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Abstract
This article explores the grammar-body interface by examining the intertwinement of embodied practices and turns at talk, wherethe sensing body permeates the ongoing syntax, in particular in activities in which the participants are engaged in talking about sensorial features while at the same time experiencing them, for instance in tasting sessions. So, the question tackled concerns how situated feelings, sensory experiences, and perceptive actions are embedded in the ongoing talk, and how they shape its emergent syntax, possibly affecting its smooth progressivity. The study shows how the choice of specific syntactic formats can be systematically related to the complex ecology of embodied actions, namely to publicly accountable ways of sensing material objects, to ways of showing and addressing an audience, and to visible ways of referring to standard documents normatively defining tasting descriptors. The syntactic formats described and their specific temporal realizations are thus deeply rooted in the local material ecology, in which they not only reproduce a normative model but reflexively express the senses with words and sensuously feel the words.
Highlights
The grammar-body interface in social interaction has been explored in multiple ways, demonstrating how the organization of turns at talk is tightly articulated with the organization of embodied conducts (Keevallik 2018a) within co-occurring gesture and lexical affiliates (Schegloff 1984; Kendon 2004) or the gaze management of turns and sequences (Goodwin 1981; Rossano 2012b) and within “complex multimodal gestalts” (Mondada 2014a)
How Sensorially Permeates Syntax in Interaction at talk, where the sensing body and the ongoing syntax are accountably intertwined, in particular in activities in which the participants are engaged in talking about sensorial features while at the same time experiencing them
In the context studied—tasting sessions training professional cheese tasters—the simplest format N + Adj refers to the standard normative organization of the tasting lexicon, materialized in artifacts such as structured lists of technical descriptors and prestructured forms in which participants write tasting results. The use of this format crucially refers to the sensorial activity of looking and touching the examined samples: each descriptor is produced as a result of a careful examination of the material object
Summary
The grammar-body interface in social interaction has been explored in multiple ways, demonstrating how the organization of turns at talk is tightly articulated with the organization of embodied conducts (Keevallik 2018a) within co-occurring gesture and lexical affiliates (Schegloff 1984; Kendon 2004) or the gaze management of turns and sequences (Goodwin 1981; Rossano 2012b) and within “complex multimodal gestalts” (Mondada 2014a). Another form of participant response is their production of some descriptors after the expert has introduced the item to describe (N), often after glancing at the computer, and has exhibited the relevant aspect of the sample (Adj) to be looked at by the audience (Extract 6) In this case, the category is produced while showing the cheese to the audience, with a rising intonation (1), inviting the audience to answer. This discrepancy, observable in the disalignments between the participants, shows the consequentiality of the selection of alternative syntactic formats as exhibiting different forms of accountability and expertise
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