PekarekDoehler2021a
| PekarekDoehler2021a | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | PekarekDoehler2021a |
| Author(s) | Simona Pekarek Doehler, Hilla Polak-Yitzhaki, Xiaoting Li, Ioana-Maria Stoenica, Martin Havlík, Leelo Keevallik |
| Title | Multimodal Assemblies for Prefacing a Dispreferred Response: A Cross-Linguistic Analysis |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Preference organisation, Gaze, Epistemic markers, Turn preface, Multimodality |
| Publisher | Frontiers |
| Year | 2021 |
| Language | English |
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| Journal | Frontiers in Communication |
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| URL | Link |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689275 |
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Abstract
In this paper we examine how participants’ multimodal conduct maps onto one of the basic organizational principles of social interaction: preference organization – and how it does so in a similar manner across five different languages (Czech, French, Hebrew, Mandarin, and Romanian). Based on interactional data from these languages, we identify a recurrent multimodal practice that respondents deploy in turn-initial position in dispreferred responses to various first actions, such as information requests, assessments, proposals, and informing. The practice involves the verbal delivery of a turn-initial expression corresponding to English ‘I don’t know’ and its variants (‘dunno’) coupled with gaze aversion from the prior speaker. We show that through this ‘multimodal assembly’ respondents preface a dispreferred response within various sequence types, and we demonstrate the cross-linguistic robustness of this practice: Through the focal multimodal assembly, respondents retrospectively mark the prior action as problematic and prospectively alert co-participants to incipient resistance to the constraints set out or to the stance conveyed by that action. By evidencing how grammar and body interface in related ways across a diverse set of languages, the findings open a window onto cross-linguistic, cross-modal, and cross-cultural consistencies in human interactional conduct.
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