SECTION 0 - FRONT MATTER

SECTION 0.2 - OTHER CONVENTIONS FOR THE READING OF THE TEXT


Tips for easier reading:
 

* Instructions to readers appear in parenthesis, for example:

          "(Click on PLAY button for INTRODUCTION movie)"
 

* Capital letters are used to designate:
     - CHAPTER TITLES and SECTION TITLES
     - titles of DATA MOVIES
     - control buttons:  PLAY, PAUSE
     - emphasis in transcripts, for example, "SIT" in:

                   Lil:  So- (0.4) you SIT on the bench
 

* Footnotes, are indicated in the text by a starred number in parenthesis:
 
            (Footnote *2; transcription symbols guide).

     Footnotes can be found two ways:
     1.  The easiest way is to

     - Click on the INDEX button at the bottom of your screen.
     - Click on the box/segment in the Notes section for the note
        you want, and read it (don't forget to use your scroll bar
        in the text window).
     - Hit the INDEX button again at the bottom of your screen.
     - Click on the last lit box in the chapter you were reading
       to go back to where you were.  (Each box is a segment
       of the chapter; a box lights up if you have visited that
       segment -- and you can just click on it again to go back
       to where you were).  Try this with Footnote *2 from
      Chapter One.

     2.  Or you can use the NOTES chapter.  For example, look
     over at the Table of Contents and locate the NOTES
     chapter.  Try to view footnote (*2) from Chapter One by
     clicking on NOTES in the Table of Contents.  When
     NOTES opens, scroll down the text until you find (*2)
     listed.  This is a guide to the transcription symbols used
     throughout the study.
 

* The INDEX button at the bottom of your screen accesses your Index operations.  The Index can be used for EASY and quick navigation to get you where you want to go or back to exactly where you came from.

     1.  There is a list of chapters and following each chapter is
      a row of boxes.

     2.  Each box is a segment of the chapter containing, for
      example, text, a movie, and a still image.

     3.  A box lights up if you have visited that segment -- so you
     can tell at a glance where you have and have not been.

     4.  Click on the box for the segment you just came from
     and go directly back to that place in the study.

     5.  With footnotes, for example, you can skip the "NOTES"
     chapter altogether and use the INDEX button and the boxes.


SECTION 0.3 - DOCUMENTATION


Representations of the following official documents appear:

1.  Copyright Legend
2.  Title Page
3.  Dissertation Signature Page
4.  Dedication
5.  Acknowledgments
6.  Abstract
7.  Vita

---------------------------------------------

1.  Copyright Legend
 
 
 

                                             Copyright

                                                     by

                                      Leslie Hope Jarmon

                                                   1996
 
 
 

2.  Title Page
 

                       An Ecology of Embodied Interaction:

                     Turn-Taking and Interactional Syntax in
 
                                  Face-to-Face Encounters

                                                      by

                             Leslie Hope Jarmon, B.A., M.A.
 

                                            Dissertation

           Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
                            the University of Texas at Austin
                                       in Partial Fulfillment
                                       of the Requirements
                                          for the Degree of
                                      Doctor of Philosophy

                           The University of Texas at Austin
                                               August 1996
 
 
 

3.  Dissertation Signature Page
 

                       An Ecology of Embodied Interaction:

                     Turn-Taking and Interactional Syntax in
 
                                  Face-to-Face Encounters
 
 
 

                                                         Approved by
                                                         Dissertation Committee:

                                                         Robert Hopper, Supervisor
                                                         Madeline Maxwell
                                                         Lynn Miller
                                                         Joni Jones
                                                         Keith Walters
 
 

4.  This Work Is Dedicated To:
 
 

                                   JOYCE HOPE JARMON,

                                    my friend and my mother
 
 
 
 

