Car talk: Integrating texts, bodies, and changing landscapes

Marjorie Harness Goodwin,; Charles Goodwin,

doi:10.1515/sem-2012-0063

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Car talk: Integrating texts, bodies, and changing landscapes

Marjorie Harness Goodwin,
Marjorie Harness Goodwin (b. 1944) is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles 〈mgoodwin@anthro.ucla.edu〉. Her research interests include ethnographic studies of talk as social organization, embodied language practices, gender and language, and language and peer interaction. Her publications include He-said-she-said: Talk as social organization among black children (1990); and The hidden life of girls: Games of stance, status, and exclusion (2006).
and Charles Goodwin,
Charles Goodwin (b. 1943) is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles 〈cgoodwin@humnet.ucla.edu〉. His research interests include video analysis of talk-in-interaction (including study of the discursive practices used by hearers and speakers to construct utterances, stories, and other forms of talk), grammar in context, cognition in the lived social world, and gesture, gaze and embodiment as interactively organized social practices. His publications include “Seeing in depth” (1995); “Practices of color classification” (1999); “Action and embodiment within situated human interaction” (1999); and Il senso del vedere: Pratiche sociali della significazione (2003).

Published/Copyright: September 6, 2012

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From the journal Semiotica Volume 2012 Issue 191

Abstract

Making use of videotaped recordings of interaction in cars filmed as middle class families pursue their daily activities, we examine some of the ways in which talk while driving includes as parts of its intrinsic organization ongoing attention to phenomena beyond the stream of speech. Important consideration is given to issues posed by the task of driving while talking about a seeable field in either the unfolding landscape or a textual artifact within the car itself. Of particular interest to our analysis is how such phenomena are attended to, collaboratively recognized, and incorporated into the ongoing organization of talk. This process involves making use of a range of resources including deictics, perceptual directives, address terms, pointings (C. Goodwin 2003), etc., to locate for others these phenomena, as well as forms of stance display that inform how the speaker aligns towards the event. Through their gaze direction, questions, and displays of understandings recipients can display their response to a noticing or reporting.

Keywords: mobility; talk-in-interaction; embodied talk; joint attention; multimodality; family interaction

About the authors

Professor Marjorie Harness Goodwin,

Marjorie Harness Goodwin (b. 1944) is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles 〈mgoodwin@anthro.ucla.edu〉. Her research interests include ethnographic studies of talk as social organization, embodied language practices, gender and language, and language and peer interaction. Her publications include He-said-she-said: Talk as social organization among black children (1990); and The hidden life of girls: Games of stance, status, and exclusion (2006).

Professor Charles Goodwin,

Charles Goodwin (b. 1943) is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles 〈cgoodwin@humnet.ucla.edu〉. His research interests include video analysis of talk-in-interaction (including study of the discursive practices used by hearers and speakers to construct utterances, stories, and other forms of talk), grammar in context, cognition in the lived social world, and gesture, gaze and embodiment as interactively organized social practices. His publications include “Seeing in depth” (1995); “Practices of color classification” (1999); “Action and embodiment within situated human interaction” (1999); and Il senso del vedere: Pratiche sociali della significazione (2003).

Published Online: 2012-09-06

Published in Print: 2012-08-21

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2012-0063

Keywords for this article

mobility; talk-in-interaction; embodied talk; joint attention; multimodality; family interaction