Reenactments in conversation: Gaze and recipiency

Abstract

In a reenactment, a speaker re-presents or depicts a previously occurring event, often dramatically. In this article we examine the role of gaze in reenactments in conversations from Japanese and American English. Following Goodwin in viewing a reenacted story as 'a multi-modal, multi-party field of activity', we show how tellers' and recipients' gaze during reenactments is deployed to achieve specific interactional ends. We argue that there are two layers of activities involved in doing reenacting -a) the habitat of the original event; b) the habitat of the reenacting event, including the dynamics of gaining appreciative recipiency -and show how they are interwoven in the joint production of a reenactment.

Multimodal analysis of quotation in oral narratives

“…Our findings are consistent with previous work which found extensive use of character intonation, facial expression and gaze when quoting or enacting characters (e.g. Sidnell 2006;Earis & Cormier 2013;Thompson & Suzuki 2014) but limited use of manual character viewpoint gestures (Earis & Cormier 2013). To this body of work, we add our observations about multimodal QD sequences, where, like Padden (1986) observed for sign language, contrastive behaviors may be used to distinguish multiple characters.…”

“…Thus, as with sign languages (e.g., Cormier et al 2012), manual co-speech gestures may be co-produced with other articulators in the visual modality, such as facial expression (Chovil 1991), changes in gaze (Sidnell 2006;Park 2009;Thompson & Suzuki 2014), or the use of gestural space (Özyürek 2002;. In narrative contexts, Earis & Cormier (2013) find that multimodal character representations in English often include prosodic elements, character facial displays and the use of co-speech gestures (though not necessarily character viewpoint gestures) to "enrich the narrative discourse" (p.339).…”

“…One such example comes from Park (2009), who suggests that Korean speakers systematically use different multimodal behaviors depending on whether they use a direct speech construction to quote past-self (present), pastaddressee (present) or a past third person character (absent), even though the Korean quoting particle already makes this distinction. Gaze is an important articulator for managing interaction in the here-andnow vs. representing other interactions (Sweetser & Stec in press), and can be used to indicate whether an interlocutor is being quoted (Park 2009) or is 'standing in' for the addressee of a prior exchange (Thompson & Suzuki 2014). Facial expressions may also be used when describing characters in a narrative (McNeill 1992;Sidnell 2006), or to differentiate between a described scene and the present moment (Chovil 1991).…”

“…Our analysis draws on findings from the linguistic and multimodal realization of quotation, where multiple articulators are often observed to be co-produced with single direct speech quotes (e.g. Thompson & Suzuki 2014), especially on the so-called left boundary of the quote (Sidnell 2006). We use logistic regression to model multimodal quote production across and within quote sequences, and find unique sets of multimodal articulators accompanying each quote sequence type.…”

Separating viewpoint from mode of representation in iconic co-speech gestures: insights from Danish narratives

“…Similarly, Earis and Cormier (2013) show that speakers can use gaze as part of their depictions of story characters, just like signers of British Sign Language can. Sidnell (2006) and Thompson and Suzuki (2014) suggest that gestural reenactments by speakers tend to be accompanied by a break in gaze away from the addressee(s). However, it remains an empirical question whether in co-speech gesture research we can apply the strict criteria for gaze interpretation that are used in sign language research in the context of viewpoint.…”