Turn-taking in Brazilian Sign Language

Abstract

This study investigates the interactional skills of fluent sign language users, with special attention to contexts of overlapping talk. Data from semi-spontaneous conversations were analyzed from the video record, transcribed in ELAN, with tiers for non-manual signals and with a ‘gesture phase’ analysis of manual signs. Results show that signers closely coordinate their contributions in accordance with the sequential implicativeness of gesture phases. They deploy conventional resources similar to those described for spoken languages to resolve overlap quickly and efficiently. We show that signers, like speakers of oral languages, orient to ‘one party talks at a time’, and that the management of talk-in-interaction is achieved within a tightly organized system which includes resources traditionally associated with the ‘linguistic’, ‘paralinguistic/prosodic’, and ‘kinetic/gestural’ domains, thus possibly contributing to investigations of explicitly ad hoc and multimodal forms of communication and eventually to a reevaluation of what might legitimately be termed ‘talk’.

Turn-Taking in Human Communicative Interaction

“…Moreover, unlike previously argued by , there is now both qualitative McCleary and de Arantes Leite, 2013;) and quantitative evidence that sign language users orient to a one-at-a-time principle in taking turns. All in all, our study is consistent with the view that, despite the potential differences between the visual and acoustic language modalities, spoken and signed turn-taking may share more features than has previously been suggested.…”

“…In addition, there are many other cases of overlapping movement of participants' articulators. As such it is important to consider, in the case of sign language, whether overlapping signs are in fact attended to as competitive turns by speech act participants McCleary and de Arantes Leite, 2013;). In the current study, we consider turns that make relevant a timely and contingent response on behalf of the addressee, namely question and answer sequences.…”

“…Crucially, signers do not orient to these practices as troublesome in conversation, nor do such overlaps get dealt with using designated overlap resolution devices (cf. McCleary and de Arantes Leite, 2013). We thus hypothesized that in optimizing turn transitions, sign language users focus on the phonological content of signs as represented by the stroke, and disregard early preparatory movements, and the intentional holding of signs for response, as well as post-utterance retraction.…”

“…report that in spoken interactions, such visible behaviors result in faster turn transition times compared to vocal-only responses in the majority of languages in their sample. Similarly, non-manual signals in sign languages may often times persist beyond question boundaries and it is unclear at present to what extent each signal should be regarded as part of the turn at talk (De Vos et al, 2009;McCleary and de Arantes Leite, 2013). Our current analyses are therefore focused on the propositional content of the utterance as expressed by the movements of the hands.…”

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

“…More recently, several studies further pinpointed the signers' orientation to precision-timing and orientation to the coordinated transition between signers on the basis of fine-grained analyses of participants' accomplishment of turn-taking (McCleary and Leite, 2013; Groeber and Pochon-Berger, 2014; De Vos et al, 2015). For example, in a recent conversation-analytic account, McCleary and Leite (2013) provide compelling evidence for several overlap resolution devices (Schegloff, 2000) that deaf participants rely upon for managing overlapping signing. These more recent studies have also demonstrated the importance of a clear definition of overlap with respect to the movement phases of signs (cf.…”