Abstract
ABSTRACTThis article examines nonlexical vocalizations in board game interactions, focusing on “moans.” Moans are prolonged, voiced, response cries. Moans react to game events where the player has suffered in some way. Despite the complaint-relevant nature of moans, game actions are never withdrawn in response to a moan, Moans are treated as laughable, while lexical complaints invoke arguments and apologies. This article suggests that moans are a manifestation of managing Bateson’s play paradox in that they denote suffering but also willingness to continue play and a validation of the prior event. Moans are suggested to be a contextualization cue for “this is play.” Given the relative unconventionality of the form of moans, these tokens are suggested as evidence that lack of conventionalization may be a members resource rather than a problem. The article analyzes a corpus of 34 hours of video-recorded board game play (169 tokens) in English (Canadian, American, and British).
Highlights
This article examines nonlexical vocalizations in board game interactions, focusing on “moans.” Moans are prolonged, voiced, response cries
Despite the complaint-relevant nature of moans, game actions are never withdrawn in response to a moan, Moans are treated as laughable, while lexical complaints invoke arguments and apologies
“Moans” are nonlexical response cries that occur in response to game events where the utterer “suffers” in some way; when something goes wrong for players in the game, they produce a response cry, which Goffman (1978, p. 800) described as “exclamatory interjections which are not full-fledged words.”
Summary
This article examines nonlexical vocalizations in board game interactions, focusing on “moans.” Moans are prolonged, voiced, response cries. This article suggests that moans are a manifestation of managing Bateson’s play paradox in that they denote suffering and willingness to continue play and a validation of the prior event. This article examines a set of nonlexical vocalizations used by adults in a play setting, the use of “moans” during board games. The article will contribute to our understanding of nonlexical vocalizations, play-in-interaction among adults, and contextualization cues for nonseriousness and play. This article will describe how moans are a member’s method for achieving an action as play, providing a concrete example of one of Bateson’s (1972/2006) signals, called contextualization cues. Prior research into nonlexical vocalizations has suggested a connection between response cries and establishing attention and/or displaying engagement. The “flooding out” nature of these sounds, as predicted by Goffman, may contribute to their effectiveness in situations where the trigger for the response is very proximal; Wiggins (2002) found this to be true of tasting sounds like mm, saying they constructed immediacy and spontaneity
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