The Role of Recipient Questions in Establishing Intersubjectivity and Progressing a Story in Aided Communication

Patricia Mayes,Mary Clinkenbeard

doi:10.7146/sss.v11i1.121363

Abstract

We report on a case study involving two participants: One participant has a communication disability and uses a high-tech, electronic device to speak, and the other is nondisabled. Their interaction differs from typical, everyday conversation because some linguistic resources are unavailable in aided speech, resulting in frequent repair sequences and slower progression. The analysis shows that when the aided speaker initiates an extended telling, the recipient uses questions to do repair-related actions as well as actions that could progress the story. Thus, this context affords the opportunity to investigate how the recipient’s projections interact with intersubjectivity and progressivity.

Highlights

Recipients’ questions are an important resource for clarifying a prior speaker’s utterance
We examine how the Alternative Communication (AAC)-using participant in this study tells a story and investigate the following questions: 1) what types of questions does the recipient ask and how do those questions relate to whether the recipient is engaged in repair or an action oriented toward progression?; 2) what can we learn about how the recipient projects what comes next?; 3) what kinds of actions does the speaker do immediately before and after the recipient asks a question, and does such sequencing affect the progress of the telling?
6.2 Projection, Progressivity, and Recipient Questions we focus on a longer story that takes some time to get started, gets interrupted by other stories, and eventually comes to what may be considered an ending about fourteen minutes after the point where extract 2 begins

Summary

Introduction

Recipients’ questions are an important resource for clarifying a prior speaker’s utterance. The focus here is on high-tech AAC, in which the aided participant types an utterance into a device, equipped with speech-generating software that vocalizes what was typed In this kind of interaction, some of the linguistic resources that typically would be used by a recipient to project the speaker’s action are unavailable, resulting in frequent communication breakdowns, repair sequences, and slower progression of the ongoing project. 1979), as in the data we examine, co-construction is more difficult In this context, a primary resource the recipient can use to achieve intersubjective understanding and progress the story is questions. 6.1 Two Functions of Recipient Questions In the context of AAC interaction, where progress is slow and there are many repairs, when an AAC-using participant embarks on a multi-unit turn at talk or an extended project such as a story, recipients often help construct the ongoing talk. Hehehehehe (h)gi(h)ve me a hint Fred, hehe. .h ((looks at device and begins to type))

18 FD: they

Discussion

Conclusions