This sub-section addresses a situation where the current speaker encounters trouble searching for a word and uses the demonstrative pronoun as a referential expression for the unavailable word searched for (Hayashi, 2003; Mori and Hayashi, 2006), which is then followed by an embodied completion (Olsher, 2004). Previous studies have found that the use of demonstratives as filler words have a distinct role in word searches. They are known as ‘placeholders’ for a word that is temporarily not available to the speaker but then later replaced by a more accurate word item (Hayashi, 2003; Hayashi and Yoon, 2006).
However, what is different in the following instance is that the speaker does not replace the placeholder with a more accurate word. Instead, the speaker is unable to produce an actual word for her word search. Instead, she completes her word search with an embodied completion (Olsher, 2004). The analysis below Excerpt 14 thus looks at a situation where the current speaker demonstrates multiple word searches and use the demonstrative pronoun “this” as a placeholder and then resolves the search with embodied completion.
Excerpt 14 below is a conversation between Ben, Kai and Amy, in which they are talking about the latest Samsung brand mobile model (‘Samsung Edge’), which has a curved screen design. It is worth mentioning that in their conversation they refer to the curved screen design as a “bend screen”. Furthermore, Excerpt 14 a follow-on from a conversation from Excerpt 4 in the previous analysis chapter (Section 5.3).
Excerpt 14: Just like this
(Ben: Malaysia; Kai: Malaysia; Amy: China)
1 AMY: is it goo::d to have a bend screen?
2 (0.6)
3 BEN: [I don't I-]
4 AMY: │[ I:: sa::]:w │I saw a::: │(0.4) pho::ne
│((Amy gazes at her arms and lifts her arm up)) │((Amy points at her left wrist and looks at Ben))
│((Amy gazes and points at the mobile))
5 │ju:st (0.4) │like this.
│ ((Amy grips her wrist))
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Figure 7.4
6 (0.4)
7 AMY: │and the::n (0.5)│er:::[scree::n │like thi:s.
│ ((Amy moves her fingers to her upper left arms))
│((Amy shifts her gaze to Ben. Ben turns to gaze at Kai.)) │((Amy looks at Kai and Kai looks
at Amy’s hand movement. [Fig. 7.5] ))
Figure 7.5
8 BEN: [ya::h,
9 (1.0)
((Amy gazes at Kai and then at Ben. Ben gazes at Amy.))
10 BEN: it's [ I- ↑I don't ↓kno:w =
11 AMY: │[°like calculator°
│ ((Amy gazes at Ben while tapping her inner left arms. [Fig. 7.6] ))
Figure 7.6
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In line 1, Amy begins her utterance by asking Ben if it is good to have a curved screen mobile phone. Following the 0.6 second gap in line 2, Ben attempts to answer Amy’s questions but his turn overlaps with Amy’s utterance (line 3 – line 4).
Nonetheless, when Amy produces her turn in line 4 to line 5, she seems to have trouble formulating her turn construction unit, which indicates the use of a stretched words sound such as delaying her turn and then making a restart (Carroll, 2004). She pauses a moment and then further shows speech perturbation in her talk, indicating the launch into her word search. Additionally, in Amy’s word search in line 4 to line 5, she shows different embodied movements, such as gaze shifting and hand movements, which also synchronise with her talk.
In line 4, Amy lifts her left arms upwards towards Ben, turns to look at her hands, and says “I:: sa:::w”. When she makes a restart “I saw a:::”, she keeps her gaze on her hand movement and points at her left wrist with her right index finger and turns her gaze direction towards Ben. Amy then pauses for 0.4 seconds, during which she begins to bring her gaze to look at the mobile which is in Ben’s hand and points to the object as she says “pho::ne” (line 4).
In line 5, Amy shifts her gaze to look at her wrist, holds it with her right hand, and makes a soft movement around her wrist as she produces “ju:st”, and then pauses again for a moment. Amy then shifts her gaze to Ben as she continues holding her wrist softly, and lowers her arms towards Ben and produces “like this”, which ends with
a downward intonation. Following the use of “this” as a placeholder, Amy continues demonstrating her hand movement of circulating the gripping gesture around her wrist (resembling a bracelet, as illustrated in Figure 7.4). The embodied actions (such as the use of gestural hand movement) displayed after the use of “this” demonstrate Amy’s attempt to describe visually the unavailable word such, representing the embodied completion.
It is observed that when Amy directs her gaze at Ben during her ongoing search (line 5), the gaze direction indicates that she is inviting Ben to join in her search
(Goodwin and Goodwin, 1986). However, Ben does not provide a response in the following 0.4 second pause as he keeps his gaze on Amy’s gestures (line 6). Likewise, during the 0.4 second pause, Amy keeps her gaze on Ben as she continues
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demonstrating her hand movement. Furthermore, as Amy demonstrates the hand movement, which co-occurs with her utterance “like this”, both Ben and Kai bring their gaze on her hand movement and at the same time Ben puts the mobile down on the table (Figure 7.4).
