Maintaining and resolving an explicit understanding

Example 6.7 provides further evidence for how the use of gesture hold plays an important role, not only in projecting, but in maintaining the relevance for co-

participants’ explicit contribution towards shared understanding. The target action in

5

Also, this forms an interesting parallel to example 5.3 in the previous chapter, where co-participant’s display of recognition was made relevant with a mid-TCU pause. No gesture holds are found in mid-TCU pauses, which further supports the claim that gesture hold makes explicit rather than implicit display of understanding relevant next.

169 example 6.7 is an understanding check, which becomes problematic as there is initially no response, followed by a disconfirmation.

Prior to this excerpt Tor and Lars are addressing attitudes towards music. In Lars’ view, phenomena like ‘Guitar Hero’ has helped in shifting people’s attitudes in favour of social qualities of performing music rather than musical ambition. In the excerpt below Lars makes an analogy to the tradition of Norwegian school bands, which, unlike Swedish school-bands, also have focussed more on the fun parts of making music and not necessarily musical quality (01-03). The reference to school-bands as being Norwegian does not seem to be entirely clear to Tor, which is what he brings to the surface with an understanding check in 08.

(6.7) KTH-NO, TL, 11:36 ”i Sverige”

01 L: det ´FINS ingen: °h `STO:re krav til at det her s IT EXISTS NO BIG DEMANDS TO THAT IT HERE there are no great expectations for it (to)

02 <<all >`NOen gang skal> sˀ n: kunne bli ´BRA: SOME TIME SHALL COULD BECOME GOOD to ever (x-) become good

03 eller noe sånt; OR SOME SUCH or anything 04 (-) 05 T: °mh= °mh

06 L: =man `GJØR ´det bare. ONE DOES IT JUST you just do it

07 (.)

08 T: 1-> <<all >ja ´HER i> `SVERige— YES HERE IN SWEDEN (yes) here in Sweden 09 2-> (-)

10 L: 2/3-> <<f >´NEI: i> `NOR´ge men[er `jeg;] NO IN NORWAY MEAN I no in Norway I mean 11 T: 3-> <<f >[´J ]A <<all >okay.>> YES OKAY yeah okay 12 T: [mm, [((THROAT))] mm ((throat))

170 13 L: [°th [med ´KORPS,]

WITH SCHOOL-BANDS with school-bands

Tor’s candidate understanding in 08 comes after a complete turn from Lars, in 01-03 and incremented in 06. In this turn Lars assesses det her/“this here” (01), referring to Norwegian school-bands. There is nothing in the production of 03 or 06 indicating that Lars projects more talk himself, rather it seems like Lars is pursuing an

agreement/alignment from Tor. This is also supported by the use of gaze: Lars gazes at Tor all the way during 01-07. Tor orients to the relevance of him responding in 08, by producing an understanding check and thereby displaying that reference trouble is what has prevented him from agreeing/aligning before. Tor’s candidate solution to this

reference trouble is ja her i Sverige/“(yes) here in Sweden” (08). An interesting design feature of this understanding check is the use of the initial ja/“yes”. One thing that the use of this item potentially shows is that Tor has some access to understanding already. I would not expect to find such a turn-initial ja if Tor was expressing disbelief, for example.

As he produces his candidate understanding in 08, Tor produces a gesture which he holds into the inter-turn gap in 09. Tor seeks a confirmation from Lars, and as we will see, the development of this gesture hold demonstrates both interactants’ orientation to its relevance for the current process. The details of this development are illustrated in transcript 6.7a below.

171 (6.7a) KTH-NO, TL, 11:36 ”i Sverige” GESTURE ANNOTATION 1

a

b

STEP 1 2 (3) 2 3

08-10 MG(T) ...^^^^x^^^^x---(....)---//

08-11 T: ja ´HER i `SVERige— (0.3)= [´J ]A okay.

(yes) here in Sweden yeah okay

10 L: =´NEI: i `NOR´ge men[er jeg;]

no in Norway I mean

Tor holds his gesture stroke as it reaches its second peak/beat in the last syllable of Sverige/“Sweden”. This gesture is shown in figure a. For three-tenths of a second Lars does not initiate a response. After about 2/3 of this time Tor starts to release his gesture (figure b, and indicated by ‘...’ in brackets). Immediately following this Lars initiates a response, and in response, Tor holds his gesture again (i.e. the handshape in figure b). What this shows is Tor’s sensitivity to, and projection of, the emerging

contribution from Lars. As Lars does not provide any response for some time, Tor starts withdrawing his action, but maintains it again as Lars does initiate a response. That is, Tor holds his ‘semi-released’ gesture only because talk is now again aimed towards achieving shared understanding.

