Reenactments during tellings: Using gaze for initiating reenactments, switching roles and representing events

Pfeiffer, Martin; Weiss, Clarissa

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2021.11.017

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Additionally, in both signed and spoken conversations, shifts in eye gaze (Engberg-Pedersen, 1993;Maury-Rouan, 2011;Thompson and Suzuki, 2014) as well as body orientation (Cantarutti, 2020) or head position (Maury-Rouan, 2011) are indicators that an enactment will follow. Specific gaze patterns have been observed, for example, depending on whether the enacted scene is dialogic or not (Pfeiffer and Weiss, 2022). Furthermore, qualities of the enactment, such as specific prosody or facial expressions, are sometimes already used in the discourse leading up to the enactment and therefore contribute to its framing through a spillover effect (Cantarutti, 2020).…”

Section: Enactment and Depictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mocking enactments: a case study of multimodal stance-stacking

de Vries,

Andries,

Meissl

2024

Front. Psychol.

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Although research into multimodal stance-taking has gained momentum over the past years, the multimodal construction of so-called stacked stances has not yet received systematic attention in the literature. Mocking enactments are a prime example of such complex social actions as they are layered both interactionally and stance-related, and they rely significantly on the use of bodily visual resources, depicting rather than describing events and stances. Using Du Bois’ Stance Triangle as a framework, this study investigates mocking enactments as a case study to unravel the multimodal aspects of layered stance expressions. Drawing on three data sets—music instruction in Dutch, German, and English, spontaneous face-to-face interactions among friends in Dutch, and narrations on past events in Flemish Sign Language (VGT)—this study provides a qualitative exploration of mocking enactments across different communicative settings, languages, and modalities. The study achieves three main objectives: (1) illuminating how enactments are used for mocking, (2) identifying the layers of stance-taking at play, and (3) examining the multimodal construction of mocking enactments. Our analysis reveals various different uses of enactments for mocking. Aside from enacting the target of the mockery, participants can include other characters and viewpoints, highlighting the breadth of the phenomenon under scrutiny. Second, we uncover the layered construction of stance on all axes of the Stance Triangle (evaluation, positioning, and alignment). Third, we find that mocking enactments are embedded in highly evaluative contexts, indexed by the use of bodily visual resources. Interestingly, not all mocking enactments include a multimodally exaggerated depiction, but instead, some merely allude to an absurd hypothetical scenario. Our findings contribute to the growing body of literature on multimodal stance-taking, by showing how a nuanced interpretation of the Stance Triangle can offer a useful framework for analyzing layered stance acts.

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Section: Enactment and Depictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mocking enactments: a case study of multimodal stance-stacking

de Vries,

Andries,

Meissl

2024

Front. Psychol.

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“…Many studies on demonstrating one's own or others behavior deal with referring to real events in the past. While studies on reported speech and direct quotes (Günthner, 1999;Holt and Clift, 2007) focus on verbal-vocal means, studies on reenactments include other multimodal resources, such as gestures, gaze, and body postures (Sidnell, 2006;Ehmer, 2011;Tutt and Hindmarsh, 2011;Thompson and Suzuki, 2014;Pfeiffer and Weiss, 2022).…”

Section: Two Kinds Of Depictions: Demonstrations Versus Illustrationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Typical and widely described means in the literature are iconic (also illustrative, imagistic, depictive or imitative) gestures [s. Kendon (2004, p. 84-107) for a review of gesture classification; see also McNeill, 1992;Streeck, 2009, ch. 6;Müller, 2010;Clark, 2016, p. 327;Urbanik and Svennevig, 2021] and direct reported speech (e.g., Clark and Gerrig, 1990;Keevallik, 2010) or reenactments (Sidnell, 2006;Pfeiffer and Weiss, 2022). However, unlike iconic gestures and unlike quotations or reenactments (e.g., in narratives), demonstrations in instructional environments are directive rather than assertive actions.…”

Section: Demonstrations Are Expected To Be Imitatedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Showing and telling—How directors combine embodied demonstrations and verbal descriptions to instruct in theater rehearsals

Schmidt

Deppermann

2023

Front. Commun.

