Samenvatting studietekst 5 – Multimodale communicatie
1. Introduction
The framing, grounding, and coordination of conversational interaction is made possible by the relative
flexibility of the human body. These movable elements of the human body can be arranged and mobilized in
conjunction with talk in a potentially limitless variety of configurations.
2. Background
Research was started at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1955.
The Stanford Group (also called Palo Alto group) included the following researchers: Frieda Fromm-
Reichmann, Henry Brosin, Charles Hockett, Norman McQuown, Alfred Kroeber, Gregory Bateson and Ray
Birdwhistell. The group’s goal: use film to understand the role of unverbal behaviour in the treatment of
psychiatric patients. But their work came to be associated with the emergence of a research approach that
treated communication as an integrated system of embodied as well as linguistic behaviours that take on
meaning not in isolation, but in the contexts of other behaviours and events: context analysis.
Erving Goffman (latecomer to Palo Alto) approached the study of interaction not with the methods afforded by
film and microanalysis, but rather through astute ethnographic observation and anecdote. With Goffman, we
understand the basic performativity involved in interactional processes. Goffman’s students Harvey Sacks and
Emanuel Schegloff went on in 1973/1974 with their colleague Gail Jefferson to found conversation analysis:
involves the rigorously empirical and detailed study of conversational interaction using recorded, naturally-
occuring data.
3. Posture
Ecological huddle (Goffman) / F-formation (Kendon): positioning of one’s body toward another for interaction
in ways that convey varying degrees of involvement in any number of other activities and events. With their
body arrangements participants create a ‘frame’ of engagement and visibly display their alignment toward one
another as interactants.
The head, torso, and legs especially can be arranged to convey different points of attentional focus:
- Head, torso and legs aligned in the same direction, a single dominant orientation is communicated.
- Not in the same direction, they communicate multiple simultaneous orientations that are ranked in
accord with the relative stability of each body segment.
Schlegloff (1998) writes that when these body segments are arranged divergently, and as such communicate
multiple simultaneous involvements, they convey a postural instability that projects a resolution in terms of
moving.
4. Gaze
Gaze: looking at another, and another’s looking back. Speakers and recipients do not typically gaze at one
another continuously, but intermittently: recipients gaze towards speakers as an indication of their
attentiveness to talk, and speakers direct their gaze to recipients to show that talk is being addressed to them;
recipients typically gaze for a longer duration at speakers, and speakers for shorter duration.
5. Facial expression
The great mobility of the face makes it an especially useful resource as both a stand-in for, and elaborator of,
talk. Kendon (1990) writes of the face in a ‘kissing round’: he describes different types of facial expressions and
notes that a closed-lip smile by the women invites kissing, while a teeth-exposed smile does not. Pillet-Shore
(2012) notes that the face is used to ‘do being warm’ and invites further interaction. Goffman: the face itself is
one of ‘the most delicate components of personal appearance’ and integrally involved in the interactional work
by which participants show themselves via constant control of their facial movements to be situationally
present. Ruusuvuori and Peräkylä have demonstrated that facial displays not only accompany specific
elements of talk, but can project and follow these elements both in redundant and non-redundant ways, in
effect, making use of the face to extend the temporal boundaries of an action beyond a turn at talk.
1. Introduction
The framing, grounding, and coordination of conversational interaction is made possible by the relative
flexibility of the human body. These movable elements of the human body can be arranged and mobilized in
conjunction with talk in a potentially limitless variety of configurations.
2. Background
Research was started at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1955.
The Stanford Group (also called Palo Alto group) included the following researchers: Frieda Fromm-
Reichmann, Henry Brosin, Charles Hockett, Norman McQuown, Alfred Kroeber, Gregory Bateson and Ray
Birdwhistell. The group’s goal: use film to understand the role of unverbal behaviour in the treatment of
psychiatric patients. But their work came to be associated with the emergence of a research approach that
treated communication as an integrated system of embodied as well as linguistic behaviours that take on
meaning not in isolation, but in the contexts of other behaviours and events: context analysis.
Erving Goffman (latecomer to Palo Alto) approached the study of interaction not with the methods afforded by
film and microanalysis, but rather through astute ethnographic observation and anecdote. With Goffman, we
understand the basic performativity involved in interactional processes. Goffman’s students Harvey Sacks and
Emanuel Schegloff went on in 1973/1974 with their colleague Gail Jefferson to found conversation analysis:
involves the rigorously empirical and detailed study of conversational interaction using recorded, naturally-
occuring data.
3. Posture
Ecological huddle (Goffman) / F-formation (Kendon): positioning of one’s body toward another for interaction
in ways that convey varying degrees of involvement in any number of other activities and events. With their
body arrangements participants create a ‘frame’ of engagement and visibly display their alignment toward one
another as interactants.
The head, torso, and legs especially can be arranged to convey different points of attentional focus:
- Head, torso and legs aligned in the same direction, a single dominant orientation is communicated.
- Not in the same direction, they communicate multiple simultaneous orientations that are ranked in
accord with the relative stability of each body segment.
Schlegloff (1998) writes that when these body segments are arranged divergently, and as such communicate
multiple simultaneous involvements, they convey a postural instability that projects a resolution in terms of
moving.
4. Gaze
Gaze: looking at another, and another’s looking back. Speakers and recipients do not typically gaze at one
another continuously, but intermittently: recipients gaze towards speakers as an indication of their
attentiveness to talk, and speakers direct their gaze to recipients to show that talk is being addressed to them;
recipients typically gaze for a longer duration at speakers, and speakers for shorter duration.
5. Facial expression
The great mobility of the face makes it an especially useful resource as both a stand-in for, and elaborator of,
talk. Kendon (1990) writes of the face in a ‘kissing round’: he describes different types of facial expressions and
notes that a closed-lip smile by the women invites kissing, while a teeth-exposed smile does not. Pillet-Shore
(2012) notes that the face is used to ‘do being warm’ and invites further interaction. Goffman: the face itself is
one of ‘the most delicate components of personal appearance’ and integrally involved in the interactional work
by which participants show themselves via constant control of their facial movements to be situationally
present. Ruusuvuori and Peräkylä have demonstrated that facial displays not only accompany specific
elements of talk, but can project and follow these elements both in redundant and non-redundant ways, in
effect, making use of the face to extend the temporal boundaries of an action beyond a turn at talk.
