Hearing-impaired recipients' non-vocal action sets as a resource for collaboration in conversation

This article reports findings from a conversation analytic (CA) study concerning the occurrence of the non-vocal actions by the hearing-impaired (HI) recipients of talk and the consequences that these actions have for each speaker's ongoing turn in their dyadic interactions. The action sets that were analyzed include gaze shifts and leaning forward, turning one ear toward the speaker, the facial, expression of a frown, and following these, immobility. This article argues that these non-vocal actions are consequential actions of the HI recipient and they strengthen the recipient's collaboration with the speaker. These collaborative procedures are points on a continuum and these include perceptual strain, partial misperception, or more substantial misperception. The speakers interpreted the nonvocal actions according to the ongoing sequence, and for this reason, their responses varied, but they also reflected the speaker's knowledge of the HI recipient's hearing impairment. The non-vocal actions of trouble differ from the verbal other-initiations of repair (e.g. What?). This difference may serve a specific function in HI-conversations; the non-vocal actions that occur simultaneously with the speaker's turn enable the sharing of the HI recipient's perceptual uncertainty in a face-saving manner without explicitly disturbing the conversational flow.