Abstract
Head nods observed in naturally occurring conversation are usually patterned. They not only accompany speech, but also have interactional functions of their own. This paper explores the interactional functions of temporally and sequentially adjacent head nods between the recipient and the speaker in Mandarin face-to-face conversation. These head nods are used by conversational participants to negotiate the closing of telling activities. The recipient initiates head nods at the possible completion of a telling. The teller usually produces reciprocal head nods immediately after the (onset of the) recipient nods and closes the current telling activity. It is argued that the recipient head nods are treated as completion-implicative of the current activity, and the speaker uses reciprocal head nods and summary statements to conclude the activity.
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Appendices
Appendix A
The transcription conventions of GAT-2 (Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem 2) (Selting et al. 2009) used in this article:
- (.):
-
micro-pause
- (-), (–), (—):
-
short, medium or long pauses
- (1.0):
-
pauses which are more than 1.0 second
- =:
-
latching of intonation phrases
- ACcent :
-
primary or main accent
- :::
-
prolongation or stretching of the sound just preceding ::
- ≪creaky>>:
-
phonation feature of a stretch of speech
- ≪p>>:
-
piano, soft
- ↘:
-
one head nod
- –:
-
level final pitch movement
- ;:
-
falling to mid final pitch movement
- .:
-
falling to low final pitch movement
Appendix B
- ASP:
-
aspect marker
- ASSC:
-
associative
- BA:
-
a pretransitive marker
- CL:
-
classifier
- CRS:
-
currently relevant state
- CSC:
-
complex stative construction
- NEG:
-
negative
- PFV:
-
perfective aspect
- PRT:
-
particle
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Li, X. (2019). Negotiating Activity Closings with Reciprocal Head Nods in Mandarin Conversation. In: Reber, E., Gerhardt, C. (eds) Embodied Activities in Face-to-face and Mediated Settings. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97325-8_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97325-8_11
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