Reported speech as enactment

When Gesture “Takes Over”: Speech-Embedded Nonverbal Depictions in Multimodal Interaction

“…Ubiquitous and complex in their own right, depictions of descriptive speech — that is, canonical quotations — have long intrigued linguists and have a rich and extensive literature (e.g., McGregor, 1997 ; Tannen, 2007 ; Vandelanotte, 2009 ; Buchstaller, 2014 ; Spronck and Nikitina, 2019 ; see also Hodge and Cormier, 2019 for discussion in relation to depicting). Though indeed frequently observed in our corpus, such tokens are not included in our analysis, where the aim is to draw attention to overlooked phenomena in the literature.…”

“…Perhaps unsurprisingly, tokens preceded by like are frequently observed (see Golato, 2000 ; Streeck, 2002 ), due to like ’s function as a quotative (see e.g., Tagliamonte and Hudson, 1999 ; Macaulay, 2001 ; Vandelanotte and Davidse, 2009 ), which indexes many of the functions depictions serve, such as quotation, enactment, demonstration, and pantomime (see Hodge and Cormier, 2019 ). What makes things less straightforward, however, is that like also often functions as a marker signaling hesitation or hedging, among many other things (see Miller and Weinert, 1995 ; D’Arcy, 2017 ).…”

Figure Composition

“…But this is changing. In the last decade research on re-enactments, bodily-quoting, constructed action, and the multi-modality of reported speech has blossomed (e.g., Clark and Gerrig 1990;Haviland 1993;Streeck 2002;Sidnell 2006;Goodwin 2007;Keevallik 2010;Keevallik 2013;Sandlund 2014;Cormier, Smith, and Sevcikova-Sehyr 2015;Stec, Huiskes, and Redeker 2015;Stec, Huiskes, and Redeker 2016;Hodge and Cormier 2019). While some of this research draws a distinction between representations of bodily movements and spoken discourse, the concept of figure composition is in line with a growing consensus that "verbal and bodily quoting are essentially the same kinds of activities" (Keevallik 2010, 402).…”

“…The eyes, for instance, are the only human organ capable of, and construable as, both giving and receiving visual information. These semiotic affordances of different parts of the body are especially clear in studies of sign language (see Stec, Huiskes, and Redeker 2016, 1), where the most careful work on multi-modal represented discourse (under the umbrella of 'role shift' or 'constructed action') is done, and where the languages being studied have the most developed semiotic resources for using the non-sonic parts of the body as elements in figure compositions (see Cormier, Smith, and Sevcikova-Sehyr 2015;Stec, Huiskes, and Redeker 2016;Hodge and Cormier 2019 for discussion of this literature and its relation to work on represented discourse in spoken languages). I might have thus been justified in separating this section with sub-sections on the eyes, the hands, the body, and so forth-as I did above regarding deictics, suprasegmentals, segmentals, et cetera.…”

The more you move, the more action you construct

“…Hodge & Ferrara 2013;Ferrara & Johnston 2014;Jantunen 2017). However, as argued, for example, by Hodge & Cormier (2019), no clear distinction can be made between the enactments of actions (i.e. traditional or even prototypical constructed action) and the enactments of speech (i.e.…”