A regular turn in American sign language Essay

In the next example, the Professor is suggesting that the next step is to separate portions of the Student’s narrative into chunks. She explains that narrative chunks in spoken languages are detected through linguistic cues, such as rhythm, intonation, and discourse markers (Chafe 1982). She concludes by saying that she does not know if ASL has these cues or if there are other kinds of cues. Her final remark, Ð ° rhetorical question, is interpreted into ASL as Ð ° direct question: Does ASL has cues? The Student immediately responds, â€Å"YES† The Professor’s delay at hearing Ð ° response is minimal, less than Ð ° half second. The briefness of this delay accounts for the illusion that the speakers are almost talking to each other, Because the Student begins to respond in ASL by the second potential turn transition, the exchange between Professor, Student, and Interpreter occurs seemingly naturally within Ð ° brief time span and without problems. That primary speakers are responding to the Interpreter in terms of the norms of their own language is also demonstrated by their nonverbal behavior. Both speaker’s nod their heads, smile and silently laugh, and make other gestures at moments that co-occur with utterances they understand in their own languages. For example, later in the meeting when the Professor learns that the Student will be going to another city to give Ð ° speech, she smiles and nods, but these expressions occur after she hears the interpretation in English, not after the Student says it in ASL. one wonders, then, whether the Student understands, intuitively or not, that the nonverbal information he sees the Professor engage in at that moment is attached to what he said moments ago noted that when people speak the same language, they know what facial signals go with what words and so can interpret the combination of the two signals. But when we interact with people who speak another language, any speaker might observe another speaker’s body and facial cues but most likely cannot associate these cues with their exact words, sentence, or meanings. In this section І have demonstrated how the Student and the Professor take turns at potential transition moments within their own language, and thus, with the Interpreter. Regular turns occur naturally in face-to-face interaction, and they also occur naturally in interpreting. The participants, the discourse, and the moment combine (McDermott and Tylbor [1983] call this â€Å"collusion†) to create interactional harmony whereby Ð ° turn happens successfully and comfortably. In regular turns, then, the Interpreter is an active participant who constructed equivalent responses in terms of message content and also in terms of potential turn transition. Knowing when and how to signal turns or pauses is discourse knowledge and an indication of communicative competence. Creating Turns From studies of no interpreted conversations, we know that speakers do not take turns or continue their turns only because they recognize Ð ° transition moment or Ð ° specific syntactic unit that allows for exchange. Bennett (1981) suggests that the structural regularities in discourse and Ð ° participant’s understandings of the thematic flow of the discourse make turn units â€Å"considerably more flexible† (emphasis his) than the notion of turns created solely from structural surface signals. Within conversations, participants create themes which unfold, diverge, and reconverge as the talk proceeds (Bennett 1981). Themes comprised of individual and shared motives, feelings about the subject, and the meanings that are uttered direct conversational contributions Turns, then, also come about through participants’ intuitive sense of â€Å"now† being the right moment to speak, or take Ð ° turn. After playing back the videotape of the meeting once, І asked the participants to focus on turn-taking. І asked them to recall, if they could, their motives and feelings around their turns, and why, in some places, they chose to speak. Predictably, their own reasons for taking Ð ° turn or continuing Ð ° turn were based in large part on their own sense of participation in the conversation and from Ð ° sense of wanting either to contribute to Ð ° theme or, in one case, to stop Ð ° theme. These developments are not predictable but are Ð ° part of conversational behavior. Moreover, the ways in which the interlocutors contribute to the flow constitutes an emerging pattern of conversational style (Tannen 1984). For example, at one point in the meeting, the Professor began to talk even though she could hear an interpretation. During her interview, І asked the Professor about this segment. Her response was, â€Å"І probably just decided it [the Student’s talk] was enough. І didn’t especially want to hear the answer now. І just wanted to set it as Ð ° topic that would be interesting for him to think about and report on during the semester. † The Professor began to talk from her own sense of the direction of the conversation and her desire to have the Student think about the topic and not initiate Ð ° longer discussion at present. To steer the conversation in Ð ° different direction and perhaps head off Ð ° lengthy discussion, she took Ð ° turn from her own sense of needing to alter the theme of the conversation, not from Ð ° surface syntactic signal. In another example, at the beginning of the meeting, the Student was looking at the Interpreter because the Interpreter was signing, and then he turned away from the Interpreter and looked toward the Professor and the telephone and answering machine. He began to talk while the Interpreter was still interpreting, not at Ð ° potential transition moment in ASL. His turn, too, has to be motivated by reasons other than an approaching grammatical unit or paralinguistic signal. When asked why he stopped watching the Interpreter and began to speak, the Student replied, â€Å"І knew where [the Interpreter] was going; І could sense the way his sentence would end. І wanted to see what she was doing to make the phone stop ringing. † (This he had learned from what the Professor had just said. ) Discourse knowledge, real world knowledge, Ð ° sense of conversational direction, speaker intention, and many other factors motivate speakers to take turns. Although interpreters cannot always predict when Ð ° speaker will talk, they can become accustomed to the possibilities of change and that turns can occur at the least likely moments, or rather, at any moment. Primary participants are actively involved in creating and responding to turns, and, for all intents and purposes, make arbitrary decisions which must be managed by an interpreter. More significantly, these examples demonstrate that primary participants are active in the emerging nature and flow of talk as the interpreter directs and coordinates the exchange.