On How to Do Things with Holds: Manual Movement Phases as Part of Interactional Practices in Signed Conversation

Abstract

This article discusses the organization of phases of manual movement and nonmovement in sign language conversation, predominantly in, but not limited to, conversational repair. The analysis makes use of video recordings from a Swedish Sign Language corpus (Mesch et al. 2012). It finds that, in signed conversation, different types of holds have diverse interactional implications and that various interactional procedures (e.g., holding a turn or prompting for a response) are associated with the adoption of these holds. Also, aiming for a more fine-grained description, this article proposes novel notions related to phases of manual movement (i.e., the full-hold, the half-hold, and the prolonged stroke). Shifting focus from manual movement purely as a means of conveying lexical meaning, this article proposes an interactional view of movement segments as a locus of situated meaning that emerges during interaction.

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