ELSEVLER Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465-490 www.elsevier.nl/locate/pragma Interaction by inscription* Jiirgen Streecka,*, Werner Kallmeyerb zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZ a Department of Communication Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712- 1089, h Institutfiir deutsche Sprache, R5,6- 13, D- 68016 M annheim, USA. Posgach 101621, Germany Received 2 May 1999; revised version 4 November 1999 Abstract This paper investigates uses of inscriptions - graphic acts and the marks resulting from them - as rhetorical and socio-symbolic devices in face-to-face interaction. The analysis of a business-negotitition between two German entrepreneurs reveals that the integration of inscriptions and talk often yields hybrid symbols: while signifying within an instrumental domain such as record-keeping or accounting, they may simultaneously participate in the ‘mise-en-s&e’ of conversational action or serve as metaphoric ‘graphic gestures’. Reconstructing these local meanings of inscriptions requires close analysis of the co-ordination of talk and graphic activity, of the movement patterns of graphic acts, and of the visual gestalt of graphic marks. The paper ends with a discussion of inscriptions as turn-construction units. 0 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Conversation analysis; Writing; Conversational tion; Gestures; Hybrid symbols rhetoric; Nonverbal communica- 1. Introduction It is common practice in the disciplines which study human communication that categorical distinctions are drawn between the various media, symbol systems, and modalities of communication. Thus, one commonly distinguishes between spoken and written communication, between writing and drawing, writing and gesture, and between instrumental and symbolic acts. But these clear-cut distinctions are We wish to thank the protagonists of the interaction that we analyze here for making the materials available, and two anonymous reviewers for their very insightful comments. * Corresponding author. Fax: +l 512 471 3504; E-mail: jstreeck@mail.utexas.edu 0378-2166/01/$ - see front matter 0 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: SO378-2166(99)00126-S 466 J. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465- 490 abstractions. They posit only canonical uses of the media and make it difficult to describe symbolic activities that fall ‘in between’ the categories by merging components from more than one, or because they constitute ‘non-canonical’ applications. Social interaction is full of such hybrid, non-canonical practices. For example, when explanations of technical devices or procedures are given, instrumental actions are typically performed in a demonstrative, self-referential and semi-symbolic fashion they are practical actions and representations of practical actions at the same time (Goffman, 1974). Or, where material objects are within reach of an interaction participant’s hands, they may become incorporated in gestures, thereby lending some of their inherent meaning-potential to, while having them elaborated or altered by, gestures; objects of daily use may also be arranged ad hoc to fulfill some local symbolic need (Streeck, 1996; LeBaron and Streeck, 1997) - a practice for which no common label exists. Social interaction is a vociferous process, always hungry for stuff out of which signs, symbols, and scenic arrangements can be fashioned, and it often appropriates for its own purposes other rule-guided activities that are in play at the time, and transforms them in the process. Among such rule-guided activities that are often carried out alongside social interaction are ones that involve inscriptions - writing, diagramming, calculating, and so on. Inscriptions have recently received a great deal of attention, in particular among ethnographers of scientific practice’ who have argued that “the most powerful explanations [of scientific practice] ... are the ones that take writing and imaging craftsmanship into account” and distinguish them from lay practices in terms of “modifications in the way in which groups of people argue with one another using paper, signs, prints and diagrams” (Latour, 1990: 22). Each established system of inscription - say, alphabetic writing, arithmetic, technical drawing - has its own constitutive and regulative rules (D’Andrade, 1984) that enable and define intelligible expressions that can be formed from the components of the system. But when they are used in social interaction, these rule-systems often give way to lacal considerations and symbolization needs, yielding expressions that are given local interpretations, rather than interpretations that could be ‘deduced’ from context-free rules of the ‘system’. What we want to focus upon are samples of practices in which inscriptions are produced for local purposes, that is, are used in ways that do not accord with normative rules. Our focus is on interactional uses of inscriptions: we examine interaction sequences in which inscriptions are made for purposes other than those which the inscription systems are primarily designed to handle. Imagine a speaker who draws a line on a piece of paper as he speaks, a line which, at the time of its making, does not represent anything and is not a part of a current graphic activity, but rather serves to ‘underline’ and, thus, ‘emphasize’ the point that the speaker currently makes: since pen and paper are available and the speaker is positioned to use them, he makes what might be called a ‘graphic gesture’. Or imagine that the ’ Amann and Knorr-Cetina (1990); Knorr-Cetina (1981); Latour and Woolgar (1986); Lynch (1985); Lynch and Woolgar (1988). .I. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 46.% 490 467 drawing of such a line does have an ‘official’ role within a current graphic activity (say, a ‘bottom line’ is drawn under a set of numbers), but the act of drawing it is timed and performed in such a way that it simultaneously also ‘underlines’ a word that is being spoken. These are two of the cases that we will examine below. We investigate such interactional acts of inscription (and the graphic signs resulting from them) within the context of a business negotiation. Inscriptions are certainly as important in the business world as they are in science labs; in fact, writing appeared for the first time as an accounting system in the context of trade - in the function of ‘external memory storage’ (Donald, 1991; Schmandt-Besserat, 1996). The cases that we investigate are rather humble situated improvisations: not much gets written down that has any impact beyond the situation at hand. Yet, we believe that these inconspicuous instances are of some interest to the analysis of talk and social interaction, because they expand our understanding of the range of materials out of which interactional symbols are made, as well as of the range of units out of which turns-at-talk can be fashioned. 2. The materials The use of pen and paper is what is common to the various instances that we examine here, besides the fact that they are all lifted from the same 20-minute segment of interaction. This segment constitutes a phase in a business negotiation2 between two German entrepreneurs, Antpohler, the owner of a company with approximately 100 employees that produces cookies, and Destrooper, the man in charge of marketing. These businessmen are in the process of devising a new marketing strategy: in addition to selling the cookies that Antpiihler’s company produces in large quantities to wholesalers, they want to directly market smaller quantities of top-shelf cookies to hotels and restaurants. The idea is that these establishments might sell single units (a single florentine) along with cups of coffee. The advantage of this strategy, besides reaching a new segment of the market, could be that it might work during the summer season, when people in Germany do not tend to eat cookies in large quantities. However, such direct-marketing requires an entirely new negotiation of the terms of trade, because it involves a much less advantageous labor-profit ratio on the distributor’s side. Destrooper - who takes the role of the distributor in these negotiations - needs to get a larger share of the profit than he usually does, and what is at issue is: how much. During their conversation, the two businessmen propose, reject, counterpropose, and write down numbers - besides other graphic marks that they make.3 The stage for these graphic performances is a single sheet of paper that Antpohler initially places on the table in front of himself, as he readies his body and pen zyxwvutsrqponmlkjih for the making of inscriptions. At one level, the sheet - along with the established cultural A prior stage of this negotiation is analyzed in Streeck (1996). 