Eye closures in spoken Hebrew: Conversational functions and meaning semiosis
The present study focuses on eye closure (EC) as a communicative facial gesture in Israeli Hebrew media talk and pays particular attention to its coordination with co-expressive verbal, prosodic, and embodied resources. Drawing on the interactional approach to language and embodied action, the study demonstrates that EC can convey four contextual meanings — concentration, hedging, negation, and totality — depending on the context in which it occurs and the verbal material with which it is co-produced. The paper proposes that these contextual meanings are derived from the more general meaning of disengagement conveyed by EC. Moreover, the present paper suggests several potential semiotic connections between the basic physiological use of EC as a reflex of self-protection and evasion and its observed contextual meanings. This provides evidence for the co-optation of the basic functions of facial gestures for communicative purposes via metaphorical-metonymical extensions.
Publication history
1.Introduction
Eye closure (EC) is a facial gesture in the eye region that involves the complete and temporary closure of the eyelids. While the communicative potential of other gestures in the eye region — notably gaze direction (Kendon 1967Kendon, Adam 1967 “Some Functions of Gaze-Direction in Social Interaction.” Acta Psychologica 26: 22–63. Kendon, Adam 1967 “Some Functions of Gaze-Direction in Social Interaction.” Acta Psychologica 26: 22–63. ; Goodwin 1981Goodwin, Charles 1981 Conversational Organization: Interaction Between Speakers and Hearers. New York: Academic Press.Goodwin, Charles 1981 Conversational Organization: Interaction Between Speakers and Hearers. New York: Academic Press.; Rossano 2012Rossano, Federico 2012 “Gaze in Conversation.” In Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 308–329. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Rossano, Federico 2012 “Gaze in Conversation.” In Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 308–329. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. ) and the eyebrow raise (Ekman 1979Ekman, Paul 1979 “About Brows: Emotional and Conversational Signals.” In Human Ethology, ed. by Meinrad von Cranach, Kurt Foppa, Wolf Lepenies, and Detlev Ploog, 169–249. Cambridge University Press.Ekman, Paul 1979 “About Brows: Emotional and Conversational Signals.” In Human Ethology, ed. by Meinrad von Cranach, Kurt Foppa, Wolf Lepenies, and Detlev Ploog, 169–249. Cambridge University Press.; Chovil 1991/1992Chovil, Nicole 1991/1992 “Discourse-Oriented Facial Displays in Conversation.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 25: 163–194. Chovil, Nicole 1991/1992 “Discourse-Oriented Facial Displays in Conversation.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 25: 163–194. ; Ambrazaitis and House 2017Ambrazaitis, Gilbert, and David House 2017 “Multimodal Prominence: Exploring the Pattern and Usage of Focal Pitch Accents, Head Beats and Eyebrow Beats in Swedish Television.” Speech Communication 95: 100–113. Ambrazaitis, Gilbert, and David House 2017 “Multimodal Prominence: Exploring the Pattern and Usage of Focal Pitch Accents, Head Beats and Eyebrow Beats in Swedish Television.” Speech Communication 95: 100–113. ; Dix and Groß 2024Dix, Carolin, and Alexandra Groß 2024 “Surprise About News or Just Receiving Information? Moving and Holding Both Eyebrows in Co-Present Interaction.” Social Interaction: Video — Based Studies of Human Sociality 6 (3).Dix, Carolin, and Alexandra Groß 2024 “Surprise About News or Just Receiving Information? Moving and Holding Both Eyebrows in Co-Present Interaction.” Social Interaction: Video — Based Studies of Human Sociality 6 (3).) — has received robust corroboration, the communicative capacity of EC is relatively understudied. Closing one’s eyes for a period longer than a blink is a physiological reflex triggered by, and simultaneously reflecting, various physiological, cognitive, and psychological states that are not necessarily related to interaction. While at their core, ECs serve as a protective reflex triggered by rapidly approaching objects or bright light (Darwin 1872/1998Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.; Fridlund 1994Fridlund, Alan J. 1994 Human Facial Expression: An Evolutionary View. Academic Press.Fridlund, Alan J. 1994 Human Facial Expression: An Evolutionary View. Academic Press.; Hunyor 1994Hunyor, Alexander 1994 “Reflexes and the Eye.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Ophthalmology 22: 155–159. Hunyor, Alexander 1994 “Reflexes and the Eye.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Ophthalmology 22: 155–159. ), ECs have also been associated with performing complex cognitive activities (Glenberg et al. 1998Glenberg, Arthur M., Janet L. Schroeder, and David A. Robertson 1998 “Averting the Gaze Disengages the Environment and Facilitates Remembering.” Memory & Cognition 26: 651–658. Glenberg, Arthur M., Janet L. Schroeder, and David A. Robertson 1998 “Averting the Gaze Disengages the Environment and Facilitates Remembering.” Memory & Cognition 26: 651–658. ; Doherty-Sneddon et al. 2002Doherty-Sneddon, Gwyneth, Vicky Bruce, Leslie Bonner, Sarah Longbotham, and Caroline Doyle 2002 “Development of Gaze Aversion as Disengagement from Visual Information.” Developmental Psychology 38: 438–445. Doherty-Sneddon, Gwyneth, Vicky Bruce, Leslie Bonner, Sarah Longbotham, and Caroline Doyle 2002 “Development of Gaze Aversion as Disengagement from Visual Information.” Developmental Psychology 38: 438–445. ; Markson and Paterson 2009Markson, Lucy, and Kevin B. Paterson 2009 “Effects of Gaze-Aversion on Visual-Spatial Imagination.” British Journal of Psychology 100 (3): 553–563. Markson, Lucy, and Kevin B. Paterson 2009 “Effects of Gaze-Aversion on Visual-Spatial Imagination.” British Journal of Psychology 100 (3): 553–563. ; Vredeveldt et al. 2014Vredeveldt, Annelies, Alan D. Baddeley, and Graham J. Hitch 2014 “The Effectiveness of Eye-Closure in Repeated Interviews.” Legal and Criminological Psychology 19 (2): 282–295. Vredeveldt, Annelies, Alan D. Baddeley, and Graham J. Hitch 2014 “The Effectiveness of Eye-Closure in Repeated Interviews.” Legal and Criminological Psychology 19 (2): 282–295. ), with expression of drowsiness and fatigue (Schleicher et al. 2008Schleicher, Robert, Niels Galley, Susanne Briest, and Lars Galley 2008 “Blinks and Saccades as Indicators of Fatigue in Sleepiness Warnings: Looking Tired?” Ergonomics 51 (7): 982–1010. Schleicher, Robert, Niels Galley, Susanne Briest, and Lars Galley 2008 “Blinks and Saccades as Indicators of Fatigue in Sleepiness Warnings: Looking Tired?” Ergonomics 51 (7): 982–1010. ), and with pain display (Kunz et al. 2019Kunz, Miriam, Doris Meixner, and Stefan Lautenbacher 2019 “Facial Muscle Movements Encoding Pain — A Systematic Review.” Pain 160 (3): 535–549. Kunz, Miriam, Doris Meixner, and Stefan Lautenbacher 2019 “Facial Muscle Movements Encoding Pain — A Systematic Review.” Pain 160 (3): 535–549. ). In addition, prior linguistic research has proposed that ECs can also hold communicative value, such as conveying the concepts affirmation/negation (Grishina 2013Grishina, Elena 2013 “Eye Behavior in Russian Spoken Interaction and Its Correlation with Affirmation and Negation.” In Approaches to Slavic Interaction, ed. by Nadine Thielemann, and Peter Kosta, 63–83. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Grishina, Elena 2013 “Eye Behavior in Russian Spoken Interaction and Its Correlation with Affirmation and Negation.” In Approaches to Slavic Interaction, ed. by Nadine Thielemann, and Peter Kosta, 63–83. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 2017 2017 Russkaya Zhestikulyatsiya s Lingvisticheskoy Tochki Zreniya [Russian gestures from a linguistic perspective]. Moscow: Jazyki Slavyanskoy Kul’tury. 2017 Russkaya Zhestikulyatsiya s Lingvisticheskoy Tochki Zreniya [Russian gestures from a linguistic perspective]. Moscow: Jazyki Slavyanskoy Kul’tury.) and high quantity/commitment (Vincze and Poggi 2011Vincze, Laura, and Isabella Poggi 2011 “Communicative Functions of Eye Closing Behaviours.” In Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication and Enactment: The Processing Issues, ed. by Anna Esposito, Alessandro Vinciarelli, Klára Vicsi, Catherine Pelachaud, and Anton Nijholt, 393–405. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. Vincze, Laura, and Isabella Poggi 2011 “Communicative Functions of Eye Closing Behaviours.” In Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication and Enactment: The Processing Issues, ed. by Anna Esposito, Alessandro Vinciarelli, Klára Vicsi, Catherine Pelachaud, and Anton Nijholt, 393–405. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. , 2022 2022 “Multimodal Signals of High Commitment in Expert-to-Expert Contexts.” Discourse & Communication 16 (6): 693–715. 2022 “Multimodal Signals of High Commitment in Expert-to-Expert Contexts.” Discourse & Communication 16 (6): 693–715. ). Building on this prior research, the present paper aims to examine the conversational functions performed by ECs, and pays particular attention to their intra-personal coordination with other verbal, prosodic, and embodied resources. In addition, the present paper aims to discuss potential transition routes from the physiological-cognitive uses of EC to their communicative functions.
