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    Introduction: John Gumperz' Approach toContextualization*Peter Auer , University of Constance

    1. What is contextualizatio~z?Since 1976, when Jenny and John Gurnperz started to use the term, the notion of"contextualizing language" has become increasingly popular among researchers onnatural language and natural interaction. Yet, despite the fact that a number ofscholars have chosen to subsume their work under this notion, it is not easy to sayprecisely what their work has in cornmon, let alone to define "contextualization".This is due to the fact that despite some fifteen years of empirical work, few of thetheo retical issues con cem ing "contextualization" hav e been d iscussed. It is the aim ofthe following remarks to raise some of these theoretical issues. This will be done byva no us rneans: o n the basis of an exemplary data analysis, by com panson with othertraditions in the so cial sciences, implying other and similar conceptions of context,and by reference to the main areas on which the research on contextualization hasfocused over the last years.

    Before we try to give a provis ional answer to the quest ion "What is

    In: Peter Auer: The contextualization

    of language. Amsterdam: Benjamins,

    1992, S. [1] - 37

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    2 Peter AuerHigh Pnests mean. M usic provides the cues for ii counter-reading, revealing the 'tme'interpretation of these lines: it is that of a mock eiy.

    How does Bach rnanage to do that? I n the middle of an E major/a flatpassage, he starts a modulation on so wollen nlir ihm glauben, which leads into astraightforward, almost primitively transparent C major, before he returns into Gmajor:

    I .V la

    I 1 '- -- .\cm X r c u i , sa o i c i . ~ O r n rc m K r r u , ao uo l - l cnw rbm

    c.. te-*- 7 -- :b h8 4 O 7 8

    How can something 'abstract' like music steer the interpretation of much mo re'rneaningful' linguistic signs? Od y for a handful of Bach's listeners (contemporary orpresent) is it by tracing the harmonies while listening to a chorus like the onementioned above that such inferencing becomes possible; and even fewer of themwill be acquainted with Bach's compositions in such an intimate way as to know, asmodern musicologists te11 us, that Bach quite regularly switches into C major tocontextualize irony. But even for the average listener who has an ear for baroquemusic, and who listens carefully, it is possible to notiice two things: first, a suddenshift of harmonies, and second, in the midst of Bach's complicated composition, aslhort spark of unexpected clarity and (pseudo-)naive sirnplicity. The first cue may d onothing more than draw attention to the piece of music (and thereby text) marked insuch a way; it may have the effect of telling the attentive listener that this passage isto be interpreted differently from the rest, without telling h im o r her how.

    The second cue , on the other hand, is more specific: C major attributes to theHigh Priests candid sincerity and child-like straightfonvardness. However, a directinterpretation of their words in a mood of sincerity and straightforwardness, isexcluded by the narrative context in which the High Priests' words are uttered: itcontradicts their role in the story. A complex process of inferencing now comes intoplay. There is a clash between the expectations built up so far in the story, accordingto which the High Priests are sly and malicious, and the particular harmoniesunderlying their words now, which suggest the opposite. The conclusion of thisinferencing can only be that the High Priest's words are to be understood as ironic,i.e. that they mean som ething different from what is saiid.

    Bach's vocal music is full of similar cases, where harmonies and rhythm,melodies and orches tra t ion, a l though bas ica lly ' abs trac t ' s igns without any('referential' ) meaning, are used to steer the interpretation of ehe words theyaccompan y; where music is used, not only to bn ng out the inherent, pious meaning ofa sacred text, but in order to give it one interpretation to the exclusion of other,ciompeting ones, and in order to put it in the ngh t emotional mo od, Le.: to provide theproper context for its interpretation.

    The idea that lies at the heart of Gump erz' concept of contextualization is thateveryday language has to be 'orchestrated' and 'put to music' by everyday language-users just as well; as Bach uses music to steer the interpretation of language,l

    llt is not by chance that Bach has been chosen as an example here; in fact, the metaphor with musiccan be foiiowed a little further. There is a sense in which Bach iooked upon his music as a servantof the word, particularly in his geistliche Musik, which is a direct consequence of his protestant(creed. t is well known that cornposers of iater centuries freecl music from this l og oc en ~c iew,and turned it into a purely absuact semiotic systern, independent (and indeed ernancipated) from

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    4 Peter Auer

    everyday speakers use a repertoire of vocal m d non-.vocal means for the samepurpose. In both cases, the semiotic resources ernployed ;are crucial in order to createthe proper context, in which the verbal message iis to be u.nderstood.

