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From Trouble in the Talk to New Resources: The Interplay of Bodily and Linguistic Resources in the Talk of a Speaker of English as a Second Language

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Longitudinal Studies on the Organization of Social Interaction

Abstract

This chapter explores how a family of related expressions emerge from repairs and are refined over time by a novice speaker of L2 English. We trace longitudinally a connection between a complex of deictic (pointing) and dynamic (hand movements) gestures and a small family of specific, related linguistic resources centred on the verbs “ask”, “tell”, and “say”. The data reveal that the L2 speaker packages these linguistic resources with particular gestures and re-uses these gesture-word packages in subsequent conversations. We will show in detail how the gesture-talk combination is used to display understanding and achieve intersubjectivity and how it changes over time as the gesture is subsumed by the emergent verbal language and becomes a communicative resource in its own right when circumstance demands it.

We appreciate the extensive and extremely helpful review comments to a previous version of this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Because of technical issues we cannot provide pictures to all excerpts in the chapter, but all excerpts are available for online viewing here (Explorer only): http://www.labschool.pdx.edu/Viewer/viewer.php?eskwaglongca

  2. 2.

    For more on how Carlos builds his linguistic resources in and through interaction, see Eskildsen (e.g., 2012, 2015, 2017, in press) and Eskildsen and Wagner (2015).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern Denmark, Sønderborg, Denmark

    Søren W. Eskildsen

  2. University of Southern Denmark, Kolding, Denmark

    Johannes Wagner

Authors
  1. Søren W. Eskildsen
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  2. Johannes Wagner
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Simona Pekarek Doehler

  2. Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Kolding, Denmark

    Johannes Wagner

  3. Department of Social Sciences, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland

    Esther González-Martínez

Appendix: Transcription Conventions

Appendix: Transcription Conventions

In addition to the Jeffersonian transcription symbols, we use *, #, and + to indicate the precise beginning of a nonverbal action.

/ / in a transcription line indicates a part of talk that is transcribed phonetically in the line below.

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Eskildsen, S.W., Wagner, J. (2018). From Trouble in the Talk to New Resources: The Interplay of Bodily and Linguistic Resources in the Talk of a Speaker of English as a Second Language. In: Pekarek Doehler, S., Wagner, J., González-Martínez, E. (eds) Longitudinal Studies on the Organization of Social Interaction. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57007-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57007-9_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-57006-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-57007-9

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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