Ad hoc ‘assemblies’ or systematic ‘packages’? On some regularities at the grammar-body interface

Donnerstag, den 16. Mai 2024, 16:00 Uhr
Vortragssaal des Leibniz-Instituts für Deutsche Sprache Mannheim (R5, 6-13, Raum 0.06)

Simona Pekarek Doehler, University of Neuchâtel

Abstract:

Participants in face-to-face social interaction deploy multiple resources for building actions in mutually accountable ways. While some multimodal resources are used together to accomplish local interactional tasks in more or less ad hoc manners, in this paper, I am interested in the possibility of grammar, position within turn and sequence, and co-occurring embodied conduct to be interrelated in systematic ways. By systematic ways, I mean the recurrent occurrence of grammar-position-body packages for specifiable interactional purposes (Kärkkäinen & Thompson 2018; see papers in Pekarek Doehler, Keevallik & Li 2022). I document such packages drawing on three empirical studies on French concerned with lexically specific multi-word expressions (comment on dit ‘how do you say’ and je sais pas ‘I don’t know’) as well as more schematic constructional scheme (pseudo-clefts). The studies evidence the methodic character of grammar-body packages – i.e., recurrent body-language constellations that ‘go together’ and are put to use in systematic ways as part of interactants’ accountable practices for conducting social interaction. I argue that observing such systematicities at the grammar-body interface represents a key analytic resource, enabling researchers to differentiate various functional uses of a given construction in a given sequential environment.