Cultural concept, movement, and way of life: jeitinho in words and gestures
-
Ulrike Schröder
Ulrike Schröder is Professor of Linguistics and German Studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Her research areas comprise cognitive linguistics, cultural linguistics, gesture studies, intercultural pragmatics, and interactional linguistics. Recent publications
include Metaphorical conceptualizations: (Inter)Cultural perspectives (ed. with M. Mendes de Oliveira and A. M. Tenuta, 2022, De Gruyter) andMultimodal Communication in Intercultural Interaction (ed. with E. Adami and J. Dailey-O’Cain, Routledge, forthcoming).
und
Jürgen Streeck
Jürgen Streeck is a linguist and professor of communication studies, anthropology, and Germanic studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Among his books are
Gesturecraft – The Manu-facture of Meaning (2009);Self-Making Man. A Day of Action, Life, and Language (2017);Embodied Interaction. Language and Body in the Material World (ed. with C. Goodwin and C.D. Lebaron, 2011); andIntercorporeality. Emerging Socialities in Interaction (ed. with C. Meyer, J. Streeck & J.S. Jordan, 2017).
Abstract
Starting from a non-dualistic view on embodiment this paper approaches the relationship between cognition, gesture, language, and cultural practice by analyzing the gestural construction of the cultural concept jeitinho in talk-in-interaction. After introducing our phenomenological view on embodiment and gesture in interaction, we give a short overview of some main studies broaching the issue of cultural matters before presenting the concept jeitinho as delineated in historical, sociological, and anthropological approaches. In the empirical section, we offer a fine-grained analysis of four videosequences taken from a conversation about jeitinho between two Brazilian and two German professors who have lived in Brazil for more than 20 years. We show that the gestural style of both Brazilian professors differs significantly from the gestural engagement of the German professors since they schematically embody a sinuous gesture style and construe the cultural concept jeitinho as a qualium by adopting a character viewpoint while the German participants remain observers regarding their gestural performance.
Funding source: Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior
Award Identifier / Grant number: Unassigned
Funding source: University of Texas at Austin
Award Identifier / Grant number: Unassigned
About the authors
Ulrike Schröder is Professor of Linguistics and German Studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Her research areas comprise cognitive linguistics, cultural linguistics, gesture studies, intercultural pragmatics, and interactional linguistics. Recent publications include Metaphorical conceptualizations: (Inter)Cultural perspectives (ed. with M. Mendes de Oliveira and A. M. Tenuta, 2022, De Gruyter) and Multimodal Communication in Intercultural Interaction (ed. with E. Adami and J. Dailey-O’Cain, Routledge, forthcoming).
Jürgen Streeck is a linguist and professor of communication studies, anthropology, and Germanic studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Among his books are Gesturecraft – The Manu-facture of Meaning (2009); Self-Making Man. A Day of Action, Life, and Language (2017); Embodied Interaction. Language and Body in the Material World (ed. with C. Goodwin and C.D. Lebaron, 2011); and Intercorporeality. Emerging Socialities in Interaction (ed. with C. Meyer, J. Streeck & J.S. Jordan, 2017).
Acknowledgments
Ulrike Schröder would like to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for the sponsorship Research Group Linkage Programme (UFMG and University of Potsdam) as well as the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel – CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior), for the senior fellowship Capes-PrInt programme which enabled her research year at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, as well as the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany (2020–2021).
Appendix A: Transcription conventions[13]
| [ ] | overlap and simultaneous talk |
| [ ] | |
| = | fast, immediate continuation with a new turn |
| Or segment (latching) | |
| and_uh | cliticizations within units |
| hm_hm | bi-syllabic tokens |
| (.) | micro pause, up to 0.2 s. |
| (−) | short pause of 0.2–0.5 s. |
| (--) | intermediary pause of 0.5–0.8 s. |
| (2.0) | measured pause of 2.0 s. |
| :, ::, ::: | lengthening (0.2–0.5 s; 0.5–0.8 s; |
| 0.8–1.0 s) | |
| ((laughs)) | non-verbal vocal actions and events |
| <<laughing>> | para-verbal and non-verbal action as |
| accompanying speech with indication of scope | |
| <<acc> | accelerando |
| (may i) | assumed wording |
| (i say/let’s say) | possible alternatives |
| °hh hh° | in- and outbreaths |
| (xxx) | one unintelligible syllable |
| acCENT | focus accent |
| accEnt | secondary accent |
| ac!CENT! | extra strong accent |
| ? | rising to high final pitch movement of |
| intonation unit | |
| , | rising to mid final pitch movement of |
| intonation unit | |
| – | level final pitch movement of intonation |
| unit | |
| ; | falling to mid final pitch movement of |
| intonation unit | |
| . | falling to low final pitch movement of |
| intonation unit | |
| ˆSO | rising-falling accent pitch movement |
| ˇSO | falling-rising accent pitch movement |
| ´SO | rising accent pitch movement |
| `SO | falling accent pitch movement |
| ↑ | pitch upstep |
| ↓ | pitch downstep |
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Cultural concept, movement, and way of life: jeitinho in words and gestures
- Data collection methods applied in studies in the journal Intercultural Pragmatics (2004–2020): a scientometric survey and mixed corpus study
- Borrowed Swahili discourse-pragmatic features in Kenyan and Tanzanian Englishes
- Forum
- On the verge of extinction: the semantics, pragmatics, and etymology of eight endangered similes in Jish Arabic
- Book Reviews
- Németh T., Enikő: Implicit Subject and Direct Object Arguments in Hungarian Language use: Grammar and Pragmatics Interacting
- Christoph Rühlemann: Corpus Linguistics for Pragmatics: A guide for research
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Cultural concept, movement, and way of life: jeitinho in words and gestures
- Data collection methods applied in studies in the journal Intercultural Pragmatics (2004–2020): a scientometric survey and mixed corpus study
- Borrowed Swahili discourse-pragmatic features in Kenyan and Tanzanian Englishes
- Forum
- On the verge of extinction: the semantics, pragmatics, and etymology of eight endangered similes in Jish Arabic
- Book Reviews
- Németh T., Enikő: Implicit Subject and Direct Object Arguments in Hungarian Language use: Grammar and Pragmatics Interacting
- Christoph Rühlemann: Corpus Linguistics for Pragmatics: A guide for research
