Foreshadowing a problem: Turn-opening frowns in conversation

•In a turn-opening frown, speaker starts to frown briefly before the utterance onset.•Turn-opening frowns (TOF) are integral part of the upcoming turn's contribution.•TOFs initiate a turn that deals with a problem.•This relates to (negative) evaluation, disaffiliation, and/or epistemic difficulty.•TOFs are not typically reciprocated by their recipients.

Occasionally in conversation, a participant starts to frown during a silence between utterances, before starting to talk. The purpose of our study was to determine how these frowns contribute both to the upcoming turn and to the larger conversational context. The results suggest that these frowns mark the following utterance as dealing with something problematic in relation to the expectations created in the preceding talk. As pre-beginning elements, these frowns anticipate utterances that involve difficulties associated with negative evaluation, disaffiliation, or epistemic challenge. All three types of problem involve some complication that arises in the expected course of events within the interaction. These frowns seem to foreshadow utterances that somehow deviate from the recipient's routine expectation. As these frowns persist into the utterances they anticipate, they become intertwined with what is being said. Furthermore, the utterance or utterances that follow(s) the turn-opening frown expose(s) the grounds for that problem. Turn-opening frowns are typically produced by the frowning participant gazing downward and away from the recipient. The recipients of these frowns do not typically reciprocate them even though they notice the frown. However, these facial expressions work as an important interactional resource for the interlocutors, hinting beforehand at a problem in the conversation that will be addressed in the upcoming turn of talk.