Body Trouble: Some Sources of Difficulty in the Progressive Realization of Manual Action

ABSTRACT

This report examines interactional troubles that find their source, not in talk, but in manual action. First, we introduce the intertwined character of two fundamental features of most, if not all emergent human conduct: The ongoing structural projection of an action-in-progress along with its continuing progressive realization. We then identify two sources of body-behavioral trouble that interfere with the action implication of emerging manual action, and result in remedial action by its recipient. Manual actors sometimes 1) foreshorten the “preparation phase” of emerging manual action, or 2) interrupt manual action before it comes to completion. Additionally, we demonstrate how misconstruing the action implication of emerging manual action can also result in body trouble that leads to recipient remediation, even when there is no reduction of its structural projectability or interruption of its progressive realization. For each circumstance, we describe the adjusting actions that remediate such body troubles. [Occasionally, English is spoken.]

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

¹ Of course, vocal responses such as laughter and visible responses such as head nods need not be held off. Moreover, these can be positioned by reference to recognition. See Lerner (1992, p. 250) for an instance of laughter employed at recognition in the course of a co-participant’s story preface.

² In addition, a collection of legacy field recordings (including Specimens 2 and 3 here) produced over the course of several decades from the 1960s onwards and shared among practitioners of Conversation Analysis was inspected.

³ This issue is addressed more generally at the beginning of our Concluding Remarks. We encourage Readers to consider these descriptions in close conjunction with their associated field recording. (See Note 5.)

⁴ The routine way many forms of manual action develop can be described in this manner: The action first begins with a Preparation Phase to get the hand or hands in position, the main or Focal Action itself is then undertaken, and this is regularly (but not invariably) followed by a Return Phase, where the hands are returned to whatever they were doing before, or they are returned to a resting home position. See Lerner and Raymond (2021b) for a description of remediation across this “Manual Action Pathway” (or MAP). Also, see Mandelbaum and Lerner (2021) for an examination of food service offers interjected across the MAP during mealtime self-service.

⁵ Please view the field recording for this and subsequent specimens mentioned in the text as the static pictorial representations cannot adequately capture the dynamic phenomena associated with body trouble and its remediation. Accompanying video clips can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

⁶ Schegloff (2013) describes a corresponding repair operation for “aborting” turns at talk. However, this ordinarily involves only self-repair as recipients will ordinarily be waiting for the transition relevance of possible completion to begin a response.

⁷ Employing a “hand drop” can be a practice for withdrawing participation, abruptly. By overtly releasing the muscle-based effort to propel the hand (and thus reducing the accountability of the hand’s movement to gravity’s omnirelevance) a hand-dropper can thereby be seen to have withdrawn from the task-at-hand. In an examination of classroom hand raising, Lerner and Raymond (2017, pp. 304–306) contrast the use of an abrupt hand drop to that of a rather more stealthy hand pivot.

⁸ Indeed, both of Jennifer’s companions display a tracking of, and produce conduct responsive to, her incipient action. It is precisely Betty’s palpable (albeit transient) reaction to Jennifer’s move to return the glasses to its owner that seems to occasion Jennifer’s query and her redirection of the glasses hand-off to Betty.

⁹ Also, see Lerner and Zimmerman’s (2003) description of a teasing proffer by a young child who, just as another child begins to reach for the proffered object, quickly withdraws it, thereby producing a “sequential surprise” for her recipient.

¹⁰ Schegloff (1987) has identified “problematic sequential implicativeness” – that is, problems associated with the action import of a turn at talk – as a leading source of misunderstanding in talk-in-interaction. In this section, we describe a source of misconstruing manually-implemented actions that turns out to recapitulate this finding for visible conduct.

¹¹ This case involves the same restaurant transaction examined as Specimen 1.

¹² For contrast, note the hand drop employed in Specimen 2 that abandons receipt of a pair of eyeglasses after the hand-off in progress is discontinued by a co-participant (in favor of transferring the glasses to someone else).

¹³ Although Larry initially respects Michelle’s instrumental entitlement (as the party in physical possession of the cards) to launch the transfer by partially withdrawing his hand, this nevertheless exposes his failed attempt to retrieve the cards. He then uses that occasion to launch a second try at retrieving the cards, even though Michelle has not actually proffered them. She sees his second try-in-progress and now responds by proffering the cards.

¹⁴ This case actually introduces two types of variation: In addition to showing that action mis-projection is not limited to manual action, it also shows that mis-projection can be relevant even in circumstances when one’s action is conducted by reference to another participant’s action, but does not stand in a reciprocal relationship to it. Bonny’s crossing to the trashcan is not prompted by or responsive to Ann’s apparent departure, but the timing and pace of her movement is conducted by reference to Ann’s progress.

¹⁵ Although not developed in this report, we should at least note that body trouble can also result from the simultaneous onset of incompatible manual actions. Similarly, the simultaneous onset of speech by two speakers can be treated as a source of trouble in allocating turns at talk that is in need of repair (see Sacks et al., 1974).

¹⁶ We are indebted to Elliott Hoey for pointing out the parallel motivations between reciprocal manual actions and conversational turn-taking.

¹⁷ We can just mention three forms this mis-projection can take. First, recipients occasionally produce a recognition point response (Jefferson, 1973, 1986) – that is, they respond substantially before the current speaker has reached a possible completion. For instance, Goodwin and Goodwin (1987, pp. 30–32) show that the production of a recognition point assessment by a recipient can be vulnerable to mis-projection of a positive assessment that then turns out to be negative. Second, a recipient of a current turn-so-far can aim to chorally co-produce its completion, but end up not actually saying the same thing as the original speaker (Lerner, 2002, p. 251, Notes 2, 4). Or third, a recipient of a compound TCU-in-progress can offer a completion for that unit that mis-projects what action is being accomplished through that TCU (even while correctly projecting the form of the final component of the TCU) as is revealed when the proffered other-completion is rejected (See Lerner, 2004, p. 240, Extract 24).

¹⁸ There are practices available to both sides of such transactions for managing whether and how timing matters – and the handshake case (Specimen 1) offers some evidence in that the originator of the handshake, foreseeing the delay, further adjusts the presentation of his hand by then leaning his body forward slightly after his arm had been extended, but while his recipient is still engaged in transferring an object out of her right hand.