Monitoring the swimzone while finding south: sustained orientation in multiactivity among beach lifeguards
-
Simon Harrison
Simon Harrison received his PhD in English Studies from the Université de Bordeaux III and is currently Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. His research interests include gestural forms associated with negation and, more broadly, gestural recurrency in discourse. He is author of the forthcoming book
The Impulse to Gesture: Where Language, Minds, and Bodies Intersect (Cambridge University Press).
and
Robert F. Williams
Robert F. Williams received his PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego, and is currently Associate Dean of the Faculty and Associate Professor of Education at Lawrence University. His research examines how people construct meaning in instructional situations, in collaborative problem-solving, and in creative activity, focusing on the role of gesture in building shared understandings.
Abstract
Lifeguards stationed opposite their swimzone on a beach in southwest France huddle around a diagram in the sand; the Head Lifeguard points to the sun then looks at the swimzone. What is going on here? Our paper examines two excerpts from this interaction to explore how lifeguards manage an instruction activity that arises in addition to the task of monitoring the swimzone. Building on frame analysis and multiactivity in social interaction, we focus on the role of gaze behavior in maintaining a sustained orientation to the swimzone as a distinct activity in this setting. Multimodal, sequential analyses of extracts from the video data show that orientation to the lifeguarding task is sustained primarily by body orientation and gaze patterns that routinely return to the swimzone. This is supported when sustained orientation away from the swimzone leads to the momentary suspension of the instruction activity and consequent re-organization of the interaction, illustrating the normative and visible nature of managing multiactivity. These gaze behaviors and interactive patterns constitute practices of professional vision among beach lifeguards.
About the authors
Simon Harrison received his PhD in English Studies from the Université de Bordeaux III and is currently Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. His research interests include gestural forms associated with negation and, more broadly, gestural recurrency in discourse. He is author of the forthcoming book The Impulse to Gesture: Where Language, Minds, and Bodies Intersect (Cambridge University Press).
Robert F. Williams received his PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego, and is currently Associate Dean of the Faculty and Associate Professor of Education at Lawrence University. His research examines how people construct meaning in instructional situations, in collaborative problem-solving, and in creative activity, focusing on the role of gesture in building shared understandings.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Tom Clark, Geoff Hall, and Daryl Johnson for their valuable input to earlier versions of this research, as well as three anonymous reviewers and editorial work at TEXT & TALK. We are indebted to the lifeguards who took part in this study and to the managers of the beaches at the town hall, and we thank Magali Kerbellec, Marion Sadoux, and Aliyah Morgenstern for help with questions relating to French.
Appendix: transcription conventions
- ----
Gaze direction. Indicated in tier underneath speech. Direction of gaze integrated between the dashes (e.g. “---sand--” is gaze towards the sand; also see abbreviations in Table 1).
- --/--
Forward slash in-between dashes indicates shift in gaze (e.g. “---sand--/--sun--” would mean a shift in gaze from the sand towards the sand).
- *words*
Coordination of gestural action is temporally anchored in the speech with asterisks then described in-between same signs in a tier below speech.
- +words+
Coordination of action other than gestures (such as clearing the sand) follows the same convention but with plus signs.
- °words°
Speech between these symbols is with lowered voice (e.g. for parenthetical comment).
- [words]
Square parentheses indicates overlapping speech.
- ?
Question intonation
- er:::
Colons indicate elongated sound.
- (0.7)
Pause length noted to tenths of a second; pauses between turns indicated on separate line.
- HL
Speakers are indicated at beginning of line: HL (Head Lifeguard), CM (Lifeguard operating camera), L3 (Third Lifeguard)
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© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Towards multiple hyperTheme: Theme beyond the clause
- Monitoring the swimzone while finding south: sustained orientation in multiactivity among beach lifeguards
- The forbidden first word: Discourse functions and rhetorical patterns of and-prefacing in student essays
- Documenting knowledge mobilization: a quantitative analysis of citation and reported speech in a Canadian public inquiry
- The past is a foreign country: disputed memories and telling rights in co-narrated refugee stories
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Towards multiple hyperTheme: Theme beyond the clause
- Monitoring the swimzone while finding south: sustained orientation in multiactivity among beach lifeguards
- The forbidden first word: Discourse functions and rhetorical patterns of and-prefacing in student essays
- Documenting knowledge mobilization: a quantitative analysis of citation and reported speech in a Canadian public inquiry
- The past is a foreign country: disputed memories and telling rights in co-narrated refugee stories
