Embodied Negotiation as Interactional Strategy

Excerpt 16 examines how the participants combine gesture and exploit circumlocution, as well as spelling as an interactional strategy to resolve the word search sequence. The analysis focuses on how participants organise their talk and embodied action as resources to negotiate meaning for the word searched-for. The joint construction in meaning-making is developed as a concept and references that are related to the word searched-for. However, in the process the main speaker displays her negotiation for meaning of the word that she is searching for, and the search sequence is expanded to a longer series as another participant joins in to elicit more information and seek clarification of the trouble source arising in the search sequence.

Excerpt 16: Wax and wasp

(Ann: Vietnam; Mus: Malaysia; Lea: Kazakhstan)

1 ANN: and there were some insect

2 (0.5)

3 ANN: and- 4 MUS: Hahaha

5 ANN: ya:h so they were having a kind of │like-

│((Ann shifts gaze upwards.))

6 │(0.8)you know the │wax?

│((Ann brings her hand to her lips and gazes downwards. [Fig. 7.16] ))

│ ((Ann makes a cupping hand gesture and gazes at Mus. Mus and Lea gaze at Ann. [Fig. 7.17] ))

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7 (0.2)

8 ANN: u:hm (0.6) tch (0.4) it's >kinda like< a:: hh

9 │hone::y er::

│((Both Mus and Ann maintain gazes at each other. Lea turns her gaze upwards. [Fig. 7.18] ))

Figure 7.18

10 MUS: hone::y,

11 ANN: honey but it's the wax uhm↓ 12 MUS: oka:y

13 ANN: │a place that they stay and >I don't know how< to call it?

│ ((Ann brings both hands apart in front of her body as Mus turns to look at Ann’s hand gesture. [Fig. 7.19] ))

Figure 7.19

14 MUS: yah yah 15 ANN: ya::h↓

16 MUS: │the hone:y co:mb in the:: [mi-

17 LEA: [>I didn't< know what

18 │insect this?

│ ((Lea shifts her gaze to Ann. Ann turns to gaze at Lea.))

19 ANN: │called wax (.) it's ve:ry like honey but it canno:t

│ ((Ann and Lea gaze at each other. Mus puts food into her mouth and gazes at Ann.))

20 produce honey,

21 (0.5)

((Lea gazes upwards as Mus gazes at Lea.))

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23 ANN: [like ] bees it │cannot produ:ce produ:ce [wh:y=

│ ((Mus turns to gaze at Lea. Lea frowns. [Fig. 7.20] ))

Figure 7.20

24 MUS: [↑oh: 25 ANN: =it's called wax

26 (0.3)

27 MUS: it's um │>double< you: aye es pee right?

│ ((Mus spells out the word ‘wasp’ with a pointing gesture and gazes at Ann. Both Lea and Ann gaze at Mus. [Fig. 7.21] ))

Figure 7.21

28 ANN: >yah<

((Mutual gazes between Mus and Ann and Ann smiles.))

29 (0.6)

30 LEA: wasp

((Mutual gazes between Mus and Lea. [Fig. 7.22] ))

Figure 7.22

31 (0.4)

32 MUS: │[↑ya::h

33 LEA: │[↑oh:: yah [I know that

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34 ANN: [( ) │yah a:::nd u:hm (0.8) and er::

│ ((Lea turns to gaze at Ann.))

35 I saw │that and I thought it's whole belo:ng [to::::

│ (( Ann points her finger upwards and maintain her gaze at Mus. [Fig. 7.23] ))

Figure 7.23

36 MUS: [>mm hm<

37 (0.3)

38 ANN: to the:: bee

At the beginning of the excerpt, Ann talks about her visit to the insect exhibition in a museum, and as she begins her telling both Mus and Lea are involved in cutting

baklava (a Turkish dessert). However, as Ann talks about her experience (line 5 to line

6) she makes an abrupt stop, shifts her gaze away from Mus, and looks downward as she touches her lips and displays a thinking face (Goodwin and Goodwin, 1986) during the 0.8 second pause (as illustrated in Figure 7.16), indicating that she is launching her word search. Following this, Ann offers a try-marked word “wax,” pronounced /wɑks/ with a rising intonation (line 6) as her candidate solution. When Ann produces her candidate solution to her word search she directs her gaze at Mus as an invitation for her co-participation (Goodwin and Goodwin, 1986; Hayashi, 2003). Produces the word “wax” in a rising intonation indicates that she is seeking Mus’s confirmation (Koshik and Seo, 2012). Co-occurring with her utterance is her hand gestures, which she brings forward towards Mus as she forms a cupping hand gesture, at which Mus halts her activity of cutting the baklava and brings her gaze to Ann, as illustrated in Figure 7.17.

When Ann does not get a response from Mus in the subsequent line (line 7), Ann continues to progress in her word search sequence (line 8). Despite the fact that Ann shows hesitation and makes several pauses in her talk, she also shows that she is not giving up and provides further description of the candidate word produced earlier

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through the use of circumlocution, producing associated synonym words (“wax” and “honey”) in expressing meaning for her word search (line 8 – line 9). Furthermore, it is observed that Ann uses similar gestures of cupping her hand when she produces the lexical word “wax,” which she later repeats as she elongates the vowel sound word “hone::y” (line 9), as illustrated in Figure 7.18. At this point, both Ann and Mus have

their gazes on each other. At the same moment, Lea moves her gaze away from Ann and turns to look into space and display a thinking character (Figure 7.18).

