(Salle F101)

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  Bono, Mayumi
  Katagiri, Yasuhiro

(ATR Media Information Science Laboratories, Kyoto)

Gazing, pointing and modality expression in conversations

This study explores the interactional functions of gazing and pointing gestures in the interactive presentation conversations. Kendon (1967) claimed that the speaker’s gaze shift toward the hearer in a conversation tends to accompany with turn change. Bavelas (1992, 2002) proposed that certain types of gestures, e.g., beats, have interactive functions. We propose, by extending the notion of proposition-modality structure for sentences fi rst proposed by Fillmore (1969), the bipartite structure of the information presentation function (proposition) and the interaction management function (modality) for verbal and nonverbal actions in conversations. We then attempt to identify interaction management functions of gazing and pointing actions that take place in conversations from their temporal co-occurrence relationships with the utterances of modality expressions. Sentence and phrase endings of Japanese can be expressed by adding auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, or fi nal particles (e.g. kara, darou, desukara, deshou, yone, ne), after propositional contents expressed by subjects, verbs and objects. These modality expressions are used to serve common-ground establishment, turn management, and other interaction management functions. We collected interactive poster presentation conversations in Japanese, and examined the temporal relationships between gaze shifting, pointing gesture occurrences and the modality zone in which one or other modality expressions are uttered. We found that gaze shift toward the hearer tends to occur in the modality zone, whereas pointing gesture initiation tends not to occur in the modality zone. We also found that pointing gesture hold often signifi es topic continuity. There fi ndings suggest that gazing and pointing play different interactional management functions in conversation.