5.  Acknowledgments

     Many people have helped me directly or indirectly.
     I would like to begin by thanking Erica Hoffman and Susan Corbin for giving me permission to use fragments of their video data in this study.
     I offer profound gratitude to the members of my extended family and friends who have let themselves be videotaped relentlessly for this research.  Spencer Jarmon, my brother, composes beautiful music and graciously created "laconica" for this project.
     I am grateful to my committee members, Madeline Maxwell, Lynn Miller, Joni Jones, and Keith Walters, for their teaching, for their support and encouragement of this project, and for their kindness when I was ill.  To Paul Gray, Graduate Advisor, who never let an opportunity to rally my spirits pass unheeded, I owe special thanks.
     The Department of Speech Communication staff, Lora Maldonado, Deanna Matthews and Margaret Surratt manage to provide incredible support under incredible duress, and I thank them deeply for their personal friendship and support day-to-day, everyday.
     The members of the Graduate Assembly and especially Vice-President and Dean Teresa Sullivan receive special recognition for engaging the challenge of multimedia technology in scholarly enterprises and for granting me permission to proceed with this project.  Other supporters in various departments at the University of Texas who have provided support and to whom I am grateful include Tim Rowe, Coco Kishi, John Wheat, Belinda Gonzalez Lehmkuhle, and Richard Mendez and his staff.
     In the summer of 1992, I took a course with Jurgen Streeck in video-ethnography, and being behind the camera changed the way I see.  In the summer of 1993, Sandy Stone played for me a stamp-size Quicktime movie on her computer, and my life has not been the same since.  I am deeply grateful to her for that and for her friendship.  Two kind-spirited guides merit special recognition:  Conrad Solis, who first introduced me to Adobe Premiere, and Tracy Prater, who taught me about digitizing boards.  I am also grateful to Yakov Sharir, who introduced me to LifeForms, and to Gary Thompson of Apple, who has provided technical assistance and enthusiasm all along the way.  Very special thanks are extended to David Avila, interface-designer par excellence, at Human Code and Digital Arts, for his creativity and generosity of spirit, and to the others at Human Code/CDF, especially David and John Stansbury, who helped make final realization of this project possible.  The outside cover for the CD-ROM was graciously designed by Jake Jarmon and Spencer Jarmon, and deep thanks are extended to both.
     I would like to express my deep appreciation to my friends and colleagues Erica Hoffman, Curt LeBaron, Susan Corbin, JoAnn McKenzie, Dan Modaff, Charlotte Jones, and Tommy Darwin for their intellectual insights and most especially for their on-going spiritual support.  Jeff Stringer and Amy Darnell are especially thanked for teaching my classes when I could not.
     I am deeply indebted to two groups of nurturers:  the medical personnel who have seen me through the last year, and my friends/family at Taos Cooperative, who have provided me with food, friendship, and conversational data for four years.
     Very profound gratitude and affection are extended to my dissertation supervisor, Robert Hopper, whose support and willingness to take a chance enabled us to get permission to go ahead with this CD-ROM project.  I thank him deeply for introducing me to the micro-universe of human interaction, for sharing with me his love of music, and for being here.
     Finally, I want to thank my friend and mother, Joyce Jarmon, without whose support this project -- or anything else I have ever tried to do -- would never have unfolded.
 
 
 
 

6.  Abstract
 

                       An Ecology of Embodied Interaction:

                     Turn-Taking and Interactional Syntax in
 
                                  Face-to-Face Encounters

                                                       by

                                Leslie Hope Jarmon, PhD.

                         The University of Texas at Austin

                              Supervisor:  Robert Hopper
 

     This dissertation presents micro-analyses of how embodied actions exhibit orderliness and function as elemental and recurrent components of participants' turns in face-to-face interaction.  That embodied actions recurrently constitute turns and turn-components in interaction merits that they be specified within an expanding description of the turn-taking system.
     The occurrence of embodied actions as turns interestingly problematizes the fundamental concepts of turn-constructional unit, projectability, turn completion, and turn overlap.  Furthermore, how embodied actions actually work in face-to-face interaction invites a closer examination of the performing body as a shared communicative resource.  Co-presence entails that, like voices for speaking, bodies for acting are immediately perceptually available to interactants in service to on-going lines of activity as well as to the construction of a turn.
     The methodology of conversation analysis has been used to examine videotaped instances of naturally-occurring interaction.  Data is collected, closely transcribed, repeatedly observed, and analyzed for patterns oriented to by participants themselves.  Collections of instances exhibiting similar phenomena are developed and research findings are shared with other scholars of human interaction.  Formulated from empirical observation and analyses of recurrent patterns of behavior in actual instances, three propositions are presented in this study:

     Proposition One:  Embodied actions constitute a fifth
     domain of turn-construction unit types within the turn-taking
     system.  Embodied action-turns thrive in an interactional
     ecology that includes both visual-spatial and vocal-aural
     domains.  Actual occurrences from the data show their use
     as construction units in turns in adjacency-pair, assessment,
     and repair sequences, and demonstrate co-participants'
     unremarkable and recurrent use of embodied action-units
     as turns.

     Proposition Two:  In addition to speech, at least three
     additional shared communicative resources, with
     recognizable underlying order, form, and structure, are
     available to co-present interactants and can contribute to
     the projectability of embodied action-turns:  the body metric;
     the order exhibited in the configuring of a turn over time; and
     recognizable embodied practices from everyday life.