I begin the discussion with a short review of the literature on the functions of EC from various perspectives (Section 2). After presenting the data and methodology underlying the present study (Section 3), I provide a structural and sequential analysis of the communicative EC in my data and illustrate four contextual meanings the EC conveys (Section 4). I then conclude by discussing potential semiotic connections between the physiological-cognitive uses of ECs and their communicative uses (Section 5).
2.ECs — a physiological and communicative perspective
Since a temporary closure of the eyelids occurs most frequently during blinking, many studies have adopted a threshold of 500 ms in order to differentiate between blinks and eye closures that are not blinks (see Caffier et al. 2003Caffier, Philipp P., Udo Erdmann, and Peter Ullsperger 2003 “Experimental Evaluation of Eye — Blink Parameters as a Drowsiness Measure.” European Journal of Applied Physiology 89 (3): 319–325. Caffier, Philipp P., Udo Erdmann, and Peter Ullsperger 2003 “Experimental Evaluation of Eye — Blink Parameters as a Drowsiness Measure.” European Journal of Applied Physiology 89 (3): 319–325. ; Wang et al. 2011Wang, Yangfan, Sonya S. Toor, Ramesh Gautam, and David B. Henson 2011 “Blink Frequency and Duration During Perimetry and Their Relationship to Test–Retest Threshold Variability.” Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science 52 (7): 4546–4550. Wang, Yangfan, Sonya S. Toor, Ramesh Gautam, and David B. Henson 2011 “Blink Frequency and Duration During Perimetry and Their Relationship to Test–Retest Threshold Variability.” Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science 52 (7): 4546–4550. ; Murali and Händel 2021Murali, Supriya, and Barbara Händel 2021 “The Latency of Spontaneous Eye Blinks Marks Relevant Visual and Auditory Information Processing.” Journal of Vision 21 (6): 1–12. Murali, Supriya, and Barbara Händel 2021 “The Latency of Spontaneous Eye Blinks Marks Relevant Visual and Auditory Information Processing.” Journal of Vision 21 (6): 1–12. ). The closing of the eyelids for longer than a blink, termed an EC in the present study, has mainly been described from non-communicative perspectives as facial movements that potentially reflect a person’s physiological, cognitive, and psychological states.
In what appears to be their core use, ECs function as a protective reflex triggered by tactile, visual, and auditory stimuli that are perceived as a threat, such as rapidly approaching objects or bright lights (Darwin 1872/1998Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.; Fridlund 1994Fridlund, Alan J. 1994 Human Facial Expression: An Evolutionary View. Academic Press.Fridlund, Alan J. 1994 Human Facial Expression: An Evolutionary View. Academic Press.; Hunyor 1994Hunyor, Alexander 1994 “Reflexes and the Eye.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Ophthalmology 22: 155–159. Hunyor, Alexander 1994 “Reflexes and the Eye.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Ophthalmology 22: 155–159. ). By extension, ECs can be used as a reaction to unpleasant behaviour. In such cases, the EC implies that “the despised person is not worth looking at, or is disagreeable to behold”, and is consequently “highly expressive of disdain” (Darwin 1872/1998Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray., 266). From a cognitive perspective, ECs, together with other practices of gaze aversion, have been observed in people performing complex cognitive tasks, such as remembering information, thinking about an answer to a question, or recalling distant memories. Many experimental studies have shown that gaze aversion improves performance in such tasks, arguably because gaze aversion enables one to disengage one’s visual attention from irrelevant visual information, as well as to interrupt the social interaction processes involved in face-to-face communication (Glenberg et al. 1998Glenberg, Arthur M., Janet L. Schroeder, and David A. Robertson 1998 “Averting the Gaze Disengages the Environment and Facilitates Remembering.” Memory & Cognition 26: 651–658. Glenberg, Arthur M., Janet L. Schroeder, and David A. Robertson 1998 “Averting the Gaze Disengages the Environment and Facilitates Remembering.” Memory & Cognition 26: 651–658. ; Doherty-Sneddon et al. 2002Doherty-Sneddon, Gwyneth, Vicky Bruce, Leslie Bonner, Sarah Longbotham, and Caroline Doyle 2002 “Development of Gaze Aversion as Disengagement from Visual Information.” Developmental Psychology 38: 438–445. Doherty-Sneddon, Gwyneth, Vicky Bruce, Leslie Bonner, Sarah Longbotham, and Caroline Doyle 2002 “Development of Gaze Aversion as Disengagement from Visual Information.” Developmental Psychology 38: 438–445. ; Markson and Paterson 2009Markson, Lucy, and Kevin B. Paterson 2009 “Effects of Gaze-Aversion on Visual-Spatial Imagination.” British Journal of Psychology 100 (3): 553–563. Markson, Lucy, and Kevin B. Paterson 2009 “Effects of Gaze-Aversion on Visual-Spatial Imagination.” British Journal of Psychology 100 (3): 553–563. ; Vredeveldt et al. 2014Vredeveldt, Annelies, Alan D. Baddeley, and Graham J. Hitch 2014 “The Effectiveness of Eye-Closure in Repeated Interviews.” Legal and Criminological Psychology 19 (2): 282–295. Vredeveldt, Annelies, Alan D. Baddeley, and Graham J. Hitch 2014 “The Effectiveness of Eye-Closure in Repeated Interviews.” Legal and Criminological Psychology 19 (2): 282–295. ). In this regard, ECs can also serve as a means of concentrating focus and intensifying emotional reactions, particularly within the context of spiritual and religious rituals (Fingesten 1959Fingesten, Peter 1959 “Sight and Insight: A Contribution Toward an Iconography of the Eye.” Criticism 1 (1): 19–31.Fingesten, Peter 1959 “Sight and Insight: A Contribution Toward an Iconography of the Eye.” Criticism 1 (1): 19–31.; Nash et al. 2013Nash, Jonathan D., Andrew Newberg, and Bhuvanesh Awasthi 2013 “Toward a Unifying Taxonomy and Definition for Meditation.” Frontiers in Psychology 4: 806. Nash, Jonathan D., Andrew Newberg, and Bhuvanesh Awasthi 2013 “Toward a Unifying Taxonomy and Definition for Meditation.” Frontiers in Psychology 4: 806. ; Mattes et al. 2019Mattes, Dominik, Omar Kasmani, and Hansjörg Dilger 2019 “All Eyes Closed. Dis/Sensing in Comparative Fieldwork on Affective-Religious Experiences.” In Analyzing Affective Societies: Methods and Methodologies, ed. by Antje Kahl, 265–278. London: Routledge. Mattes, Dominik, Omar Kasmani, and Hansjörg Dilger 2019 “All Eyes Closed. Dis/Sensing in Comparative Fieldwork on Affective-Religious Experiences.” In Analyzing Affective Societies: Methods and Methodologies, ed. by Antje Kahl, 265–278. London: Routledge. ), contemplating positive experiences and emotions (Gratiolet 1865Gratiolet, Pierre 1865 De La Physionomie et des Mouvements d’Expression. Paris: Hetzel. Gratiolet, Pierre 1865 De La Physionomie et des Mouvements d’Expression. Paris: Hetzel. , 217, cited in Darwin 1872/1998Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray., 174), or while listening to music (Lerner et al. 2009Lerner, Yulia, David Papo, Andrey Zhdanov, Libi Belozersky, and Talma Hendler 2009 “Eyes Wide Shut: Amygdala Mediates Eyes-Closed Effect on Emotional Experience with Music.” PLoS One 4: e6230. Lerner, Yulia, David Papo, Andrey Zhdanov, Libi Belozersky, and Talma Hendler 2009 “Eyes Wide Shut: Amygdala Mediates Eyes-Closed Effect on Emotional Experience with Music.” PLoS One 4: e6230. ).