3 We only examine Antpijhler’s penmanship, since Destrooper’s cannOt be recovered from the videotape. 468 J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465- 490 practices for making graphic marks - serves primarily cognitive functions: as cognitive artifacts (Norman, 1993), graphic marks facilitate the tasks of calculating and record-keeping. At another level, both the particular fashion in which these marks are made and the symbolic structure that is gradually assembled on the sheet serve rhetorical-interactional functions. Furthermore, beyond the marks that they make in pursuing their accounting tasks, the participants also make marks on this sheet of paper that have no functions in solving the instrumental task, but are exclusively occasioned by the process of interaction. The making of these signs is of particular importance to us, because it is squarely situated between several canonical practices, drawing, writing, and social interaction. Finally, an important feature of inscriptions is what Latour has called ‘immutability’ (Latour, 1990): after they have been completed, they do not disappear (as spoken words and gestures do), but they remain on the scene as tacit reminders of previously established, available to be revisited, remembered, and changed. Our interest in these phenomena is threefold. For one, we come to them with an interest in the rhetorical order and dramaturgy - the mise-en-she - of speaking in interaction: we are interested in describing how speech acts, larger conversational activities, and interactional modalities are situated, performed, dramatized, and staged (see Kallmeyer and Schmitt, 1996). Frequently, interactants do not simply carry out conversational actions, but through the particular fashion in which they perform them, also refer to them, highlight, enhance, or account for them, and make them transparent to others. Gesture or, more generally, embodied behavior plays a central role in this mise-en-sdne of conversational action, but it often includes more than ‘naked’ bodily action, for example, the use of tools (a pen being one example). Sometimes, a locally activated ‘activity system’ (Goffman, 1964) - e.g., adding numbers - with its props, tools, signs, settings, definitions, rules, and motor acts, serves as a fertile reservoir for the selection of behavioral and symbolic units that participate in the mise-en-sake of conversational acts. Such activity systems can include inscriptions, and the making of inscriptions may therefore figure prominently in the embodied self-symbolization of interaction. This interest in mise-en-s&e meets with a separate interest in the representational methods and experiential foundations upon which conversational gestures are made. We have suggested elsewhere (LeBaron and Streeck, 2000) that gestural imagery is not an ‘autonomous’, self-contained visual system whose unit-acts are related to their referents in terms of visual correspondences. Rather, gestural representation is often predicated upon other manual practices, some of them symbolic, others not, and draws some of its vocabulary of forms from them. Inscription constitutes one possible family of practices from which gesture may draw its vocabulary of forms, not least because the two kinds of activities share various important features, notably that of visualization. Thirdly, we want to examine inscriptions, albeit in a preliminary fashion, as turnconstructional components. Turn-construction has from the beginning of conversation-analytic research been understood to be one of the central mechanisms of conversational organization. It comprises the units and methods out of which tumsat-talk are fashioned - turns that take a ‘projectable’ course toward completion J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 46.5490 469 (Sacks et al., 1974), i.e., whose progression can be inspected by interlocutors so that these are prepared to take a next turn when the current unit reaches its completion point. Conversation analysis originated as a sociological enterprise devoted to the study of social action, and while some of its early practitioners, notably the Goodwins (Ch. Goodwin, 1979; M.H. Goodwin, 1980), have included embodied activities in their analyses from the outset, most work on turn-construction has focused on the linguistic resources out of which turns are made. However, research on gestures has demonstrated that these, too, can constitute turn-components (see for example Streeck and Hartge, 1992; Streeck and Knapp,1992). This is not surprising, because gestures are known to be speakers’ phenomena, that is, actions that accompany, are interwoven with, and occasionally replace, talk. Actions that can occur independently of talk, however - instrumental acts, inscriptions, and so on - have so far only rarely been studied for their possible participation in the construction of ‘projectable’ turns-at-talk. At the end of this article, we will therefore re-examine some of the graphic acts that we found in our materials with a view to their possible status as turn-constructional units or, to put it more generally, their systematic integration into the process of turn-construction. Graphic and other acts that we examine are marked by square brackets and numbers in the transcript; the second line of the transcript, set in italics, is a verbatim English translation of the German original; we have chosen it over grammatical annotations because of the proximity of English and German grammar. It has the added benefit of giving the reader a flavor of German syntax. The only annotation used is ‘FT’, for (modal) ‘particle’, used whenever an English equivalent is unavailable. 3. The stage We enter the businessmen’s negotiation as they complete an episode of testing cookies produced by Antpohler’s competitors. Destrooper, the marketing man, requests that they move on to discussing profit margins: ‘So, dann lassen Se ma1 zum F’reis kommen! ‘, he says, ‘All right, let’s talk prices then! ’ Having removed the objects used in their prior activity, Antpohler now positions himself in a fashion which indicates readiness for writing: a pen in hand, he has a sheet of paper in front of him. In response to Destrooper’s request, he says: (1) 1 A Ja ( - - >, ich hatte eingangs schon erw&nt daB unsere Ware , I had Yes initially already mentioned that our ware Well, I had initially mentioned already that our product 2 per Kilo verkauft wird, (- -) und das Kilo dieser Wareper kilo sold and the kilo this-of ware gets, is sold by the kilo and a kilo of the product 3 das gesamte Florentinersortiment (-) kostet (-) the entire jlorentine assortment costs the entire assortment of florentines costs 470 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465490 4 ftimfunzwanzich Mark (-) und zwanzig Pfennig (- - -) brutto. five- and- twenty marks twenty-five marks and twenty pennies gross and twenty Pfennig gross. 1 ii: writes ‘25, 20 brutto’) As he utters ‘ftimfunzwanzich Mark ( - ) und zwanzig Pfennig (- -) brutto’, Antpohler writes 25.20 brutto in the top left comer of the sheet. This inscription may serve several purposes: as Antpijhler’s external memory, for further calculations, or as a mark that is visible and therefore shared by the two participants. Destrooper, the interlocutor, who is attentive to Antpohler’s preparatory actions, focuses his gaze on the sheet as Antpohler is writing. (He does this in all of the examples below, unless otherwise noted: thus, Antpiihler’s graphic acts take place in the public space of the interaction.) In this segment, Antpiihler commits an abstract quantity to a material and enduring interaction record and thus preserves it for further cognitive, interactive, and graphic tasks. Inscriptions allow us “to put the world on paper and to think about the world in terms of those representations” (Olson, 1994). The number becomes a material entity that can be manipulated and operated upon along with other material entities. Latour writes: “Realms of reality that seem far apart (mechanics, economics, marketing, scientific organization of work) are inches apart, once flattened out onto the same surface. The accumulation of drawings in an optically consistent space is .,. the ‘universal exchanger’ that allows work to be planned, dispatched, realized.” (Latour, 1990: 54) Many arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, calculating percentages, and so on) are greatly facilitated by inscriptions, which can therefore be regarded as “cognitive artifacts” (Norman, 1993). It is in this capacity that the inscription that is thus begun is later expanded and used. This instance, however, also constitutes a ‘non-canonical case’. As he demonstrates the financial implications of the demands that Destrooper makes on behalf of the distributor, Antpohler writes ‘50%’ underneath ‘25,20’, draws a line, and writes ‘33%’ underneath. (2) 1 A Wenn ich Ihnen jetzt (-) und Sie signalisieren ja I you now and y ou signal PT If If I now give you and what you signal is 2 dreiunddreiaig Prozent (-) von oben dreiendreiRign Drittel thirty three 3 percent from above thirty three and a third thirty-three percent from the top thirty-three and a third wenn ich das richtig in Erinnerung habe I that correctly in memory have if if I remember this correctly J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465- 490 471 4D Mhm. MlUll. 