violinist - closest to the audience and in a com m and­ ing position w ith respect to the rest of the ensemble. This seating position also allows the quartet m usicians to see and h ear each other directly, and to w atch each o ther peripherally even as they read their w ritten scores, w hich are traditionally arrayed on m usic stands in the area betw een the players - w hether the m usicians actu­ ally need to read the w ritten m usic or not.6 Thus, even if

5

6

Somewhat curiously, if for some reason one musician is absent or incapacitated, the standard practice is to set aside the violin first and limp along with just harp and guitar, perhaps on the theory that an impoverished ensemble must move down but not up the hierarchy of instruments. Concert soloists in western classical music traditionally play, of course, without written scores, because having committed the repertoire to memory is a sign of professionalism.

the first violinist is not the true leader of the quartet - for example, if the cellist is actually “in com m and” in some sense - the traditional seating arrangem ent rem ains, and it perm its com m unication and coordination between all the m em bers of the ensemble. The physical arrangem ent of the jazz combo in the m aster class described here had a different nature. The group was arrayed in a long ragged line, piano at one end, drum s at the other. The tenor sax player set him self up in a chair next to the drum s and rem ained there, as did the bassist, hooked up to an amplifier to his right. The cornet player, the de facto leader of the group, moved around the center of the perform ance area, although he tended to stay close to an electric keyboard th at he also occa­ sionally played. The alto sax player started at the d ru m ­ m ers end of the group, b u t walked behind the ensem ble to the opposite end of the line beyond the piano and back again, apparently as the spirit moved him . As Figure 21.4 shows, the distance betw een individual m usicians could be large, and it seems unlikely that the piano player, for example, could even see the alto sax player in the config­ uration shown. W hether or not a fixed tradition (or pref­ erence) dictates w here the various players sit in relation to one another - som ething th at clearly varies w ith dif­ ferent kinds of jazz and configurations of instrum ents there are presum ably constraints about acoustic and visible access th at lim it how the perform ance space m ay be laid out.7 In this p articular case, the jazz m usicians were largely using borrow ed instrum ents. The wind play­ ers had their own horns, b u t the piano, the drum set, and the electric bass were provided by m em bers of the audi­ ence - Reed students - and had already been set up in the perform ance space before the perform ers arrived. The m usicians thus merged themselves into a space already partially structured in ways outside th eir initial control. Perhaps a m ore im portant constraint on m usical per­ form ance is the nature of the music, and here it is w orth contrasting the problem s of sequence and coordination in these three m usical traditions with the apparently analo­ gous issues in spoken conversation. Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson’s (1974) model of conversation provides an ide­ alized turn-taking engine, purportedly universal, th at first needs to be brought into action, and which, once started, will continue until explicitly closed down, because any given turn provides a series of options for a subsequent turn, but no specific m echanism for shutting dow n the whole sequence. As a result, a variety of independent procedures are required both to start a conversational exchange and to bring it to a close, as the classic literature argues. By contrast, the m usic itself in each of the cases under exam ination provides different resources and a dif­ ferent problem atic for sequencing and coordination. 7

As Alessandro Duranti (p.c.) points out to me, it is important for drummer, bassist, and usually pianist to be in good mutual visual and aural contact to maintain the rhythmic line of the perfor­ mance, although much depends on who sets the rhythm and how it is maintained.