The communicative potential of ECs was hinted at by Darwin (1872/1998Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray., 34), who stated that “persons in describing a horrid sight often shut their eyes momentarily and firmly, or shake their heads, as if not to see or to drive away something disagreeable”. More recently, Ekman (1997 1997 “Expressive Behavior and the Recovery of a Traumatic Memory: Comments on the Videotapes of Jane Doe.” Child Maltreatment 2 (2): 113–116. 1997 “Expressive Behavior and the Recovery of a Traumatic Memory: Comments on the Videotapes of Jane Doe.” Child Maltreatment 2 (2): 113–116. , 115) observed “longer than usual closures of both eyes” during the speech of a seventeen-year-old girl who had experienced abuse as a child. These ECs were produced co-extensively with describing what her mother had said, and were interpreted by Ekman as “signs that she does not want to see what she is talking about” (ibid., 115). Relatedly, Calbris (2011Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 211) mentioned ECs as one type of evasive reflex, together with turning the head away and miming the act of vomiting, which originally allowed one to evade aggression directed at the face and to protect the facial sensory organs. According to Calbris, such reflexes were then extended to convey evasion of ideas.
Approaching this topic from a discursive usage-based perspective, Vincze and Poggi (2011Vincze, Laura, and Isabella Poggi 2011 “Communicative Functions of Eye Closing Behaviours.” In Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication and Enactment: The Processing Issues, ed. by Anna Esposito, Alessandro Vinciarelli, Klára Vicsi, Catherine Pelachaud, and Anton Nijholt, 393–405. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. Vincze, Laura, and Isabella Poggi 2011 “Communicative Functions of Eye Closing Behaviours.” In Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication and Enactment: The Processing Issues, ed. by Anna Esposito, Alessandro Vinciarelli, Klára Vicsi, Catherine Pelachaud, and Anton Nijholt, 393–405. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. , 2022 2022 “Multimodal Signals of High Commitment in Expert-to-Expert Contexts.” Discourse & Communication 16 (6): 693–715. 2022 “Multimodal Signals of High Commitment in Expert-to-Expert Contexts.” Discourse & Communication 16 (6): 693–715. ) observed that EC could function as a marker of high quantity/commitment (‘it is really a lot/so’). The ECs in their study were found to appear with quantifiers denoting large amounts (e.g., many, three million, so much) or with adverbs of high degree (e.g., very, widely). The authors suggested that in these contexts, EC evokes the speaker’s mental effort to depict high quantities. The communicative potential of ECs was also demonstrated by Grishina (2013Grishina, Elena 2013 “Eye Behavior in Russian Spoken Interaction and Its Correlation with Affirmation and Negation.” In Approaches to Slavic Interaction, ed. by Nadine Thielemann, and Peter Kosta, 63–83. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Grishina, Elena 2013 “Eye Behavior in Russian Spoken Interaction and Its Correlation with Affirmation and Negation.” In Approaches to Slavic Interaction, ed. by Nadine Thielemann, and Peter Kosta, 63–83. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 2017 2017 Russkaya Zhestikulyatsiya s Lingvisticheskoy Tochki Zreniya [Russian gestures from a linguistic perspective]. Moscow: Jazyki Slavyanskoy Kul’tury. 2017 Russkaya Zhestikulyatsiya s Lingvisticheskoy Tochki Zreniya [Russian gestures from a linguistic perspective]. Moscow: Jazyki Slavyanskoy Kul’tury.) based on their occurrence in Russian cinematic discourse. Grishina differentiated between ECs that function as full gestures and ECs that function as embedded gestures. As full gestures, ECs are said to convey the meanings “to become unseeing” and “to vanish” in situations in which speakers wish to protect themselves from informational or social inconvenience (Grishina 2013Grishina, Elena 2013 “Eye Behavior in Russian Spoken Interaction and Its Correlation with Affirmation and Negation.” In Approaches to Slavic Interaction, ed. by Nadine Thielemann, and Peter Kosta, 63–83. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Grishina, Elena 2013 “Eye Behavior in Russian Spoken Interaction and Its Correlation with Affirmation and Negation.” In Approaches to Slavic Interaction, ed. by Nadine Thielemann, and Peter Kosta, 63–83. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 72–73). By contrast, as embedded gestures, ECs reportedly convey the meanings of affirmation or negation, but only when used in combination with explicit markers of affirmation or negation, which can be verbal (da ‘yes’ and net ‘no’, respectively) or embodied (a head nod and a headshake, respectively) (ibid., 75). Grishina hypothesized that the meaning of negation in such cases was derived metaphorically from leaving the zone of communication and breaking contact with the interlocutor, which was achieved by both the headshake and the EC.
Despite stemming from different disciplines and involving different languages, these prior accounts and studies appear to suggest that EC may have communicative potential. Building on these prior studies, the present study explores how EC is used by Hebrew speakers to convey meaning.
3.Data and methodology
The present analysis is based on a corpus of ten episodes of the television talk show A rendezvous with Roni Kuban broadcast on the Kan 11 channel. The program is a personal interview program formatted as a friendly conversation between the program’s host and prominent personalities in Israeli society. The use of this type of data was motivated by the availability of close-up facial images that facilitated the analysis of the ECs. However, the study has some limitations due to the choice of these data. A significant drawback is that the camera’s position does not always allow one to examine the recipient’s responses. In addition, as the data might not reflect real spontaneous everyday conversations, incorporating such spontaneous material in future research is recommended.
The selection of sequences containing ECs was initially based on the author’s perception of the ECs. Instances shorter than 500 ms — a threshold differentiating between blinks and eye closures that are not blinks that has been adopted in many studies (see Caffier et al. 2003Caffier, Philipp P., Udo Erdmann, and Peter Ullsperger 2003 “Experimental Evaluation of Eye — Blink Parameters as a Drowsiness Measure.” European Journal of Applied Physiology 89 (3): 319–325. Caffier, Philipp P., Udo Erdmann, and Peter Ullsperger 2003 “Experimental Evaluation of Eye — Blink Parameters as a Drowsiness Measure.” European Journal of Applied Physiology 89 (3): 319–325. ; Wang et al. 2011Wang, Yangfan, Sonya S. Toor, Ramesh Gautam, and David B. Henson 2011 “Blink Frequency and Duration During Perimetry and Their Relationship to Test–Retest Threshold Variability.” Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science 52 (7): 4546–4550. Wang, Yangfan, Sonya S. Toor, Ramesh Gautam, and David B. Henson 2011 “Blink Frequency and Duration During Perimetry and Their Relationship to Test–Retest Threshold Variability.” Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science 52 (7): 4546–4550. ; Murali and Händel 2021Murali, Supriya, and Barbara Händel 2021 “The Latency of Spontaneous Eye Blinks Marks Relevant Visual and Auditory Information Processing.” Journal of Vision 21 (6): 1–12. Murali, Supriya, and Barbara Händel 2021 “The Latency of Spontaneous Eye Blinks Marks Relevant Visual and Auditory Information Processing.” Journal of Vision 21 (6): 1–12. ) — were excluded from the analysis. This procedure resulted in ninety instances of ECs with a duration of at least 500 ms, which were subsequently coded for: (1) duration; (2) temporal coordination with affiliated verbal material; (3) co-occurring embodied resources; and (4) the prosodic properties of the affiliated utterances. Visual and acoustic analyses were supported by ELAN (ELAN 2021ELAN (Version 6.0) [Computer Software] 2020 Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Language Archive. https://archive.mpi.nl/tla/elanELAN (Version 6.0) [Computer Software] 2020 Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Language Archive. https://archive.mpi.nl/tla/elan) and PRAAT (Boersma and Weenink 2021Boersma, Paul, and David Weenink 2021 Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer (Version 6.1.40) [Computer Program]. http://www.praat.org/Boersma, Paul, and David Weenink 2021 Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer (Version 6.1.40) [Computer Program]. http://www.praat.org/).
The analysis of these sequences has identified four contextual meanings conveyed by EC: concentration in the context of word search (Section 4.1), hedging in the context of claiming insufficient knowledge (Section 4.2), negation in the context of rejecting claims (Section 4.3), and totality in the context of extreme case formulations (Section 4.4). It is suggested that these contextual meanings are unified by a generic meaning of disengagement, which is locally specialized depending on the object to which it is directed. Section 5 will propose that the meaning of disengagement originates in the physiological use of EC as a reflex of self-protection.
