LECTURE: Goodwin, C. (1995) Co-constructing meaning in conversation with an aphasic man. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 28, pp.233-260.
‒ In 1979 Rob (at approx 60 years) a successful New York lawyer. a man who made his living through his ability to use language, suffered a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of his brain.
‒ The tape for the (1995) was made in 1992, 13 years after the stroke – Rob then 73 years old.
‒ The right side of his body was paralyzed and he suffered severe aphasia, losing almost completely the ability to speak meaningful language. He was, however, able to understand what others said to him, and to use nonsense syllables to produce meaningful intonation melodies.
‒ On the advice of the nurse caring for him in the hospital, and against the advice of his neurosurgeons (who insisted that because nothing could be done to repair his brain he would spend the rest of his life in bed in a vegetative state), his family sent him to the Kessler rehabilitation center.
‒ After several months of intense work with therapists there, he learned to walk with a brace, and to speak three words: Yes, No, and And. For years after the stroke his wife would dream that he was again able to talk to her.
‒ However, 13 years later, in 1992 when the videotape that provides the data for this article was made, these were still the only three words he could speak (and that remains the case as of this writing).
‒ In 1982, Holland (1982, p. 50) could write that "no published observational studies of aphasic patients' natural communication are currently available." Since that time there has been growing attention to the "need to place greater emphasis in management programmes on aphasics using language in everyday contexts" (Green, 1984, p. 35; see also the work cited at the beginning of this article and in note 6). Moreover it is recognized that the global notion of "context" has to be decomposed into relevant sets of organizational practices (Goodwin & Duranti, 1992). According to Foldi, Cicone, and Gardner (1983, p. 83), it is necessary to
“go further than simply saying "context" helps communication. or course it does. But it is only by testing out its various components and manifestations -- ranging from vehicles like intonation and gesture to pragmatic structures like speech acts, presuppositions, turntaking, or the redundancies or narrative -- that the notion of context can be given significant meaning.”.
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Central concept: "adjacency pairs"
‒ Talk works in terms of expectations and commitments, and in an adjacency pair, one speaker formulates a situation in which an other feels required to do something:
‒ Here are some types of adjacency pairs that have been extensively studied: assertion-assent/dissent; question-answer; summons-answer; greeting-greeting; apology-acceptance/refusal; compliment-acceptance/rejection;; threat-response; challenge-response; accusation-denial/confession; boasting-appreciation/derision.
‒ The "first pair-part" (FPP) establishes a conditional relevance, and whatever comes to be said in response to it, will be inspected to see how it can possibly serve as the "second pair-part" (SPP).
1. 01 a: Hello. 2 01 a: How are you?
02 b: Hi. 02 b: Fine.
(greeting-greeting) (question-answer)
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Introduction:
‒ Rob’s talk does not stand alone as a self-contained entity, but emerges from, and is situated within, the talk of others, to which it is inextricably linked.
‒ This raises the possibility that despite the extraordinary sparseness of this system, its speaker might nonetheless be able to engage in complicated language games, to say a wide range of different things while performing diverse kinds of action, by making use of resources provided by the speech of others.
Activities as interpretative frameworks:
((1) - Nurse pulling on a sock over Rob’s leg. She has just moved her hands to work on the upper part of the sock.))
1. Rob: Nyuh nuh. ((points toward sock))
2. (1.3) ((Nurse looks to Rob and then back to sock))
3. Nurse:* Up more?
4. Rob:* Yes.
5. (1.8) ((Nurse pulls lower part of sock))
6. Rob: Ye:s.
‒ In line 3 the nurse states a guess about what Rob is trying to bring to her attention.
‒ This guess is delivered as a first pair part (visible in part through its rising terminal pitch). By virtue of its conditional relevance (Schegloff, 1968), a first pair part builds a context that shapes the interpretation of whatever will be said as a reply to it.
‒ Several features of the processes of inference and action occurring here require further comment.
‒ 1) First, despite his inability to speak novel sentences, Rob is able to recognize and participate in the pragmatic organization of talk-in-interaction, for example, to produce a competent reply at precisely the place where such a reply is relevant.
‒ 2) Second, the actions of his interlocutor here take a very special form, for example, a guess about what he is trying to say.
‒ In order to make that guess, a key inferential resource used by the nurse is orientation to a relevant activity.
