Demonstrating and checking understanding - Bodily-visual resources in action formation and ascription

Abstract

This article uses multimodal conversation analysis to investigate bodily-visual resources in action formation and ascription. The focus is on next actions that bring understanding to the interactional surface either through demonstrating or checking understanding. The data come from instructional cooking and gardening activities organized for adult immigrants. The analysis shows how bodily-visual resources systematically couple with confident actions of demonstrating and tentative actions of checking understanding, and are oriented to as distinguishing between them. Checking understanding is characterized by immobility of bodily-visual actions, whereas demonstrating understanding is characterized by a continuous flow of bodily-visual actions. The analysis contributes to research on embodiment in action ascription, and more specifically the role of embodiment in showing understanding and in dealing with trouble in understanding. The article also introduces a novel way to use graphic transcripts to represent the temporal progression of bodily-visual actions and spoken turns. The data are in Finnish with English translations.