Multimodality, Interaction and Turn-taking in Mandarin Conversation
| University of Alberta
One major feature of conversation is that people take turns to speak. Based on audio and video recordings of naturally-occurring Mandarin conversation, this book explores the role of syntax, prosody, body movements as well as their interplay in turn organization in the temporal unfolding of action and interaction. Adopting the methodology of interactional linguistics, this book offers a fine-grained analysis of the three multimodal resources and the sequential environments in which they appear. It demonstrates that syntax, prosody and body movements not only converge but also diverge in projecting possible turn completion. As one of the few systematic studies of multimodality in Mandarin interaction, this book will be of interest to researchers in Chinese linguistics, interactional linguistics, conversation analysis, and multimodal analysis.
[Studies in Chinese Language and Discourse, 3] 2014. xi, 265 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Transcription conventions | pp. ix–x
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Glossing conventions | pp. xi–xii
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Chapter 1. Introduction | pp. 1–22
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Chapter 2. Preliminaries and methodology | pp. 23–32
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Chapter 3. Syntax in turn organization | pp. 33–70
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Chapter 4. Prosody in turn organization | pp. 71–138
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Chapter 5. Body movements in turn organization | pp. 139–194
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Chapter 6. Interplay of syntax, prosody, body movements and pragmatic resources in turn organization | pp. 195–240
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Chapter 7. Conclusion | pp. 241–246
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References | pp. 247–264
“One of the most important contributions of this monograph is that it studies, for the first time, Mandarin Chinese conversation in terms of the linguistic units related to TCUs and the linguistic cues to project turn ending. Another important contribution is that the monograph adds a new dimension, visual resource (i.e. body movement), and studies systematically the interplay of the three multimodality resources (i.e. syntax, prosody and body movement) with pragmatic resource in the construction and organization of turns. [...] This monograph is easy to read for those who are interested in Chinese but do not know Chinese. Li elaborates all the findings with many examples, each of which is followed by detailed interpretation.”
Xia Liu, University of International Business and Economics, P.R. China, in Discourse Studies, Vol. 18(6), 2016
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Subjects & Metadata
BIC Subject: CF/2GDC – Linguistics/Chinese
BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General