Marjorie Harness Goodwin

Gesture and coparticipation in the activity of searching for a word

In this paper gesture will be studied by analyzing in some detail its organization within a particular activity, searching for a word. Such an approach is quite different from others that often study such phenomena by isolating gesture from the local, interactive circumstances of its production (see, for example, Morris et al. 1979). However, by investigating gesture within particular events, it is possible to begin to study in some detail not only how participants find it to be meaningful, but also how they use that meaningfulness as a constitutive feature of the social organization of the activities they are engaged in. Data for this analysis consist of videotapes of conversations recorded in a range of natural settings (for a more complete description of these data see C. Goodwin [1981: 33-46]). We will begin by raising the issue of how participants find gesture to be a meaningful event. In the following, a speaker produces a small gesture, a wave of her hand, and immediately after this happens, the recipient nods toward her. Thus two parties are clearly working in concert; an action is performed by one and answered by another. However, how these participants interpret each others actions, and even what they are doing together, remains inaccessible unless the activity they are involved in, and the types of coparticipation that activity makes possible, are investigated in detail. Talk is transcribed using a simplified version of the Jefferson transcription system (Sacks et al. 1974: 731-733). Dashes within parentheses mark tenths of seconds with a silence; a full second is marked by a plus sign (Example I).

Participation, affect, and trajectory in family directive/response sequences*

Abstract Making use of videotapes of family interaction, this paper investigates alternative trajectories that develop as parents and children negotiate disputes resulting from directive/response sequences. Forms of arguments constituted through recycled positions are distinguished from arguments that are buttressed by accounts or rule statements. Constellations of features including structures of control, forms of tying utterances to prior utterances, accounts, as well as facing formations are consequential. The forms of participation frameworks that are constructed afford different ways of sustaining focused interaction, gearing into what someone has said, and displaying to each other how participants are aligned within the activity frame. Alternative trajectories develop in light of the forms of joint attention that are established, as well as sustained engagement.

Aggravated correction and disagreement in children's conversations

Abstract This paper investigates features of “aggravated” correction and disagreement in the naturally occurring conversations of urban black children, ages 4–14. Intonation contours, turn shapes, and the patterning of sequences demonstrate an orientation toward displaying rather than mitigating expressions of opposition with previous utterances. It is argued that such phenomena are constructed through systematic selections of alternatives to procedures for constructing agreement and for accomplishing repair in adult conversation.

Multi-modality in girls' game disputes

This paper examines embodied procedures for producing disagreement turns in the midst of the children’s game of hopscotch. Turn shape, intonation, and body positioning are all critical to the construction of stance towards a player’s move in the game. In particular, in formulating a player’s move as ‘‘out’’ foul calls can state unambiguously, without doubt or delay that a violation has occurred. Turn initial tokens in disagreement turns include cries of ‘‘OUT!’’, negatives (‘‘No!’’), or response cries (nonlexicalized, discrete interjections such as ‘‘Ay!’’ or ‘‘Eh!’’). Players make use of pitch leaps, vowel lengthening, and dramatic contours (for example, LHL contours) to vocally highlight opposition in the turn preface. Whereas the normal pitch range of a speaker’s talk in ordinary conversation can be between 250 and 350 Hz, in opposition moves the pitch may be considerably higher, around 600 Hz. Affective stance is also displayed through gestures such as extended points towards the person who has committed the foul or the space where the foul occurred. Explanations or demonstrations (frequently embodied re-enactments of the player’s past move) constitute additional critical components of disagreement moves as they provide the grounds for the opposition. Disagreement moves and trajectories within children’s games provide demonstrations of the practices through which girls build and display themselves as agents in the constitution of their social order. Data for this study consists of videotaped interaction of working class fifth grade girls on the playground: second generation Mexican and Central Americans in Los Angeles, and African American Southern migrant children. Ethnic differences in the display

Children Socializing Children: Practices for Negotiating the Social Order Among Peers

The articles in this special issue were originally part of a session entitled Children Socializing Children: Cultural Production, Participation and Authoritative Discourse in Peer Play Interactions at the 2005 International Pragmatics Associations meetings at Riva del Garda, Italy. We thank Karin Aronsson and Jenny Cook-Gumperz for their comments on our articles.

