Introducing Performative Pragmatics by Robinson Douglas;

Author:Robinson, Douglas; [Douglas Robinson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1474734
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Turn-taking and the body

Competent adult speakers typically have a good feel for turn-taking speech acts: how long it’s okay to talk, and when to shut up and let someone else have a turn; how to grab the next turn, and when to yield and let someone else grab it; how to show deference to a more powerful speaker, and so on. This is not innate, though: we have to learn that “feel” in childhood. And some people never learn it: we have all encountered at least one person who is completely insensitive to the cultural “rules” in this matter, and will blithely interrupt others at random.

What is interesting about these “rules,” though, is that they are determined not just by each language-community – speakers of English, or Chinese, or Hopi – but also by the members of each individual conversation. This makes the turn-taking structure of any conversation unique (i.e., it’s hard to generalize from one conversation to all conversations) but far from random. A conversation is always structured by the group having it. Just as the group is the most important force governing the creation of context, so too is it the most important force governing the taking of turns.

We aren’t typically consciously aware of working together with others to structure a conversation, though; as I say, we have a “feel” for it. This is because we perform these structuring speech acts mostly with our “bodies,” or what’s called the “mindful body”: having learned how to structure conversation, we push what we know down into the unconscious functioning of somatic (bodily) knowledge. (Bodies are everywhere relevant in a performative pragmatics, because we always perform language with our bodies, and without bodies there is no performance.) Our bodies are trained in childhood, and continue to be trained throughout our lives, to guide us and others through conversations: signaling us when to gear up to grab the next turn, signaling others that we’re in the process of gearing up, and so on.

Christian Heath (1984), for example, analyzing videotape recordings of medical consultations, found that speakers in these professional situations sent very clear bodily signals to each other regarding their readiness to speak or be spoken to. In one session, for example, the patient comes into the doctor’s office, they greet each other and establish who the patient is, then the doctor asks for the patient’s medical cards and studies them in silence for 7.3 seconds.

At the beginning of this silent period, Heath found, the patient turns his posture away from the doctor, leaning back and looking away, signaling that he is not going to intrude on the doctor’s reading.

But 5 seconds into the silence, 2.3 seconds before the doctor speaks, the patient begins gearing up to participate again: “The patient then moves posturally forward, directly toward the doctor. As the patient moves forward he brings his gaze upon the doctor. Immediately following the patient’s movement forward and his shift of gaze toward the doctor, the doctor produces the topic-initiating turn [‘What can I do for you?’]” (Heath 1984: 249).

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