MUSICAL SPACES

Consider the basic8 cycle of six Zinacantec sonetik (son "song” + -etik "PLU”). The songs themselves and the order of th eir perform ance are fixed. So, too, are the words to be sung, at least in principle: Each occasion of perfor­ m ance brings with it a set of expected lyrics, or at least a set of expected building blocks in the parallel couplets of Tzotzil ritual language (Gossen, 1985; Haviland, 1994 [1992], 2000)9, although there is no fixed script for w hich verses should be sung in w hat order, how often repeated, and so on. There are thus only a few central coordination problem s related to the son sequence itself: How to start off the cycle of tunes, how long to play each tune, how to m ake the transition from one tune to its fixed succes­ sor, and how to stop again. Slightly m ore complex is the coordination of singing: W hen to sing a falsetto chorus (which has no words), and in the im m ediately following sung section exactly which words to use from the lim ited repertoire of possibilities. Canonically there is a sim ple Zinacantec solution to all these coordination problem s: The violinist decides. The violinist signals th at he is about to start playing by moving from a stylized tuning of his instrum ent (which in tu rn signals his com panions to tune theirs, or to pass him the instrum ent because the violinist is considered to be m ost expert at tuning) to a sim ilarly stylized short arpeggio, from which he moves som ew hat deliberately into the first phrase of the first song. The o ther two m usi­ cians are expected to fall into synchrony w ith the violinist som etim e around the end of th at first phrase, although it m ay take ano th er phrase or two before exact synchrony of rhythm is achieved. (The m ain business of the guitar­ ist, who strum s sim ple chords, and of the bass strings or left hand of the harp - and of the dancers' feet, w hen there are dancers - is m aintaining such a rhythm , once it is established.) If for som e reason the violinist is not sat­ isfied w ith how the ensem ble sounds - if an instrum ent is badly out of tune, or if one of the other m usicians fum ­ bles or is not quite ready - he will break off w ith another stylized ending arpeggio. He will restart the m usic once he is satisfied the problem has been corrected. As far as the singing goes, he will simply start to sing at w hat he deem s an appropriate m om ent, and the others will fol­ low, relying on their individual knowledge of the lyrics, b u t also on the highly predictable parallelism of the song to follow the violinist's lead.10* There are other more specialized tunes, which also come in fixed sequences. They are played for different ritual offices and fiestas, and some are played canonically with only a violin and a slightly larger, deeper-voiced guitar. What distinguishes an accomplished musician from an ordinary one is partly knowledge of these addi­ tional cycles of son. 9 Thus, for example, at the weekly ritual at the Chapel of the Senor de Esquipulas, which takes place on the weekend, there will always be a reference in song to savaro // rominko “Saturday” and “Sunday.” 10 Aaron Cicourel (p.c.) has characteristically pressed me on this description. Who, he asks, monitors whether everything is work­ ing in these performances, and what happens when things go 8

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Because for any given ritual event there is a fixed cycle of tunes, the perform ance will continue through to the end of the cycle. At each change of tune, the violinist sim ­ ply stops playing one tune and starts playing the next, som etim es em phatically (for example w ith a slight cre­ scendo). Again it is up to his com panions to note the change and to adjust their own playing accordingly. Because ritual events are long, and because the m usic is repetitive and highly predictable, virtually no other phys­ ical cues need to be exchanged betw een jvabajometik other than the m usic itself - no glances, or shifts in pos­ ture, or dem onstrative m ovem ents of the instrum ents, although these are som etim es p resent.11 Indeed, the m usicians som etim es appear to have dozed off as they play, rousing themselves w ith apparent effort to break into falsetto singing, or receiving a swift kick from one of their fellows if their instrum ent goes silent.12 Zinacantec vob thus represents som ething of a lim ­ iting case for joint activity: The activity requires m ul­ tiple participants, b u t strict convention - in this case w hat Zinacantecs m ight call kostumbre or "custom ” - in som e sense predeterm ines the overall outcom e. All th at is required for coordination is a single authoritative and responsible leader - the violinist, in this case, who plays his tunes and sings his songs, and w hom the rest sim ply follow, using conventional cues as guides to their own pre-determ ined and sim ilarly conventional parts. Being a m usician is tan tam o u n t to m astering the conventions, from which everything else theoretically follows au to ­ m atically once the leader is in place. Playing m usic resem bles other perform ances in th a t it is a deliberate execution of actions designed for reception by an audience, to whom, in Baum an's form ulation, the perform ers exhibit an explicit, self-reflexive "responsibil­ ity” (Baum an, 1977; see Berger & Del Negro, 2002). In this sense as well, vob is a kind of lim iting case, because wrong? It would require an excursion into Zinacantec ethnomusicology longer than this chapter can accommodate to give an ade­ quate answer, but it is partly to avoid breakdowns in performance that ritual officeholders recruit musical groups by first approach­ ing a violinist and then asking him, on the basis of his past expe­ rience, to choose the harpist and guitarist from among musicians he deems to have the requisite competence. 11 In other musical traditions, such as Irish dance music, there can be a pre-arranged script that allows transitions to proceed smoothly. A sequence of jigs or reels can be agreed on in advance and each piece is then repeated a fixed number of times before a transition. Somewhat more demanding is the practice, common in Australian woolshed dances or New England country dances, of playing each tune three times through, and shortly before the final repetition of the final section, having the lead musician sim­ ply call out the name of the next tune, to which he or she jumps directly, requiring a kind of instant recall from name to tune and key on the part of fellow musicians. 12 Zinacantecs often rank musicians not in terms of what a west­ ern observer might call their musical abilities but by explicit ref­ erence to their stamina. Major fiestas in Zinacantân can last for three days and four nights, or even longer, and musicians for the major religious officeholders may be expected to perform with minimal rest during the entire eighty-four hours. So a good musi­ cian chkuch yu’un vayel “can resist sleepiness.”