In line 7, as Amy continues her utterance, she demonstrates further speech perturbation features through the elongated words, pauses, and hesitations as she says
“and the::n (0.5)er::[scree]::n”, which launches another word search. At
the onset of Amy’s word search, she shifts her gaze, which was on Ben, to look at her left hand wrist again, which is in a similar body position as in her previous utterance (Figure 7.4). As she continues to show her left hand in an upward position, she brings her hand forward and then she moves her right index finger on top of her inward left arm. With the index finger touching her inner arm, she then makes an upward and downward movement on her inner arm and brings her gaze to Ben, then turns to look at Kai and says “like thi:s” in a falling intonation. Simultaneously, Kai turns to look at Amy’s hand movement, as illustrated in Figure 7.5.
It is observed that when Amy gazes at Ben for the second time at the point she utters her mid utterance in line 7, this indicates that she is inviting Ben to co-participate in her word search activity (ibid.). Nonetheless, Ben does not provide any candidate item to assist Amy in the resolution of the word search. Instead, Ben says “ya::h” in a slightly rising intonation (line 8) and begins to shift his gaze and orients his body posture towards Kai, which can indicate that he is extending the invitation to Kai to join in the search sequence. However, having noticed Ben’s gaze shifting towards Kai, Amy turns to look at Kai and says “like thi:s”. In Amy’s second occurrence of her word
search she also makes use of “this” as a placeholder to indicate the word that she is searching for. Following her end utterance “like this” in line 7, she continues to moves her finger in an upward and downward movement on her arm, representing her
embodied completion.
Following the embodied completion in line 8 comes a long, 1.0 second gap in line 9, and there is no uptake from Kai. Thus, Amy turns to gaze at Ben, who has kept his gaze on her from earlier. Ben then self-selects himself to take the turn, his utterance overlaps with Amy’s utterance as he says in a lower voice “°like calculator°”
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(line 10 to line 12), and Amy taps her inner arm randomly with her index finger, which seems to provide further visual description for the unavailable word (Figure 7.6). Although it is not known if both Ben and Kai achieve understanding of Amy’s
explanation, the salient feature that can be noted in this segment is how Amy organises her talk and embodied actions as interactional practices in making the attempt to make complete her word search despite not getting the actual word searched-for.
In mobilising her utterances and her embodied actions such as displaying hand gestures and using the demonstrative pronoun “this” as a placeholder (Hayashi, 2003; Hayashi and Yoon, 2006) Amy is making her thinking process in her ongoing word search visible to her recipients (Hayashi et al., 2013) in order to support the referential expression for the unavailable word searched-for. Furthermore, when Amy points towards the mobile in Ben’s hand and then brings her gaze on Ben during her utterance in line 4, she makes the object relevant in her ongoing word search. Thus, as Amy progresses in her word search, the use of the object in her talk develops a shared referent with Ben for the word that is searched-for (Mondada, 2007; Nevile et al., 2014).
Although Amy extends her invitation to her recipients for co-participation in her search sequence through directing her gaze towards Ben and Kai (Goodwin and
Goodwin, 1986), she also demonstrates the attempt to resolve her word search through making a self-repair (Schegloff et al., 1977). Hence, the representation of her embodied actions accompanying the use of the demonstrative pronoun “this” seems to play a role in Amy’s search sequence (line 5 and line 7). Furthermore, the coordination of her talk and embodied actions allows Amy to project an understandable frame of valuable resources that is significant for her to complete her search even though she does not achieve the actual word.
Thus, the embodied actions displayed by Amy are similar to the embodied completion in the study by Olsher (2004), which showed that the partial turn of the speaker is completed through gestures. Similarly, in this study Amy completes her search sequence with the display of embodied completion. However, this example has a different outcome to the studies by Hayashi (2003) and Hayashi and Yoon (2006) on the use of the demonstrative pronoun as a placeholder. In their studies, Hayashi (2003) and
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Hayashi and Yoon (2006) showed that the speaker uses a placeholder for a word that is temporarily not available to the speaker, and which is then later replaced by a more accurate word item. In Excerpt 14, the actual or accurate word is not provided. Instead, the speaker completes her search with embodied completion. Furthermore, Olsher’s study shows that the embodied completion is presented unaccompanied by a word, whereas in this example the embodied completions co-occur with talk (i.e. the use of the demonstrative pronoun “this”).
Excerpt 14 has shown how a speaker does not need an actual word to resolve a word search to progress in a talk. It is evident from the data that the speaker utilises talk and embodied actions with the combination of using a placeholder (Hayashi, 2003) and embodied completion (Olshers, 2004) as resources in the word search resolution. Hence, the hybrid interactional moves of the use of “this” as placeholder and embodied completion represent the multiple multimodal resources mobilised by the speaker as ‘multimodal completion’ (Mondada, 2015). These multimodal completions reveal that the speaker uses and configures ‘complex multimodal gestalts,’ such as the talk, gestures, the body, and body movements (ibid.), and so the roles of multimodal resources demonstrated by participants are significant in L2 word searches.