Some uses of gestural responsive actions

A central focus of research on gestures in social interaction has been their relationship to the concurrent production of talk. This report concerns situations in which interactants build responsive actions using gestures. We establish analytically relevant differences in approaches to the analysis of concurrent and responsive gestures before demonstrating some uses of gesture in the building of responsive actions.Previous research has established that gestures that are produced by recipients during the production of talk are often used to show stance. We show that, likewise, stance is often a salient aspect of gestures that occur following initiating actions that ordinarily make a spoken response relevant. Gestural responses may be used to do sensitive interactional work through recipients’ treatment of stance as salient and by exploiting constraints that conditional relevance imposes on responsive actions. Uses of gestural responsive actions include showing stance in a sequential position, using one action type to do another, and showing that talk is forthcoming. The current findings have implications for the treatment of gesture in conversation analysis and other sequentially oriented methodologies.

► Key differences exist between gestures with and without accompanying talk.
► Stance is often a salient aspect of gestural responses to talk.
► Gestures can do sensitive work through stance and conditional relevance.