Abstract
The gesture ‘showing’ helps shape a specific activity as well as local roles and moral obligations. Against the backdrop of the activity of a father and daughter “cleaning her room”, this paper raises the question why participants choose to pick up an object rather than simply point at it. In contrast to ‘pointing’, the gesture ‘showing’ involves picking up the object moving it into the projected site of vision of the addressee to establish mutual orientation and a joint activity space. ‘Showing’ appears to be a powerful means to increase the relevance of a response against the backdrop of the trajectory of the unfolding activity. It allows for manipulations of the object and it represents a display of greater commitment, closer association or contiguity.
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Notes
- 1.
English does not have a cognate phrasal verb ‘room up’ (‘up’ as in ‘clean up’ or ‘eat up’) which would represent a most faithful translation of the German word ‘aufräumen’, suggesting both the idea of place and finishing, in the sense that the goal is to find a final place for objects where they really belong. Notions such as ‘sorting’ or ‘cleanliness’ are actually not there in the German word used by the participants. ‘Tidying’ and ‘sorting’ will be used interchangeably in this paper to translate ‘aufräumen’ into English .
- 2.
‘Zeigen’ will be translated as ‘showing ’ to reflect its everyday nature. Semantically, in German , it includes the idea of ‘indicating’, e.g. in that the ‘index finger’ is called ‘Zeigefinger’ or that the hands of a clock are called ‘Zeiger’.
- 3.
Names have been anonymised.
- 4.
The interesting question regarding under what circumstances so is left out by the father has to be answered elsewhere. This would be interesting for the issue in how far it is family resemblance (Wittgenstein 1958) is sufficient for members to recognise that some activity is being jointly maintained. There does not seem to be a direct connection to the ‘showing ’ gesture , which is the main focus of this paper.
- 5.
In this example (Transcript 5.1), an item is categorised even though it is later thrown out. This is not mandatory for objects ending on the rubbish pile. Only for the meaningful objects is a categorisation strictly necessary.
- 6.
In fact, simply the sheer number of things the girl owns (which in the end makes the activity necessary), and the fact that she has her own room and a nursery she shares with a sibling, two rooms where her things can be put, are clearly not universal circumstances of upbringing.
- 7.
This may also simply be a reflection of her sitting on the desk and having to shift her weight accordingly (cf. also her “fall” from the desk later in the transcript).
- 8.
That Dad is in the uncomfortable position of having to do a body torque (Schegloff 1998) to throw the objects that will be discarded behind him underlines that he has made a strategic decision to face the girl rather than positioning himself in a way that would allow him easy access to the different piles of objects that are being sorted.
- 9.
Since the slip of paper would have fallen out of the box at this point, this might be why he had chosen to remove it from the box earlier.
- 10.
Note that the girl is still looking down at the paper clips on her desk at this moment.
- 11.
Since the girl is currently looking at the paper clips on her desk, it is unclear what she can pick up with her peripheral vision: while the action of ‘showing ’, foremost as a movement, is probably discernable, it is questionable whether she is also able to discern a facial expression . In other words, while the quizzical expression of the father might be a cue for the analyst, for the co-participant, the daughter, it might simply not be visible .
- 12.
Examples where the girl looks but does not offer a categorisation of an object have to be discussed elsewhere. In this specific context, it seems sufficient for the dad when the girl signals the reception of the gesture by displaying that she can see the ‘showable’. The father simply continues in the general course of action by turning her non-classification of the object into tacit agreement through various embodied and verbal practices. Rather than marking her behaviour as morally questionable or non-cooperative, the dad treats her only ‘looking at the object ’ as an affirmation of his own classifications .
- 13.
This rotation seems to serve a purpose similar to that of the use of a demonstrative in right dislocation (cf. Gerhardt [2014: 94–97] where television viewers use the demonstrative pronoun that as an increment to reconnect their talk to earlier scenes on television).
- 14.
Based on the context of it use, tongue-in-cheek has been assigned different meanings: e.g. contact avoidance in unfocused interaction (Givens 1981: 225, but see Cary 1979) or jesting (Poggi et al. 2007; Attardo et al. 2003; Smith et al. 1981: 520 (all in passing only)). In German , this facial expression does not evoke the idea of “tongue-in-cheek,” a fixed phrase which does not exist in German . From personal observation, German children seem to stick their tongue into their cheek in moments of deep concentration, e.g. during writing acquisition or when drawing. There do not seem to be any in-depth studies of this phenomenon.
- 15.
In this still (Fig. 5.16), it does not look as if he is retracting his arm , but on the video it is clearly visible .
- 16.
The verbal exchange concerning the box continues for another 13.2 seconds during which Merit first needs to clarify what these parts are (her dad is looking down at the floor rather than at the slips in his hands) and during which the two negotiate the relevance of the box and the slips of paper, until 03:40.2 when Dad puts the box down as having to be reintroduced into the emerging new order of the room. This will have to be analyzed elsewhere.
- 17.
Pointing can also be done with other body parts. However, pointing with the index finger is often taken as putatively universal and the prototypical form of pointing (e.g. Kita 2003: 2).
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Elisabeth Reber, Lorenza Mondada, Harrie Mazeland, Jörg Bergmann, Geoffrey Raymond and all members of the MEmI Network as well as members of the audience of the panel on Activities in Interaction at IPrA Belfast for their comments and suggestions.
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Gerhardt, C. (2019). ‘Showing’ as a Means of Engaging a Reluctant Participant into a Joint Activity. In: Reber, E., Gerhardt, C. (eds) Embodied Activities in Face-to-face and Mediated Settings. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97325-8_5
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