Feeling spirits: sharing subjective paranormal experience through embodied talk and action

Rachael Ironside

doi:10.1515/text-2018-0020

Article

Feeling spirits: sharing subjective paranormal experience through embodied talk and action

Rachael Ironside
Rachael Ironside is a senior lecturer in Events Management at Robert Gordon University, UK. Her research examines group interaction and paranormal experiences using video data and conversation analysis to explore how groups collectively identify and negotiate ostensibly paranormal events. In particular, her research explores how groups navigate experiences through a series of verbal and multimodal interactions with people, space, and objects.

Published/Copyright: October 30, 2018

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From the journal Text & Talk Volume 38 Issue 6

Abstract

This article examines how subjective paranormal experiences are shared and understood through embodied talk and action. Paranormal experiences often possess subjective qualities, regularly experienced as “senses” or “feelings”; however, the ability to share these experiences collectively provides the opportunity to validate such events. Drawing upon video data selected from over 100 hours of recorded footage during UK-based paranormal investigations, this study uses conversation analysis to examine how individuals communicate their experiences to others and through this evoke a way of understanding their experience as potentially paranormal. It is argued that embodied talk and action invite others to not only see the subjective paranormal experiences of others, but to understand and become co-experiencers in these events.

Keywords: embodied action; collective experience; conversation analysis; paranormal; social interaction; gesture

About the author

Rachael Ironside

Rachael Ironside is a senior lecturer in Events Management at Robert Gordon University, UK. Her research examines group interaction and paranormal experiences using video data and conversation analysis to explore how groups collectively identify and negotiate ostensibly paranormal events. In particular, her research explores how groups navigate experiences through a series of verbal and multimodal interactions with people, space, and objects.

Appendix

Transcription key
A–Z: Indicates each group member.
[: Indicates overlapping speech.
[: Indicates overlapping action (bold).
hh.: Indicates an inhalation (the number of h’s indicates the length of the inhalation).
hh: Indicates hearable aspiration, such as laughter and exhalation (the number of h’s indicates the length of the sound).
wo::: Indicate a prolonging of the preceding sound (the number of colons indicates the length of the prolonged sound).
wor- word: Hyphen mid-sentence indicates a cut-off from speech.
word-: Hyphen at the end of a line of script indicates speech carrying on to the next line.
word: Underlining of a word indicates emphasis or rise in pitch.
word?: Denotes a piece of talk posed as a question.
CAPITALS: Indicate louder sounds.
°word°: Degree symbols indicate quieter sounds.
(0.5): Within talk brackets indicate the length of a break between speech in seconds. During non-verbal interaction, the numbers within brackets indicate how long the interaction lasted for.
(text): Text in brackets indicates unsure speech.
(): Indicates an unknown piece of talk.
(Text): Bold italic text indicates a description of non-verbal actions and environmental details.
Transcription annotation
←: Denotes a relevant feature in the transcript (often referred to in the text).
G: Denotes a gaze shift.
EG: Denotes an embodied gesture.
ER: Denotes an embodied verbal reference.

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Published Online: 2018-10-30

Published in Print: 2018-11-27

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2018-0020

Keywords for this article

embodied action; collective experience; conversation analysis; paranormal; social interaction; gesture