Multimodal amusement resonance as a conversation interactional device
Evidence from Mandarin Chinese and English
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.23416Keywords:
resonance, amusement, repetition, multimodality, humourAbstract
The incorporation of materials from the previous speaker in subsequent speaker talk has been variably characterised as repetition (Tannen, 1987), format tying (M. Goodwin, 1990), resonance (Du Bois, 2014) and so forth (henceforth “resonance”). Resonance has been shown to be a pervasive feature of everyday talk-in-interaction. This paper, with data from Mandarin Chinese and American English, shows first that resonance can manifest in multiple modalities, namely morphosyntax, prosody and embodied actions, often simultaneously. Second, it will be shown that the next speaker often does this in the service of creating an amusing effect, or conversational humour. It is proposed that multimodal resonance with amusing effects is an uplifting device in conversation that has a unique impact on the way interaction is managed. As such, investigating such a practice can further our understanding of resonance as a pervasive interactional phenomenon and how multimodality is deployed for coherent courses of action.
References
Anolli, L., Ciceri, R., & Infantino, M.G. (2002). From “blame by praise” to “praise by blame”: Analysis of vocal patterns in ironic communication. International Journal of Psychology, 37, 266–276. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207590244000106
Arnold, L. (2012). Dialogic embodied action: Using gesture to organize sequence and participation in instructional interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(3), 269–296. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2012.699256
Attardo, S. (1994). Linguistic theories of humor. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Attardo, S. (2005). Humor. In J. Verschueren, J. Ostman, J. Blommaert & C. Bulcaen (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics (2nd ed., pp. 1–18). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Attardo, S., Eisterhold, J., Hay, J., & Poggi, I. (2003). Multimodal markers of irony and sarcasm. Humor, 16(2), 243–260. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.2003.012
Attardo, S., Wagner, M. M., & Urios-Aparisi, E. (2011). Prosody and humor. Pragmatics & Cognition, 19(2), 189–201. https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.19.2.01att
Attardo, S., Wagner , M. M., & Urios-Aparisi, E. (2013). Introduction. In S. Attardo et al. (Eds.), Prosody and humor (pp. 1–13). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2022). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 6.2.14, retrieved 24 May 2022 from http://www.praat.org/.
Brône, G., & Zima, E. (2014). Towards a dialogic construction grammar: Ad hoc routines and resonance activation. Cognitive Linguistics, 25(3), 457–495.
Chafe, W. (1987). Cognitive constraints on information flow. In Russel S. Tomlin (Ed.), Coherence and grounding in discourse [Typological Studies in Language, 11] (pp. 21–51). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Chafe, W. (1994). Discourse, consciousness, and time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Chafe, W. (2007). The importance of not being earnest: The feeling behind laughter and humor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Chui, K. (2014). Mimicked gestures and the joint construction of meaning in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 70, 68–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.06.005
Couper-Kuhlen, E. (1996). The prosody of repetition: On quoting and mimicry. In E. Couper-Kuhlen & M. Selting (Eds.), Prosody in conversation: Interactional studies (pp. 366–405). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cutler, A. (1974). On saying what you mean without meaning what you say. In M. W. LaGaly, R. A. Fox & A. Bruck (Eds.), Papers from the Tenth Regional Meeting (pp. 117–127). Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.
Du Bois, J. W. (2006). Transcription in action: Resources for the representation of linguistic interaction. http://transcription.projects.linguistics.ucsb.edu/representing. Last accessed 3 June 2022.
Du Bois, J. W. (2014). Towards a dialogic syntax. Cognitive Linguistics, 25(3), 359–410. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2014-0024
Du Bois, J. W., Schuetze-Coburn, S., Cumming, S., & Paolino, D. (1993). Outline of discourse transcription. In J. A. Edwards & M. D. Lampert (Eds.), Talking data: Transcription and coding in discourse research (pp. 45–89). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Du Bois, J. W., Chafe, W., Meyer, C., Thompson, S. A., Englebretson, R., & Martey, N. (2000–2005). Santa Barbara corpus of spoken American English, parts 1–4. Philadelphia, PA: Linguistic Data Consortium.
Du Bois, J. W., & Kärkkäinen, E. (2012). Taking a stance on emotion: Affect, sequence, and intersubjectivity in dialogic interaction. Text & Talk, 32(4), 433–451. Online 1860–7349 DOI 10.1515/text-2012-0021.
Enfield, N. J., & Sidnell, J. (2017). On the concept of action in the study of interaction. Discourse Studies, 19(5), 515–535. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445617730235
Ford, C., & Fox, B. A. (2010). Multiple practices for constructing laughables. In D. Barth-Weingarten, E. Reber & M. Selting, (Eds.), Prosody in interaction (pp. 339–368). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Glenn, P., & Holt, E. (2017). Conversation analysis of humor. In S. Attardo (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and humor (pp. 295–308). London and New York: Routledge.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. London: Harper & Row.
Goodwin, C. (2000). Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 1489–1522. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0378-2166(99)00096-x
Goodwin, M. (1990). He-said-she-said: Talk as a social organization among Black children. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Gorisch, J. (2012). Matching across turns in talk-in-interaction: The role of prosody and gesture. PhD dissertation, University of Sheffield.
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics, Vol. 3, Speech acts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press.
