Abstract
Research on multimodal interaction has shown that simultaneity of embodied behavior and talk is constitutive for social action. In this study, we demonstrate different temporal relationships between verbal and embodied actions. We focus on uses of German darf/kann ich? (“may/can I?”) in which speakers initiate, or even complete the embodied action that is addressed by the turn before the recipient's response. We argue that through such embodied conduct, the speaker bodily enacts high agency, which is at odds with the low deontic stance they express through their darf/kann ich?-TCUs. In doing so, speakers presuppose that the intersubjective permissibility of the action is highly probable or even certain. Moreover, we demonstrate how the speaker's embodied action, joint perceptual salience of referents, and the projectability of the action addressed with darf/kann ich? allow for a lean syntactic design of darf/kann ich?-TCUs (i.e., pronominalization, object omission, and main verb omission). Our findings underscore the reflexive relationship between lean syntax, sequential organization and multimodal conduct.
Highlights
The core insight into social interaction we owe to Conversation Analysis (: CA) is the sequential nature of talk-in-interaction (Schegloff, 2007)
In section Completion of Embodied Action Before Confirmation: Presupposition of Certainty of Intersubjectivity, we focus on cases in which the embodied action that is requested by the darf/kann ich?-turn is already produced simultaneously
Our study demonstrates that the degree of agency and the deontic stance that a participant claims by their actions can be systematically equivocal
Summary
The core insight into social interaction we owe to Conversation Analysis (: CA) is the sequential nature of talk-in-interaction (Schegloff, 2007). This orientation is displayed in the speaker’s embodied conduct during darf/kann ich?-TCUs: The core action is carried out only after a verbal [extracts (3), (4), (6)], or nonverbal [extracts (4–6)] go-ahead from the recipient.
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