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.
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.
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