Gareth Walker | The University of Sheffield (original) (raw)

Papers by Gareth Walker

Cross-parametric impressionistic and acoustic phonetic analysis is brought to bear on one resourc... more Cross-parametric impressionistic and acoustic phonetic analysis is brought to bear on one resource for con-tinuing past a point of projectable turn completion at which co-participants could legitimately begin their talk. Rushthroughs involve the co-occurrence of a cluster of phonetic parameters around the join between two units of talk, namely (i) temporal compression of the final sylla-ble of the pre-rushthrough talk (ii) pitch and loudness dis-continuities marking the boundary between the pre-and post-rushthrough talk (iii) particular 'segmental' features which highlight continuity between the pre-and post-rushthrough talk. Sequential interactional analysis shows that rushthroughs are used to build turns which control the trajectory of the talk. This research contributes to our un-derstanding of the phonetic features of unit endings and how those features are manipulated in interactional settings, and to an ongoing movement towards the building of a 'phonology for conv...

This thesis presents a series of exploratory studies of how participants engaged in everyday conv... more This thesis presents a series of exploratory studies of how participants engaged in everyday conversation utilise linguistic resources in managing entry to and exit from talk. For each study a data-set is constructed from audio recordings of telephone calls; this data-set is then analysed in terms of interactional organisation and linguistic design. Analysis of interactional aspects of the talk is conducted according to the principles of Conversation Analysis; analysis of linguistic design focuses on phonetic details, employing both impressionistic and acoustic techniques. Throughout the studies, an attempt is made to relate the linguistic (and particularly the phonetic) design of talk to its function in interaction.

Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics

Discourse Processes, 2015

An auspicious but unexplored environment for studying phonetic variation in naturalistic interact... more An auspicious but unexplored environment for studying phonetic variation in naturalistic interaction is where two or more participants say the same thing at the same time. Working with a core data-set built from the multimodal Augmented Multi-party Interaction (AMI) corpus. The principles of Conversation Analysis are followed to analyse the sequential organisation of the talk and to explain the phonetic variation observed. Acoustic divergence and equivalence between simultaneous responses are described. Phonetic features discussed include duration and timing, pitch, loudness and phonation type. The interactional factors which explain the acoustic divergences are established through turn-by-turn analysis and consideration of gaze direction and other visible features. It is argued that any research on phonetic variation in naturalistic talk which disregards the local organisation of interaction will always be incomplete.

Handbook of Conversation Analysis [book], 2013

This is the author's final version of the chapter available via http://dx.

Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 2013

The analysis of language use in real-world contexts poses particular methodological challenges. W... more The analysis of language use in real-world contexts poses particular methodological challenges. We codify responses to these challenges as a series of methodological imperatives. To demonstrate the relevance of these imperatives to clinical investigation, we present analyses of single episodes of interaction where one participant has a speech and/or language impairment: atypical prosody, echolalia and dysarthria. We demonstrate there is considerable heuristic and analytic value in taking this approach to analysing the organization of interaction involving individuals with a speech and/or language impairment.

Research on Language and Social Interaction, 2013

Can very young children deploy laughter interactionally? Using data from video recordings of 52... more Can very young children deploy laughter interactionally? Using data from video recordings of 52 interactions between six mothers and their young children, this article examines one particular kind of sequence in which interactionally ordered child laughter occurs. In that sequence, the young child commits some kind of potential transgression (e.g., breaking wind, standing on objects on the floor, or playing in a proscribed location). The child’s mother then draws attention to the potential transgression in some way (e.g., by admonishing the child, requesting a change to the child’s behav- ior, issuing a particular kind of child-directed gaze), thus treating the child’s action as constituting a transgression. At some point following the potential transgression, the child laughs. What is shown is that even young children can fit their laughter to the ongoing interactional sequence. It is argued that the child’s laughter provides for a display of affiliation from the mother.

Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 2012

Investigations into the management of turn-taking have typically focussed on pitch and other pros... more Investigations into the management of turn-taking have typically focussed on pitch and other prosodic phenomena, particularly pitch-accents. Here, non-pitch phonetic features and their role in turn-taking are described. Through sustained phonetic and interactional analysis of a naturally occurring, 12-minute long telephone call between two adult speakers of British English, sets of talk-projecting and turn-projecting features are identified. Talk-projecting features include the avoidance of durational lengthening, articulatory anticipation, continuation of voicing, the production of talk in maximally close proximity to a preceding point of possible turn-completion, and the reduction of consonants and vowels. Turn-projecting features include the converse of each of the talk-projecting features, and two other distinct features: release of plosives at the point of possible turn-completion, and the production of audible outbreaths. We show that features of articulatory and phonatory quality and duration are relevant factors in the design and treatment of talk as talk- or turn-projective.

Language and speech, 2012

The empirical focus of this paper is a conversational turn-taking phenomenon in which conjunction... more The empirical focus of this paper is a conversational turn-taking phenomenon in which conjunctions produced immediately after a point of possible syntactic and pragmatic completion are treated by co-participants as points of possible completion and transition relevance. The data for this study are audio-video recordings of 5 unscripted face-to-face interactions involving native speakers of US English, yielding 28 'trail-off' conjunctions. Detailed sequential analysis of talk is combined with analysis of visible features (including gaze, posture, gesture and involvement with material objects) and technical phonetic analysis. A range of phonetic and visible features are shown to regularly co-occur in the production of 'trail-off' conjunctions. These features distinguish them from other conjunctions followed by the cessation of talk.

Pragmatics of Society (Handbook of Pragmatics, Volume 5) [book], 2011

Prosody in Interaction [book], 2010

There is a need to get to grips with the phonetic design of talk in its totality and without a se... more There is a need to get to grips with the phonetic design of talk in its totality and without a separation of prosodic and non-prosodic aspects. Features of duration, phonation and articulation are all shown to be systematic features of rush-throughs, and bound up with the turn-holding function of the practice. Data are drawn from audio and video recordings made in a range * I am grateful to John Local for the generous sharing of data and ideas during the formation of this paper; I take full responsibility for how I may have incorporated or overlooked those data and ideas. Wells and an anonymous reviewer and gave useful comments on earlier drafts and revisions.

Text & Talk - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse Communication Studies, 2008

Linguists, and other analysts of discourse, regularly make appeal to affectual states in determin... more Linguists, and other analysts of discourse, regularly make appeal to affectual states in determining the meaning of utterances. We examine two kinds of sequence that occur in everyday conversation. The first involves one participant making an explicit lexical formulation of a co-participant’s affectual state (e.g., ‘you sound happy’, ‘don’t sound so depressed’). The second involves responses to ‘positive informings’ and ‘negative informings’. Through consideration of sequential organization, participant orientation, and phonetic detail, we suggest that the attribution of analytic categories of affect is problematic. We argue that phonetic characteristics which might be thought to be associated with a¤ect may better be accounted for with reference to the management of particular sequential-interactional tasks. The finding that stance does not inhere in any single turn at talk or any sin- gle linguistic aspect leads us to suggest that future investigations into stance and affect will need to pay attention simultaneously to matters of both linguistic-phonetic and sequential organization.

Journal of Pragmatics, 2007

In everyday English conversation, talk can be produced such that it is simultaneously a grammatic... more In everyday English conversation, talk can be produced such that it is simultaneously a grammatical ending of what precedes it, and a beginning of what follows (e.g. ‘‘that’s what I’d like to have is a fresh one’’). A range of features of phonetic design (including pitch, loudness, duration, and articulatory characteristics) are shown to be deployed in systematic ways in order to handle the dual tasks of avoiding the signaling of transition relevance at the end of the pivot, and marking out the fittedness of the pivot to both what precedes and what follows. Turns built with pivots are found to be most often engaged in assessing, enquiring, or reporting, though their more general application as a practice for the continuation of a turn past a point of possible syntactic and pragmatic completion is emphasized.