5 A das w&en finfzig prozent Aufschlag? (- ) zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWV 1 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVU l[ that would be fifty percent mark- up that would be fifty percent added-on [ 6 D Hm. Hm. 7 A Dann verblieben mir hier 1 2[ then 8 remained me here then I would be left here with beziehungsweise (-) Sie hgtten ihre dreiendreiBig Prozent 1 J Id respectively y our thirty - three y ou had percent or rather you would have your thirty-three percent (1: writes ‘50%‘; 2: draws line; 3: points to D.; 4: writes ‘33%‘) The graphic marks are arranged as if in an addition-schema. But no figures are ‘really’ added here. Rather, what Antpijhler demonstrates is this: given his own production price of 25.20 Deutschmarks and Destrooper’s request to receive 33% of the sales price, he must add 50% to his production price in his calculation of the sales-price. The addition-schema is used in a demonstrative, ‘as if’, fashion: to add 33% ‘from the top’, I have to add 50% to my price. The schema, in other words, serves persuasive or rhetorical purposes: it simply visualizes the steps of a calculation. The schema is taken from an established cultural practice, but used here only as a template or paradigm, as AntpGhler himself has previously pointed out : (3) 1 A Bei achtundzwanzig At twenty - eight 2 Prozent behalte ich (-) unter percent keep I I potentially keep At twenty-eight percent einen (-) vertretbaren (-) Kostendeckungsbeitrag (-) und an acceptable 4 cost- coverage- contribution acceptable such einen vertretbaren cost-return ratio Gewinn. also also profit. an 3 Umsttiden under circumstances an an acceptable and and acceptable profit. Ich will nur mal versuchen Ihnen das zu demonstrjjm. 1 2[ 1 l[ I will just once try You that to demonstrate. I would like to try and demonstrate this to you here. (1: points to D; 2: adopts writing posture) 472 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA J. Streeck,W . Kallmey erI Journal of Pragmatics33 (2001) 465- 490 Here, Antpohler formulates his current activity as a demonstration (that Destrooper’s proposal will not work). Small behavioral modulations can mark the difference between ‘doing’ and ‘staging’ an act, i.e., turning it into a ‘performance’. The difference is one of focus and type of attention. ‘Staged’ acts involve an element of self-referentiality: the actor demonstrates awareness of the manner in which he or she acts, at the same time working towards drawing the audience’s attention to this manner (Bauman, 1986). Sometimes, even a brief gap in a mm-at-talk - a minimal delay in the utterance of a word - can suffice to demonstrate self-referentiality and self-awareness and attract attention to the word (or its delivery). These small but interactionally implicative distinctions in the conduct of social and instrumental action deserve much more scrutiny than they have previously been given and we are able to give them.4 Here, modulated actions function to prepare the scene, set the stage for the performance, and establish a connection between inscription and interaction. Once this nexus is established as a framework for the conversation, symbols and actions that might otherwise appear incongruent or unintelligible become coherent, relevant, and meaningful. At the same time, they establish the sheet that Antpohler has in front of him as a stage upon which symbolic exchanges can take place. Throughout this episode, Antpbhler writes numbers on this sheet in such a way that the sheet is partitioned into two equal, vertical halves. This partition becomes a mediating structure, an ‘interface’ for the interaction: a material structure with its own affordances and constraints (two-dimensional lay-out, conventions of writing, etc.), recruited as a field within which intermediate interaction results can be given external and enduring expression. Social and economic relations between the two parties are spatialized, and this spatialization is given permanence through the arrangement of graphic marks on a sheet of paper. The function of the sheet as an interface for mediating the negotiation can be gleaned from pointing gestures and other spatializing devices. Notice the indexicals and pointing gestures in the following calculation: (4) 1 A Wenn ich also bei (-) der Kalkulation (-) noch einen zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcb 1 l[ If 2 I thus at this calculation still a So if I still have by this calculation a Kostendeckungsbeitrach von vielleicht (- -) f_infzehn Frozent habe coverage- cost- contribution of maybe fifteen percent 1 2[ 3 cost-return ratio fifteen percent of maybe (3.5) bleibt mir (- -) hiichstens ein (-) zu versteuemder Reingewinn (-) remains me at the highest a to be taxed pure profit what’s left for me at the maximum is a taxable pure profit 4 Goffman (1974) provides numerous important distinctions between different “keys” in which action and interaction can be conducted. J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal 4 473 of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465- 490 von einem Drittel. 1 3[ of one third. 5 of one third. ((six lines deleted)) Wenn ich also jetzt hier ein Drittel (- -) von dieser Spanne ktirze 4[ 1 If I thus now here a third of this margin take off If I now take off here one third of this margin verbleiben mir letztendlich (-) vielleicht f&if Prozent. 6 (- ) 1 5[ remains me in the last end maybe five percent. what’s left for me in the end is maybe five percent. (1: points to ‘25,20’; 2: writes ‘15%‘; 3: writes ‘: 3’ (=‘divided by three’); 4: points to ‘15%‘; 5: writes ‘5%‘.) This second calculation is written down on the right half of the paper. The sheet is thus divided into two halves, each of which represents one of the parties to the business venture (as well as to the interaction). The structure is not graphically marked, but suggested by the location of the two calculations: the spacing of the numbers lends significance to parts of the papers as ‘territories’, which in turn index (the interests or perspectives of) the two parties to the negotiation. This can be seen in line 1 of (4) above, in which Antpohler makes pointing gestures, first towards ‘Destrooper’s calculation’ (which is indexed by the distal article - fem., sg., dative der, ‘that’), then to his own figures (which are marked by the proximal deictic hier, ‘here’). The participants draw upon this structure in this fashion on several other occasions which space does not permit us to describe here. So far, we have seen that a graphic interface - an external, visible and therefore jointly accessible structure - emerges as a by-product of the participants’ instrumental actions. The fashion in which these activities are carried out is adapted to local interactional circumstances, and the marks that result from them and that remain in the interaction space of the encounter are more than the residue of calculations: they embody locally constituted social meanings for the parties. In the context of face-to-face interaction, operations such as taking notes, calculating, and drawing involve more than the pursuit of cognitive or instrumental goals: inevitably, to the extent to which they are visible to both parties, the actions that constitute them also participate in the interactional and socio-symbolic negotiation of the encounter, and it is not uncommon that the participants deliberately draw upon their inherent symbolic potential to achieve purely interactional ends. In the case above, the social-organizational potential of the cognitiveinstrumental actions that are carried out stems from the fact that these actions are makings, that is, productions of enduring material entities which persist in the space of the interaction beyond the activities for which they were made and in which they originally figured. In other words, the social potential is inherent in the activities’ products. Graphic acts bear complex and shifting relations to gestures: on the one hand, in terms of their esthetic and motoric features, graphic acts, including writing, are 