    In most general terms, contextualization bhereforr? compr ises al1 activities bypurticipants which make relevant, maintain, revise, cancel ... any aspect of contextwhich, in tu rn, is responsible for tke interpretation of an utterance in its particularlocus of occurrence. Such an aspect of context niay be thi: larger activity participantsare engaged in (the "speech genre"), the smal l- xa le aci.ivity (or "speech act"), themood (or "key") in which this activity is pierformed, the topic, but also theparticipants' roles (the participant constellation, compriising "speaker", "recipient","bystander", etc.), the social rela.tionship between paizicipants, the relationshipbetween a speaker and the information he conve:ys via language ("modality"), eventhe status of "focused interaction" itself.

    In addition to this wide notion of contextualization, a narrower tradition hasdeveloped out of Gumperz' and othlers' work on contextuailization, restricting the areacovered, by focussing on particular contextualization cues, and by adhering to cerainmethodological standards. This alpproach will be described in section 3. Beforedealing with it in detail, it may be useful to consider ari exarnple which shows bywhat means language is contextualized, and how these means are put to work.2 . An example: Contextualization at workThe following extract is taken from an interairtion bet.ween two Italian-Germanbilingual children (Marielia aged 12,Giulio aged 10) and an adult bilingual (m.). It ispresented here first in the 'orthodox' conversation analytic t ranscription mode:[Giulio has been telling a joke; adjacen t to the joke's punc:h line , the following s equen ce occurs]03 M: (allora) L c hO2 (0.75)03 G: 'hh [laug hing inbre athl 'hh [simpl e iribreathlO 4 ich kenn noch ei.n vo- ' h

    language. Gumperz' approach to interaction is, like Bach's conception of music, 'logocenmc':contrary to other scholars (particularly those wo rking on kinesic, gestural andproxemic cues), thevocal, and particularly the verbal part of interaction continues to te in the cenme of his attention.Although the importante of other signalling channels is taken into account, they are still seen as'servants'of the WOm.

    06 G: h& ich kenn noch-07 M: [ wart etz bin ich08 G: vonner Kirche09 M: no adesso Lo; Lo. - allora -1 eh: bo: Onon=lo=s o=pi~o1 c'era u:na - una femrn.[etc.Translation:

    (0.k.) my turn(0.75)

    'hh 'hh[I know another one ab- 'hlw aithey 1know another-

    E it now it's rny~tuni=now=i t~s=my=turnlabout a churchno now me; me. - 0.k. -eh: we:ll I forgot -therewas a - a woman. ((etc.))

    In Pike's usage of the terms "etic" and "emic" in discourse analysis,2 this sequence(excluding the last line) is etic trash. Emically, the eplisode consists of a series ofjolre-tellings3; and occurring, as it does, inbetween two jokes, the second onebeginning in line 11, the extract up to this line belongs to neither of them. It is part ofthe trivia of the interaction about which participants will have forgotten as soon asthe episode is over; and it is the kind of event traditional ethnographers and otherobservers usually disregard in their protocols or coding schemata. Yet, noticed andremembered activities such as jokes do not just happen - they have to be broughtabout. They are contexts ("schemata") for the interpretation of the events narrated inthem; but these contexts have to be enacted by participants in an interaction. There is,then, the question of how we can hear the line c'era una femmina ... as being thebeginning of a joke; or, in other words, by what means this activity is 'orchestrated' inorder to be hearable as such. We want to know how transition between one joke and

    2~1 ' . ike 1967 , 21971, particularly pp 37-93.3 ~ 0 t hokes in full length and a content analysis for them can be found in Bierbach 1986.

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    6 Peter Auerthe other, how starting again with ye!t anothe r joke (after a first one has been told) isaccomplished.

    There is good reason to believe that a lot of the w~orkwhich is necessary toaccomplish the transition in question is done in the "etic tr8ashu equen ce, lines 1-10,and by the packaging of line 11 (the candidate be gim ing of the second joke) itself.The enactrnent of the schema 'joke' is partly due to strategies which precede it intime; partly, they occ ur 'on' it, so that line 11 is not only the beginning of a (second)joke, but also d isplays tha t it is a secolnd joke in va:rious ways.

    Some of this contex tualizatiori work is observable iri the simple version of thetranscript given so far. Even on the basis of the information contained in it, it is clearthat lines 1-10 lay the gro und fo r the activity of ainother joke's teiling to occur; theydo so, although there is no overt deiccription or niaming of this activity. There are,however, clear indications that the activity to foliow wiil be of the same type as theactivity just terminated. T his is indicated by Giulio's text-aniphoric noch eig (04,06) ,3nd by Manella's etz bin ich dranladesso io (0 7 ,09, possibly 01). In the sequential3osition post a joke by Giuli o line:; 1-9 must be heard to refer to another joke's:eliing. Transition into the new joke's telling is also marked by lexical me ans, mainly)y allora (=std. ital. al lora , 'now') in line 9, but also in line 1, and possibly byzspetta in line 5. Both allora an d as,oetta ca n be used to introduce 'big packages'ike narratives, or more precisely: they can b e used to mark the role of the participant~ h os about to 'perform' this activity. Finally, the joke (or, at least, a fictionaliarrative) is contextualized by its fonnu laic begim ing (c'era .. una emm = std. ital.Lna donna, ' there was...a w oman').