Journal of Pragmatics, 2006

Repetition poses certain problems for pragmatics, as evidenced by Sperber and Wilson’s claim that... more Repetition poses certain problems for pragmatics, as evidenced by Sperber and Wilson’s claim that ‘‘the effects of repetition on utterance interpretation are by no means constant’’. This is particularly apposite when we examine repetitions produced in naturally occurring talk. As part of an ongoing study of how phonetics relates to the dynamic evolution of meaning within the sequential organisation of talk-in-interaction, we present a detailed phonetic and pragmatic analysis of a particular kind of self- repetition.
The practice of repetition we are concerned with exhibits a range of forms: ‘‘have another go tomorrow . . . have another go tomorrow’’, ‘‘it might do . . . it might do’’, ‘‘it’s a shame . . . it’s a shame’’. The approach we adopt emphasises the necessity of exploring participants’ displayed understandings of pragmatic inferences and attempts not to prejudge the relevance of phonetic (prosodic) parameters. The analysis reveals that speakers draw on a range of phonetic features, including tempo and loudness as well as pitch, in designing these repetitions. The pragmatic function of repetitions designed in this way is to close sequences of talk.
Our findings raise a number of theoretical and methodological issues surrounding the prosody– pragmatics interface and participants’ understanding of naturally occurring discourse.

Phonetica, 2005

We describe and exemplify a methodology for providing an integrated account of the communicative ... more We describe and exemplify a methodology for providing an integrated account of the communicative function of parametric phonetic detail and its relationship with interactional organization. We exemplify our analytic approach by documenting two different phonetic designs of stand-alone ‘so’ in a corpus of recorded American English telephone conversations. These two designs – which encompass particular loudness, pitch and laryngeal characteristics – correlate with different communicative functions and have different consequences for the interactional-sequential organization of the talk. We argue that if phonology is to be truly concerned with function and linguistic contrast, we need to induce those functions and domains of contrast from a thoroughgoing phonetic and sequential analysis of talk-in-interaction.

York Papers in Linguistics

Techniques of sequential and phonetic analysis are brought to bear on two sequences of everyday c... more Techniques of sequential and phonetic analysis are brought to bear on two sequences of everyday conversation which extend understanding of a previously de- scribed practice (the ‘abrupt-join’). The findings also provide directions for future analysis.

Sound Patterns in Interaction [book], 2004

This report is based on phonetic and interactional analysis of a collection of increments drawn f... more This report is based on phonetic and interactional analysis of a collection of increments drawn from audio recordings of British and North American talk-in-interaction. An increment is a grammatically fitted continuation of a turn at talk following the reaching of a point of possible syntactic, pragmatic, and prosodic completion. Parametric phonetic analysis reveals that a range of phonetic parameters (including pitch, loudness, rate of articulation, and articulatory characteristics) mark out an increment as a continuation of its host. Interactional analysis reveals that increments deal with a range of interactional exigencies including, but not limited to, possible problems of understanding and alignment arising from the host turn.

Journal of Pragmatics, 2004

This paper represents part of the output of an ongoing study of clusters of phonetic parameters i... more This paper represents part of the output of an ongoing study of clusters of phonetic parameters in the management of talk-in-interaction. Here we report on the sequential organisation and phonetic form of abrupt-joins. By abrupt-join we mean to adumbrate a complex of recurrent phonetic events which attend a point of possible turn-completion, and the beginning of an immediately subsequent turn-constructional unit (TCU) produced by that same speaker. In doing an abrupt-join, the speaker can be seen to preempt the transition relevance and interactional implicativeness of the first unit. The phonetic features which constitute this practice include duration, rhythm, pitch, loudness and articulatory characteristics of both the end of the first unit and the beginning of the second. Abrupt-joins are a resource used in the building of a particular kind of multi-unit turn, where each unit performs a discrete action with the abrupt-join marking the juncture between them, with the subsequent talk changing the sequential trajectory projectable from the talk leading up to the abrupt- join. One clear distributional pattern emerges from the data: abrupt-joins occur regularly in closing- relevant and topic-transition sequences.