Turn organization and bodily-vocal demonstrations

Abstract

The study focuses on turns in interaction that involve a bodily-vocal demonstration: an embodied demonstration that is accompanied by a non-lexical vocalization. It shows how the temporal organization of these demonstrations contributes to participant treatment of them as a part of a turn-constructional unit, mostly as its completion. It is also suggested that a bodily-vocal demonstration may function as a separate turn-constructional unit, with a transition relevance point before it, and other participants refraining from action before its completion. Vocalizations, occasionally with coherent pitch contours of intonation units, are argued to render bodily displays vocal space within turns-at-talk. After a bodily-vocal demonstration, the turn-constructional unit can be recompleted with verbal devices, displaying further similarity to verbal-only turns. The analysis calls into attention the relevance of embodied behavior to the emergence of units in conversation.