‒ Here, it is the immediate, local activity that they are both engaged in together (putting on his sock), and she manages to figure out what he is trying to tell her almost immediately.
‒ 3) Despite the rapidity with which an adjacency pair, such as that in lines 3-4, passes, it provides a pervasive example of a consequential social world, one that is collaboratively built through the deployment of language structures within interaction.
Search sequences:
((2) - lines 31 to 47 - Muffin/one/butter)
‒ Sequences, collaboratively determined, that help what Rob is trying to say, are built through use of basic structures providing for the organization of talk-in-interaction.
‒ However, the specifics of the sequences used by Rob and his family constitute a specialized language game, one that shapes interaction in a distinctive fashion. The following provides a simple example of how such sequences are characteristically expanded; additional turns are added between the initial question in line 35 and its final answer in line 45.
‒ At the point where this exchange begins, the nurse is at the refrigerator asking Rob what he wants for breakfast.
(2)
31 Nurse: English muffin?
32 (3.4)
33 Husband: Ye:s.
34 (0.4)
35 - Nurse: A:nd what would you like on it.
36 Wife: Just one.
37 (0.8)
38 - Nurse. Jelly?
39 ( 1.0)
40 - Husband: No:
41 (0.8)
42 Wife: Butter?
43 - Nurse: Butter?
44 (0.3)
45 - Husband: Yes.
46 (0.6)
47 - Nurse: Okay.
‒ The most pervasive way in which sequences are expanded to take into account the limitations of Rob's vocabulary is through the addition of alternative guesses (formatted as try markers; see Sacks & Schegloff, 1979) as to what Rob might want or be trying to say.
‒ This expansion ends when Rob accepts a guess.
‒ Thus in line 38, after. asking Rob what he wants on his English muffin (line 35), the nurse proposes a first possibility, “Jelly?"
‒ When Rob rejects this with a "No:" (line 40), she offers a second possibility, "Butter?" (line 43); and when this is accepted by Rob (line 45), the search sequence reaches its conclusion.
‒ As interactive objects Rob's "Yes" and "No" constitute very different kinds of events; "Yes" provides an exit from the guessing sequence, whereas "No" leads to the cycling of another round with a new guess.
‒ The sequence in (2), with a single additional guess, is an example of a simple, brief expansion.
‒ However, on many occasions these expansions become quite protracted, as along, and sometimes exhausting, search is begun for what Rob is trying to tell those around him.
‒ A number of phenomena implicated in the organization of such sequences are visible in example (2).
‒ 1) First, unlike many problematic negotiations, it is assumed that there is a correct answer to the search, and that one particular party, Rob, knows that answer and is entitled to tell others whether they are right or wrong.
‒ 2) There is a strong division of labor; the activity generates a set of structurally different kinds of participants who perform different kinds of action: Rob accepts or rejects proposals about what he might be trying to say, whereas his interlocutors provide relevant guesses.
‒ 3) Third, in order to formulate new guesses, Rob's interlocutors engage in systematic work, for example, searching for alternatives within the same natural category set (e.g., butter as an alternative to jelly within the set of foods that are spread on English muffins).
‒ 4) Fourth, though Rob is the party who speaks the least, the organization of the activity locates him as the central, focal participant.
Resisting interpretative frameworks:
((3) - toast/yes-no/cheese/no..no/butter/just jelly/....)
‒ A repertoire of subtly differentiated responses, each tailored to the environment within which it appears:
1. Nurse: Would ya like toast?
2. (0.6)
3. Husband: Yes:,=
4. = uh no:,
5. (0.7)
6. Husband: [( )
7. Nurse: [Cheese?
8. (0.2)
9. Husband: No no.
10. (1.2)
11. Nurse: Butter?
12. (0.3)
13. Husband: No.
14. (2.4)
15. Nurse: [uhm:
16. Husband: Noo:,
17. (1.2)
18. Wife: Just jelly?
19. (1.0)
20. Husband: No-
21. (0.9)
22. Nurse: [Lemme show ya
23. Wife: [English muffin?
24. (0.3)
25. Husband: Yes.
26. (0.3)
27. Wife: Do you want an English muffin?
28. (0.4)
29. Husband: Y!e:s.
30. (0.9)
31. Nurse: English muffin?
32. (3.4)
33. Husband: Ye:s
34. (0.4)
35. Nurse: A:[nd what would you like on it?
36. Wife: [Just one.
37. (0.8)
38. Nurse: Jelly?
39. (0.1)
40. Husband: No:
41. (0.8)
42. Wife: Butt[er?
43. Nurse: [Butter?
44. (0.3)
45. Husband: Yes.
46. (0.6)
47. Nurse: Okay.
Conclusions:
‒ The production of meaning emerges through a collaborative process of co-construction.
