Turns and turn-taking in sign language interaction: A study of turn-final holds
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Authors
Pochon-Berger, Evelyne
Author (Corporation)
Publication date
2014
Typ of student thesis
Course of study
Collections
Type
01A - Journal article
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Supervisor
Parent work
Journal of Pragmatics
Special issue
DOI of the original publication
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Series number
Volume
65
Issue / Number
May
Pages / Duration
121-136
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Publisher / Publishing institution
Elsevier
Place of publication / Event location
Edition
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Programming language
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Abstract
This article examines a recurrent phenomenon in sign language interaction: the freezing of a sign, called a ‘hold’, in turn-final position. This phenomenon is traditionally described as a prosodic feature that contributes to the rhythm of signed talk and to the marking of syntactic boundaries, hence not adding any propositional content on its own. A detailed observation of these holds in naturally occurring conversational data, however, raises the following questions: What is the relevance of such holds in the management of turn-taking? What meaningful social action do they accomplish? Based on 90 min of video-recordings of Swiss German Sign Language (DSGS) interaction within an institutional setting, we undertake micro-sequential and multimodal analyses yielding the following findings (1) turn-final holds occur recurrently in turns that set a strong action projection (e.g. questions), (2) they embody the current speaker's expectations regarding next actions; and therefore (3) their release is finely tuned to the recognizability of the relevant and expected next action in progress.
Keywords
sign language, interaction, turn-taking
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ISBN
ISSN
0378-2166
1879-1387
1879-1387
Language
English
Created during FHNW affiliation
No
Strategic action fields FHNW
Publication status
Published
Review
Peer review of the complete publication
Open access category
License
Citation
Girard, S., & Pochon-Berger, E. (2014). Turns and turn-taking in sign language interaction: A study of turn-final holds. Journal of Pragmatics, 65(May), 121–136. http://hdl.handle.net/11654/26124