Haiman, J. (1998). Talk is cheap: Sarcasm, alienation, and the evolution of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heritage, J. (2007). Intersubjectivity and progressivity in references to persons (and places). In T. Stivers & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Person reference in interaction: Linguistic, cultural and social perspectives (pp. 255–280). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Holt, E. (2011). On the nature of “laughables”: Laughter as a response to overdone figurative phrases. Pragmatics, 21(3), 393–410. https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21.3.05hol
Huhtamäki, M., Lindström, J., & Londen, A-M. (2020). Other-repetition sequences in Finland Swedish: Prosody, grammar, and context in action ascription. Language in Society, 49(4), 653–686. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404520000056
Jefferson, G. (1979). A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance/declination. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 79–96). New York: Irvington.
Jefferson, G. (1984). On the organization of laughter in talk about troubles. In M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 346–369). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jefferson, G., Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Notes on laughter in the pursuit of intimacy. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organisation (pp. 152–205). Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.
Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kim, K.-H. (2022). Syllabic matching as a practice for managing resonance in sound and category in Korean conversation: An excursion into the poetics of ordinary talk. East Asian Pragmatics. (This issue.)
Kim, M. S. (2022). Creative multimodal and multilingual puns as and through joint actions in Korean media interviews. East Asian Pragmatics. (This issue.)
Kohler, K. J. (2008). “Speech-smile”, “speech-laugh”, “laughter” and their sequencing in dialogic interaction. Phonetica, 65, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1159/000130013.
Lerner, G. (2002). Turn-sharing: The choral co-production of talk-in-interaction. In C. Ford, B. Fox & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), The language of turn and sequence (pp. 225–256). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Levinson, S. C. (2013). Action formation and ascription. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 103–130). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Levitan, R., & Hirschberg, J. (2011). Measuring acoustic-prosodic entrainment with respect to multiple levels and dimensions. Proceedings of Interspeech 2011 (pp. 3081–3084). Florence.
Li, X. (2020a). Click-initiated self-repair in changing the sequential trajectory of Actionsin-progress. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 53(1), 90–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2020.1712959
Li, X. (2020b). Interpersonal touch in conversational joking. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 53(3), 357–379. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2020.1786970.
MacWhinney, B. (2007). The TalkBank project. In J. C. Beal, K. P. Corrigan & H. L. Moisl (Eds.), Creating and digitizing language corpora: Synchronic databases (Vol. 1, pp. 163–180). Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. https://psyling.talkbank.org/years/2007/palgrave.pdf
Malinowski, B. (1923). The problem of meaning in primitive languages. In C. K. Ogden & I. A. Richards (Eds.), Supplement to the Meaning of Meaning (pp. 146–152). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Pardo, J. S. (2006). On phonetic convergence during conversational interaction. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119(4), 2382–2393. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2178720.
Pomerantz, A. M. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 57–101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pomerantz , A. M., & Heritage, J. (2013). Preference. In J. Sidnell J & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 210–228). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation, Vol. 2. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791208
Selting, M. (2010). Affectivity in conversational storytelling: An analysis of display of anger or indignation in complaint stories. Pragmatics, 20(2), 229–277. https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.20.2.06sel
Stivers, T. (2005). Modified repeats: One method for asserting primary rights from second position. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 38(2), 131–158. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3802_1
Stivers, T. & Sidnell, J. (2005). Introduction: Multimodal interaction. Semiotica, 156, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.2005.2005.156.1
Stivers, T., Rossi, G., & Chalfoun, A. (2022). Ambiguities in action ascription. Social Forces, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soac021.
Su, D. (2016). Grammar emerges through reuse and modification of prior utterances. Discourse Studies, 18(3), 330–353. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445616634551
Suzuki, R. (forthcoming). Manipulating referentiality and creating phaticness: Repeated use of novel NPs in Japanese conversation. In M. Ewing and R. Laury (Eds.), (Non) referentiality in conversation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Szczepek Reed, B. (2007). Prosodic orientation in English conversation. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Szczepek Reed, B. (2020). Reconceptualizing mirroring: Sound imitation and rapport in naturally occurring interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 167, 131–151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.05.010
Takanashi, H. (2020). Playful naming in playful framing: The intertextual emergence of neologism. In R. Ide & K. Hata (Eds.), Bonding through context: Language and interactional alignment in Japanese situated discourse (pp. 239–264). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.314.11tak.
Tannen, D. (1987). Repetition in conversation as spontaneous formulaicity. Text, 7(3), 215–243.
Tantucci, V., & Wang, A. (2022). Dynamic resonance and explicit dialogic engagement in Mandarin first language acquisition, Discourse Processes, 59(7), 553–574. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2022.2065175.
Tao, H. (1996). Units in Mandarin conversation: Prosody, discourse, and grammar [Studies in Discourse and Grammar, 5]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Tao, H. (2020). NP clustering in Mandarin conversational interaction. In S. A. Thompson & T. Ono (Eds.), The “noun phrase” across languages: An emergent unit in interaction [Typological Studies in Language, 128] (pp. 271–314). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Uhmann, S. (1996). On rhythm in everyday German conversation: Beat clashes in assessment utterances. In E. Couper-Kuhlen & M. Selting (Eds.), Prosody in conversation: Interactional studies (pp. 303–365). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
Williams, J. A., Burns, E. L., & Harmon, E. A. (2009). Insincere utterances and gaze: Eye contact during sarcastic statements. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 108, 565–572. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.108.2.565-572
Wu, R. (2018). Indexing epistemic authority/primacy in Mandarin conversation: Aiyouprefacing as an interactional resource. Journal of Pragmatics, 131, 30–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.04.008