But it is not only Tor who is sensitive to the gesture hold as part of the ongoing process: As Tor starts releasing his gesture (figure b), Lars not only initiates talk, he does so in a highly distinct and abrupt manner. First, Lars’ nei/”no” initiating 10 is clearly louder than the surrounding talk. Second, the nei is preceded and accompanied by Lars quickly raising his shoulders. Third, Lars shifts his gaze away from Tor at the same time. The shoulder movement (‘SG’) and gaze (‘Gz’) is included in transcript 6.7b below.

Withdraws gesture slightly Gesture

172 (6.7b) KTH-NO, TL, 11:36 ”i Sverige” GESTURE, GAZE AND SHOULDER ANNOTATION

STEP 1 2 (*) 2 3

08-10 MG(T) ...^^^^x^^^^x---(....)---//

08-11 T: (ja) ´HEr i `Sverige— (0.3)= [´J ]A okay.

(yes) here in Sweden yeah okay

10 Gz(L-T) ___________________________B ,,L x_________________

10 SG(L) ^^^

10 L: =´NEI: i `NOr´ge men[er jeg;]

no in Norway I mean

Tor’s shoulder movement (‘^^^’) starts immediately after Tor starts releasing his gesture hold, along with a gaze-shift and loud speech production. Combined these signals provide a strong indication that Lars is now ‘taking’ speakership. As they get initiated right after Tor starts releasing his gesture, it seems highly plausible that Lars displays a sensitivity to Tor’s gesture, and Lars does so for the purpose of maintaining the process towards shared understanding. In other words, Lars uses this as a ‘last call’ to give Tor the kind of response he projected.

So far I have mainly dealt with the fact that Lars finally does provide a contribution to Tor’s understanding check; details as to how Tor and Lars resolve shared understanding have not yet been provided. As indicated by Lars’ delayed response, Lars has some trouble in confirming Tor’s understanding. And the reason for this is that Lars was referring to Norway, not Sweden (10). Tor’s orientation to this development

demonstrates how Tor not only orients to whether or not Lars responds, but also to the content of Lars’ response.

As Lars produces Norge/”Norway” in 10, Tor starts releasing his gesture in preparation for a second gesture. The second gesture co-constructs “Norway” indexically as

somewhere/something else than “Sweden”. This development is illustrated in 6.7c below.

173 (6.7c) KTH-NO, TL, 11:36 ”i Sverige” GESTURE ANNOTATION 2

c d _e

STEP 2 3

10-11 MG(T) ..)---//...^^^^^^^x...//

10 L: ´NEI: i `NOr´ge men[er jeg;] no in Norway I mean

11-12 T: [´J ]A okay. mm, yeah okay mm

Tor’s second gesture is formed as an indexical gesture using the thumb (see figures c-e above). This gesture points away from the direction of his first gesture (see transcript 6.7a), and by doing so Tor manages to anticipate, and highlight, the repair of “Sweden” to “Norway”. Notice that Tor is able to display this orientation rather early, towards the coda of the first syllable in Norge/“Norway”. There are several potential factors that may provide Tor with an opportunity to anticipate “Norway”. First, as Lars has already disconfirmed Tor’s understanding with nei/“no”, the referent following i/“in” is likely to project another place/country. Furthermore, i Norge/“in Norway” uses the same lexical/syntactic format as 08, thereby marking it as the object in repair. Second, it seems plausible that the referent is either Sweden or Norway in this case, and Tor is then able to use the early parts of Lars’ “Norway” to anticipate what follows.

As in 6.6, shared understanding is further resolved in a gesture release. Tor releases his gesture towards the end of Lars’ TCU i Norge mener jeg/“in Norway I mean” (there is no good reason to view i Norge/“in Norway” and mener jeg/“I mean” as two separate TCUs, as they are produced as one intonation phrase with no phonation break), following the gesture peak (i.e. no hold). But unlike the above examples, the gesture

174 release is simultaneous with Tor’s initiation of a verbal validation (11), and not

preceding the verbal response. Note however, that Tor works to make his verbal response a next turn event (i.e. in the clear), by (i) extending ja/“yes” beyond the

completion of Lars’ spoken material in 10, and (ii) using “okay” to extend the turn with a particle that marks confirmation. Therefore, this example also supports the proposed sequence of events (Table 6.A).

6.3.3 Summary

These examples demonstrate how interactants pay attention to gestures, and gesture hold, as part of bringing and keeping shared understanding to the surface of interaction, and how they manage this process on a moment-by-moment basis. Example 6.7 in particular showed how the use of gesture is finely tuned to the resolution of shared understanding, which further proves its role and importance in projecting such an action in the first place.