How Does
She Play That?: The Roles of Talk and Embodiment in Referring to Objects and
Persons
Stefan Frazier
UCLA
Introduction. This paper analyzes how references to persons and objects
are made in talk-in-interaction via pronouns that have not been activated through
a full lexical mention of their referents but that are nonetheless immediately
accessible to the speaker’s interlocutor.
The instance under analysis here comes from video data of naturally occurring
conversation between the several people depicted in Figure 1. Not in the figure,
but just off camera to the right, stands a large double string bass. The utterance
in question for this paper, as spoken by the participant named Shel, is indicated
by the arrow in the transcript below.
Figure 1. Frame grab at Shel’s word "that" in line 3.
1 Jack: Feel like z gon like fall overn crush (you).
2 (2.0)
->3 Shel: I know. How does she play that.
4 (1.2)
5 Shel: It’s like three times her [size.
6 Stan: [Uh
h evreone says
that. Heh-h heh
Just prior to this spate of talk there have been two separate
conversations, one between Stan and Dean, and one between Jack and Shel. (Osip
and Nadia have been quiet for some time.) Jack’s comment in line 1 remains
part of his conversation with Shel: he is physically oriented toward Shel and
his reference to it (in the transcript as z or "it is"), is
to the bass, as evidenced by his simultaneous pointing gesture to the bass (made
somewhat before the sequence of talk in the transcript above).
Shel, having previously directed her utterances toward Jack, now faces Stan
and makes the utterance in question, I know. How does she play that.
Stan has just been visibly engaged in a separate conversation with Dean and
not had interaction with Shel for some time. Thus Shel’s reference to that
is not currently active for him, nor is her reference to she (a non-present
person). Judging by Stan’s uptake of Shel’s utterance, however, that
and she are immediately accessible to him. How is this possible? Also,
what are the networks of social relationships revealed by, and constitutive
of, the talk and embodiment in this segment?
The pronouns that and she become apparent to Stan due to a confluence
of several factors. First, as visible in the translucent red circle in Figure
1, Shel makes a pointing gesture toward the bass, thus making publicly available
what she is referring to. Second, this pointing gesture, in turn, is only interpretable
by the visible and verifiable presence of the object she is pointing to, the
bass. Third, Stan’s shift in body orientation just before Shel’s utterance
renders him the likely recipient of the utterance. Two final factors are the
location of the conversation participants – Stan’s apartment –
and Stan’s relationship – as flatmate and partner – to the owner
of the musical instrument.
Each of these factors will be taken up below in separate sections, beginning
with the pointing gesture. However, this is done only for the sake of analytical
clarity. As C. Goodwin (1994, 2000, 2002, among others) has pointed out, to
be interpreted, a point or any other gesture must be acknowledged by its interpretants
not as a single, discrete sign, but rather as one in an array of several semiotic
modalities. These fields work in close conjunction with one another; they are,
thus, not merely mutually reinforcing, but also mutually necessary
for the purposes of communication. In addition, regarding the pointing gesture
as part of an array of communicative resources shows the highly complex, yet
organized, placement of the pointing gesture within the ongoing discourse.
Following is an analysis of the five factors.
1. The pointing gesture. A close look at the video data of the utterance
shows that Shel’s pointing gesture is not the canonical gesture we know
as a "point," i.e. with index finger outstretched and other fingers
curled in. Nor does it follow the trajectory of a normal point. Instead, during
her utterance Shel sweeps her arm from a position close to her body and brings
it to rest on the arm of the seat in which she is sitting. No finger is extended;
rather, Shel’s arm comes to rest such that it is oriented in the general
direction of the bass. See Figure 2.
Figure 2. The movement of Shel’s pointing gesture
during
her utterance How does she play that.
Haviland (1996) has noted that pointing gestures, while most often done with
an outstretched finger, can also take other forms and can even be done with
other body parts, in which a general indication of the direction of the reference
suffices. Beyond Haviland’s excellent analysis, Shel’s "non-point
pointing gesture" can be interpreted via another principle, coming from
Conversation Analysis. In a paper on reference to non-present persons, Sacks
& Schegloff (1979) explain the "minimization principle": when
referring to persons, participants in conversations should use, if possible,
a single, recognitional reference form, i.e. the shortest form available to
have the referred-to person recognized. Sacks & Schegloff were describing
talk, but a similar principle holds for Shel’s point. As she moves her
arm during her utterance (How does she play that), bringing it to rest
during the word play, and simultaneously looks at Stan, the dominant object
in the indicated direction is the bass. Additionally, the bass is the only object
in that general direction that can be "played."Thus the referent has
been adequately specified by a single recognitional reference form, the pointing
gesture, in combination with the talk and the indicated object – the bass.