4.Analysis
4.1ECs co-produced with word search — indexing concentration
This section illustrates the use of EC within the context of word search, often taking place mid-phrase simultaneously with a filled pause and excessive elongation. This use is illustrated by the following excerpt taken from a segment in which the speakers discuss the topic of aging in show business. Prior to the excerpt, the guest — a well-known Israeli singer — asserted that show business is a world of illusions and that one has to work hard to maintain these illusions. At the beginning of the excerpt, the host formulates the guest’s prior turn via an az ‘so’-prefaced formulation (line 1) that proposes a somewhat extreme inference about the guest’s self-perception as not growing old and remaining exactly the same.11.Prosodic notation: | minor boundary; || major boundary; / major boundary with “appeal” tone; (0.5) pause measured in seconds; ::: elongation. Embodied action notation: actions are described on a separate line marked in green; whenever relevant, the action is delimited between two identical signs (*…*); *---> The action described continues across subsequent lines until the same symbol is reached.
(Rendezvous with Roni Kuban, with Yardena Arazi; 27:37)
1 H: az ha-ashlaya hi she| ani lo mizdakenet| ani nisheret bediyuk
so def-illusion she that I neg get.old.sgf I stay.sgf exactly
So the illusion is that I’m not getting old, I’m staying exactly,
2 G: lo| tire| ze barur she roim et-ha-emet||
no look this clear that see.plm acc-def-truth
No, look, obviously, one sees the truth,
3 aval ani ken menasa lishmor al-sug.shel|
but I yes try.sgf keep.inf on-kind.of,
But I do try to maintain kind of,
gaze to the right
4 digniti|
dignity
gaze upwards
5 ⟹ sug.shel-e:|
kind.of uh
eye EC (0.7 sec)
6 shel-e::|
of uh
eye slightly opened, gaze down
7 H: estetika||
Aesthetics
8 G: ken||
yes
The guest rejects the proposed characterization due to the obvious futility of hiding the passing of time (line 2). Nonetheless, she acknowledges that she does strive for a dignified self-appearance. The guest manifests difficulty in finding the optimal formulation for the projected indirect object of the infinitival complement lishmor ‘to maintain’, namely the thing that she is attempting to maintain. She first uses the hedge sug shel ‘kind of’ (line 3), and after a short pause, produces the formulation digniti ‘dignity’ in a separate prosodic unit (line 4). This formulation is accompanied by what looks like a “thinking face” (Bavelas and Chovil 2018Bavelas, Janet B., and Nicole Chovil 2018 “Some Pragmatic Functions of Conversational Facial Gestures.” Gesture 17 (1): 98–127. Bavelas, Janet B., and Nicole Chovil 2018 “Some Pragmatic Functions of Conversational Facial Gestures.” Gesture 17 (1): 98–127. ; Bavelas 2022Bavelas, Janet B. 2022 Face-to-Face Dialogue: Theory, Research, and Applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bavelas, Janet B. 2022 Face-to-Face Dialogue: Theory, Research, and Applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ), a facial configuration that includes looking up or around, away from persons or objects in the immediate surroundings, thereby displaying that the speaker is engaged in a word search. The guest then repeats the hedge sug shel ‘kind of’, followed by an elongated filled pause e:: ‘uh’ in a separate prosodic unit (line 5), followed by its partial repetition (line 6) (see Figure 1). At this point, the host intervenes and proposes an alternative formulation (line 7), which the guest accepts (line 8).
The repetition of the hedge and the elongation phenomena suggest that the initial formulation (‘dignity’) was not satisfactory, thereby displaying a continued search for the right word. Notably, the guest produces a 0.7-second EC co-extensively with the elongated repetition of the hedge (line 5). In this context, the EC appears to index concentration and a deliberate effort to overcome the word search challenge. This local function of the EC can be motivated by applying its proposed meaning of disengagement towards any external distractions, metaphorically construed as objects that the speaker does not wish to see. Thus, disengaging from external distractions can be perceived as a display of concentration.
4.2ECs co-produced with claims of insufficient knowledge — indexing hedging
This section illustrates the use of EC within the context of claiming insufficient knowledge, typically accompanying verbal approximators and hedges, such as be’erex ‘approximately’, o mashehu kaze ‘or something like that’, eyze ‘around’, or yaxol lihyot ‘maybe’. This use is illustrated by the following excerpt taken from an interview with a prominent health official. The cited excerpt represents the climax of a personal narrative regarding how the guest began to feel signs of approaching labor shortly before her final medicine exam was about to begin.
(Rendezvous with Roni Kuban, with Idit Matot; 20:37)
1 G: ben tsir le-tsir ani ona al-ha-sheela|
between contraction to-contraction I answer.sgf on-def-question
Between contractions I’m answering a question
2 ve az ani tsoraxat||
and then I scream.sgf
and then I’m screaming
3 pashut tsaraxti kdey lehotsi et-ha-energiyot|
simply screamed.1sg in order to get.out.inf acc-def-energies
I just screamed to get the energy out
4 ad.she hirgashti she ototo e yesh tinok||
until felt.1sg that soon uh ext baby
until I felt that soon uh there is a baby
5 ⟹ asiti eyze shmonim|
did.1sg around eighty
I did around eighty
eye EC (0.8 sec)
hand circular motion of open palms
6 sheelot|
questions
7 mitox ha-mea| o mashehu kaze|
out.of def-hundred or something like.that
out of hundred (questions), or so
In lines 1–4, the speaker vividly describes sitting an examination while having contractions until she gave birth. She was able to complete most of the examination, which she illusrates by providing a numerical estimate of having answered eighty questions out of a hundred (lines 5–7). This numerical estimate is both prefaced (eyze ‘around’) and completed (o mashehu kaze ‘or so’) with elements casting it as an approximation that is less than ideal but nonetheless adequate in the context (Inbar 2021Inbar, Anna 2021 “The Expressions ve ze (lit.) ‘and this’ and o mashehu ‘or something’ in Spoken Israeli Hebrew: Cognitive, Social and Cultural Aspects.” Leshonenu 83 (3): 401–424. (in Hebrew)Inbar, Anna 2021 “The Expressions ve ze (lit.) ‘and this’ and o mashehu ‘or something’ in Spoken Israeli Hebrew: Cognitive, Social and Cultural Aspects.” Leshonenu 83 (3): 401–424. (in Hebrew)). The prosodic realization of the entire numeral phrase in three prosodic units also suggests the interpretation of her estimate being insecure or tentative (see Selting 2011Selting, Margret 2011 “Prosody and Unit Construction in an Ethnic Style: The Case of Turkish German and Its Use and Function in Conversation.” In Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan Cities, ed. by Friederike Kern, and Margret Selting, 131–159. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Selting, Margret 2011 “Prosody and Unit Construction in an Ethnic Style: The Case of Turkish German and Its Use and Function in Conversation.” In Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan Cities, ed. by Friederike Kern, and Margret Selting, 131–159. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 142). In addition to all these elements, the guest performs a 0.8-second EC coterminously with the unit asiti eyze shmonim ‘I did around eighty’ (line 5), while performing an alternating back and forth motion with her open palms that metaphorically conveys the meaning of approximation and uncertainty (Grishina 2017 2017 Russkaya Zhestikulyatsiya s Lingvisticheskoy Tochki Zreniya [Russian gestures from a linguistic perspective]. Moscow: Jazyki Slavyanskoy Kul’tury. 2017 Russkaya Zhestikulyatsiya s Lingvisticheskoy Tochki Zreniya [Russian gestures from a linguistic perspective]. Moscow: Jazyki Slavyanskoy Kul’tury., 328–330). In this context, the EC seems to operate as a hedge, expressing the speaker’s diminished epistemic commitment to the accuracy of their words. This specific role of the EC can be explained by applying its proposed meaning of disengagement in response to a potential face threat for not being able to fully commit to the accuracy of one’s formulation (here: the number of questions answered). In this case, it is the threat to one’s face that is metaphorically construed as an object that the speaker does not want to see.