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in Z inacantec ethno-conceptualization, although there are h u m an spectators present and although m usicians certainly b oth listen to and criticize one another, the audience in question is prim arily thought of as super­ natural: It consists of the saints and ancestral deities for whose enjoym ent the m usic is destined, w hereas co-pres­ ent hum ans are either bystanders o r them selves perform ­ ers (for example, dancers). In string quartet perform ances, the different nature of the m usic poses m ore complex problem s of coordina­ tion, som e m echanical and som e aesthetic. In the string quartet m aster class, the professional m usicians m ade a distinction betw een m usical fundam entals - “ju st play­ ing the notes,” staying in tim e w ith one another, and so on - and various kinds of coordination th a t relate to som ething m ore expressive they called “musicality.” The procedures of instruction also lead to an im plicit distinc­ tion in string quartet m usic betw een true perform ance m ode (a way of playing and a kind of coordination appropriate to perform ing the m usic for an audience) and at least two other m odes, often called “practice” and “rehearsal,” each of w hich implies slightly different prob­ lems of coordination w ith different solutions. The score is seem ingly the predo m in an t coordinat­ ing device for the string quartet. The score itself is, in one sense, a physical object whose presence in the per­ form ance has, as we have already seen, a structuring effect on the layout of the space. It is also a representa­ tion at different sim ultaneous levels: It shows the “notes” to be played and som etim es other aspects of technique (bowings, dynam ics, etc.), and it therefore lays out sche­ m atically the whole sequence of m usical actions each individual player is to perform , and how these are to be synchronized w ith the p a rts of the others. The string quar­ tet score is also a representation of the com poser s inten­ tions for the m usic as a whole. It is thus the em bodied analogue of the Zinacantec conventional cycle of sonetik. In the case of one of the pieces perform ed at the class by the student group (the first m ovem ent of M ozarts SQ in F, K590), the score also contains a nam e - “The Em peror of Prussia Q uartet” - w hich encapsulates a m usical tra ­ dition on w hich the professional group focused some of its critical suggestions. That trad itio n im plicates a B akhtinian series of p rio r perform ances of the quartet by oth er groups, tracing back to the q u artets com position and supposed original perform ance, and it raises ques­ tions about the individual style of the quartet ensem ble in question and its ow n renditions of the m usic. The overall structure of the jazz perform ance follows a different logic. If the score is in a technical sense the string q u a rte ts “m aster plan,” in the jazz perform ance the em phasis is on im provisation w ithin a schem atic skeletal structure, given both by a “tu n e” - the piece being played, which m ay have its ow n accom panying tra ­ dition - and by an overall conventional organization that, for the Reed m aster class exam ined here, involved a) a series of opening riffs, b) a section in w hich a tune was

