The management of turn transition in signed interaction through the lens of overlaps

Abstract

There have been relatively few studies on sign language interaction carried out within the framework of conversation analysis (CA). Therefore, questions remain open about how the basic building blocks of social interaction such as turn, turn construction unit (TCU) and turn transition relevance place (TRP) can be understood and analyzed in sign language interaction. Recent studies have shown that signers regularly fine-tune their turn-beginnings to potential completion points of turns (Groeber, 2014; Groeber and Pochon-Berger, 2014; De Vos et al., 2015). Moreover, signers deploy practices for overlap resolution as in spoken interaction (McCleary and Leite, 2013). While these studies have highlighted the signers' orientation to the “one-at-a-time” principle described by Sacks et al. (1974), the present article adds to this line of research by investigating in more detail those sequential environments where overlaps occur. The contribution provides an overview of different types of overlap with a focus of the overlap's onset with regard to a current signer's turn. On the basis of a 33-min video-recording of a multi-party interaction between 4 female signers in Swiss German Sign Language (DSGS), the paper provides evidence for the orderliness of overlapping signing. Furthermore, the contribution demonstrates how participants collaborate in the situated construction of turns as a dynamic and emergent gestalt and how they interactionally achieve turn transition. Thereby the study adds to recent research in spoken and in signed interaction that proposes to rethink turn boundaries and turn transition as flexible and interactionally achieved.

Some interactional functions of finger pointing in signed language conversations

“…One of the key findings from this research is that speakers and signers engage their whole body to coordinate their conversations and interactions, especially in relation to turn-taking (e.g., Baker 1977;Schegloff 1984;Heath 2004;Hayashi 2005;Iwasaki 2009;Deppermann 2013;McCleary & Leite 2013;Mondada 2013). In this way, visible bodily actions help speakers maintain the orderliness of conversation in spoken language contexts (Mondada 2007;Streeck 2009a;Kamunen 2018) and signed language contexts (e.g., Coates & Sutton-Spence 2001;McCleary & Leite 2013;Girard-Groeber 2015;de Vos et al 2015). In addition, such actions can be polyfunctional, expressing either multiple pragmatic meanings or combined with referential meanings (e.g., Johnston 1992;Jokinen 2009;Streeck 2009a;Healy 2012;Lepeut 2018;submitted;Gabarró-López 2020; see also Goodwin 1986).…”

Competition Reduces Response Times in Multiparty Conversation

“…The earlier corpus-based literature on turn transition times has concerned dyads, multi-party conversation, or a mixture of the two (e.g., Stivers et al, 2009 ; de Vos et al, 2015 ; Girard-Groeber, 2015 ; Holler et al, 2018 ). This complicates the comparison of turn transition times to response times obtained in laboratory settings from individually tested participants.…”

“…No systematic quantitative comparison of turn transitions in dyadic and multi-party conversations appears to exist to date. The existing quantitative studies of turn transition times focused on dyads (e.g., ten Bosch et al, 2004 ; Heldner and Edlund, 2010 ; Roberts et al, 2015 ) or on multi-party conversations ( Girard-Groeber, 2015 ; Holler et al, 2018 ) or did not distinguish between dyadic and multi-party conversations in their analyses (e.g., Stivers et al, 2009 ; de Vos et al, 2015 ). The effect of competition for the floor on turn transition times has been investigated by comparing dyads interacting in friendly chats or arguments, with the latter resulting in shorter turn transitions ( Trimboli and Walker, 1984 ), but not in multi-party compared to dyadic conversation.…”

First Encounters: Repair Sequences in Cross‐Signing

“…While work on the conversational infrastructure of signed languages has been sparse to date, initial reports suggest that despite potential differences between the auditory and visual language modalities, very similar turn‐taking principles apply to signed languages as have previously been reported of spoken languages. This is, for instance, evidenced by the mechanisms that are in place to enable smooth turn transitions (Baker, ; Mesch, ), resolve overlap (Girard‐Groeber, ; McCleary & de Arantes Leite, ), and optimize turn timing in signed conversations (De Vos, Torreira, & Levinson, ). In our view, CA methods are particularly well suited to the study of cross‐signing as these interactions and the communicative strategies that feature in them are not easily understood outside the particularities of the sequential context in which they emerge.…”