4.3ECs co-produced with rejection — indexing negation
ECs were also identified in sequences where the guest rejects a locally relevant claim or position previously introduced or alluded to by the host. The following example illustrates a case in which the guest conveys rejection through a grammatically negative utterance accompanied by an EC. This example comes from an interview with an Israeli actor during the Covid pandemic when theatres were closed in Israel. In the cited excerpt, the host expresses sadness over the noticeable absence of strong opposition from the public against the closure of theatres and people’s apparent indifference to the lack of cultural activities (lines 1–3).
(Rendezvous with Roni Kuban, with Dror Koren; 5:25)
1 H: anaxnu gilinu she olam ha-tarbut shotek|
we found.1pl that world.of def-culture is.silent.sgm
we found out that the culture world is silent
2 ve ha-tsibur lo bidyuk yotse.mi.gidro||
and def-public neg exactly go.out.of.his.way.sgm
and the public doesn’t really go out of his way
3 rov ha-anashim matslixim lixyot bli-ze||
most def-people succeed.plm to.live without-this
most people are capable of living without it
4 G: hine sheela metsuyenet shelxa|
pres question excellent your
here’s an excellent question
5 she ani shover et-ha-rosh aleha||
that I break.sgm acc-def-head on.her
that I’m breaking my head over it
6 ani lo- ani tohe ma ha-tshuva||
I neg I wonder.sgm what def-answer
I don’t, I wonder what the answer is
7 be-tkufa she ba|
in-period that in.her
in a period when
8 ⟹ ani lo yaxol|
I neg can.sgm
I can’t
eye EC (0.6 sec)
head headshake
9 ani lo yaxol lehaashim et-ha-kahal||
I neg can.sgm to.blame acc-def-public
I can’t blame the public
The guest commends the observation made by the host, but admits that it’s a point for which he lacks a definitive answer (lines 4–6). He then begins to formulate a temporal clause, but abruptly abandons it midway through (line 7), instead asserting his inability to blame the public for not mounting a more substantial fight on behalf of the theatres (lines 8–9). He does that through a grammatically negative utterance that is produced in two versions: an aborted initial version (ani lo yaxol ‘I can’t’; line 8) and a full version (ani lo yaxol leha’ashim et-ha-kahal ‘I can’t blame the public’; line 9). Notably, the first version is accompanied by two gestural elements that can be linked to negation. The first is a headshake, an extensively studied head movement generally associated with signalling negative responses and expressing concepts related to negation (McClave 2000McClave, Evelyn Z. 2000 “Linguistic Functions of Head Movements in the Context of Speech.” Journal of Pragmatics 32 (7): 855–878. McClave, Evelyn Z. 2000 “Linguistic Functions of Head Movements in the Context of Speech.” Journal of Pragmatics 32 (7): 855–878. ; Kendon 2002 2002 “Some Uses of the Headshake.” Gesture 2 (2): 147–182. 2002 “Some Uses of the Headshake.” Gesture 2 (2): 147–182. ; Harrison 2014Harrison, Simon 2014 “Head Shakes: Variation in Form, Function, and Cultural Distribution of a Head Movement Related to ‘No’.” In Body — Language — Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction, ed. by Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill, and Jana Bressem, 1496–1501. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Harrison, Simon 2014 “Head Shakes: Variation in Form, Function, and Cultural Distribution of a Head Movement Related to ‘No’.” In Body — Language — Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction, ed. by Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill, and Jana Bressem, 1496–1501. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. ; Bross 2020Bross, Fabian 2020 “Why Do We Shake Our Heads? On the Origin of the Headshake.” Gesture 19 (2/3): 269–298. Bross, Fabian 2020 “Why Do We Shake Our Heads? On the Origin of the Headshake.” Gesture 19 (2/3): 269–298. ). The second is the EC, which appears to be functioning as a facial marker of negation. This local function of the EC can be explained by applying its proposed meaning of disengagement towards claims (here: the host’s implication that the public is to blame), metaphorically construed as objects that the speaker does not wish to see.
The following example illustrates an instance where the rejecting utterance is structured as a grammatically affirmative clause. The guest is an actor who discusses the feelings of depression and insecurity that he experienced while playing a demanding theatrical role. Prior to the excerpt, he described how these feelings had occasionally prevented him from getting out of bed. Here, the host treats the guest’s story as surprising or unexpected due to an apparent contradiction with his public image as a tough person who “doesn’t cry” (line 1).
(Rendezvous with Roni Kuban, with Amos Tamam; 20:16)
1 H: aval ata lo exad she boxe ve meraxem al=atsmexa||
but you neg one that cry.sgm and pity.sgm on=yourself
but you’re not someone who cries and takes pity on himself
2 ⟹ G: ani gam baxiti||
I also cried.1sg
I also cried
eye EC (0.9 sec)
head nodding
3 H: ken/
Yes
4 G: ani gam baxiti|| ken ken||
I also cried.1sg yes yes
I also cried. Yes, yes.
head nodding
In response, the guest states that he did in fact cry, and accompanies the verbal utterance with an EC and nodding. While the verbal utterance implicitly disaligns with the host’s assumption by reporting on an instance that disproves that assumption, the EC appears to function here as a more material marker of negation that metaphorically construes the action of rejection as breaking eye contact with the rejected claim. The co-extensive nodding appears to reaffirm his statement, and anticipates the host’s difficulty in accepting it because it contrasts with the guest’s public image as proposed by the host. Such an anticipation is revealed to be well justified given the host’s subsequent display of incredulity (line 3), to which the guest responds with a self-repeat of his assertion, again accompanied by nodding (line 4).
4.4ECs co-produced with extreme case formulations — indexing totality
ECs were also found to co-occur with “extreme case formulations”, namely lexical items, phrases, and syntactic structures that convey the meanings of totality and extreme intensification, thereby invoking the maximal properties of persons, objects, or events (Edwards 2000Edwards, Derek 2000 “Extreme Case Formulations: Softeners, Investment and Doing Nonliteral.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 33 (4): 347–373. Edwards, Derek 2000 “Extreme Case Formulations: Softeners, Investment and Doing Nonliteral.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 33 (4): 347–373. ; Íñigo-Mora 2007Íñigo-Mora, Isabel 2007 “Extreme Case Formulations in Spanish Pre-Electoral Debates and English Panel Interviews.” Discourse Studies 9 (3): 341–363. Íñigo-Mora, Isabel 2007 “Extreme Case Formulations in Spanish Pre-Electoral Debates and English Panel Interviews.” Discourse Studies 9 (3): 341–363. ). These include amplifiers (such as meod ‘very’, hamon ‘plenty’, kolkax ‘so’, mamash ‘really’, and nora ‘awfully’), negative indefinites (such as eypaam ‘ever’, meolam ‘never’), and lexemes that contain an intensity component as part of their meaning (such as madhim ‘astonishing’, metumtemet ‘idiot’, agadit ‘legendary’, mifletset ‘monster’). The next example provides a first illustration of this use. The following excerpt was taken from an interview with a well-known Israeli singer who began her career in a military entertainment troupe.22.Military entertainment troupes are artistic ensembles that consist of musicians and singers who have successfully auditioned prior to their enlistment in compulsory service. These troupes became extremely popular in the late 1960s and the mid-70s, particularly in connection with the foundation of Israel Television in the late 1960s, which placed the image of these troupes at the heart of popular culture (Arav and Gurevitz 2009Arav, Dan, and David Gurevitz 2009 “Trauma and Kitsch: The Presentation of Israel’s Army Entertainment Troupes on Television.” In The Nation on Screen: Discourses of the National in Global Television, ed. by Enric Castelló, Alexander Dhoest, and Hugh O’Donnell, 271–291. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Arav, Dan, and David Gurevitz 2009 “Trauma and Kitsch: The Presentation of Israel’s Army Entertainment Troupes on Television.” In The Nation on Screen: Discourses of the National in Global Television, ed. by Enric Castelló, Alexander Dhoest, and Hugh O’Donnell, 271–291. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.). In this excerpt, the guest recounts a personal past event that had a tremendous impact on her career, namely having been approached by the commander of the Nahal (a paramilitary IDF unit) entertainment troupe to join the group without having to audition.
