Multimodal profiles of je (ne) sais pas in spoken French

Abstract

This article analyses forms and functions of the phrase je (ne) sais pas (the French equivalent of I don't know) from a multimodal perspective in a corpus of videotaped interactions between native speakers of French. Je (ne) sais pas can pragmaticalise to take on a wide range of functions, and combines with various gestures, especially recurrent ones. Verbal, vocal and visual features of the 84 occurrences of je (ne) sais pas were annotated systematically. The annotations were used to identify profiles of je (ne) sais pas qualitatively, and exploratory statistics then allowed to test whether the qualitative profiles were confirmed quantitatively. Three multimodal profiles were identified for je (ne) sais pas. Although multimodal form-functions patterns could be observed qualitatively, the best statistical model obtained was one that left out co-occurring gestures, suggesting they had a certain autonomy. Based on these results, possible theoretical accounts of the relationship between pragmatic markers and gestures are discussed. Approaches that treat gesture as secondary and dependant with respect to speech (contextualisation cue; multimodal construction) are not retained. Combinations of pragmatic markers and recurrent gestures are best described as patterns of contextual configurations in which diverse semiotic resources are assembled into locally relevant multimodal packages.