“Are You Looking at Me?” The Influence of Gaze on Frequent Conversation Partners' Management of Interaction with Adults with Acquired Hearing Impairment

ABSTRACT

This article presents findings from a larger conversation analysis study of interactional management by adults with severe or profound acquired hearing impairment and their experienced communication partners. It addresses how some partners display a consistent orientation toward their hearing-impaired cointeractants' need for visual speech information. These partners monitor their cointeractants' gaze direction and hence their availability as recipients of their talk. They time their talk in such a way that important components of their talk coincide with the availability of their hearing-impaired cointeractants' gaze. Where necessary, they secure their cointeractants' gaze by using conversational gaze-soliciting strategies such as speech disfluencies and gestures. On listening, the self-repairs by partners that constitute or result from these strategies might easily be thought to arise from problems of production alone. However, detailed visual examination of the data reveals the function of these self-initiated self-repairs by partners and underlines the importance of visual analysis to a full understanding of the management of interaction.

KEYWORDS

Hearing impairment - gaze - conversational repair - gesture - conversation analysis

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APPENDIX A Key to Symbols Used in Transcriptions

Talk

• [ ] Square brackets mark simultaneous talk.

• = Equal signs between units mark contiguous talk.

• (0.5) Silences, measured in tenths of a second, appear in parentheses.

• (.) A brief silence, or micropause, is represented by a period in parentheses.

• . A period indicates a falling terminal pitch contour.

• , A comma indicates a slightly rising terminal pitch contour, indicating that talk is hearably incomplete.

• ¿ A Spanish question mark indicates a midrising terminal pitch contour.

• ? A question mark indicates a high-rising terminal pitch contour.

• ah Underlining indicates stress.

• : Colons indicate sound stretch.

• ↑↓ Upward or downward arrows indicate a marked change in pitch.

• LOUD Talk that is louder than surrounding talk is capitalized.

• °soft° Talk that is softer than surrounding talk is enclosed by degree signs.

• ca- An abrupt cutoff is represented by a hyphen.

• .hh audible in-breaths are represented by two h's preceded by a period.

• () Talk enclosed in parentheses shows an inadequate hearing by transcribers.

• → A horizontal arrow marks relevant self-initiated self-repair and gaze.

Gaze and Gesture

• The first letter of the relevant participant's name marks each line of gaze or gesture transcript; gaze transcript is indicated by g, and gesture, body movement, and other relevant details are indicated by o.

• A line of X's (XXXXX) represents gaze at partner.

• A line of hyphens (- - -) represents gaze away from partner.

• A line of commas (,,,,,) represents transition between the two states.

• P represents a pointing gesture.