474 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA J. Streeck, W . Kallmty er I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465- 490 closely related to gesture, and it is common to refer to the component acts of writing, painting, and so on, as ‘gestures’ - a connection that is perhaps most prominent in iconographic and logographic writing systems. (In Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, the dynamic features of the motor-acts are given equal attention as the structures of the resulting sign.) The examples in this article strongly suggest that considerations of gesture in social interaction should not remain restricted to those gestures that are made with the naked hands: gestures that incorporate props and tools, including writing instruments, are important resources for symbolization (Streeck, 1996), and as these examples demonstrate, they can become coordinated with speaking in much the same way as writing (for example, the ‘stroke’ of a writing act is made to coincide with a peak accent in the spoken utterance). However, graphic gestures have the additional feature of leaving enduring traces, which distinguishes them from gestures that are made with the naked hands: these traces can be revisited, expanded, and altered; ephemeral gestures lack this feature.5 The relationships between symbolic practices that use the interaction space and those that use surfaces as a medium need further exploration6 4. Mise-en-s&e The possibility of socio-symbolic and interactional uses of cognitive actions derives from the fact that these can be carried out in demonstrative, ritualized, playful, and other non-primary fashions - they can be zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONM modulated to social ends (Goffman, 1974). In the first place, such opportunities arise from the ubiquitous possibility to move one’s body during the conduct of an activity so as to enhance, highlight, exaggerate, broadcast, or even parody what one is presently doing. The action in this case is not simply done, but done self-referentially: the body makes its own conduct transparent, intelligible, and compelling, and demonstrates the actor’s awareness of his conduct. While the segment above only constitutes a minimal case of mise-en-s&e, the manner in which Antpohler presents the result of this demonstrative accounting shows features of calculated impression-management. The essence of his ‘proof’ is that, if he accepted Destrooper’s proposal, his profits would go down to zero. The turn-constructional unit in which he formulates this is a carefully timed and orchestrated combination of speech, writing, and body motion. (5) 1 A Ah:, Sie htitten lhre dreiendreihig Prozent (-) Uh you would have your thirty-three percent Uh: you would have your thirty-three percent 5 In sign-languages, however, the location where a gesture is made can be remembered and used for anaphoric purposes: once a character is introduced in a discourse by a sign made in a particular location, the location serves as an index for the referent. 6 A particularly compelling cultural practice which combines gesture with a graphic surface are the socalled “sand stories” of Warlbiri women in Aboriginal Australia: symbolic gestures (from a conventionalized repertoire) are drawn in the sand; after each segment of a story, the surface is wiped clean and made available for new gestures (Munn, 1973). J. Streeck, W. Kallmeyer I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465-490 2 3 415 und mei:ne fiinf Prozent die ich noch zur Verl&ung habe I*[ 1 1[ and my five percent that I still to disposal have and my five percent which I still have at my disposal als Reserve wtirden auf null (- - - - - - - - - -) runtergehen. 31 14 as reserve would on null down-go. in reserve would go down to zero. (1: writes ‘5’, 2: draws a line; 3: writes ‘0’; 4: turns to D) Antpohler’s formulation of the result (d, ‘zero’) is a small, but quite dramatic enactment. He has just written ‘33%’ on Destrooper’s side of the sheet; now he writes on his side: he writes ‘5’; then, with marked gestural effort, he draws a line under it - an action which, like many other inscription acts in this conversation, coincides with the word that carries the main accent of the clause (Verfiigung, ‘disposal’) - , and then utters and writes ‘0’ at the same time. The writing of ‘0’ ends in an ornamental, sweeping motion of the hand. Then, before completing his sentence, Antpohler makes a lengthy pause, while turning to Destrooper and intently looking at him: he pauses for effect. Only then does he complete the sentence by uttering the verb (runtergehen, ‘go down’). The pause reveals the speaker’s careful monitoring of his talk, and it invites the addressee to share this orientation and feel the impact of the content. Destrooper’s response is silence; he appears stunned. The episode illustrates what (Latour, 1990: 36-37) has said about inscriptions: “What is so important in the images and in the inscriptions... is .. the unique advantage they give in the rhetorical or polemical situation. ‘You doubt what I say? I’ll show you’.” This is an example of the “staging of a stenography in which attention is focused on ..* [a] dramatized inscription . ..” (Latour, 1990: 42). In these segments, then, actions which have an instrumental role in the activity at hand are modulated and carried out in an enhanced, demonstrative, persuasive, performative fashion. They are both done and staged. Rhetorical and interactional effects result from the particular mode of execution. However, it is also possible that the component-parts of an activity-system such as writing, especially if it is already ‘in play’, provide the raw materials from which symbolic actions and representations for a different activity can be made. A case in point is the popular ‘quotation mark’ gesture, a symbol from the activity-system of alphabetic writing, which is used to distance oneself from a term that one uses in speaking, to mark it as ‘not my own’. In the following examples, the activity ‘arithmetic with pencil and paper’ provides component-parts for conversational gestures which serve, not arithmetical, but sociosymbolic functions. The mise-en-sc8ne of speaking draws upon the symbolic resources of arithmetic and writing, and the results are what we may call ‘hybrid’ symbolizations. Again, the achieved interactional effect hinges on the precise placement of the instrumental act in the stream of talk, as well as upon its ritualization or ‘gesturalization’. J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal of Pragmatics 476 33 (2001) 465- 490 5. Hybrids One of the most ubiquitous and versatile components of inscriptions is the line. In the context of arithmetic operations, lines indicate summation, or the completion of an operation, among other possibilities. Lines reveal the dual nature of external cognitive operations with particular clarity: they are material, visible, and enduring products of motor acts; and these motor acts themselves can be executed in different ways - they can be accentuated, formalized, or embellished. In the previous segment, for example, we saw Antpiihler drawing a line after writing ‘5’ and before writing ‘O’, but drawing it with marked effort: the motion itself was made conspicuous; it had the visible qualities of a gesture. On several other occasions during this negotiation of profit margins, Antpiihler draws a double summation-line. This act, too, is gesturalized, a ‘dramatized inscription’, made with considerable effort and aplomb. Here is one example: (6) ihn also auf (-) achtundzwanzig Mark anheben 1 A Wir muSten We would have to it thus to twenty-eight marks raise We would have to raise it to twenty-eight marks (-) damit & (-) eine Spanne von dreiunddreihig Prozent haben. 