The Alignment of Manual and Verbal Displays in Requests for the Repair of an Object

In this study we explore request sequences at an American shoe repair shop. We investigate the methods through which customers at the shop present objects for repair or alteration, focusing on the fine interplay between their verbal requests and their manual manipulation of these objects. Our analysis shows that customers coming to the shoe repair shop enact an epistemic stance toward the object they have brought in for repair. We argue that the verbal utterances and manual manipulations are fitted to one another with regard to the epistemic stance individual customers display: Customers whose requests are formulated, for instance, as problem descriptions or as inquiries into the repairability of an object manipulate the object only very minimally, if at all; whereas customers whose requests are formulated as solution specifications manipulate the object in ways that also evidence the problem and/or its solution. The data are in American English.

[1]  Eric Hauser.  Book review: Fabienne HG Chevalier and John Moore (eds), Producing and Managing Restricted Activities: Avoidance and Withholding in Institutional Interaction , 2016 .

[2]  Trine Heinemann,et al.  Rethinking format: An examination of requests , 2016, Language in Society.

[3]  Anna Gerber,et al.  Communication In Medical Care Interaction Between Primary Care Physicians And Patients , 2016 .

[4]  Giovanni Rossi,et al.  The request system in Italian interaction , 2015, ICCA 2015.

[5]  Maurice Nevile,et al.  The Embodied Turn in Research on Language and Social Interaction , 2015 .

[6]  Orchestrating directive trajectories in communicative projects in family interaction , 2014 .

[7]  Paul Drew,et al.  Requesting in social interaction , 2014 .

[8]  Giovanni Rossi.  When do people not use language to make requests , 2014 .

[9]  Marja-Leena Sorjonen,et al.  On the grammatical form of requests at the convenience store , 2014 .

[10]  E. Stokoe,et al.  The order of ordering: Objects, requests and embodied conduct in a public bar , 2014 .

[11]  John Heritage,et al.  Action formation and its epistemic (and other) backgrounds , 2013 .

[12]  Tiina Keisanen,et al.  The Organization of Participation and Contingency in Prebeginnings of Request Sequences , 2012 .

[13]  M. Rauniomaa,et al.  Two multimodal formats for responding to requests , 2012 .

[14]  John Heritage,et al.  Epistemics in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge , 2012 .

[15]  John Heritage,et al.  The Epistemic Engine: Sequence Organization and Territories of Knowledge , 2012 .

[16]  Seung-Hee Lee,et al.  Managing Nongranting of Customers' Requests in Commercial Service Encounters , 2011 .

[17]  Jakob Steensig,et al.  The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation: Proposing shared knowledge as a means of pursuing agreement , 2011 .

[18]  Jakob Steensig,et al.  The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation: Acknowledgements , 2011 .

[19]  Trine Heinemann,et al.  Realization as a Device for Remedying Problems of Affiliation in Interaction , 2010 .

[20]  Andrea Golato.  Marking understanding versus receipting information in talk: Achso. and ach in German interaction , 2010 .

[21]  Jacki O'Neill,et al.  Designing for Diagnosing: Introduction to the Special Issue on Diagnostic Work , 2009, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[22]  Jürgen Streeck,et al.  Gesturecraft: The manu-facture of meaning , 2009 .

[23]  Galina B. Bolden.  “So What's Up?”: Using the Discourse Marker So to Launch Conversational Business , 2008 .

[24]  P. Drew,et al.  Contingency and Action: A Comparison of Two Forms of Requesting , 2008 .

[25]  Jürgen Streeck,et al.  Depicting by gesture , 2008 .

[26]  Charles Goodwin,et al.  15 Environmentally Coupled Gestures , 2007 .

[27]  M. Goodwin.  Participation, affect, and trajectory in family directive/response sequences , 2006 .

[28]  Jeffrey D. Robinson.  Accounting for the visit: giving reasons for seeking medical care , 2006 .

[29]  Aug Nishizaka,et al.  What to Learn: The Embodied Structure of the Environment , 2006 .

[30]  Margaret H. Szymanski,et al.  Would You Like to Do it Yourself? Service Requests and Their Non-granting Responses , 2005 .

[31]  Geoffrey Raymond.  Prompting Action: The Stand-Alone "So" in Ordinary Conversation , 2004 .

[32]  Richard Gwyn,et al.  The Semiotic Body in its Environment , 2001 .

[33]  C. Goodwin.  Action and embodiment within situated human interaction , 2000 .

[34]  J. Streeck.  Gesture as communication II: The audience as co-author. , 1994 .

[35]  Wayne A. Beach,et al.  Transitional regularities for ‘casual’ “Okay” usages , 1993 .

[36]  S. Woolgar,et al.  Introduction: Sociological orientations to representational practice in science , 1988 .

[37]  Jack Whalen,et al.  Sociology as a Natural Observational Science@@@Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. , 1987 .

[38]  C. Goodwin.  Gestures as a resource for the organization of mutual orientation , 1986 .