In the subsequent action, Mus displays herself to be an active participant as she repeats Ann’s circumlocution “hone::y,” (line 10) and provides a minimal token “okay.” Following Mus’s minimal token “okay,” Ann consider Mus’ “okay” as an incomplete solution to the ongoing trouble in understanding the lexical word “wax” (Beach, 1995), and thus Ann continues to provide more description in the following turn. In line 13, Ann brings both of her hands in front of her body with both of her palms slightly apart as she utters “a place that they stay”, and at this moment Mus shifts her gaze towards Ann’s hand movement. Then Ann overtly displays trouble in producing the actual word for her search as she furrows her eyebrows and keeps her gaze on Mus and explicitly says “>I don't know how< to call it?” in a rising intonation, as shown in Figure 7.19 (line 13).

It can be understood that Ann’s gaze direction, when she explicitly displays her trouble in her search activity, indicates an invitation to Mus to co-participate in the search process. Thus, Mus displays her co-participation as she joins to further negotiate meaning for the unavailable word with Ann in line 13 through line 16. However, in line 16, as Mus begins to share her understanding, her turn overlaps with Lea’s utterance in line 17. At this point, Lea turns to gaze at Ann and interrupts Mus as she displays her trouble in understanding towards Ann, “[>I didn't< know what insect this?” (line 17). Notably, Ann, who has made most of her eye contact with Mus from the beginning of the excerpt, now turns to look at Lea when Lea displays her trouble in understanding, and thus Ann begins to align to Lea’s trouble and shows her orientation towards Lea from line 19 through line 25.

Note that when Lea displays her trouble in understanding of the type of insect that Ann is referring to, the search sequence moves on to another phase (i.e. a further

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meaning negotiation process). Furthermore, it is also interesting to note that Lea, as the non-speaking participant, shows herself to be an active listener, observable through her embodied actions such as her gaze aversion and body posture.

In line 19 to line 25, Ann turns her body position and directs her gaze towards Lea, describing the insect and recycles her previous use of circumlocution such as “wax” and “honey”. As Ann provides the description, Lea displays a thinking posture as she gazes upwards (line 21), and then she looks downwards to continue cutting the

baklava as she listens to Ann’s explanation. Furthermore, in Ann’s explanation, she

adds additional information to say that the insects are similar to bees but they cannot produce honey (line 23). Moreover, as Ann provides her description Mus keeps her gaze on Ann and produces a change-of-state token “[oh:: ↓]” (line 22) to display noticing, and then Mus produces another change-of-state token “[↑oh” in a high pitch, indicating that she is displaying understanding (Heritage, 1984).

It can be noted that Lea shows no understanding noticeable through facial gestures, as shown in Figure 7.20. Following this, Mus begins to seek confirmation from Ann as she starts to spells out the word “wax” in line 27, which co-occurs with her pointing gesture into mid-air and also directing her gaze at Ann, as illustrated in Figure 7.21. Furthermore, as Mus spells out the word, both Ann and Lea display their

recipiency towards Mus as both keep their gaze on Mus. At the end of Mus’ spelling, Ann provides her acknowledgement and smiles at Mus (line 28), which might indicate that an understanding between her and Mus is reached.

In line 30, Lea keeps her gaze on Mus as she utters “wasp,” which she

pronounces /wɒsp/, which is followed by a mutual gaze between her and Mus, as shown in Figure 7.22. Mus confirms Lea’s contribution (line 31), which overlaps with Lea’s utterance as she continues to display her understanding, and Mus gesturally confirms Lea’s understanding when she points an open palm gestures towards Lea and nods once (line 32 - line 33).

It is worth mentioning that in line 13 Ann explicitly displays her trouble

searching for the word to describe “a place that they stay”, which is associated with the use of circumlocution as she produces “honey” and “wax”. It can be

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which she refers to as “wax”. However, Mus and Lea display their understanding of the type of insect that Ann is referring to as “wasp”. Therefore, after an understanding is shown by Mus and Lea, Ann then makes a continuation in her search sequence even though the word that she is searching for is related to the place where the insects live (line 34). However, Ann chooses to ‘let it pass’ (Firth, 1996) and decides to progress her talk as she replaces the word searched-for with the placeholder “that” (Hayashi, 2003) as she says “I saw that and I thought it's whole belo:ng to:::: to the:: bee” (line 35-line 38), as illustrated in Figure 7.23

The examination in this excerpt shows that participants demonstrate

collaboration through talk and embodied actions where they express meaning by use of interactional strategies with embodied actions in meaning-making for the unavailable word. Furthermore, it has been shown that that the search sequence results in a longer series as all the participants demonstrate a joint construction in a further meaning through embodied negotiation. Even though the speaker’s initial word searched for is not successfully attained, the participants have successfully managed rely on the reference word (wasp) for the unattainable word, which is sufficient to clarify the meaning of the trouble source in order to accomplish mutual understanding.