     Proposition Three:  The recurrence of embodied action-turns
     provides additional evidence for a syntax-for-interaction,
     extending quasi-linguistic analysis beyond vocalics and
     centering analysis on communicative actions embedded
     within situated activities.  A syntax-for-interaction takes into
     account the practices of human communication and the
     multiple resources, sequential structures, and organizing
     systems co-present participants have at hand for
     constituting and managing their lines of activity in
     interaction.

     The dissertation is available only on CD-ROM; the phenomenon under investigation -- nonvocalized embodied actions in co-present human interaction  -- lend themselves to examination through the use of multimedia technology because of their visual, sequential, and dynamic character.  Only through a medium capable of presenting these essential features are we able to share such data and the findings resulting from its research; form and content are interwoven.  New features include a collection of instances from the videotaped data in the form of interactive digital movies.
 
 
 
 
 
 

7.  Vita

                                                       VITA

     Leslie Hope Jarmon was born in Corpus Christi, Texas on October 16, 1952, the daughter of Joyce Hope Jarmon and Jake Jarmon, Jr.  After completing her work at W. B. Ray High School, Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1970, she entered the University of Texas at Austin.  She received the degree of Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1976.  She worked for the United States Peace Corps from 1982 to 1987.  She received a Masters of Arts degree from Corpus Christi State University in 1992, and she entered the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in the summer that same year.

Permanent Address:

842 Retama
Corpus Christi, Texas  78408

This dissertation was created on CD-ROM by the author.
 



 
 

SECTION 0.4 - SPECIFICATIONS


All files were created or optimized to enable them to play on lowest common denominator PC or MAC equipment with low double-speed compact disc players.  Movie Player will play the data movies.

The interface was created using CDFactory software, a product of Human Code, Inc., Austin, Texas (512) 477-5455.  Human Code's is an industry leader in developing, publishing, and marketing the most innovative and compelling interactive multimedia products, specifically in the areas of interface design, illustration, 3D visualization, programming, and audio/video production.  CD-ROM titles with partners including Apple Computer, Discovery Channel Multimedia, Bandai-Japan, NASA, and Putnam New Media have resulted in global recognition and awards for the Austin-based developer.  Human Code developed the CDfactory--a suite of authoring tools for multimedia--to eliminating the need for programming, thus allowing designers, producers, and developers to concentrate on content creation and organization.

CDfactory
Technology by Human Code1995
Human Code, Austin TX
Phone: 512-477-5455
Fax: 512-477-5456

License Agreement

PLEASE OBSERVE THE FOLLOWING REQUIREMENTS IN USING THIS CD.  This CD contains the CDplayer, a runtime software program from Human Code, Inc. ("HCI").  CDplayer is licensed by HCI to the user under the following conditions.  You may not extract, decompile or otherwise apply any process to the CD to derive or obtain the source code for CDplayer.  Ownership of CDplayer and all copyrights and other intellectual property rights remain solely with HCI.  HCI LICENSES CDPLAYER "AS IS" AND DISCLAIMS AND EXCLUDES ANY AND ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  IN NO EVENT SHALL HCI BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR SIMILAR DAMAGES OR FOR LOST DATA OR PROFITS RESULTING IN ANY WAY FROM THE USE OF THE CDPLAYER.  No vendor, distributor, dealer, retailer, sales person or other person is authorized to make any warranty, representation or promise which is different than, or in addition to the representations of this Agreement about the software.  This Agreement shall be governed by, and interpreted in accordance with the laws of the State of Texas.
 

Other CD Information:

Data Movies recorded in Adobe Premiere with
     RastorOps cards at:  30 fps, 320 X 240, 22 khz
Optimized with Movie Shop, Apple Cinepak at:
     30 fps, 224 X 168, Data Rate 140 K/sec,
     Sound @ 11 khz/mono

Hardware:
Macintosh Quadra 950
- 16 RAM
- 16Ó Apple color monitor
- RasterOps boards:
     - 24MXTV = mother board (to capture)
     - MoviePak2 = daughter board (accelerator)
Panasonic VCR (S-VHS capability) model:  AG-7350
Panasonic color video monitor (TV) model:  CT-2582Y
Bernoulli external memory system (Omega 150 multidisc)
RasterOps Switch Box
Apple External Compact Disk Player (X2)
APS External A/V HD (2G)

Multimedia Software:
- Adobe Premiere 3.0
- Adobe Photoshop 2.5.1
- RasterOps Mediagrabber 2.5.2
- SoundEditPro
- MovieShop 1.1.4
- MoviePlayer 1.0
- LifeForms 1.0.1
 
 

                                         End of Introduction