2 I[ 1 margin of thirty-three so that you a percent have. so that you get a margin of thirty-three percent. (1: draws double line) The locally conveyed sense of this inscription derives from its simultaneous participation and place within two concurrent activity systems, the calculation and the conversation. While it is made within an appropriate slot in a sequence of actions which together constitute the (would-be) written calculation (note that the numbers are not actually added here), namely after all numbers have been written down, before the end-result is inscribed. But the line is also coupled with a spoken word - the (polite) second-person pronoun Sie - which bears the main accent of the sentence and is delivered with emphasis: we thus perceive the drawing of the double line as a gesture of emphasis. The gestalt of this graphic mark conveys a sense of parity, equality, fairness. Here it is made within the context of a linguistic act in which the speaker explains what he would need to do to meet the demands of the other. While the graphic act has a place in the activity ‘would-be calculation’ and is gesturalized so as to metaphorize parity, its placement in the turn conveys the sense ‘parity for you’. There are several other occasions in which the graphic mark ‘double line’ projects a sense of parity. For example, as he sums up the gist of the second of the two alternative proposals that he makes, Antpohler again marks the adverb problemlos (‘without any problem’) with a double line: (7) 1 A ... und kiinnte &men, wenn ich (-) &re Produkte in einer 1 11 .. and could you if I your produ’cts in a . .. and could give you, if I produce your products in a J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal 2 33 (2001) 465490 411 zweiten Schicht produzieren kann (-) problemlos (-) 1 2[ 1 3[ second 3 of Pragmatics shift can produce a second shift, dreiunddreil3ig Prozent thirty - three percent without problem without any problem geben. give. thirty-three percent. (1: pointing gesture to D.; 2: brings hand in writing position; 3: draws double line) What happens in these cases can be described as a blending’ of two symbol- and activity-systems (or practices): a (behavioral and/or symbolic) unit that belongs to one activity system and is used (or made) in line with the rules and requirements of this system, simultaneously fulfills a function in another symbolic realm, which relates not to the instrumental activity, but to the interaction and the social relationship that is negotiated in and through it. A graphic mark belonging to the specific inscription practices that are used for arithmetics (e.g., the summation line) is produced in such a fashion that it, and the act of making it, also serve as markers within the ongoing dialogue. A component of the system ‘inscription’ (or ‘arithmetics’) is recruited for a secondary job within the activity ‘gesture’, specifically ‘interactional’ or ‘discourse-organizational gesture’. Note that the turn-component with which the inscription is coupled is an insert within the unfolding syntactic structure of the utterance; it could be deleted without any syntactic and little semantic effect. This insert is produced after a micro-pause, during which the speaker brings his hand in a writing position - and thus readies it for drawing the lines. At the same time - and on another level - , the drawing of the lines prefaces the conclusion of (this part of) Antpiihler’s argumentation; it thus lends salience to the unit that completes the turn. Typically in cases like this, the instrumental or cognitive system or practice supplies raw materials for an interactional system (in this case, gesture). It is sufficient that the cognitive-instrumental system is activated (i.e., made relevant in and for the interaction at hand); once it is, its components can make cameo-appearances in the realm of social-interactional symbolization. ‘Blending’ two practices means that a meaningful gestalt is projected from one system onto the other, unrelated one: while the systems or practices are partly fused in the given case (a summation line is a ‘natural’ juncture marker), the systems (arithmetics, gesture) are fundamentally separate and not intrinsically related. This is different, for example, from cases where inscriptions - for example, diagrams - are interpreted within another system, for example gestures (Ochs et al., 1996): in the latter case, there is an intrinsic relationship between the two systems, and one practice elaborates products of the other. After AntpCjhler has written down a few numbers, as he explicates the problems posed by Destrooper’s request and outlines his own counterproposals, occasionally, while he utters a number, he points to a location on his sheet. Sometimes, he utters ’ We use the term ‘blending’ in line with Fauconnier (1997). .I. Streeck,W .Kallmey erI Journal of Pragmatic533 (2001) 465490 478 a number and simultaneously points to one that is actually there on the sheet; at other times, he points to ‘virtual’ numbers. He ‘pretends to point’, if you will. Or, to put it differently, he schematically incorporates components of a currently activated activity system into the visual-gestural mise- en- sctne of talk. For example, he may try to make an argument more persuasive by pointing to a number that ‘might as well have been written’. At other times, Antpohler writes a number or a word in the air as he utters it. This is the case in segment (8): (8) 1 A ... und ich gebe Ihnen diese dreiunddreiI3igndrittel Prozent Kondition .. . 1 11 ... and I give you these thirty-three and a third percent commission ... (1: ‘writes’ ‘33 l/3’ in the air) Although this performance (and others of the same kind) amounts to little more than a gestural ornament, it illustrates a rather general cultural belief among professionals who routinely work with inscriptions that what is written down somehow has an enhanced ontological status. Among Antpijhler and his counterpart, this practice is so habitual that it even permeates their talk during times when no actual inscriptions are made: the habit asserts itself in writing gestures. The most intricate example of such blendings of activity and gestural systems occurs during Antpohler’s utterance of a ‘big word’, a complex business term, vertretbarer Kostendeckungsbeitrag, which literally means ‘acceptable contribution towards covering the costs’ and might be translated as ‘acceptable cost-return-ratio’. (9) 1 A Bei achttmdzwanzig At 2 Prozent behalte ich (-) unter Umstanden twenty - eight percent keep I under circumstances I At twenty-eight percent potentially keep einen (-) vertretbaren (-) Kostendeckungsbeitrag (-) und 1 2[ a acceptable coverage- cost- contribution acceptable cost-return ratio such einen vertretbaren Gewinn. an 3 also an acceptable and and profit. acceptable profits. (1,2: draws two long lines in the air.) also As he utters this phrase, Antpohler makes a two-part gesture: a sequence of two horizontal long lines drawn in the air. The production of each unit coincides precisely with the uttering of one word. The visual gestalt is unequivocal, and so is the activity system from which the gesture is taken: Antp6hler ‘underlines’ the words and thus makes them out as words that are written somewhere. In his enactment, he appears like someone who reads a file and underlines what is important. Thus, he lends the weight of written documents to his words as he speaks them. He enacts an inscription-based rhetoric in his embodiment of speaking. The bodily practice of J. Streeck. W . Kallmey er I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465d90 479 making graphic annotations on a written text serves as the model for his mise-ensc2ne of speaking. 6. Graphic gestures Once the repertoires and practices of writing and drawing have been mobilized for socio-symbolic uses, the possibilities for fabricating gestural symbols from them are endless. We understand gestures not only by virtue of their visual forms, but also in terms of their ‘fit’ with a slot within an unfolding action sequence, as well as with the spoken words with which they are coupled. Highly abstract, rudimentary movement components can therefore index a broad, diverse and polymorphous range of meanings. The same is true for graphic marks that are produced in gestural fashion in the course of an interaction. Made in the way of gestures on a surface, they can function descriptively, rhetorically, and in various other capacities. We have already encountered several instantiations of the most basic of all graphic marks, the line. In these instances, the line has figured as part of an established practice, but was produced in gestural ways, so that it simultaneously served purposes of interactional symbolization. In other cases, lines are drawn in the manner of iconic gestures. Several times in the process of explaining the operations of his company (in attempts to demonstrate that his interlocutor’s requests are unrealistic), AntpGhler draws a line on his sheet to symbolize ‘operation’ or ‘production’ (in German : Betrieb). (10) 1 A Wenn ich den Be@&b in eine zweite Schicht fahre (- - ) 1 I[ operation in second shift drive Zf Z the If I run the operation for a second shift, 2 Kostendeckungbeitrag. hab ich einen ganz anderen have Z an entirely different coverage- cost- contribution . I have a totally different cost-return ratio. (1: draws a long line on the sheet.) In the conditional clause (line l), the verb (fahren, ‘drive’) highlights the dynamic character of a business: it is in motion, ‘driven’. The root of the noun (Trieb, ‘drive’) matches this semantic profile (Betrieb can denote ‘company’ or ‘enterprise’, but also ‘commotion’). The