A Relevance Rule Organizing Responsive Behavior During One Type of Institutional Extended Telling

ABSTRACT

More research is needed on the organization of mid-telling sequential environments wherein the normal turn-taking rules for speaker transition are typically suspended. While there is research on the type, function, and consequences of recipients’ vocalized responses, we know less about bodily responsive behavior (e.g., nodding) and even less about how responses (or lack thereof) are organized around turn constructional unit boundaries. Using conversation analysis of face-to-face data captured by multiple, participant perspective camera angles, this article addresses these issues by documenting a relevance rule that organizes responsive behavior during international students’ problem presentations to university advisors. Data are in American English.

Notes

¹ Stand-alone head nods were produced and treated as continuers (Schegloff, 1982; Stivers, 2008; Whitehead, 2011). For example, in Extracts A and B, advisors’ nods are positioned early and on time relative to students’ TCU endings (which come after “‘O’ ‘P’ ‘T’?” and “situation.”) respectively, and in both cases students treat nods as continuers by progressing their presentations in next TCUs (with “.h but I changed my…” and “uh: I had applied for…” respectively; regarding progressivity, see later subsection in main text).

² Participants treated brief assessments as minimal acknowledgement tokens oriented toward students continuing their tellings. For example, in Extract C, the advisor, who produces “Good.” (line 74), orients to the student continuing by immediately producing a continuer, “Mm hm,” (line 75), after which the student continues to progress his telling in his next TCU (line 77; regarding progressivity, see later subsection in main text).

³ Nodding either preceded or started concurrently with, but never started after, vocal responses (Schegloff, 1984). When nods co-occurred with vocal responses, there is evidence that students treated nods as continuers (Schegloff, 1982) independent of vocal responses. For example, in Extracts D and E, advisors begin to nod prior to students’ TCU endings (i.e., prior to “po:int.” and “question,” respectively), and students begin to progress their presentations in next TCUs either before (with “an’…” in Extract D), or concurrently with (with “Uh:m:…” in Extract E), advisors’ production of vocal continuers (regarding progressivity, see later subsection in main text).

In line with this evidence (e.g., Extracts D–E), we coded advisors’ responses as beginning with their nodding, and thus the advisors’ responses in Extracts D and E (above) were coded as being positioned early relative to TCU endings.

The majority of the 97 early responses (54.6%) were positioned within the last word of TCU endings (see Extracts D–E). Earlier positioning was largely a by-product of advisors targeting possible syntactic TCU endings (e.g., “working” in Extract F) to which students added more than one word (Jefferson, 1986; In the main text, see also the advisor’s nod at line 78 in Extract 7, which targets the student’s “mess” at line 76).

⁴ From a multilevel modeling perspective, these tests should be interpreted cautiously given the point estimates and large confidence intervals. The relatively small amount of data (N = 155) did not permit analysis/control of a second level of clustering involving individual observations (i.e., multiple TCU endings) being nested within unique advisor-student dyads.

⁵ See main text regarding students’ gaze aversion. In the 22 omitted cases in which advisors’ bodies and gaze were oriented away from students (e.g., toward computers) at TCU endings, the results are strikingly contrary to our finding: In 16/22 cases (72.7%), advisors’ produced minimally acknowledging responses that were late (vs. early or on time) relative to TCU endings, and in 15/16 of these cases (93.8%), students nonetheless proceeded to progress their tellings, thereby treating advisors’ late responses as being normative.