Waiting to Inhale: On Sniffing in Conversation

ABSTRACT

This article examines sniffing in everyday conversations. It builds on prior conversation analytic research on respiratory conduct, which has shown how things like inbreaths, sighs, and laughter are delicately organized and consequential components of the social occasions into which they figure. Sniffing—the swift, audible, intake of breath through the nasal passage—is analyzed by reference to its sequential placement in talk. Using a collection of 70 cases of sniffs in naturally occurring conversations, two recurrent uses of sniffing are described. Sniffs placed before or during a turn-at-talk serve to delay turn progression. And sniffs placed in the postcompletion space of a turn can indicate its completion. This association between postcompletion sniffing and turn completion is further supported through a comparison with postcompletion inbreaths. By situating sniffing in its sequential contexts, the organization of breathing is shown to be bound up with the organization of speaking. Data are in American and British English.

Notes

¹ The reader may note that the analysis is restricted to speakers’ sniffs and covers only 48/70 cases. The remaining 22 cases occurred in the following environments: recipient sniffs at TRP of current speaker’s turn (n = 9), recipient sniffs in middle of current speaker’s turn (n = 8), participant sniffs in a long lapse (n = 3), and recipient sniffs in postbeginning of current speaker’s turn (n = 2). Fuller analysis of these is reserved for another report.

² Though only two examples are shown in this section, all five precede an analyzably dispreferred or misaligned response.

³ I thank a reviewer for suggesting this line of analysis.

⁴ Contrast with “precision” searches (see Lerner, 2013), where speakers are accountably invested in “getting it right” (e.g., person or place name). Contrastively, in doing “approximation” speakers seem less attached to their searched-for word and may indicate the acceptability of alternates (through, e.g., yknow or general extenders).

⁵ This section shows five examples of midturn sniffs out of 13 in the collection. The remaining eight cases were categorized as follows: two “delicate” types, three “word search” types, and three “activity shift” types. Activity shift sniffs were not shown for space considerations, but a brief description can be given: Participants may sniff midturn prior to a change in activity, such as going from a prosaic description to an embodied reenactment or depiction. This is consistent with the analysis of other midturn sniffs in that activity shift sniffs preface a slight change in the speaker’s trajectory.

⁶ Some postcompletion sniffs seem to have a physiological motivation of recovering breath. This is apparent after laughter, which involves relatively great respiratory exertion. In the following, Lottie completes her turn with laughter and then sniffs.

NBIV10R2_1841

01   LOT: I yelled in et'er tuh Ad'line 'n God s(h)he b(h)een up

02        f::er (.) ↑HOU:RS YIHKNOW EN she's gunnuh be quiet fer

03         ↑ME¬*:..h[k      hu[.>.nhhHh<

04   EMM:            [°¬*Oh:° [°*bless'erhear:t.°

This postlaughter environment doesn’t exclusively host sniffing, however. Oral inbreaths are common after laughter (Jefferson et al., 1977, p. 66; Hepburn & Varney, 2013). Furthermore, sniffing also occurs after bouts of sobbing (Hepburn, 2004). Laughter and sobbing are both respiration-heavy activities and may occasion the intake of breath. Postlaughter sniffs may thus be part of a more general practice whereby inbreaths—oral or nasal—follow a respiration-heavy activity.

⁷ One of the two deviant cases follows, taken from the opening of a call from Dana to her boyfriend Gordon, who had called late the previous night, drunk, angering her mother.

HOLT:U&88-1-4:1

01  GOR:  How are you.

02               (0.5)

03  DAN:  I[‘m okay

04  GOR:   [.tplk

05               (.)

06  GOR:  .pk Good,

07               (0.5)

08  DAN:  Actually I'm no[t but (.) the(h)re we go:,=

09  GOR:                   [.hhh

10  GOR:  =.hhhhehhhhe:hh .hh But (.) yih (.) you are but you're

11          not. .hh[h=>.nhh< Hey listen I'm sorry about last ni:gh,

12  DAN:            [(Right)

13  DAN:  [Mm:,

14  GOR:  [.km.tch I didn't think your mum would go (0.5) .pt.k

15          over the top,

Dana is hearably irked; her response to “How are you” is a downgraded “okay” (Jefferson, 1980), which gets revised into “Actually I’m not.” Gordon treats her response as laughable (see Sacks, 1992), then in the transition space of his turn he takes an inbreath-turned-sniff. He immediately continues speaking to produce an apology. I account for this deviant case by reference to the structure of call openings (Schegloff, 1986). Ordinarily, after the how-are-you phase the caller (Dana) produces a reason-for-the-call. Given this normative structure, for Gordon to apologize as soon as possible, he would need to wrest from Dana that structurally provided opportunity. He does this with a postcompletion sniff followed by a misplacement marker “Hey listen” (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973).

⁸ Debbie and Shelley, HOLT M88.1–5, NB:IV:10:R, NB:IV:13:R, SBC28, Virginia, and Watergate419ekalm.

⁹ Not to suggest that sniffing is always disattended . Sniffing can be a meaningful act itself. For example, a sniff accompanied by widened eyes and raised brows can display surprise. Or if at a night club one asks, “Why did they go to the bathroom?,” a sniff in response can answer “to do cocaine.”

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Rubicon grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research [#44617010].