"Progressing courses of action: Gestures and gestalt in Mandarin multi-party talk"

Event Date: 

Friday, May 7, 2021 - 1:30pm to 3:30pm

Event Location: 

  • https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/7574427215
This study examines the information-delivering package of co-occurring gestures, talk, and other embodied actions in Mandarin multi-party talk in daily context. It employs qualitative, collection-based conversation analytic methods. 19 people were recruited to participate. They enacted daily interaction in either a group of three or a group of four. 358 minutes of recordings were subjected to conversation-analytic transcription and analysis, focusing on the deictic gestures, turn-taking gestures, and common ground-invoking gestures. It is argued that deictic gestures are employed at the TCU-internal position, facilitating the progression of the current course of action when the progression encounters difficulties. Turn-taking gestures are employed at the turn- or TCU-initial positions to display orientation to take the floor when interlocutors are competing to speak next. Common ground-invoking gestures mark the more knowledgeable party among interlocutors, soliciting co-telling and/or affiliative stance from the gestured.