2. The bass. The concurrent actions of Shel’s talk and her pointing
gesture have foregrounded an item of interest to be further talked about. After
a 1.2-sec pause in which there is no uptake to Shel’s utterance, Shel elaborates
in line 5: It’s like three times her size. At this moment, Shel
is not making reference merely to the bass, but to a particular attribute of
the bass, namely its large size compared to the petite stature of the person
who plays it (a characteristic known to Shel). This elaboration has made "conditionally
relevant" (Garfinkel 1967, Schegloff 1989, among others) one particular
attribute of the bass to the current exclusion of its other attributes (such
as its four strings, the fact that it must be played upright, the fact that
it is played with a bow, and so on). For this interaction at this given moment,
three semiotic modalities – talk, a gesture, and a physical object in the
vicinity – work together to create conditional relevance and further elaborate
on the referents to "she" and "that."
3. The physical orientation of the participants. The first part (I know)
of Shel’s utterance I know. How does she play that is a response
designed for a particular recipient who is not Stan (but rather Jack and his
just-prior utterance Feel like z gon like fall overn crush (you) in line
1). Prior to this, Shel’s eyegaze has been generally directed at Jack.
For the next part of her utterance (How does she play that) we should
thus not only ask how Stan understands the person reference. How does he even
know the question is meant for him? How does he know that he is the one addressed?
These questions are partially answered by the fact that by the middle of Shel’s
utterance, her eyegaze is firmly on Stan, who may thus analyze himself as the
one addressed. But another thing has happened just previously that works to
secure the formation of a larger participation structure. (For discussion on
participation structures see M.H. Goodwin (1990).). During the 2-second transition
space in line 2, Stan shifts his position from a physical orientation directed
straight at Dean (with his legs pointing in Dean’s direction) to an orientation
more open to the whole group (sitting on the floor cross-legged). See Figure
3.
Figure 3. Stan’s posture shift, from facing Dean to a stance open to the
whole group.
Stan has previously been in the first (left-oriented) position for quite a while
before Shel’s How does she play that. During that time, however,
in order to address Jack, Shel, Nadia, or Osip, Stan has had to turn his head
noticeably. In shifting his body stance to a position more open to the group,
this head turn is no longer necessary, making an orientation toward a whole-group
participation structure, and thus an understanding of Shel’s eyegaze as
an address toward him, more "natural."
Now Stan may understand Shel’s utterance as directed at him: he has heard
and seen someone address him. For purposes of brevity, I have left out of discussion
here another very crucial aspect of this and many other face-to-face interactions:
the ability of all the participants to actually see each other’s
actions. See C. Goodwin (1980, 1981, 2000) for more discussion on the topic,
and see Lerner (in press) for what may happen when participants in fact don’t
see who is speaking to them.
4. Location: the apartment. With Shel’s eyegaze on Stan upon uttering
How does she play that, she is indexing an understanding to Stan that
he is the one qualified to take up her question/exclamation. This implicit ratification
of Stan as the "authority" on the matter rests on one other fact:
he lives in this location, and is the only person present who does. (This fact
is brought into focus not only in this segment, but throughout the video data
of this occasion, during which Stan publicly plays the part of the "host.")
In a multitude of ways, both non-verbal and through his talk, Stan shows that
he is the one responsible for those activities that relate to the layout of
the apartment or for things that belong therein – and the bass to which
Shel makes reference is one of those things. The locally public, collective
knowledge thus contributes to Stan’s understanding of himself as the addressed
recipient, the person "in charge" of information about the bass, and
the person who is thus able to elaborate on Shel’s question regarding the
person referred to as "she."
5. Stan’s relationship to the owner of the bass. The owner of the
bass is also Stan’s flatmate and spouse. Stan, having understood that he
is the one being talked to, is thus able to infer, through a combination of
the pointing reference to the bass and the simultaneous attribution of "authority"
to himself via Shel’s address, that the pronoun "she" in Shel’s
utterance How does she play that refers to his own spouse. The utterance
thereby reveals the social relationship status of one of Shel’s co-present
conversation participants. On the other hand, that same social relationship
status is constitutive of Shel’s utterance as well. Were it not immediately
and publicly clear how the referent is related to Stan, "she" may
need to be actually specified with a lexical reference. Thus Shel’s utterance
provides an interesting example of how talk, gesture and other forms of embodiment,
and social participation structures mutually elaborate each other.
Conclusion. Much more could be written about the category-bound activities
being done by Shel’s pronoun references "she" and "that"
and the structures of relevance that these categories engender. For example,
the analysis of the dual-categorical nature of the pronoun referent "she"
as "the bass player" and as "Stan’s spouse" would illustrate
the powerful nature of categorization, a topic Sacks (1995) describes as "the
central machinery of social organization" (Vol. I, p. 40). In this short
paper I hope, at least, to have demonstrated the need for regarding gestures
and other forms of embodiment not as isolated systems, but as sub-systems embedded
within a larger range of semiotic modalities at play in talk-in-interaction.
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