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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

Insights from multimodal analysis on longitudinal interview data: the case of I don't know

Résumé

Discourse markers (DM) are usually defined as expressions with little referential meaning but multiple pragmatic functions (Pichler, 2009, p. 561). One such DM is the expression I don’t know (IDK), which is widely used by native speakers and learners alike (Baumgarten & House, 2010; Bybee & Scheibman, 1999). However, there is currently no consensus on the different functions that this DM can take in interactional discourse. Proposed functions include floor holding, topic closing, prefacing, opting out of the interaction, hedging, etc. (Pekarek Doehler, 2016), although the comparability and reliability of coding schemes for such functions is unclear. This may be in part because existing studies have largely relied on audio files or transcriptions. We hypothesize that coding may be rendered more reliable if multimodal sources of information are used to disambiguate pragmatic functions (Mondada, 2017). In particular, shrugs are frequently associated with the use of IDK (Beaupoil-Hourdel & Morgenstern, 2021, Debras, 2017), while gaze provides interesting clues as to how speakers and listeners manage interactions (Rossano 2012). In this paper, we used a case-study approach to investigate the evolution of the use of IDK by five L2 learners of English over a year abroad, a learning context demonstrated to increase DM use (Tavakoli, 2018). Five filmed semi-guided interviews were conducted over the course of 12 months. The resulting 12 hours of recordings were transcribed, and 424 instances of IDK were identified. We coded them for pragmatic function, drawing on both linguistic and multimodal cues, taking into consideration the speaker’s body posture, gestures (shoulder-lifts, palm-ups associated with lifted eyebrows and/or a mouth shrug), gaze and the prosodic contours of their vocal productions. The coding process revealed that multimodal evidence was essential in identifying pragmatic functions in more than half of all instances. On the basis of these findings, we argue for the importance of using a variety of evidence sources for pragmatic coding. Baumgarten, N., & House, J. (2010). I think and I don’t know in English as lingua franca and native English discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 1184-1200. Beaupoil-Hourdel, P., & Morgenstern, A. (2021). French and British children’s shrugs: A cross-linguistic developmental case-study of a recurrent gesture. Gesture, 20(2), 180 218. Bybee, J., & Scheibman, J. (1999). The effect of usage on degrees of constituency: The reduction of don’t in English. Linguistics, 37(4), 575-596. Debras, C. (2017). The shrug. Gesture, 16(1), 1–34. Mondada, L. (2017). Le défi de la multimodalité en interaction. Revue francaise de linguistique appliquee, 2, 71 87. Pekarek Doehler, S. (2016). More than an epistemic hedge: French je sais pas ‘I don’t know’ as a resource for the sequential organization of turns and actions. Journal of Pragmatics, 106, 148-162. Pichler, H. (2009). The functional and social reality of discourse variants in a northern English dialect: I DON’T KNOW and I DON’T THINK compared. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(4), 561-596. Rossano, F. (2012). Gaze behavior in face-to-face interaction. Doctoral Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen. Tavakoli, P. (2018). L2 development in an intensive study abroad EAP context. System, 72, 62-74.

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Linguistique
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Dates et versions

hal-04415830 , version 1 (26-01-2024)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04415830 , version 1

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Pascale Leclercq, Amanda Edmonds, Elisa Sneed German, Pauline Beaupoil-Hourdel. Insights from multimodal analysis on longitudinal interview data: the case of I don't know. EuroSLA 32, Aug 2023, Birmingham, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-04415830⟩
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