Yuval Geva
1. Body Talk
Here are some things people do with their bodies: breath, walk along rivers, dance, lay bricks, sit and listen, punch, kick, push, go ha ha ha, go hmm…, go a-ha!, cut hair, smell, taste, hug, give presentations, cook pancakes, play ice hockey, climb rocks, sing opera, have fika, hold things, point at birds and buildings, produce sounds, sentences, gestures, facial expressions, stories, set limits, come together, live “ordinary lives”.
The ethnomethodologist, when observing each of these things, finds immense beauty. They also find coordination, arrangement, “order at all points”, and the shared methods by which people’s experiences are put together in time. They find what could be called – for all practical purposes – “syntax”.
Historically, linguists and conversation analysts have rarely meant this sort of thing when they used the term “syntax”. For linguists, syntax refers to the ways in which conventionalized verbal elements are arranged to convey meaning. For conversation analysts, syntax was viewed as a resource for organizing talk-in-interaction. In both disciplines, the study of syntax rarely went beyond the stream of speech, as it is found in most verbally organized activities like phone calls and dinner conversations.
Since the “embodied turn” in research on language and social interaction, multimodal interaction analysts and interactional linguists working in the ethnomethodological tradition have done a considerable amount of work in rethinking what syntax is. Many papers, volumes and panels have been put together in order to unveil the orderly ways in which the body produces and accompanies syntax and sequential organization, within a variety of languages and a variety of human activities. However, there remains much more to be discovered, and much work to be done.
Last September, a diverse group of researchers came together to get some of this work done. On the 7th and 8th of September 2023, the first “Embodied Syntax Network Conference” took place in Linköping University, Sweden. Its purpose was to deepen our understanding of how language and the body are coordinated to bring about social action in various settings. Its result was a wealth of newly-generated knowledge, newly-acquired friends, and innovative paths for EMCA and IL to take.
2. From Language in General, to Body in Particular
The conference was organized by a team from Linköping University specializing in the study of non-lexical vocalizations in interaction, headed by Leelo Keevallik. Keevallik and the team, in particular Emily Hofstetter, Agnes Löfgren, and Adrian Kerrison have put the conference together with extreme meticulousness and generosity.
The conference was also the product of an international project dealing with clause-combining and the body in interaction, headed by Jan Lindström, Yael Maschler, Simona Pekarek-Doehler, and Keevallik herself. The spirit of intellectual vigor and friendship stemming from these two projects definitely painted the conference’s two days.
A diverse array of researchers filled Linköping’s cozy Key Huset building. Linguists, interaction analysts and social psychologists had Swedish filter coffee and chokladbollar together. Early career researchers stood alongside the defining scholars of our field (among them Jakob Steensig, and Lorenza Mondada). Not only the sounds of English and Swedish bounced around the room, but also Japanese, Polish, Estonian, Hebrew and French.
This diversity, apart from being a lot of fun, also meant many different interests, approaches, and objects of research. Some of us were interested in looking at how the body-syntax interface is realized in local activities, occurring in the here and now. While others were more interested in what systematicities, abstractions and generalizations can be found when looking at verbal and embodied behaviors. A whole rich spectrum was to be found in the programme and book of abstracts, and for good reason. After all, as Keevallik emphasized in a pre-conference workshop, working along the spectrum that ranges from the general to the local is inseparable from our field’s methodology and philosophy.
3. Settings and Practices
It was certainly interesting to see how each of the presenters positioned themselves along this spectrum. On the local end, there were presentations unveiling the patterns of syntactic and sequential organization to be found in a range of body-oriented settings, many of which had never been never explored through the ethnomethodological lens before. Video data was presented from feminist self-defense training (in Ann Weatherall’s contribution), construction sites (Paweł Urbanik), military patrol vehicles (Lira Rautiainen), cheese tastings and forensic lab meetings (Lorenza Mondada), rock band rehearsals (myself), language interpreter training (Maija Tjukanov) and sporting events (Adrian Kerrison) – to name just a few!
It was vividly shown that in these settings, syntax is something that is shaped and achieved by the body. Units like phrases, clauses and sentences were demonstrated to have specific slots in which bodily behaviors can be systematically incorporated. Bodily phenomena like straining, smelling, touching, and jumping were shown to be devices that accompany (and sometimes disrupt) the uttering of units in ways that are meaningful for interactants. The body’s gaze, vocalizations, movements, melodies and cadences were proven not to be mere “embellishments” to the stream of speech, but phenomena that are syntactically patterned in their own way.
