Laura M. Ahearn - Living Language

1 a period of sharing during the 1960s and 1970s during which Schegloff, Sacks, and Jefferson and Dell Hymes, John Gumperz, and other anthropologically inclined sociolinguists were all involved in countering the Chomskyan view of linguistic competence that focused solely on syntax;

2 a second period during the 1980s and 1990s when CA came into its own as a discipline and grew apart from linguistic anthropology, which was also developing a separate set of intellectual interests, and this led to pretty fundamental disagreements between the two approaches along the lines of what constituted appropriate context, units of analysis, and the autonomous nature (or lack thereof) of conversation; and

3 a third period beginning in the early 2000s and extending to the present of reinvigorated “interdisciplinary convergence” (Clemente 2013:690) as a result of cross-fertilization and renewed dialogue between scholars in both disciplines.

For scholars who view language as a form of social action, it is easy to see why it makes sense to study actual talk closely.

But talk rarely comes to us as a disembodied voice, so linguistic anthropologists who study communicative events often analyze gestures, body movements, facial expressions, and interaction with various objects (or “props”) in the material environment alongside speech as an integrated, multimodal event. Meanings cannot begin to be understood – or might even be misunderstood – if such elements are left out of the analysis.

Various typologies have been suggested for the analysis of multimodal discourse. Following Enfield (2005), Stivers and Sidnell (2005) distinguish between “vocal/aural” modalities on the one hand and “visuospatial” modalities on the other, but while some scholars have found these sorts of typologies to be useful, others, such as Haviland (2004) and Streeck et al. (2011:9), have not. These latter researchers prefer instead to focus on the integration and coordination of multiple modalities of communication within the material world rather than separating modalities apart from one another. They argue that the interaction should be understood as a complex, emergent ensemble in which the whole adds up to be more than the sum of the parts. “Insofar as gestural typologies ignore or minimize such semiotic complexity in the different gestural ‘types’ they isolate, the classificatory impulse seems analytically obfuscating rather than helpful” argues Haviland (2004:205).

While it is undoubtedly true that meaning-making involves multiple modalities, as well as the material environment (and, I would add, knowledge of personal histories, cultural norms, social relations, and many other invisible and inaudible aspects of the event at hand), it is still useful to take note of at least one of the gesture categorizations before presenting a few examples of analyses of emergent multimodal discourse.

Perhaps the most common typology of gestures is psychologist David McNeill’s (1992:78–80):

Iconics are gestures that “bear close formal relationship to the semantic content of speech” (1992:78). In other words, they iconically (in a Peircean sense) resemble that which is being described verbally. An example might be if a girl traced in the air the shape of a huge tree that she saw being cut down. A subset of iconics are sometimes called emblems , which are stand-alone gestures that have a conventional meaning within a particular society or speech community. Examples of emblems include the thumbs-up sign, giving someone “the finger,” and placing the cuckold or rabbit-ears sign behind someone else’s head. Emojis can also be considered emblems, given their iconic resemblance to that which they represent, as we will discuss further in Chapter 8. Each of these signs can mean different things in different speech communities around the world.1992:78). In other words, they iconically (in a Peircean sense) resemble that which is being described verbally. An example might be if a girl traced in the air the shape of a huge tree that she saw being cut down. A subset of iconics are sometimes called emblems , which are stand-alone gestures that have a conventional meaning within a particular society or speech community. Examples of emblems include the thumbs-up sign, giving someone “the finger,” and placing the cuckold or rabbit-ears sign behind someone else’s head. Emojis can also be considered emblems, given their iconic resemblance to that which they represent, as we will discuss further in Chapter 8. Each of these signs can mean different things in different speech communities around the world. 4For example, my daughter told me several years ago that in her fifth-grade class the rabbit-ears sign meant “Turn around, I want to kiss you” – but she assures me that the recipient of the action never actually complied with this request! (See Figure 2.1.)

Metaphorics are gestural representations of more abstract concepts, such as a cupped hand to represent a question. As Keith Murphy (2003:34) notes, however, these sorts of gestures also have an iconic component. For this reason, both iconics and metaphorics are sometimes grouped together and called representational .

Deictics are pointing gestures – they often use the index finger and are therefore easily identified as indexical signs.

Beats have no discernible meaning, according to McNeill, but instead might involve pounding of the fist or flicking of the finger to count off participants, emphasize a point, or separate sections of a narrative, for example.

Figure 2.1A gesture with many possible meanings: “Peace,” “V for victory,” or “Turn around, I want to kiss you”.

Source : Courtesy Laura Ahearn.

Increasingly, gestures are analyzed as part of an overall embodied participation framework, revealing insights about how gestures, talk, touch, eye gaze, body movements, and the material environment all interact to create meaning. This is the approach we will take in this book – a practice-based approach, in other words, one that is in keeping with our view of language as a form of social action. Jürgen Streeck is one of the leading theorists advocating this way of studying of gesture, which, he argues, should be conceived of “as a family of human practices : not as a code or symbolic system or (part of) language, but as a constantly evolving set of largely improvised, heterogeneous, partly conventional, partly idiosyncratic, and partly culture-specific, partly universal practices of using the hands to produce situated understandings” (Streeck 2009:5; emphasis in the original; cf. Farnell 2012; Goodwin and Cekaite 2018; Kataoka 2013).

When one uses this approach to study interactions, one of the main accomplishments in any linguistic interaction becomes quite clear: the establishment of a joint attentional frame and a common understanding of what the interaction is “about.” Often this understanding will come not from any words that are spoken but rather from unspoken movements, gestures, or spatial configurations. It can be challenging to arrive at this joint understanding of what sort of interaction is taking place, especially when the backgrounds of participants differ – but even when they do not. Small gestures, eye gazes, or body movements can help to cue the interactional frame and appear to speed up rather than slow down the recipient’s response time (Holler and Levinson 2019).

Misao Okada analyzes exactly how this sort of joint attention and understanding are arrived at in an analysis of how a Japanese boxer and his coach come to understand each other by coordinating their talk, eye gaze, gesture, body movements, and surrounding material objects (Okada 2013:391). First, as the boxer and his coach work together, they carefully track each other’s movements and develop a “joint attentional frame.” Then, through a complex series of words, gestures, and movements, they proceed through the session successfully because they both understand how to communicate using the multiple semiotic modalities available to them. Our ability to understand one another is based on much more than abstract knowledge of grammar, or even the ability to speak, Okada argues: “Communicative competence encompasses participants’ ability to use, understand and coordinate not only talk but also a combination of other resources, such as hand gestures or body movements … A hearer’s ability to attribute meaning to a speaker’s intricate combination of vocal and nonvocal behaviors is necessary to attain a congruent understanding of what is going on” (Okada 2013:400).