| Listener activities, both verbal and nonverbal, can affect following turns by other participants in talk in interaction. In terms of their likelihood of generating a response from the primary speaker, listener activities fall into three groups: (1) nods and verbal continuers like uh-huh signaling simple recipiency (Schegloff 1982) elicit the fewest responses; (2) assessments like wow marking emotional involvement in foregoing talk (Goodwin 1986) elicit somewhat more responses; and (3) head shaking and facial expressions indicating distress or doubt along with verbal information state tokens like oh and so registering receipt of information (Heritage 1984) are most likely to elicit responses of their own. Perhaps because they overlap with speech in progress rather than occupying auditory space of their own, nonverbal responses receive less notice and fewer reactions overall than similar verbal responses. Indications of doubt and disagreement, whether verbal or non verbal, are more likely to elicit direct response than simple tokens of information receipt like oh. My paper explores listening practices and teller responses to them in a set of stories, focusing specifically on nonverbal response tokens and gestures. I will show that listener activities can initiate trajectories in their own right. |