(Rendezvous with Roni Kuban, with Yardena Arazi; 05:58–06:14)
1 G: hu amar li et-ha-mishpat|
he said.3sgm to.me acc-def-sentence
He said to me the sentence
2 (0.4) haxi yafe she|
the.most pretty that
the most beautiful (sentence) that
hand horizontal palm --->
3 ⟹ *(0.3)eypaam* amru li||
ever told.3pl to.me
I was ever told
eyes *EC (0.6 sec)*
hand ----------------------------
4 (0.6) hu amar li| meydale| kshe at mitgayeset|
he told.3sgm to.me honey when you are.drafted.sgf
he said to me, honey, when you get drafted
5 (0.6) at baa elay le-lehakat ha-naxal||
you come.sgf to.me to-band.of def-Nahal.
you are coming to me to The Nahal entertainment group
The speaker prefaces the climax of this narrative — the constructed rendition of the sentence that the commander uttered to her (lines 4–5) — via an extreme case formulation that evaluates the sentence in highly positive terms via an interplay of verbal, prosodic, and embodied means (lines 1–3). Verbally, the utterance in lines 1–3 contains two lexical intensifiers, haxi ‘the most’ and eypaam ‘ever’, both of which are part of the complex noun phrase ha-mishpat haxi yafe she-eypaam amru li ‘the most beautiful sentence that I was ever told’. Prosodically, this noun phrase is realized incrementally in three prosodic units, with each prosodic unit being given its own primary accent (see Selting 2011Selting, Margret 2011 “Prosody and Unit Construction in an Ethnic Style: The Case of Turkish German and Its Use and Function in Conversation.” In Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan Cities, ed. by Friederike Kern, and Margret Selting, 131–159. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Selting, Margret 2011 “Prosody and Unit Construction in an Ethnic Style: The Case of Turkish German and Its Use and Function in Conversation.” In Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan Cities, ed. by Friederike Kern, and Margret Selting, 131–159. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ). Such a separation allows the speaker to prosodically accent the two lexical intensifiers in the respective units (see Figure 2).
In addition to these verbal-prosodic elements that contribute to the construction of extreme case formulation, we also find two co-extensive gestural elements that can be linked to the expression of totality. The first is the Horizontal Palm gesture, a well-known manual marker of intensification, totality, and a lack of exception (Kendon 2004 2004 Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004 Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; Grishina 2015 2015 “O russkom zhestikulyatsionnom otritsanii [Russian gestures of negation].” Proceedings of the Institute of Russian Language 6: 556–604. 2015 “O russkom zhestikulyatsionnom otritsanii [Russian gestures of negation].” Proceedings of the Institute of Russian Language 6: 556–604.; Harrison 2018 2018 The Impulse to Gesture: Where Language, Minds, and Bodies Intersect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2018 The Impulse to Gesture: Where Language, Minds, and Bodies Intersect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; Inbar and Shor 2019Inbar, Anna, and Leon Shor 2019 “Covert Negation in Israeli Hebrew: Evidence from Co-Speech Gestures.” Journal of Pragmatics 143: 85–95. Inbar, Anna, and Leon Shor 2019 “Covert Negation in Israeli Hebrew: Evidence from Co-Speech Gestures.” Journal of Pragmatics 143: 85–95. ).33.The Horizontal Palm has an especially long total duration (3.5 seconds) due to a notably clear separation between its preparation phase (line 2) and its stroke/retraction phase (line 3). The second is the 0.8-second EC co-produced with the word eypa’am ‘ever’. In this context, the EC seems to convey the idea of totality, which also underlies the meaning of the adverb eypa’am ‘ever’. I would argue that this local function of the EC can be explained by the application of its proposed meaning of disengagement towards the state of affairs conveyed by the extreme case formulation (here: the experience of never being told something), that is metaphorically construed as an object that is too extreme for the speaker to look at.
As a marker of totality, the EC can also accompany semantically extreme words, as illustrated in the next example. The speaker here is a news correspondent and documentary filmmaker who covers conflict zones across the world. In this segment, he describes his decision to embark on his first solo mission to report on a conflict zone in Bosnia after being unable to convince his boss to send him on the mission.
(Rendezvous with Roni Kuban, with Itay Engel; 26:50–27:10)
1 G: aval kan kvar ata yodea|
but here already you know
2 ha-motivatsya sheli hayta|
def-motivation my was.3sgf
my motivation was
3 ⟹ (0.7)til||
rocket
immense
eyes EC (0.9 sec)
head headshake
lips stretched
4 hixlateti she ani nosea||
decided.1sg that I ride.sgm
I decided that I’m going
After summarizing his boss’s reaction as an outright rejection, the interviewee describes his exceptionally high level of motivation (lines 1–3), which led him to decide to embark on this mission by himself using his own funds (line 4). The high level of motivation is described via an extreme case formulation “my motivation was til” (lines 3–4), and specifically by using the descriptor til. This noun literally means ‘rocket’, but is used colloquially as an extreme adjective with the meaning of ‘immense’. The prosodic separation of the descriptor from the rest of the sentence also contributes to intensification, with a prominent pitch jump between the two units (see Figure 3).
Gesturally, the descriptor “immense” is accompanied by the EC and a headshake, a well-known embodied practice of intensification (Goodwin 1980Goodwin, Marjorie Harness 1980 “Processes of Mutual Monitoring Implicated in Production of Description Sequences.” Sociological Inquiry 50: 303–317. Goodwin, Marjorie Harness 1980 “Processes of Mutual Monitoring Implicated in Production of Description Sequences.” Sociological Inquiry 50: 303–317. ; McClave 2000McClave, Evelyn Z. 2000 “Linguistic Functions of Head Movements in the Context of Speech.” Journal of Pragmatics 32 (7): 855–878. McClave, Evelyn Z. 2000 “Linguistic Functions of Head Movements in the Context of Speech.” Journal of Pragmatics 32 (7): 855–878. ; Kendon 2002 2002 “Some Uses of the Headshake.” Gesture 2 (2): 147–182. 2002 “Some Uses of the Headshake.” Gesture 2 (2): 147–182. , 2004 2004 Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004 Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; Grishina 2015 2015 “O russkom zhestikulyatsionnom otritsanii [Russian gestures of negation].” Proceedings of the Institute of Russian Language 6: 556–604. 2015 “O russkom zhestikulyatsionnom otritsanii [Russian gestures of negation].” Proceedings of the Institute of Russian Language 6: 556–604.; Inbar and Shor 2019Inbar, Anna, and Leon Shor 2019 “Covert Negation in Israeli Hebrew: Evidence from Co-Speech Gestures.” Journal of Pragmatics 143: 85–95. Inbar, Anna, and Leon Shor 2019 “Covert Negation in Israeli Hebrew: Evidence from Co-Speech Gestures.” Journal of Pragmatics 143: 85–95. ; Vincze and Poggi 2022 2022 “Multimodal Signals of High Commitment in Expert-to-Expert Contexts.” Discourse & Communication 16 (6): 693–715. 2022 “Multimodal Signals of High Commitment in Expert-to-Expert Contexts.” Discourse & Communication 16 (6): 693–715. ). The EC is particularly prominent here due to an observably tight closure of the eyelids, almost to the point of squeezing. As a result, it arguably imparts an even more pronounced impression of totality due to the effortful production of the EC. In this case, it is the speaker’s exceptionally high level of motivation that is metaphorically construed as an object that is too extreme for them to look at.
5.Discussion and concluding remarks
In the previous section, I have shown that ECs can convey four contextual meanings — concentration, hedging, negation and totality — depending on the context in which they occur and the verbal material they are co-produced with. It was also proposed that these contextual meanings can be unified by the more general stance of disengagement which gives rise to the four contextual meanings depending on its stance object (see Table 1). If EC can indeed function as a communicative sign, we may further ask whether there is some motivated link between the form of that sign and its meanings. In other words, why would an EC be recruited to indicate disengagement? My hypothesis is that the basic physiological use of EC as a reflex of self-protection and evasion (Darwin 1872/1998Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.; Fridlund 1994Fridlund, Alan J. 1994 Human Facial Expression: An Evolutionary View. Academic Press.Fridlund, Alan J. 1994 Human Facial Expression: An Evolutionary View. Academic Press.; Hunyor 1994Hunyor, Alexander 1994 “Reflexes and the Eye.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Ophthalmology 22: 155–159. Hunyor, Alexander 1994 “Reflexes and the Eye.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Ophthalmology 22: 155–159. ) has been re-interpreted for communicative purposes as a marker of disengagement.