presented by the ensem ble as a whole, then c) a series of im provisations by the individual m usicians, and d) a final closing section th at reprised the tu n e 13 and ended the perform ance. Once again, the form al substrate of the m usic in these different kinds of groups implies slightly different prob­ lems of coordination. Because the score sets out the entire sequence of notes th at com prise the string quar­ tet, for a m echanical rendition of the score all that is theoretically required is to establish a rhythm (e.g., via an agreed beat) and to coordinate the start. Once thus underway, the individual m usicians could in principle simply play through to the end of the score and stop, paying little, if any, m utual attention. As any string quar­ tet player knows, of course, this would never work, and not simply because we do not have m etronom es in our heads. "... [A]ll m usical notation rem ains of necessity vague and open to m anifold interpretations and it is up to the reader or perform er to decipher the hints in the score and to define the approxim ations” (Schütz, 1951, p. 84). Indeed, m uch of the effort in a m aster class like the one I filmed is devoted to various ways in w hich playing a string quartet is m ore than a m echanical reproduction of the notes of all the parts, w hether tem porally synchro­ nized or not. As Sawyer writes, “[cjom posed m usic has a m ore constraining structure th at the m usicians m ust follow, b u t no notational system is capable of completely determ ining the final perform ance” (Sawyer, 2006, p. 237). There is considerable theorizing about the pre­ dom inance of the group as a whole (or even the quar­ tet as a whole) over the individual instrum ents or parts. Nonetheless, it is clear th at m inim ally both the tem pos and the exact m om ent of starting (or shifting rhythm s) m ust be coordinated betw een all four instrum entalists in any successful string quartet perform ance.14 In the jazz m aster class, the m usicians took pains to distinguish the “song” - in some lim ited ways an analogue of the string quartet score - from its quite p articular (pos­ sibly even unrecognizable) rendition by the group. The flexible structure and improvised content of the jazz per­ form ance ironically requires perhaps less synchronization in starting and stopping, but considerably m ore m utual signaling in the course of a perform ance to coordinate transitions between individual solos. W hereas in their pedagogical rem arks the jazz m usicians em phasized flex­ ibility and freedom from constraints (an alm ost complete and seemingly anarchic neutrality about keys, harm o­ nies, and even rhythm , for example), their satisfactorily “tight” perform ance required intricate m utual signaling and negotiated agreem ent to achieve coordination. M any of the sequencing problem s in these musical perform ances have direct analogues in conversation, not only openings, closings, and transitions, but also Alessandro Duranti (p.c.) informs me that this is commonly called a “head" in jazz, and that “there are gestures that embody this metaphor to signal when its time to go back to it after the solos." 14 See also Weeks (1990).

13

MUSICAL SPACES

m anaging overlaps, repairs, and even apparent "pre­ sequences." Although I will not develop the issue here, the potential solutions to these sorts of problem are dif­ ferent for real perform ances, rehearsals, and practice sessions, as well as for dem onstrations, the m ode of per­ form ance peculiar to m aster classes. For example, the string q u artet m aster class began w ith a short rehearsal by the professional group of the final m ovem ent (Allegro m olto) of the Bartok String Q uartet #4. The m usicians rehearsed the final section several tim es. The video reveals a series of coordinating techniques, especially as the m usicians try to com e to agreem ent about changes of tem po (only som e of w hich are notated in the w ritten score) at the very end of the m ovem ent. At m easure 360, there is a syncopation in w hich the first and second violins begin together, playing against each other, joined two beats later by viola and cello in a parallel phrase. The choreography of physical signals, playing, and gaze - even in this tiny little section - is intricate (see Figure 21.5, where notes on movements and gaze appear below the corresponding line of the score for each instrum ental­ ist). The sequence is begun, in a conventionalized way, by a bodily signal from the first violin, who lifts his bow with a stylized m ovem ent to indicate th at play is to begin. The second violinist, who m ust start simultaneously, keeps his head turned tow ard the score, b u t moves his eyes far to his right so as to keep the violinist in his peripheral view, thus being able to coordinate with him precisely. Similarly, he glances back to the first violin at the beginning of the second little triplet, starting at the end of the second bar. At the sam e time, the cello player (and presum ably the violist as well, though I cannot see his eyes on the video) w atches the first violinist s stylized starting gesture before returning her gaze to the w ritten music. Both viola and cello then begin to play following the beat established by the violins, but the cello player also makes a visual check of the violist, with w hom her playing is synchronized, as they come to the end of their first little ru n together. At the end of her second run, at a m om ent when only the second violin is playing a long harm onic note, the cellist again glances at the first violinist, presum ably in anticipation of the little them e he is about to play. The m aster class involved often intricate discussions about how different pieces of m usic ought to be conjointly perform ed, including such issues as dynamics, rhythm , and the relative predom inance and responsibilities of dif­ ferent instrum ents. The little dance of physical cues, shift­ ing gaze, eye contact, facial expression, and other sorts of m utual attention clearly involves coordination not simply of the notes or the rhythm , but reflects a series of further agreem ents about the organization of the music, arrived at through long practice and discussion - som e­ thing Schütz (1951) calls "tuning-in." One observes these signaling techniques even in those perform ances w here the ensem ble is maximally "responsible" to its audience, th at is, m ost thoroughly in perform ance mode. During

