Gesture and coparticipation in the activity of searching for a word

In this paper gesture will be studied by analyzing in some detail its organization within a particular activity, searching for a word. Such an approach is quite different from others that often study such phenomena by isolating gesture from the local, interactive circumstances of its production (see, for example, Morris et al. 1979). However, by investigating gesture within particular events, it is possible to begin to study in some detail not only how participants find it to be meaningful, but also how they use that meaningfulness as a constitutive feature of the social organization of the activities they are engaged in. Data for this analysis consist of videotapes of conversations recorded in a range of natural settings (for a more complete description of these data see C. Goodwin [1981: 33-46]). We will begin by raising the issue of how participants find gesture to be a meaningful event. In the following, a speaker produces a small gesture, a wave of her hand, and immediately after this happens, the recipient nods toward her. Thus two parties are clearly working in concert; an action is performed by one and answered by another. However, how these participants interpret each other's actions, and even what they are doing together, remains inaccessible unless the activity they are involved in, and the types of coparticipation that activity makes possible, are investigated in detail. Talk is transcribed using a simplified version of the Jefferson transcription system (Sacks et al. 1974: 731-733). Dashes within parentheses mark tenths of seconds with a silence; a full second is marked by a plus sign (Example I).