graphic gesture which Antpiihler makes as he utters Betrieb enhances this semantic gestalt: it represents Antpiihler’s company as an ongoing operation which is perpetually in motion; it stresses continuity. Only one among the many possible aspects of the basic sign ‘line’ is activated: a line could also mark a boundary, for example (and thus symbolize distinction, separation, and so on). By drawing a long line, Antpahler produces a graphic and thus enduring representation of the continuous praduction process that is at the heart of his company. That the significance of the line as a representation of the ‘operation’ is intersubjectively shared among these parties is revealed in an instance in which Destrooper J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal 480 of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465490 points with his pen to the line on Antpohler’s sheet, as he refers to the production process. This comes about in a two-stage enactment, immediately after Antpiihler concludes one of his proposals. Destrooper initiates a counter-proposal with the preface: ‘Ja halt, dann machn wers doch so’, ‘Well hold on, then let’s do it this way’. As he utters this preface, he makes a circular, left-handed gesture with an extended index finger, pointing first to Antpohler’s, then to his own segment of the table. The gesture visualizes a connection and thus suggests coherence and equivalence between the two plans. Then, with his right hand, Destrooper picks up his pen, holds it at one end so that it forms a long baton, moves his hand far into Antpiihler’s transaction segment, and points to the line on his sheet, almost touching it with the tip of the pen. It arrives there exactly as he utters the word Produktion. (11) 1 D Ja: halt, darm machn wers doch so:, dann kann ich 1 1 2r I[ thus then can I Yes hold, then make we PT Well hold on, then let’s do it this way, then I can 2 in den Zeiten wo Sie die Prod&ion nich ausgelastet haben, 3 in the times where you the production not exhausted have, during times when you’re not running at full capacity (-) versorg ich Sie mit ah oh mit Auftragen. provide I you with uh- uh- with orders. provide you with orders. (1: makes circular gesture with left hand; 2: lifts right hand; 3 : takes pen; 4: points to ‘production-line’ with tip of pen) This action demonstrates that the meaning of the line as a representation of ‘production’, ‘enterprise’, ‘ operation’ is shared by both parties. An inscription comprises both an act (inscribing) and a graphic mark that results from it (e.g., a line); either aspect can be foregrounded in a given context. In the examples above, while the drawing of the line is a motor-sign conveying a specific sense, the mark resulting from the act embodies the same meaning, but it does so over time. In another segment, in contrast, it is strictly the motor act of drawing a line which enhances and supports the verbal formulation; the resulting sign is of no immediate relevance (although it might take on relevance if it is revisited later). When he rejects Destrooper’s proposal above, Antpiihler draws a quick line while he utters an idiomatic phrase, iiber die Biihne ziehen, literally ‘to drag across the stage’, which is a highly figurative way of saying ‘to get something done’, ‘to carry out a plan’, or simply ‘to do something’. Here, the motor enactment corresponds to the literal meaning of ‘drag’; the line remaining on the sheet has no significance for the interaction. (12) 1 A Gut (- -) Sie konnen sich vorstellen dal3 wir fur diese Monate Good you can yourse&f imagine that we for these months you can Good imagine that during those months .I. Streeck, W. Kallmeyer I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465-490 2 3 481 (-) e&ene Aktivititen (-) im Partnerbereich Detmolt (-) in the partner area Detmolt activities own we have our own activities in the Detmolt partner area 5h schon i.iber die Biihne ziehen mijchten. I[ 1 uh already across the stage drag want. that we would like to carry out (1: quickly draws a short line) A particularly interesting example occurs in the course of a conditional clause in segment (13) below. Here, the linguistic formulation is congruent with the action of putting something on paper. AntpGhler, in this utterance, claims that even Destrooper’s hypothetical and playful demand to get a new car from Antpiihler could be feasible if they got the appropriate returns ‘on paper’, i.e., ‘on the books’. This metonymy is common in the business world. But here it nicely congrues with the local act of drawing a line on paper. As he utters Umstitze (‘returns’), Antpiihler draws a line. The noun and the gesture are produced simultaneously and jointly participate in the figuration of ‘return’. The linguistic formulation not only congrues with the gestural inscription, it also reflexively exposes it as an act of putting something on paper. The phrase ‘on paper’ connects to the act and the content of the talk. We may call this a ‘double-take’. (13) sich rechnen. 1 A Au:ch das lieBe Also that would let itself calculate. Even that would be doable. 2 Wenn wir die dementsprechenden Ums9tze (-) aufs Papier kriegen. 1 1 J 1 2[ 3r we the to-that-equivalent returns on the paper get. If If we get the appropriate returns on paper [i..e. the balance sheets]. (1: readies hand for drawing; 2: slowly draws horizontal line; 3 : rapidly draws vertical line) But Antpiihler subsequently finds himself dissatisfied with the metaphor ‘on paper’, pointing out that the issue is not simply to get the return on the books or on paper, but rather to feed them back into the ongoing cycle of production. Antpiihler constructs a complex, highly metaphorical image - production, product, sales, new orders are figured as a ‘turning wheel’ - and supports his evocative account with several gestures, the last of which is a circular motion corresponding to the turning of a wheel. In other words, the representation of the production by a line is replaced by an image of ‘continuous turning’, and there is congruence between the successive images provided by the talk and those provided by gesture. The second circumscription is initiated by a word which marks the subsequent talk as a paraphrase and correction of the talk provided before, a better version: beziehungsweise, ‘or rather’. This word, too, is accompanied by a small pseudo-graphic gesture: the hand, which holds the pen, is moved as if it crosses something out. J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465- 490 482 (14) 1 A Beziehungsweise I[ 1 not only on the paper, Respectively 2 nich nur auf’s Pap& Or rather not only on paper, sondem in die Produktion, da13die Produktion produziert,(-) zyxwvutsrqponmlkjih 2[ but 3 production that you then sell the product daB dam-r wieder nachgeordert 51 that then again 5 that the production produces, but into the production that the production produces, dal3 Sk dann diese Produktion verkaufen ( - ) 41 1 that y ou then this 4 1 13[ into the production sell wird und 1 after- ordered gets and that new orders come in and dieses wunderschijne Rad sich dreht. 6[ this wonderful wheel itself 1 turns. that this wonderful wheel keeps turning. (1: gesture of ‘crossing out’; 2-4: small, unspecific gestures; 5: points to line on sheet; 6: makes ‘turning’ gesture) Again, a unit-act of the system ‘writing’ - within which words can be erased or crossed out and thus, for all practical purposes,extinguished - is appropriated for the activity ‘talking-in-interaction’ : it visualizes self-correction. All of these examples of graphic gestures are situated on the borderline between iconic and metaphorical signs (McNeill, 1992). To visualize ‘production’ by a simple line is a very abstract and not very descriptive strategy. But many ‘iconic’ or descriptive gestures are similarly abstract - formal minimization is in the nature of gestural imagery (cf. Arnheim, 1969). On the other hand, in some cases the gestural image is directly - and rather literally - related to the meaning of a word or phrase, but then the phrase is a metaphor (e.g., iiber die Biihne ziehen). Once again, we see how situated meaning is fabricated through the combining of a very simple, locally available form (i.e., a line, a circular gesture), the meaning(s) of concurrent or adjacent linguistic signs, and the sequential context of the enactment. The same method of combining linguistic and visual metaphorizations appears in two other sequences of this negotiation in which Antpohler also draws lines, albeit not straight lines. Early during the episode, when he expresses his desire to support the small businessmen who sell his products, but confronts it with the limited space that he has to maneuver in, financially speaking, Antpijhler