[Air-l] a ps on hedges

[Christian Nelson]

On Apr 12, 2006, at 8:56 PM, Bonnie Nardi wrote:
> My student has been interviewing people about how they perceive 
> themselves. The context is an audio recorded interview about personal 
> topics. So turn taking is not so relevant (I don't think). The 
> interviewee has the floor.

This is absolutely a turn-taking situation. If the interviewee didn't 
answer at all, we would all consider that bizarre. Why? Because we all 
appear to abide by rules which hold that when someone uses their turn 
to ask us a question, we should take a turn to respond. Indeed, the 
assumption that we abide by these rules is so great that we are never 
allowed to be seen as not responding--even our silence will be 
interpreted as a (usually if not always negative) response. Indeed, 
your student has only noticed these hesitancies as notable because of 
the turn-taking rules that govern most of our interactions, and 
specifically the rule prohibiting gaps and overlaps of turns. Were 
there no turn-taking rule prohibiting gaps in the taking of turns, 
there would be no possibility for the notion of hesitations, or at 
least no noticing of them in situations like interviews, conversations, 
etc. (BTW, the notion of a floor is completely bound up with the notion 
of a turn. Indeed, it is so much so that, I would argue, most 
interaction researchers have confused one with the other. Even Carol 
Edelsky, who tried to separate the concepts, wound up adding to the 
confusion in some ways.)

> What the student has noticed is that some statements are delivered 
> very directly and easily, while in other cases, the interviewee 
> searches for words, hesitates, etc. Is there rigorous  nalysis of what 
> such hesitations might mean?

Yes. The paper by Pomerantz cited earlier indicates that, at least in 
certain interactional contexts, hesitations and non-responses can 
signal that the (non)responder is reluctant to produce the response 
because it is dispreferred. (Here's where the paper by Sacks comes 
in--he notes that we prefer to agree, and make nice in conversations. 
So, when we can't be, for whatever reason, we mark that through things 
like hesitations.) (BTW, a lot of doctrinaire CAists would object to 
how I just put all of this--they'd say I've psychologized the notion of 
dispreference, and they're against that kind of thing. But I think 
Sacks paper leads directly to that, and I think he's right.)

> Or any pointers on how to interpret repeated words, etc. For example, 
> the interviewee might say, "I, I, I am different online [in various 
> ways].

Again, it depends on the interactional situation, but if you have 
visual data, you may be able to examine your videotapes with Chuck 
Goodwin's analysis of such repeats in hand. (Charles Goodwin, 1981, 
Conversational Organization: Interaction Between Speakers and Hearers. 
New York: Academic Press.) He found that people often repeat when their 
interlocutors are not gazing at them. Perhaps your student was looking 
down at his/her interview sheet or notes while the interviewee began to 
speak? You'd have to look at the data to show this.

> I think the issue is more one of articulating less thought out  
> commentary.  I know there are analyses that suggest hesitations may 
> indicate shading the truth (as the interviewee sees it), etc. I don't 
> remember where I've seen those.

There is a deep tendency to psychologize when considering interactional 
phenomenon. So, there are plenty of researchers who have sought to 
claim that hesitancies are a sign of cognitive difficulty, whether due 
to the inabilities of the speaker or the difficulty of the topic or 
extra cognitive work the speaker is engaging in because they are trying 
to cook up a lie or some such thing. This requires unnecessary 
speculation about what is in the black box of our brains. Further, it 
relies on an assumption about our capacity to interact that 
conversation analysts have repeatedly shown is extremely suspect--the 
assumption that our capacity for interaction is fragile and easily 
overpowered by certain difficulties/challenges.

--Christian Nelson