Skogmyr Marian Klara
Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
Center for Applied Linguistics, Institute of Language Sciences, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Front Psychol. 2021 Sep 27;12:689443. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689443. eCollection 2021.
This study investigates the use of verbally incomplete utterances in French-language complaints about third parties or situations. In these cases, a speaker initiates a turn with verbal means but stops talking before reaching lexico-syntactic completion. The utterance becomes recognizable as an expression of negative stance or as a precise negative assessment by virtue of the linguistic formatting of the turn-initiation, its position within the larger interactional context, and the speaker's accompanying bodily-visual displays and vocalizations. Data consist of video-recorded coffee-break conversations among first and second language speakers of French. Using multimodal Conversation Analysis, the analysis documents recurrent linguistic formats of the verbally incomplete utterances and examines the interactional deployment of the utterances in two distinct sequential contexts: (1) in the initiation of complaints, and (2) at the end of complaint tellings or reports. In the first of these, the action of leaving a turn verbally incomplete and expressing stance with bodily-visual means allows the speaker to prepare the grounds for the complaint by foreshadowing the negative valence of the upcoming talk. In the latter case, the verbally incomplete utterance and accompanying vocal and/or embodied conduct are deployed as a summary assessment or upshot of the complaint which shows, rather than merely describes, the complaint-worthiness of the situation. In both cases, the utterances work to enhance the chances for the speaker to obtain affiliative responses from coparticipants. While prior studies on verbally incomplete utterances have suggested that such utterances may be specifically suitable for subtly dealing with delicate actions, in this study the utterances are sometimes produced as part of multimodal 'extreme-case expressions' that convey negative stance in a high-grade manner. The findings contribute to a better understanding of interactional uses of verbally incomplete utterances and of the multimodal nature of negative assessments. The study thereby furthers our understanding of how grammar and the body interface as resources for the accomplishment of context-specific actions and the organization of social interaction.
本研究调查了在法语中对第三方或情况进行抱怨时使用的言语不完整话语。在这些情况下，说话者用言语手段开启话轮，但在达到词汇句法完整之前就停止说话。凭借话轮开启的语言形式、其在更大互动语境中的位置以及说话者伴随的身体视觉展示和发声，该话语可被识别为负面立场的表达或精确的负面评价。数据包括以法语为母语和非母语者在咖啡休息时间的视频对话记录。运用多模态会话分析，该分析记录了言语不完整话语的反复出现的语言形式，并考察了这些话语在两个不同序列语境中的互动运用：（1）在抱怨的开启阶段，以及（2）在抱怨讲述或报告的结尾。在第一种情况下，以言语不完整并通过身体视觉手段表达立场的行为，使说话者能够通过预示即将到来的谈话的负面倾向为抱怨奠定基础。在后一种情况下，言语不完整话语以及伴随的发声和/或身体行为被用作抱怨的总结性评价或结果，它展示而非仅仅描述该情况值得抱怨之处。在这两种情况下，这些话语都有助于提高说话者从共同参与者那里获得认同回应的机会。虽然先前关于言语不完整话语的研究表明，此类话语可能特别适合微妙地处理微妙行为，但在本研究中，这些话语有时是作为多模态“极端情况表达”的一部分产生的，以高度的方式传达负面立场。这些发现有助于更好地理解言语不完整话语的互动用法以及负面评价的多模态性质。该研究从而进一步加深了我们对语法和身体如何作为实现特定语境行为和组织社会互动的资源相互作用的理解。