draws a circle. Notice that here, too, the gesture is coupled with an insert - irgendwo, ‘somewhere’ - and thus anticipates (and thereby prepares) the linguistic term (M argen, ‘margins’). Thus, the mise- en- scPne is similar to segment (5). Note that the insert spatializes an abstract term (‘margins’) that is simultaneously spatialized by the graphic gesture. J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er / Journal of Pragmatics (15) 33 (2001) 465490 483 irgendwo (-) die Margen (-) letztendlich 1 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVU I[ now are however in the last end somewhere the margins SO So but now in the final analysis the margins are somehow such begrenzt. also limited. limited too. (1: draws circle) 1 A So (-) jetzt sind aber 2 A circle is a fitting image for ‘limitation’: it figures an enclosed territory or space. By inscribing the circle on his sheet of paper, Antpiihler creates a little monument, a reminder of the circumstances or constraints under which he operates. We might regard this inscription as a case of visual metonymy. It relates to the transferred, not to the literal meanings of his words. This is different in the second case in which an image of enclosure is produced; here, it corresponds to the literal meaning of a figurative expression that is concurrently produced. Explaining his situation, Antpijhler points out that he cannot afford to get into a situation where he sells his ware below costs. He chooses the formulation ‘to enter into a situation’. As he utters it, he draws three lines which form a rectangular enclosure with one open side. (16) 1 A Ich kann ja einfach nicht (-) zulassen (-) dal3 ich mich 1[ I can yes simply not permit that I myself I just cannot allow myself in eine Situation begebe, Herr Destrooper, (-) wo ich weit 1 into a situation move, Mr. Destrooper, where Z widely to get into a situation, Mr. Destrooper, where I work far unter Deckungskostenbeitrag ti (-) arbeite. under coverage-cost-contribution uh work. below a return on my investments. (1: draws three sides of a rectangle) What is visualized here, then, is the vehicle of a metaphor. Despite the differences in the ways in which they relate to and combine with the meaning of words spoken in the dialogue, all of the gestural inscriptions that we have examined in this section are affiliated with the content of talk. However, gestures can also - and perhaps do so more frequently - relate to the pragmatics of communication: they can visualize speech acts, direct the interlocutor’s attention, project utterance structures, address turn-taking tasks, and so on (Kendon, 1995; Streeck and Hartge, 1992). Gestures that serve these functions have been called rhetorical, pragmatic, or interactive gestures. We have examined cases of secondary pragmatic-gestural uses of components of instrumental activity systems above, e.g., the gesturalization of summation lines. One also finds instances of inscriptions that J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465490 484 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA serve as pragmatic gestures but, instead of being derived from a locally activated activity system, belong to a broader cultural vocabulary of graphic signs. For example, as he prefaces one of his proposals, AntpGhler draws an arrow on his sheet of paper; it points to the location where he is about to write down numbers. (17) 1 A Der zwei:te Weg (- -) is eine noch ganz l[ The second way The second way (1: draws arrow) andere ijberlegung. zyxwvutsrqponm 1 is a still entirely different reflection. is an entirely different idea. The drawing of an arrow focuses attention on a specific region of the sheet, and in this context prepares and indexes an imminent next phase of the shared activity, e.g., a second proposal. There are many instances throughout this negotiation where minimal graphic marks such as a quick and short diagonal line, two lines crossing one another, or a checkmark - signs that in some cases are actually made, in other cases only are simulated above the sheet of paper - serve discourse-organizational purposes. Their uses are not much different from the pragmatic uses of lines that we have previously examined, and we therefore do not pursue them any further. 7. Inscriptions as turn-constructional units Turn-construction is one of the fundamental and central domains of conversational organization. How turns are constructed so that their movement towards completion can be anticipated by interlocutors is a central question in the interactional analysis of talk. How turns at talk are co-organized with instrumental actions, which may have projectable trajectories of their own - whether the organization of action is subsumed to that of talk, or vice versa, or if the two systems are organized independently - is a complicated and open-ended question, and it is not at all clear that it will be able to be answered in any general fashion. It is conceivable that the alignment of talk and non-gestural action is always a ‘local’ accomplishment in which contextual circumstances and resources are used and taken into account, but for which no ‘systematics’ exists. However, the more limited question whether instrumental actions can be integral components of speaking-turns, that is, whether talk - and the sequential and turninternal preparation and ‘projection’ of talk - can include symbolic actions such as inscriptions as ‘official’, oriented-to parts, may be more answerable.8 It is interesting in this regard to revisit some of the interaction segments that we have examined with this particular question in mind. We will see that the integration of inscriptions into turns-at-talk is achieved by a variety of methods and that the strength of the connection varies. * For a discussion of similar issues, see Goodwin (1998). J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal of Pragmatics 485 33 (2001) 465490 One of the simplest ways of linking talk and inscription is simply to bring the two activities into temporal alignment - that is, to initiate, execute, and complete unitacts from the two systems simultaneously. Such alignment may require that the pace and item-by-item delivery of one production - in the following case: the talk - is modified so that it matches the pace of the other; only then may it be possible that the two actions emerge together, as one compound production. For example, the delivery of talk may have to be slowed down so that the writing hand can ‘catch up’. This is the case in our previous example (1): Notice the pause at the end of line 1: the speaker delays the completion of the utterance so that it coincides with the completion of writing. (1) 1 A Ja (- -), Yes, Well, 2 per Kilo per kilo ich hatte e&angs schon erwtint da6 unsere Ware Ihad already mentioned that our initially ware I had initially mentioned already that our product verkauft wird, (- -) und das Kilo dieser Waresold gets, and the kilo this- of ware 3 is sold by the kilo and a kilo of the product das gesamte Florentinersortiment (-) kostet (-) 4 the entire assortment of florentines costs fiimfunzwanzich Mark (-) und zwanzig Pfennig (- - - - ) brutto. the entire ji’orentine assortment five- and- twenty marks costs and twenty pennies twenty-five marks and twenty Pfennig 11 (1: writes ‘25, 20 brutto’) gross gross. 1 The effects on the interaction of such achieved alignment, however, may vary. It is possible that the coordination is needed only for the orderly conduct of the complex activity at hand: after all, the two lines of action (instrumental activity and talk) are topically linked and refer to one another, and dissociation might produce disorder. But it is also possible that the talk serves to broadcast what is being written, in which case the writing itself is transformed into a public performance; it needs talk ‘for publicity’s sake’, and the organization of talk - as a ‘sounding box’ (Goffman, 1983) for the written word - becomes accordingly subservient to the inscription. In such cases, the projectability of the writing act - a co-participant who is watching the inscription process can anticipate its course and completion - also facilitates the projectability of the turn at talk. A related type of achieved alignment which not only requires temporal coordination of the production of the unit acts, but is possible only when the two interrelated activities reach their appropriate respective stages at the same time, occurs in the earlier quoted segment (6). (6) 1 A Wir miil3ten ihn also auf (-) achtundzwanzig Mark anheben We would have to it thus to twenty - eight marks We would have to raise it to twenty-eight marks raise 486 J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal 2 