In this regard, existing research on gesture semiosis indicates that the form of recurrent gestures is motivated by embodied experience, such as everyday actions or movement patterns, and physiological reactions linked to specific affective or cognitive states (Kendon 2004 2004 Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004 Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; Calbris 2011Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ; Müller 2017Müller, Cornelia 2017 “How Recurrent Gestures Mean: Conventionalized Contexts-of-Use and Embodied Motivation.” Gesture 16: 277–304. Müller, Cornelia 2017 “How Recurrent Gestures Mean: Conventionalized Contexts-of-Use and Embodied Motivation.” Gesture 16: 277–304. ). Especially relevant to current discussion is the hypothesized development of various co-speech gestures associated with negative meanings from physiological reflexes of self-protection and evasion (Inbar and Shor in press In Press. “The Depiction of Negativity: The Case of the Brushing Hands Gesture Used by Hebrew Speakers.” In Perspectives on Negation: Views from Across the Language Sciences ed. by Frances Blanchette, and Cynthia Lukyanenko De Gruyter Mouton In Press. “The Depiction of Negativity: The Case of the Brushing Hands Gesture Used by Hebrew Speakers.” In Perspectives on Negation: Views from Across the Language Sciences ed. by Frances Blanchette, and Cynthia Lukyanenko De Gruyter Mouton , § 3 and references therein). One such gesture is frowning, which had already been noted by Darwin (1872/1998Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray., 292) as a possible sign of negation. More recently, frowning — probably accompanied by squinting the eyes and wrinkling the nose — has been associated with meanings of displeasure and refusal by Calbris (2011Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 318). Calbris hypothesizes that such uses are conventionalized reproductions of self-protective reflexes, given that in excessively strong light, one frowns and squints. Frowning has also been described from an interactional perspective as a turn-opening element that can foreshadow utterances that involve difficulties associated with negative evaluation, disaffiliation, or epistemic challenge (Kaukomaa et al. 2014Kaukomaa, Timo, Anssi Peräkylä, and Johanna Ruusuvuori 2014 “Foreshadowing a Problem: Turn-Opening Frowns in Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 71: 132–147. Kaukomaa, Timo, Anssi Peräkylä, and Johanna Ruusuvuori 2014 “Foreshadowing a Problem: Turn-Opening Frowns in Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 71: 132–147. ).
Physiological reflexes related to self-protection and evasion can also be produced by head movements, notably by the headshake. This is a common gesture with diverse functions that vary across communities worldwide, and is generally associated, at least in Western/European cultures, with signaling negative responses and expressing concepts related to negation (Harrison 2014Harrison, Simon 2014 “Head Shakes: Variation in Form, Function, and Cultural Distribution of a Head Movement Related to ‘No’.” In Body — Language — Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction, ed. by Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill, and Jana Bressem, 1496–1501. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Harrison, Simon 2014 “Head Shakes: Variation in Form, Function, and Cultural Distribution of a Head Movement Related to ‘No’.” In Body — Language — Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction, ed. by Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill, and Jana Bressem, 1496–1501. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. ).44.The association of the headshake with negation has been demonstrated in several languages, notably in English (McClave 2000McClave, Evelyn Z. 2000 “Linguistic Functions of Head Movements in the Context of Speech.” Journal of Pragmatics 32 (7): 855–878. McClave, Evelyn Z. 2000 “Linguistic Functions of Head Movements in the Context of Speech.” Journal of Pragmatics 32 (7): 855–878. ; Kendon 2002 2002 “Some Uses of the Headshake.” Gesture 2 (2): 147–182. 2002 “Some Uses of the Headshake.” Gesture 2 (2): 147–182. ), Italian (Kendon 2002 2002 “Some Uses of the Headshake.” Gesture 2 (2): 147–182. 2002 “Some Uses of the Headshake.” Gesture 2 (2): 147–182. ), French (Calbris 2011Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ), Russian (Grishina 2015 2015 “O russkom zhestikulyatsionnom otritsanii [Russian gestures of negation].” Proceedings of the Institute of Russian Language 6: 556–604. 2015 “O russkom zhestikulyatsionnom otritsanii [Russian gestures of negation].” Proceedings of the Institute of Russian Language 6: 556–604.), Polish (Antas and Gembalczyk 2017Antas, Jolanta, and Sonia Gembalczyk 2017 “The Bodily Expression of Negation in Polish.” Journal of Multimodal Communication Studies 4 (1-2): 16–22.Antas, Jolanta, and Sonia Gembalczyk 2017 “The Bodily Expression of Negation in Polish.” Journal of Multimodal Communication Studies 4 (1-2): 16–22.), and Hebrew (Inbar and Shor 2019Inbar, Anna, and Leon Shor 2019 “Covert Negation in Israeli Hebrew: Evidence from Co-Speech Gestures.” Journal of Pragmatics 143: 85–95. Inbar, Anna, and Leon Shor 2019 “Covert Negation in Israeli Hebrew: Evidence from Co-Speech Gestures.” Journal of Pragmatics 143: 85–95. ). There appears to be a consensus that the headshake for negation derives semiotically from infants’ natural reflex of turning their head to the side to refuse food-intake, and subsequently turning their head from unpleasant or unwanted sights, smells and tastes (Darwin 1872/1998Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.; Morris 1977; Calbris 2011Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ; Harrison 2014Harrison, Simon 2014 “Head Shakes: Variation in Form, Function, and Cultural Distribution of a Head Movement Related to ‘No’.” In Body — Language — Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction, ed. by Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill, and Jana Bressem, 1496–1501. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Harrison, Simon 2014 “Head Shakes: Variation in Form, Function, and Cultural Distribution of a Head Movement Related to ‘No’.” In Body — Language — Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction, ed. by Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill, and Jana Bressem, 1496–1501. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. ; Bross 2020Bross, Fabian 2020 “Why Do We Shake Our Heads? On the Origin of the Headshake.” Gesture 19 (2/3): 269–298. Bross, Fabian 2020 “Why Do We Shake Our Heads? On the Origin of the Headshake.” Gesture 19 (2/3): 269–298. ). In repeating this process time and again, a connection is established between refusal and the head gesture, which is then expanded through reduplication to a repeated side-to-side movement.55.While it appears impossible to test this hypothesis directly, a recent review of several predictions made by that hypothesis seems to lend it partial support, specifically in that the headshake should be the most widespread gesture for negation, and that it should be one of the earliest gestures acquired by human children (Bross 2020Bross, Fabian 2020 “Why Do We Shake Our Heads? On the Origin of the Headshake.” Gesture 19 (2/3): 269–298. Bross, Fabian 2020 “Why Do We Shake Our Heads? On the Origin of the Headshake.” Gesture 19 (2/3): 269–298. ).
The findings of the present study lend support to the perspective that, similar to other reflexes of self-protection and evasion (cf. Calbris 2011Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 318), EC has also evolved a broad communicative meaning of disengagement, which gives rise to different contextual meanings — concentration, hedging, negation, and totality — depending on its stance object. Each of these meanings arguably results from the act of disengagement from various abstract threats, as illustrated in Table 1 below.
