Multimodal Practice for Mobilizing Response: The Case of Turn-Final Tu Vois ‘You See’ in French Talk-in-Interaction

Abstract

One of the most frequent verbal expressions that people use when interacting with each other in French is tu vois ‘you see’ (Cappeau, 2004). Drawing on interactional linguistics and multimodal analysis, we examine the interactional functioning of this verbal expression when occurring in turn-final position. Previous studies on tu vois ‘you see’ in this position document only its use for marking the end of an utterance or for turn-yielding. The following aspects have thus far remained unexplored: The interactional environment in which the construction occurs, how it is connected to the speaker’s embodied conduct, the way in which it contributes to mobilizing a response from the recipient, as well as the nature of this response. Our paper addresses these issues and shows that turn-final tu vois ‘you see’ is systematically produced with a final rising intonation and coupled with the speaker’s gaze directed to the recipient. This multimodal practice is recurrently deployed in turns conveying the speaker’s emotional stance, in turns performing a dispreferred action, like disagreeing, and in turns claiming insufficient knowledge. The response that is invited using this multimodal practice is distinctly tailored to each of these actions: an affiliative response, an aligning response, and a response addressing the prior speaker’s claim of insufficient knowledge from the recipient’s own point of view. By presenting an in-depth study of the action sequences in which tu vois ‘you see’ is employed, as well as of its multimodal packaging, this contribution highlights the prospective, i.e., response-mobilizing potential of this interactional resource and shows that its use entails sequential implications even when it accompanies actions that project only weakly a response from the recipient.

Longitudinal change in linguistic resources for interaction

“…Cases where tu vois occurs at the end of a TCU but Aurelia continues her turn immediately afterwards, without waiting for a response, have been categorized as TCU-final, and not turn-final (even if a coparticipant responds). Similar to what Stoenica and Fiedler (2021) found about turn-final tu vois in L1 French, many of Aurelia's TCU-and turn-final uses occur in the context of assessment turns or stance-taking activities (Excerpt (4)), especially in Semester 3. Others occur in more neutral informings or explanations (Excerpt ( 5)), and occasionally in dispreferred responses and turns claiming insufficient knowledge (Excerpt (6)).…”

“…The same author underlines the evidential dimension of tu vois, and argues that the construction, regardless of its degree of grammaticalization, retains some of its original semantics pertaining to (a joint) seeing, even if it is a metaphorical seeing (Détrie 2010; see also Keevallik & Amon in press, on related arguments regarding the Estonian equivalent näed). Stoenica and Fiedler's (2021) recent CA/IL study is, to my knowledge, the first that considers tu vois from a multimodal perspective. In 9.5 hours of Frenchlanguage coffee break conversations, the authors identified 123 turn-final tu vois (vs. only 17 turn-initial cases).…”

“…In 9.5 hours of Frenchlanguage coffee break conversations, the authors identified 123 turn-final tu vois (vs. only 17 turn-initial cases). Stoenica and Fiedler (2021) show that speakers systematically produce turn-final tu vois with rising intonation and gaze at the recipient to mobilize recipient response in three different interactional contexts: in turns that (1) convey an affective stance (30% of cases), (2) perform a dispreferred action (32.5%), and (3) claim insufficient knowledge (5%). Recipients consistently respond with aligning or affiliating responses or with a response addressing the claimed insufficient knowledge.…”

“…Today, tu vois is one of the most frequent verbal expressions in spoken French (Cappeau 2004) and it is predominantly used as a discourse marker (henceforth DM) without complement (Andersen 1997(Andersen , 2007Cappeau 2004;Détrie 2010). Recent work within Interactional Linguistics has shown that speakers often use the construction in turn-final position to invite recipient response (Stoenica & Fiedler 2021). Consider Excerpt 2, in which tu vois is deployed at the end of a negative assessment of a third party to invite displays of affiliation from the recipient (see Excerpt (4) ).…”

Multimodal stance-taking – A systematic literature review

“…Firstly, a subset of articles discusses specific combinations of simultaneously occurring use of different semiotic resources expressed by one participant (intra-participant), which, in their combination, fulfill a certain stance function. Such multimodal packages are either linked to specific verbal utterances (Pekarek Doehler et al, 2021;Stoenica and Fiedler, 2021), to liminal signs, such as clicks (Pinto and Vigil, 2019), or to purely visual packages, such as thinking displays (Heller, 2021). Some articles mention the use of polyphonic strategies in stance expressions, i.e.…”