Interpreters’ use of environmentally coupled gestures to achieve mutual understanding of speaker identity in a deaf and hearing classroom

Abstract

Focusing on turn-taking, this article investigates how embodiment and environmentally coupled gestures are used by a signed language interpreter to facilitate intersubjective understanding of the speaker’s identity in interpreter-mediated dialogues between deaf and hearing students. The researcher draws on observations, interviews, and video-recorded data from a case study situated in a Norwegian mainstream, upper secondary school. In the classrooms, hearing students can identify different speakers’ by distinguishing their voices and looking around to see who is talking. However, deaf and hard-of-hearing students can find it more difficult to identify the speaker, especially in multi-party interactions. They are often unable to hear others’ voices directly, and in interpreter-mediated dialogues their gaze is mostly focused on the interpreter’s mediation. This study shows how the interpreter uses several environmentally coupled gestures to mediate information about the ongoing interaction, including speaker identity. The gestures include pointing, shifts in body positions (left–right stepping while standing, and left–right orienting while sitting), shifts in gaze orientation, and shifts in face gestures. Both deaf and hearing students use the mediated resources as information cues to coordinate their interaction, and to establish an intersubjective understanding of actions within participation frameworks.