of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465- 490 (-) damit S& (-) eine Spanne von dreiunddreihig Prozent haben. I[ 1 so that y ou so a margin of thirty - three that you get a margin of thirty-three percent have. percent. Here, the forceful drawing of a double line both marks the arrival at the result of the calculation and lends emphasis and exposes the word that is concurrently spoken, which also carries the main accent of the clause. This graphic gesture exemplifies another type of coordination practice, which consist in aligning the thrust of a movement (e.g., the stroke of a gesture) with the syllable that carries the main accent of a word, clause, or phrase (Kendon, 1980; Schegloff, 1984). What goes on in the two respective activities is not intrinsically related: rather, what is said modifies and elaborates what is being written, and the gesturalized conduct of writing highlights some part of what is being said. Accordingly, the inscription must be understood in terms of both systems simultaneously. It is both an essential stage of the calculation and a gesture that highlights a part of the talk that otherwise occupies the turn. The act of inscribing is clearly a turn-component - a gesture of emphasis - although it must also be understood by reference to the graphic activity of which it simultaneously is a part. Sometimes the sy ntactic organization of a turn at talk reveals that it has been constructed so as to accommodate a concomitant act as a turn-component. This is the case, for example, when a syntactic insert is incorporated into the structure of an unfolding turn so as to create a slot and ‘make time’ for a non-vocal act. This is one of the most effective methods for incorporating non-speech units into a turn at talk. It appears, for example, in our segment (7) in which Antpohler inserts the adverb problemlos (‘without any problem’) into the turn, while he forcefully draws a double-line (‘problemlos’ carries an accent, which marks it as an independent syntactic unit.) (7) 1 A ... und konnte finen, wenn ich (-) &rre Produkte in einer 1 1[ . and could y ou 1fI y our products in a and could give you, if I produce your products in a zweiten Schicht produzieren kann ( - ) probtilos (-) 1 2[ 1 3[ ... 2 second 3 shift can produce without problem a second shift, without any problem dreiunddrei6ig Prozent geben. thirty - three percent give. thirty-three percent. (1: pointing gesture to D.; 2: brings hand in writing position; 3: draws double line) In this example, the inscription is also prepared during a micro-pause before the insert. .I. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465490 487 An insert makes room for a metaphorical gesture in segment (1.5) in which the speaker draws a closed circle before he says that ‘the margins are limited’. Here, the insert adds no content at all to the sentence-in-progress - irgendwo in German is considered a ‘filler’, comparable to English like - but it does have a spatial profile: ‘somewhere’. The inscription then specifies ‘where’ this ‘somewhere’ is. (15) 1 A So (-) jetzt sind aber letztendlich irgendwo (-) dieMargen (-) zyxwvutsrqpon l[ so 2 1 now are however in the last end somewhere the margins So but now in the final analysis the margins are somehow such begrenzt. also limited. limited too. (1: draws circle) While the main function of the insert irgendwo appears to be to simply ‘make room’ (i.e., create a moment of otherwise unoccupied time), and while it would likely be considered as a mere expression of vagueness if the utterance were regarded without consideration of the context of action, within this context the term may actually index a non-linguistic representation or symbol that is simultaneously produced. In other words, it is within this context of action that the word takes on a semantic profile beyond that of a mere ‘filler’. This is true, by the way, also of other words which are often prematurely regarded as ‘fillers’. In German, the indexical adverb so (‘like this’, ‘in this manner’), which is quite frequent in colloquial speech and popularly seen as a symptom of vague, non-committal, even sloppy speech, occurs abundantly with descriptive gestures, and in this context is as precise as speech can be: it indicates that the meaning provided by the spoken utterance is complemented by nonlinguistic information and its understanding would be incomplete if the gesture were not taken into account (Streeck, 1993). In this case, clearly, the gesture is an ‘official’ turn-component. These examples demonstrate that the issue of turn-construction - what are the units out of which turns-at-talk are constructed, what makes their trajectories projectable, how can turns be expanded before they reach their projectable conclusion, and so on - requires a careful consideration of the structures of the component acts out of which those non-linguistic actions are constructed which can be co-constructed and integrated with the talk. Some of these actions can be performed by individuals, some afford ‘choral’ productions, some are organized by activity-systems that may have their own turn-taking structure. It is impossible to predict how the internal organization of speaking turns and the organization of units and courses of instrumental action are aligned within such complex activities and what the methods are by which ‘multi-modal’ turns - turns which combine linguistic and non-linguistic components - are fashioned; nor is it likely that a single ‘organization’ such as the turn-construction component of the turn-taking system for conversation will account for this integration. The issues certainly merit investigation. In the case of inscriptions such as the ones that we have described here, the coordination of action 488 J. Streeck, W . Kallmey er I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 465- 490 and speech appears to be rather similar to the ways in which gestures are integrated into turns at talk (Streeck and Knapp, 1992). 8. Conclusion Looking at a single negotiation between two German entrepreneurs, we have examined instances of (the making of) graphic marks that fall somewhere between gestures and signs that belong to some culturally established sign-system. We have suggested that these graphic signs represent a situated hybridization of symbolic and instrumental and/or representation practices: units that primarily ‘belong to’ writing simultaneously participate in a figurative, non-canonical fashion in the system ‘talking-in-interaction’. The result are hybrid acts/marks that serve instrumental and socio-symbolic purposes at the same time. To understand how these acts/marks function, we must take their hybridity or ‘in-between-ness’ seriously, because it is the ways in which components of the two systems are blended, the figurative possibilities of one system once its components are projected onto one another - that constitute the very logic of these symbolizations. We have seen that these acts/marks - ‘real’ or ‘simulated’ inscriptions - can support both the content and the rhetorical order of talk: inscriptions can be the equivalent of iconic or descriptive gestures, but they can also contribute to the social organization of talk. Gesturalizations of instrumental and representational acts that belong to systems like accounting, record-keeping, arithmetic, and so on can figure prominently in the mise-en-scdne of talking-in-interaction. There appear to be few differences between graphic gestures and gestures made with the naked hands. Rather, varieties of writing and drawing, along with the circumstance that the speaker has a pen in hand and a sheet of paper in front of him, are simply locally available resources out of which symbolic gestures are fashioned. Social interaction, we have said in the beginning, is a vociferous process, always hungry for symbolic material that can be used when a creative symbolization must be achieved. And yet, what distinguishes symbolic inscriptions from ‘normal’ gestures is that they leave traces, that they are, in a more literal sense, ‘makings’: whatever is made remains on the scene and can potentially be used again, or modified, elaborated, and embellished. Because they remain on the scene after the moment in which they are produced, inscriptions can become the targets or components of further symbolic acts. It is possible that the graphic arrangements that result from inscription acts become interfaces - mediating structures - in terms of which aspects of the interaction between the parties are organized and conceived. And yet, at other times inscriptions are not actually made but only simulated, drawn in the air above the sheet of paper upon which ‘real’ graphic marks can be found. 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