11 - Projecting Upcoming Events to Accomplish Co-Operative Action

Summary

Multiparty simultaneous action requires the ability to project with precision what is about to happen before it actually occurs. Participants’ production of assessments as an interactive activity provides an environment where the practices required to accomplish such projection can be systematically investigated. As assessments such as “so: goo:d” incrementally emerge within the stream of speech, the intensifier projects that an assessable term of some type is about to be produced. Both the character and the experiential import of the assessment are further displayed by the intensifier’s prosody. Thus a hearer can begin to produce a concurrent assessment of her own while the intensifier is still being spoken, and before actually hearing the assessment term itself. Participants are thus able to co-operatively construct simultaneous congruent assessments. A range of embodied displays further expand this repertoire. Once this peak of heightened mutual involvement has been reached, it can be systematically withdrawn from by laminating embodied displays of disengagement over talk that continues strong assessment. Simultaneous stance and experience are incrementally organized as a co-operative activity.

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