10 - Projection and the Interactive Organization of Unfolding Experience

Summary

While earlier chapters investigated the intertwining of both differential states of knowledge and unlike materials, here analysis will turn to the calibration of experience in the midst of unfolding action. Assessments draw together a diverse collection of resources for the public display of stance, evaluation, and embodied experience. Syllables such as Ah:: that lack lexical content but carry expressive prosody enable a hearer not only to display precise understanding of what a speaker is saying, but also to participate in the experience her talk makes relevant, and to do this without intruding into the segmental talk of the speaker. Assessment adjectives, such as beautiful, create an experiential, interpretative frame for the noun that will follow. Within the noun phrase itself, immediately after the adjective emerges, a hearer can display a new experiential stance. Despite pervasive claims about next turns being the place where understanding is demonstrated, these practices demonstrate the crucial importance of simultaneous action in the moment-by-moment co-operative construction of utterances, turns, and understanding.