‒ A form of life: The sequence types deployed within his family to accomplish understanding generate what is quite literally a form of life. The system includes a clear division of labor in which different kinds of participants perform different kinds of cognitive and sequential work. Within this system one party emerges as the focal participant, and indeed others can complain that their own voice gets lost as everyone mobilizes extensive work to figure out what Rob is trying to tell them. The system not only organizes action and understanding, but also produces a range of different kinds of involvement, that affect the actors in a variety of ways, leading, for example, to frustration, anger , or joy, as a mystery is at last unraveled.
‒ Rob's severe deficits in the production of words are not accompanied by equal restrictions on his ability to recognize, and actively participate in, the pragmatic organization of talk-in-interaction.
‒ In order to make himself under- stood, he both relies upon, and helps structure, the sequential organization of the talk within which he is embedded.
‒ By (1) attending to the sequential placement of his talk, and (2) using the full expressive powers of his body (intonation, gesture, affective displays of his face and body), he is able to build abroad range of subtly differentiated action, each fitted in fine detail to the contingencies of the local organization where it is placed.
‒ Most crucially, for Rob [and for very young children in fact] understandings are not encoded in the self-contained sentences of an isolated speaker, but instead are constituted through distributed structures that span the utterances of different participants.
‒ Subtle sensitivity to sequential organization is crucial.
‒ Rob makes himself understood, and constitutes himself as a meaningful actor, through his visible participation in the activity of the moment.
‒ Through variations in both the way he says things (e.g., intonation and a host of other phenomena implicated in the production o! speech) and how he organizes his body (gesture, orientation, facial displays, etc.), he is not only able to respond to what others are doing, but also to take up stances toward what is occurring and thus steer the interaction into the directions he wants to pursue.
‒ It is precisely the flexible possibilities provided by the changing textures of relevancies invoked through emergent sequential organization that makes it possible for an actor such as Rob to perform a wide range of different kinds of action with limited semantic resources.
‒ Moreover, the three words in Rob's vocabulary - yes, no, and and - seem to be present not simply because they are high frequency words in the English language, but rather because they allow him to tie his talk to the talk of others within ongoing sequences of action.
‒ With this specific vocabulary he is able to parasitically build on relevant linguistic structure provided by his interlocutors.
‒ The processes of co-construction investigated here require that others treat Rob as a competent co-participant; for example, to deal with his talk and gesture as an effort to say something meaningful, rather than the random movements of a man whose brain has been massively damaged.
‒ Though he does not have the ability to speak himself, he is treated as someone who can understand complex spoken language.
‒ However, cross-culturally there is tremendous variation in the competence attributed to those, such as children, who cannot speak (Ochs, 1988; Schieffelin, 1990).
‒ Moreover, within U.S. society, others can, and do, refuse to treat an adult such as Rob as a competent, responsible actor.
‒ Right after his stroke, a group of doctors inserted a catheter into his urinary track. As they were doing this he kept pointing and vocally objecting. Rather than recognizing him as a co-participant in the procedure being performed (indeed, one with a particularly relevant vantage point, e.g., the only one who could feel what was happening), the doctors treated the gestures and sounds he was making as the ravings of a man who had just suffered massive brain damage and did not know what he was doing. Three days later they discovered that the catheter had been inserted wrong, and that Rob had been in pain because of it the entire time.
‒ However, the events investigated here do call into question traditional assessments of competence based purely on the ability to produce language.
‒ When Rob was in the hospital, his doctors, who had focused entirely on the trauma within his brain, said that any therapy would be merely cosmetic and a waste of time, because the underlying brain injury could not be remedied.
‒ Nothing could have been farther from the truth, and medical advice based on such a view of the problem can cause irreparable harm to patients such as Rob and their families.
‒ As an injury, aphasia does reside within the skull.
‒ However, as a form of life, a way of being and acting in the world in concert with others, its proper locus is an endogenous, distributed, multiparty system.