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In theater as a bodily-spatial art form, much emphasis is placed on the way actors perform movements in space as an important multimodal resource for creating meaning. In theater rehearsals, movements are created in series of directors' instructions and actors' implementations. Directors' instructions on how to conduct a movement often draw on embodied demonstrations in contrast to verbal descriptions. For instance, to instruct an actress to act like a school girl a director can use depictive (he demonstrates the expected behavior) instead of descriptive (“can you act like a school girl”) means. Drawing on a corpus of 400 h video recordings of rehearsal interactions in three German professional theater productions, from which we selected 265 cases, we examine ways to instruct movement-based actions in theater rehearsals. Using a multimodally extended ethnomethodological-conversation analytical approach, we focus on the multimodal details that constitute demonstrations as complex action types. For the present article, we have chosen nine instances, through which we aim to illuminate (1) The difference in using embodied demonstrations versus verbal descriptions to instruct; (2) typical ways directors combine verbal descriptions with embodied demonstrations in their instructions. First, we ask what constitutes a demonstration and what it achieves in comparison to verbal descriptions. Using a typical case, we illustrate four characteristics of demonstrations that all of the cases we studied share. Demonstrations (1) are embedded in instructional activities; (2) show and do not tell; (3) are responded to by emulating what was shown; (4) are rhetorically shaped to convey the instruction's focus. However, none of the 265 demonstrations we investigated were produced without verbal descriptions. In a second step we therefore ask in which typical ways verbal descriptions accompany embodied demonstrations when directors instruct actors how to play a scene. We distinguish four basic types. Verbal descriptions can be used (1) to build the demonstration itself; (2) to delineate a demonstration verbally within an instruction; (3) to indicate positive (what should be done) and negative (what should be avoided) versions of demonstrations; (4) as an independent means to describe the instruction's focus in addition to the demonstration. Our study contributes to research on how embodied resources are used to create meaning and how they combine with and depend on verbal resources.

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“…argues, in a similar vein to Clark (2016), that visuospatial resources need to be included and accounted for within any conceptualization of language. (Pfeiffer & Weiss, 2022;Sidnell, 2006;Thompson et al 2014). In the case of reported speech, prosodic alterations (changes in pitch height, loudness, voice quality and articulation), sometimes present even before the onset of the fragment of reported talk, serve to index the origo shift that the depiction implies (Cantarutti, 2020(Cantarutti, , 2021Günthner, 1999).…”

Section: The Multimodal Design Of Depictionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…, Fox & Robles (2010),Harjunpää et al (2023,Melander (2012),Pfeiffer & Weiss (2022),Sandlund (2014),Sidnell (2006),Streeck (2002),Stukenbrock (2017), Thompson & Suzuki (2014), Tolins & Samermit (2016), Tutt & Hindmarsh (2011), Wilkinson et al (2010) Demonstration Ehmer (2021), Ehmer & Brône (2021), Evans & Lindwall (2020), Evans & Reynolds (2016), Goffman (1974), Haviland (2007), Hsu et al…”

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confidence: 99%

Bodies to suit the music : Depictions in opera rehearsals

Löfgren

2023

Studies in Language and Culture

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This thesis investigates how participants in 20 hours of video-recorded scenic opera rehearsals make use of depictions (Clark, 2016), a communicative strategy based on iconicity, to create performance bodies, i.e. what the performers should do on stage to music. The method is grounded in ethnomethodologically informed conversation analysis and interactional linguistics (EMCAIL). The thesis aims to reveal how participants in opera rehearsals construct and respond to depictions, what interactional and semiotic functions depictions carry, and the nature of the relationship between depictions and descriptions, and in extension between language and the body in social interaction.The thesis comprises three individual articles. Article I focuses on how performers and the director deploy depictions in proposals of performance bodies. It is argued that depictions reference both themselves as the current state of the artwork, and prototypes of mundane behaviour (distal scenes). The article compares the self-referentiality, or introversive semiosis, of depictions with how interactional practices in general develop over time. Article II focuses specifically on how performers make proposals with depictions. The article concludes that depictions are multimodal gestalts whose interpersonal coordination reflects the distribution of deontic rights during the rehearsals in a visuospatial way, beyond the adjacency pair. Article III focuses on changes in turn design, and the relative deployment of depictions and descriptions, over joint decision-making micro-histories. It is shown how proposals move from descriptive to increasingly depictive states as the participants assure that there is displayed epistemic access to, and alignment and agreement with, the proposed performance bodies. The use of language early in the process secures conditionally relevant responses to the proposed ideas and thereby successful outcomes of proposals. The article reveals the essentially joint nature of the decision-making process on performance bodies.The thesis uncovers the temporally heterogenous nature of depictions. They are achieved in stepwise manners: both in terms of their moment-by-moment realization in turns, and in terms of their development over interactional histories. They are dialogically achieved both in the local and historical sense: their successful realization is dependent on cooperation from co-present participants who are also intrinsically involved in their development over time. Further, it is argued that depictions are both an interactional practice for creating opera performances and the very same performances at their current states. The thesis contributes to a holistic and integrated view of social interaction where no resources, whether traditionally conceived of as linguistic or not, are considered more important than others for the local constitution of social action.

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Reenactments during tellings: Using gaze for initiating reenactments, switching roles and representing events

Cited by 8 publications

References 25 publications

Mocking enactments: a case study of multimodal stance-stacking

Mocking enactments: a case study of multimodal stance-stacking

Showing and telling—How directors combine embodied demonstrations and verbal descriptions to instruct in theater rehearsals

Bodies to suit the music : Depictions in opera rehearsals

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