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F ig u re 21.5. Bartok SQ #4, 5 movement, bars 360ff.

practices or rehearsals, other m ore drastic sorts of cues are perm itted, m ost notably simply ceasing to play (m uch like the Zinacantec violinist w ho simply stops playing if he thinks his com panions' instrum ents are out of tune). In the sam e Bartok rehearsal sequence, the first violinist suddenly breaks off, lifts his bow from the strings, and with his left hand makes a kind of dismissive wave to his right. The rest of the quartet stops playing, and the cell­ ist - apparently discerning som e specific intention - says "Try a little faster though," to which he responds "Little faster, OK." W ithout another word, the group im m edi­ ately resum es playing from the previous starting point. In the jazz perform ance during the m aster class, w here no score provided a note-by-note m aster p la n 15 for the perform ance, different problem s arose. In particular, because there seem ed to be no preset order of solos, and because the length of any given im provisation was not apparently pre-determ ined, cues were required to m an ­ age tu rn transitions. In the class I observed, these cues took m any forms. Some w ere themselves musical: riffs (when one m usician played a distinctive im provised sequence of one sort or another), vamps (when a m u si­ cian repeated a kind of holding pattern on his in stru ­ m ent, m aintaining a harm onic progression w ith perhaps a m inor im provisation accom panying it, in anticipation

15

Monson (1996) notes that some jazz solos are, in fact, note-fornote repetitions of previous performances, despite a prevailing ideology to the contrary.

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HAVILAND

Figure 21.6. Piano riff (other musicians prepare).

of another's m ore full-blown solo), and explicit kinds of cueing transitional phrases. Others involved bodily signals: gaze, pointing with hand or instrum ent, shifts in body or facial orientation, even stepping physically into or out of the perform ance space. Others were oriented to establish­ ing a shared rhythm - a "groove" (Berliner, 1994, p. 349ff.) and, indeed, the jazz perform ance in this class began even before the other instrum ents played a single note when the bass guitar player set up a rhythm ic and harm onic line that he m aintained for the entire perform ance. A good example of a m usical cue com plem ented by a corporeal one occurs at the end of the m ain piano solo w hen the jazz group played w hat was later identified as a version of King Olivers "Camptown Blues." This turned out to be, in fact, the last im provisation of the perform ­ ance, after which followed a final reprise by the whole ensemble of the m ain them e or tune. The other musicians (except for bassist and drummer, who were accompanying the pianist) were thus waiting for the solo to finish so as to play their partially pre-arranged finale. As the piano player came to the end of his solo im provisation, he repeated a

Figure 21.9. Saxophone player "walks" the solo back into the group. single phrase in a m odulated series of descending scales a m aneuver his fellows clearly interpreted as a signal th at he would soon close (Figure 21.6). They began to ready their instrum ents, in response to his riff, and when finally the piano perform er confirmed th at he was ready for them to resum e with a quick glance to his left (Figure 21.7), the rest of the group began to play the finale reprise. Som etim es m usicians physically hand the floor over from one im provisation to the next. The cornet player, ending one short solo with a trill, appeared to nod w ith head, eyes, and instrum ent (Figure 21.8) to the alto sax player, who responded by starting his ow n solo with a corresponding trill. The alto sax player, in turn, walked from the edge of the group where he had played his im provisation back into the center (Figure 21.9), physically passing the music to the next soloist.

MUSICAL SPACES

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