Other presentations had as a starting point specific linguistic and interactional practices. There were examinations of the sounds and movements bodies make when producing if-clauses (Anna Inbar and Yael Maschler, Melissa Juillet, Anne-Sylvie Horlacher and Simona Pekarek-Doehler); CTP-constructions featuring the verb ‘do’ (Virginia Calabria, Sophia Fiedler, Hilla Polak-Yitzhaki); reported speech constructions (Marri Amon); lexical fragments such as French en fait (Klara Skogmyr Marian) and Finnish ole hyvä (Samu Pehkonen and Antti Kannisto); and evaluative adjectival constructions (Leelo Keevallik, Emily Hofstetter, Agnes Löfgren and Sally Wiggins).
There were also action-focused examinations of how bodily and environmental resources are used by children to tell on their peers (Tiina Elittä); how non-lexical vocalizations serve participants in creating displays of stance (Ali Reza Majlesi and Klara Skogmyr Marian); and how multimodal assemblies are used as a sedimented means to give instructions in tango classes (Oliver Ehmer). Finally, the body was even incorporated into analyses of long-discussed linguistic categories, such as aspect (in Rosario Neyra, Matthew Butler et colleagues’ presentation). In all of these presentations, the body was situated as an unextractable part of understanding practices that were looked at only in a logocentric light so far.
4. Puzzles and Methodologies
On the more global end of the spectrum were the conference’s two plenaries. The first plenary was given by Jan Lindström, Yael Maschler, and Simona Pekarek Doehler. The presentation focused on the role of participants’ embodied conduct in the accomplishment of multi-unit turns, and particularly, the accomplishment of extensions. Using evidence from Swedish, Hebrew, and French talk-in-interaction, the presenters have shown how bodily cues are systematically deployed by participants when adding stretches of talk to TCUs ending on a possible transition relevance place.
Gaze shifts, posture changes, and transitions between “home position” and gesture space were all shown to be resources that participants orient to in order to highlight the evolving praxeological structure of their unfolding turns-at-talk. The presenters have also shown – in true EMCA spirit – how the body can be thought of as a valuable resource for both participants and analysts, as they tackle ambiguous or fuzzy boundaries between units. The presentation made a compelling, important case for including bodily cues as part of our analysis of multi-unit turns as interaction analysts. Moreover it showed the importance of incorporating the body into our explorations of phenomena like clausal integration and subordination, as interactional linguists.
The second plenary was given by Jakob Steensig, who is part of a project writing a comprehensive, descriptive grammar of Danish talk-in-interaction (DanTIN). In the thought-provoking presentation, Steensig sets out to solve a puzzle he and his team were facing when working on the grammar: which embodied resources should be included in the grammar, and how and where are they to be included?
Steensig took an innovative approach in solving this puzzle, suggesting to integrate the ‘discover procedures’ of traditional linguistics (unveiling syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations between elements), and the strictly empirical, context-sensitive methodology of interactional analysis. It was shown that embodied actions are intertwined with syntax at least on two levels of syntactic organization: “intra-unit syntax”, in which embodied resources occupy specific slots in TCUs; and “inter-unit syntax”, in which embodied resources figure into sequences of actions. Finally, the eye-opening presentation called for a broadening not only of grammar-writing approaches, but also of traditional theories of linear, successive syntax; in other words, methods and theories that can accommodate the flexible temporal nature of embodied resources.
5. All Together Now!
The conference’s presentations sparked lively discussions. Not only helpful critiques, but also some “big picture” questions emerged in almost every session. These inquiries included: “What is the nature of syntactic completion?”, “Is the body merely a resource for meaning making, or an integral part of grammar?”, “If the body is a part of grammar, how can language be accurately described while incorporating it?”, and “To what extent can we expand our concept of syntax?”. Possible solutions for some of these questions became quite clear at the end of the conference, while others remained vague, leaving room for further explorations.
The “Embodied Syntax Network Conference” was a unique opportunity to feel what it truly, and practically, means to be part of a paradigm shift. At the end of the conference, it was obvious the “embodied turn” is not just a nice idea in the minds of intellectuals. It is a kind of action, performed by different bodies coming together in order to get work done, and make sense of the world. A kind of syntax, if you will.
For programme and book of abstracts, see the conference’s website: