Deixis, Meta-Perceptive Gaze Practices, and the Interactional Achievement of Joint Attention

Abstract

The paper investigates the use of gaze along with deictics and embodied pointing to accomplish reference and joint attention in naturally occurring social interaction. It assumes that deixis, in its primordial use in face-to-face interaction, is an embodied phenomenon that involves gestural pointing as well as visual perception, thus giving rise to recurring gaze practices of the participants. The analysis draws on a model of the interactional organization of deictic reference and joint attention that serves as a sequential framework for investigating the functions of eye gaze. The analysis focuses on two meta-perceptive practices: gaze following and gaze monitoring. It shows that the use of these practices in naturally occurring social activities is context dependent, positionally sensitive, tied to participant roles, and temporally fine-tuned to the stream of the participants' verbal and embodied conduct. The sequential analysis of these practices further documents that meta-perceptive gaze practices contribute to the constitution of joint attention as mutually known by the participants. The data for this study were recorded with two pairs of mobile eye tracking glasses and an external camera. Methodologically situated within the framework of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics where video recording is used, the study breaks new ground by employing a technology almost exclusively applied in experimental frameworks to record ordinary social activities "in the wild." In striving for ecologically valid and precise eye gaze data, it also contributes to a refinement of concepts developed in experimental paradigms by adapting them to qualitative research within the field of multimodal conversation analysis and interactional linguistics.

Turn-allocation and gaze: A multimodal revision of the “current-speaker-selects-next” rule of the turn-taking system of conversation analysis

“…Note that in this constellation, gaze is not needed for movements or object-manipulations in space, as for instance, when participants are walking together, which requires the use of gaze for path-finding, spatial orientation, checking other walkers, etc., or when they are engaged in bodily activities (cooking, eating, etc.) (see Stukenbrock, 2018a, 2018b, 2020; Stukenbrock and Dao, 2019 for the use of eye-tracking in these contexts). In these cases, gaze has to deal with many competing tasks which obviously complicates analysis.…”

Fictive Deixis, Direct Discourse, and Viewpoint Networks

“…Recent work, however, has expanded the scope of the enquiry-adding the discussion of joint attention (Tomasello, 1995; see also Turner et al, 2019 for a discussion of Blended Classic Joint Attention-in the context of TV, film, etc. ), and numerous studies of gesture and eye gaze (e.g., Stukenbrock, 2014;Stukenbrock, 2020), as ways in which the speaker and the hearer use their bodies to make joint attention and communication possible 1 . Also, deixis is often talked about in terms of 'grounding', or Deictic Ground (Langacker, 1987;Langacker, 1991;Hanks, 1990;Brisard, 2012), to account for the numerous ways in which the use of deixis goes beyond just 'being there' for communication to happen, but rather being actively used to construe situations.…”

If-Clauses, Their Grammatical Consequents, and Their Embodied Consequence: Organizing Joint Attention in Guided Tours

“…What becomes progressively recognizable as an if-clause ("se guardate voi per terra,"/'if you look at the ground'; l. 02) is accompanied by the guide's pointing hand, which follows the area in which the intended object is visible (highlighted in Figure 2). While the guide formulates the area in which the new referent will be located already at the end of the protasis ("per terra"/'at the ground'; l. 02), the pointing gesture is instrumental for the visitors in identifying the new focus of attention, i.e., vestiges of razed walls, since it traces (Goodwin, 2003) the area in which the object can be found, thereby delimiting a domain of scrutiny (Goodwin, 2003;Stukenbrock, 2020). Note that (some) visitors are orienting their gaze towards the referent 9 already before the guide starts articulating the apodosis (Figure 3).…”

“…This is particularly true for addressees who are members of large groups, and who in moments of collective reorientation risk mutually hindering visual access to the object of interest. The phenomenon investigated here, i.e., grammar as a resource for action organization, is tightly related to Stukenbrock's (2018Stukenbrock's ( , 2020) studies on joint attention, since guides use ifclauses precisely as a further resource to orient the visitors to a common focus of attention. The main concern relates here, however, to the ways in which guides embed this specific linguistic resource in the situatedly emerging course of action.…”

“…The difference some authors working on joint attention and pointing make between target and referent (e.g.,Stukenbrock, 2015: 72-85) is not considered here. Such a distinction is an intersubjective achievement that becomes evident as the interaction unfolds(Goodwin, 2003;Stukenbrock, 2020).Frontiers in Communication | www.frontiersin.org August 2021 | Volume 6 | Article 661165…”