First, as a marker of concentration, the EC is used within the context of word search, often taking place mid-phrase simultaneously with a filled pause and/or excessive elongation. In this use, the EC conveys disengagement from any stimuli originating from the external environment, which might otherwise distract the speaker’s attention. This use appears to be related to the non-communicative use of the EC to reduce the effects of distraction, thereby allowing increased cognitive resources to be devoted to complex cognitive activities. Such activities include thinking about an answer to a question, recalling distant memories (Glenberg et al. 1998Glenberg, Arthur M., Janet L. Schroeder, and David A. Robertson 1998 “Averting the Gaze Disengages the Environment and Facilitates Remembering.” Memory & Cognition 26: 651–658. Glenberg, Arthur M., Janet L. Schroeder, and David A. Robertson 1998 “Averting the Gaze Disengages the Environment and Facilitates Remembering.” Memory & Cognition 26: 651–658. ; Doherty-Sneddon et al. 2002Doherty-Sneddon, Gwyneth, Vicky Bruce, Leslie Bonner, Sarah Longbotham, and Caroline Doyle 2002 “Development of Gaze Aversion as Disengagement from Visual Information.” Developmental Psychology 38: 438–445. Doherty-Sneddon, Gwyneth, Vicky Bruce, Leslie Bonner, Sarah Longbotham, and Caroline Doyle 2002 “Development of Gaze Aversion as Disengagement from Visual Information.” Developmental Psychology 38: 438–445. ; Markson and Paterson 2009Markson, Lucy, and Kevin B. Paterson 2009 “Effects of Gaze-Aversion on Visual-Spatial Imagination.” British Journal of Psychology 100 (3): 553–563. Markson, Lucy, and Kevin B. Paterson 2009 “Effects of Gaze-Aversion on Visual-Spatial Imagination.” British Journal of Psychology 100 (3): 553–563. ), and thinking about positive experiences and emotions (Gratiolet 1865Gratiolet, Pierre 1865 De La Physionomie et des Mouvements d’Expression. Paris: Hetzel. Gratiolet, Pierre 1865 De La Physionomie et des Mouvements d’Expression. Paris: Hetzel. , 217, cited in Darwin 1872/1998Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray., 174). A similar function of EC has been observed in spiritual and religious practices that focus on detachment from worldly involvement, especially in meditation (Nash et al. 2013Nash, Jonathan D., Andrew Newberg, and Bhuvanesh Awasthi 2013 “Toward a Unifying Taxonomy and Definition for Meditation.” Frontiers in Psychology 4: 806. Nash, Jonathan D., Andrew Newberg, and Bhuvanesh Awasthi 2013 “Toward a Unifying Taxonomy and Definition for Meditation.” Frontiers in Psychology 4: 806. ; Mattes et al. 2019Mattes, Dominik, Omar Kasmani, and Hansjörg Dilger 2019 “All Eyes Closed. Dis/Sensing in Comparative Fieldwork on Affective-Religious Experiences.” In Analyzing Affective Societies: Methods and Methodologies, ed. by Antje Kahl, 265–278. London: Routledge. Mattes, Dominik, Omar Kasmani, and Hansjörg Dilger 2019 “All Eyes Closed. Dis/Sensing in Comparative Fieldwork on Affective-Religious Experiences.” In Analyzing Affective Societies: Methods and Methodologies, ed. by Antje Kahl, 265–278. London: Routledge. ). Relatedly, the portrayal of closed eyes in Eastern sacred art is frequently used as an iconographic symbol of rejecting worldly concerns and the inward withdrawal of the soul, a prevalent motif in Eastern religious traditions that engage in meditation (Fingesten 1959Fingesten, Peter 1959 “Sight and Insight: A Contribution Toward an Iconography of the Eye.” Criticism 1 (1): 19–31.Fingesten, Peter 1959 “Sight and Insight: A Contribution Toward an Iconography of the Eye.” Criticism 1 (1): 19–31.).66.I extend my gratitude to Dr. Yonit Aronowicz for bringing this paper to my attention.
Second, as a marker of hedging, the EC occurs within the context of claiming insufficient knowledge, typically accompanying verbal approximators and hedges. In this use, the EC conveys disengagement from the potential threat to one’s face that is implicated in providing information that is not as precise as might be expected. Relatedly, hedging in general is regarded by Brown and Levinson (1987Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge University Press. Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge University Press. , 146) as “a primary and fundamental method of disarming routine interactional threats”. Thus, if hedging is regarded as a strategy for protection from interactional threats, the EC makes the action of protection visible by construing these threats as objects that the speaker does not want to see.
Third, as a marker of negation, the EC appears in sequences where the speaker rejects a locally relevant claim or position previously introduced or alluded to by the addressee. In such cases, the EC conveys disengagement from claims and positions with which the speaker disagrees. This use appears to be related to the non-communicative use of the EC in response to unpleasant or disagreeable sights, behaviors, and experiences, in which the EC implies that something or someone “is not worth looking at, or is disagreeable to behold” (Darwin 1872/1998Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray.Darwin, Charles 1872/1998 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray., 266) or that “it is so awful that I must blot it out by shutting my eyes” (Morris 2016Morris, Desmond 2016 Bodytalk: A World Guide to Gestures. London: Jonathan Cape. Morris, Desmond 2016 Bodytalk: A World Guide to Gestures. London: Jonathan Cape. , 55). The use of the EC in such contexts may have prompted the interpretation of the EC as a sign of “displeasure”, “refusal”, and “disapproval” via metaphoric extension. A similar hypothesis was proposed by Calbris (2011Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Calbris, Geneviève 2011 Elements of Meaning in Gesture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 211), who mentioned the EC as one type of evasive reflex which, similarly to turning the head away, originally allowed one to evade aggression directed at the face and to protect the facial sensory organs, which were subsequently extended to convey evasion from ideas.
Finally, as a marker of totality, the EC co-occurs with “extreme case formulations”, namely lexical items, phrases, and syntactic structures that convey the meanings of totality and extreme intensification. In this use, the EC can be seen as conveying disengagement from the state of affairs conveyed by the extreme case formulation that is metaphorically construed as an object so extreme that it can hurt the speaker’s eyes. As a result, the response to the threatening event comes to be used as a marker of totality. A comparable shift in meaning is also observed cross-linguistically, as lexemes that originally conveyed threat-relevant negative emotions, particularly ones related to fear, develop into emotive intensifiers over time. These may include items denoting fear-like affective states (such as the English terribly, the German schrecklich ‘horribly’, and the Hebrew paxad ‘fear’), items denoting a perceived cause or elicitor of fear (the English monstrously, the German mörderisch ‘murderously’, and the Hebrew retsax ‘murder’), and bodily symptoms of fear (such as the English tremendously) (Jing-Schmidt 2007Jing-Schmidt, Zhuo 2007 “Negativity Bias in Language: A Cognitive-Affective Model of Emotive Intensifiers.” Cognitive Linguistics 18 (3): 417–443. Jing-Schmidt, Zhuo 2007 “Negativity Bias in Language: A Cognitive-Affective Model of Emotive Intensifiers.” Cognitive Linguistics 18 (3): 417–443. ; Vardi 2015Vardi, Ruti 2015 “I’m Dying on You’: Constructions of Intensification in Hebrew Expression of Love/Desire/Adoration.” Review of Cognitive Linguistics 13: 28–58. Vardi, Ruti 2015 “I’m Dying on You’: Constructions of Intensification in Hebrew Expression of Love/Desire/Adoration.” Review of Cognitive Linguistics 13: 28–58. ; Shefer and Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot 2021Shefer, Hagit, and Hava Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot 2021 “From Negative to Positive in Spoken Hebrew.” Helkat Lashon 53: 32–53. (in Hebrew)Shefer, Hagit, and Hava Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot 2021 “From Negative to Positive in Spoken Hebrew.” Helkat Lashon 53: 32–53. (in Hebrew)).
In conclusion, the analysis proposed in this paper provides further evidence for the communicative potential of EC and the co-optation of the more basic functions of facial gestures for communicative purposes via metaphorical-metonymical extensions. Nonetheless, two limitations of this study should be mentioned. First, the proposed functional interpretation of the EC is necessarily linked to the specific data and the genre selected for the study, namely televised interactions between a host and public figures mainly engaged in a narrative-reportative action. The features of this setting, such as the existence of distributed recipiency (Hutchby 2006Hutchby, Ian 2006 Media Talk: Conversation Analysis and the Study of Broadcasting. Maidenhead: Open University Press.Hutchby, Ian 2006 Media Talk: Conversation Analysis and the Study of Broadcasting. Maidenhead: Open University Press.) and the displaced nature of the talk may have influenced the observed structural and functional distribution of the ECs. In this regard, it would be particularly advantageous to examine the use of ECs in other types of interactions, particularly ones in which the here-and-now action is more foregrounded. Another limitation of the current study is that the collected ECs represent a specific degree of the variable “eye aperture”, namely the complete closure of the eyelids. However, other degrees of eyelid opening can be observed during face-to-face interactions, such as half-open and wide-open eyelids, which may also play a communicative role. For example, the semantics of half-open eyelids have been interpreted as a sign of de-activation or relaxation, while open eyelids have been suggested to imply activation and alertness (Poggi 2013Poggi, Isabella 2013 “Mind, Hands, Face, and Body: A Sketch of a Goal and Belief View of Multimodal Communication.” In Body — Language — Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction, ed. by Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva Ladewig, David McNeill, and Susanne Tessendorf, 627–647. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Poggi, Isabella 2013 “Mind, Hands, Face, and Body: A Sketch of a Goal and Belief View of Multimodal Communication.” In Body — Language — Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction, ed. by Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva Ladewig, David McNeill, and Susanne Tessendorf, 627–647. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. ). Further investigations into the communicative potential of other degrees of eye apertures appear to be a promising direction for future research, as these will undoubtedly enrich the present study and result in a more complete understanding of the communicative functions of EC actions.
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Acknowledgements
I am particularly indebted to Prof. Pnina Shukrun-Nagar for her insightful comments and valuable suggestions on earlier drafts of this manuscript, which have greatly improved its overall quality. I would also like to extend my thanks to Romi Elbom for providing the drawings used in this paper.