Thinking Face
| Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Thinking Face | |
|---|---|
| Author(s): | Alexandra Groß (University of Bayreuth, Germany) (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8850-0605) & Carolin Dix (University of Innsbruck, Austria) |
| To cite: | Groß, Alexandra, & Dix, Carolin. (2026). Thinking Face. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: [ ] |
Thinking face refers to recurrent configurations of facial gestures, gaze and head movements that serve the interactional purpose of displaying ongoing mental processes to the interlocutor. The term ‘thinking face’ was coined by Goodwin & Goodwin (1986) to refer to speakers’ recurrent embodied – specifically facial – movements and postures during word searches (for similar descriptions see also Darwin 1872; Ekman 1979). As an embodied practice of ‘doing thinking’ (e.g., Heller 2021), it is conceptualized as a resource that contributes "to organizing thinking as public practice" (Heller 2021: 2).
The thinking face can involve different configurations of parts of the face (see figure 1). A general observation on obligatory physical components of the thinking face was first made by Goodwin & Goodwin (1986), who observed speakers averting their gaze when searching for a word. Goodwin (1987: 117) provides a more precise description of the "out-of-focus 'middle-distance' look", that is, the unfocused gaze directed at a medium distance. Heller (2021) similarly describes an imaginative gaze and vivid eye movement as intrinsic features; Ekman (1979: 185) observes "eyes looking up as if the word was to be found on the ceiling". Beyond gaze movements, the bodily configuration of the thinking face may involve pursing and slackening of the lips and lowered eyelids (see Goodwin & Goodwin 1986). Chovil (1991) observes further components such as lowered eyebrows or a frown (see also Ekman 1979), but depending on the conversational context, speakers may, in contrast, raise their eyebrows.
Figure 1: Thinking face (Thermomix corpus, C. Dix & A. Groß)
Example (1), showing children engaging in joint imagining, illustrates the internal configuration of the thinking face (speaker SAR on the right side of both stills) as well as its combination with further embodied practices. It shows that the thinking face may occur with thinking postures (ibid.) as part of a multimodal gestalt (Mondada 2014) which reflects the local demands of the activity: In Example 1, the speaker (on the right side) places the fingers on the sides of her head, which is held in a tilted position. The thinking face appears together with a wrinkled nose and narrowed eyelids that embody the process of visually focusing and 'zooming in' on an imagined scene (Heller 2021: 8).
(1) (Heller 2021: 7)
In order to make the thinking-face configuration a recognizable action (Goodwin & Goodwin, 1986: 69), it is aligned with the verbal conduct as illustrated in Example (2) for a word search: Here, speaker A begins to produce a thinking face right at the beginning of perturbations of turn production and continues it upon the marking of a repair. After finishing the gesture, A self-repairs by resuming the verb, then producing the target word and finishing the TCU.
(2) (Goodwin & Goodwin 1986: 59)
While turning away and withdrawing gaze may, in other sequential environments, be interpreted as disengaging from interaction, the usage of the thinking face within perturbations and/or pauses of ongoing turn production (Example 2) in fact indicates an intensified involvement in the word search and a continued commitment to the sequential development of the shared course of action.
Recipients attend to the producer of the thinking face and monitor their ongoing engagement in the activity. Under certain conditions, the thinking face may provide the recipient with an 'entry point' into collaborative turn-production (Lerner 1996, 2004): If the speaker looks at their partner while searching for the right word, this can be interpreted as an invitation to participate in the search, whereas looking away signals that they do not want to be interrupted. Thus, it can be the ongoing thinking face gesture or the abandoning of it – especially the (re-)turning of the gaze towards the interlocutor – that establishes opportunities for participation, e.g., by providing support with a word search (Goodwin & Goodwin 1986). If the recipient of an utterance produces a thinking face, this may be interpreted as a sign of trouble (e.g., a referential problem), leading speakers to expand their turn in order to resolve it (Stolle & Pfeiffer 2023).
The thinking face can be produced in further sequential environments: Besides word searches and initiations of other-repair in referential problems (Stolle & Pfeiffer 2023), it has also been described for activities such as argumentative decision-making in children’s interaction (Heller 2021) or storytelling (Bavelas & Chovil 2018). At the beginning of narratives, speakers might produce a prolonged thinking face (ibid.: 107–113), which signals that the speaker will keep the turn for the purpose of narrating. During argumentative decision-making among children, the main functions of the thinking face center around "creating epistemic ecologies for collaborative reasoning" (Heller 2021: 2), i.e., to (co-)imagine and "embody a hypothetical scenario", to engage in "thoughtful searching", and to do "critical thinking" about (a part of) an argument (ibid.: 5). The reciprocal use of the thinking face of both speaker and recipient is seen as an established participation framework for joint imagination.
A different but related function of the thinking face is displaying uncertainty (Goodwin, 1987), i.e., downgrading the speaker’s epistemic stance about a statement he or she is about to make. This modalizing use of the thinking face alters the frame for interpreting an utterance (Heller 2021: 3).
Descriptions of the thinking face from conversation analysis have also informed experimental studies on human–android interaction. Namba et al. (2024) implemented the combination of furrowed brows and narrowed eyelids in an android and found that it increased the recipients’ perception of thoughtfulness, authenticity, human-likeness, and appropriateness, while reducing the android’s 'eeriness'.
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