Tactical uses of stories: Participation frameworks within girls' and boys' disputes

This paper investigates how children use stories as tools for arranging and rearranging social organization. I examine how boys and girls, in their same‐sex groups, use features of stories to accomplish and restructure social identities within encounters. Though girls and boys make use of similar resources, they construct quite different types of events. Boys use stories to continue an ongoing argument while reshaping the domain of dispute. Girls, by way of contrast, use stories to restructure alignments of participants, not only in the current interaction, but also at some future time. For example, a story can depict an absent party talking about a current addressee behind her back. By organizing her story in this way, a teller can elicit from her recipient a promise to confront the offender. Such “he‐said‐she‐said” confrontations constitute a major domain of political action for the girls’ group, and an upcoming confrontation can mobilize the entire neighborhood. This study is based on fieldwork with a ...

Occasioned knowledge exploration in family interaction

This article examines the ensemble of conversational practices a particular family makes use of to cultivate active and joyful engagement in imaginative inquiry about the world, during mundane, largely unstructured activity. Parents provide opportunities for children to query new words, idioms, and concepts, and invite them to do so, though they do not impose explanations on children. Explanations are ‘recipient-designed’ in terms of age appropriateness, and may involve dramatic animations through use of the current scene as a local metric. Unpacking meanings of words and concepts can involve the playful exploration of possible rather than literal meanings as well. Participants choose to hear (and restructure) words in particular ways so that they can be seized as opportunities for launching play on sound structure. Involvement in the talk of the moment entails practices such as collaborative production of utterances, format tying, and sound play.

Building power asymmetries in girls' interaction

This study, based on three years of ethnographic research (and over 60 hours of videotaped interaction) in a Southern California elementary school, investigates how enduring asymmetrical relationships among females in a multicultural peer group are built in moment-to-moment interaction. By exploring how relations of power, based on forms of opposition, bullying, and exclusion, are both built interactively and commented upon in female groups, I call into question the generalizability of accounts of female same-sex talk which focus exclusively on cooperative or polite interactive practices. I employ both ethnographically grounded observations and the methodology of conversation analysis to analyze practices for building power asymmetry in naturally occurring same-sex female talk during play and at lunch.This study, based on three years of ethnographic research (and over 60 hours of videotaped interaction) in a Southern California elementary school, investigates how enduring asymmetrical relationships among females in a multicultural peer group are built in moment-to-moment interaction. By exploring how relations of power, based on forms of opposition, bullying, and exclusion, are both built interactively and commented upon in female groups, I call into question the generalizability of accounts of female same-sex talk which focus exclusively on cooperative or polite interactive practices. I employ both ethnographically grounded observations and the methodology of conversation analysis to analyze practices for building power asymmetry in naturally occurring same-sex female talk during play and at lunch.

Participation and Embodied Action in Preadolescent Girls' Assessment Activity

Assessments provide a principal way in which girls in their peer group make sense out of experience. The grammar of an emerging assessment utterance provides for local social organization, as participants take up stances with respect to the target. In this article, I examine participation during assessments in the midst of a gossip session in which 11-year-old American girls evaluate the captain of a softball game and his girlfriend who have excluded them from the game. Through talking and embodied action, together girls articulate their moral positions regarding how members of their age cohort should treat one another. Differentiated forms of coparticipation occur. Not only what one says but also how one positions the body can display a participants entitlement to perform negative commentary. As girls link assessments to categories of person, local notions of culture are made visible.

Searching for a Word as an Interactive Activity

This paper investigates the use of gesture and bodily display in the interactive organization of word searches. Here I examine how both speakers in the course of producing a word search in their talk, as well as recipients, in their responses to invitations to coparticipate in such an activity, make integrated use of vocal and nonvocal behaviors.