    The little sequ enc e docum ente d in our r:xtract iis, then, of conside rable.elevance for the enactment of a joke schema, which in turn provides the context invhich utterances lines 1 ff hav e to be interpreted. But in adtlition to that, participantsiegotiate another dimen sion of context in these few seconds., This is the dim ension of~articipan t oles. There is an explicit quarrel between Giulio and Marielia about theuture roles of the speaker and the r~~cipient.ot only are: participant roles in theuture activity of joke-telling a problem , roles of pa:rticipation are also disputed in theire-joke sequence itself: Mariella antl Giulio start to speak: sirnultaneously in lines14/05, and Mariella 'in te mp ts' Giuliol,ssentence ick!kenn noch einen anderen vonnerrirche '1 know anothe r one abo ut a ch.urchl,which is begun in line 06, but broken offs a consequence of Marieila's 'interruption' and only completed in fragments in line8. It is only from line 09 onwards thiat Mariella holds the tum unchailenged. Howarticipant roles are negotiatied in this sequence, how participants ' turns arebrchestrated' as antagonistic (turn-competitive), cannot yet be reconstmcted indficient detail on the basis of the transcript as it stands; but it seems evide nt that the

    question of what the participant constellation will Pook like in the future activity ofjoke-telling is determined by who 'wins' in the turn-competition that takes place in thepre-sequence. And it is Manella who tums out to be the winner.

    What has been said so far about the data extract goes little beyond an analysisin terms of orthodox conversation analysis, although it has been stated in slightlydifferent te m s; in fact, conversation analysis has sho wn for an abundante of casesthat individual utterances lay the grounds for the interpretation of subsequent (mainlyadjacent) utterances, which are therefore contextualized by them. However, this kindof mainly preparatory contextualization is only a smail part of the issue, as will bebecome apparent as soon as other means for contextualizing language are taken intoconsideration, which play little or no role in orthodox con versation analysis.

    13ne of these is linguistic variation. The transcript captures one of its manyvariants: switching between codes (here, between dialectal Italian and German). Itwiil be noted that the language of the joke itself is Italian, while some of thepreceding talk is German. This language choice for the joke is determined by the factthat it is based on a linguistic pun which can only be rendered in Italian, as it wili turnout later;4 however, it also plays an important role in the transition from inter-joketalk irito the joke. Here, it becomes relevant that code-switching into Italian does notcoincide exactly with the beginning of the joke in line 11 . Th e Italian-only passagestarts in line 9, and there is Italian talk even prior to this point (in lines 1 an d 5).From this, it follows that language choice doesn't mark the joke's beginning; instead,it is used as an indicator of the role of the joke's teller. Mariella uses Italian wh en sheassumes this role. There is, then, a difference betweei? the joke itself and itsperformance; this performance starts earlier (and includes more) than the joke. Allorain lines 1 an d 9 is part of it, a sp e t t a in line 3 , and the disclaimer eh: bo:non=lo=so=pizi 'eh: we:il 1 forgot' in line 10, too. All these utterances are producedby Marieiia qua her teller role, whereas intervening talk in which this teiler role isdisputed between herself and Giulio is mainly German. (The one exception from thisconelation between language choice and activity type, the no adesso io; io 'no nowme; me' in line 9, may contextualize 'insistente', as it occurs on the repetition ofGerman warr etz bin ich dran=etz=bin=ich=dran 'wait now it is my turn now it ismy turn ' in l ine 7; such a pattern - code-switching on repeti t ions /secondversioils/second attempts is frequent in bilingual c onversation.5 Alternatively, it maybe interpreted as a gradual approaching of the joke, which is foreshadowed inlanguage choice.)

    %e. , the baby taikpronunciation of cascare 'to fall' as caccare 'to shit' - see again Bierbach 1986.5 ~ f .uer 1983,1984.

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    Peter Auer Introducton

    However, there is much more signaU.ing goirig on (and relevant for theenactment of schemata for act.ivities or framew0rk.s of participation) in thisinteraction than is captured in the first version of the transcript. The version on thefollowing page takes into account prosody and provides a good deal of this additionalserniotic material. It contains ico:nically codecl information about pitch movement(dots), prominence by elongation (elongated dots) arid pitch accents (dots withcurves); prosodic phrasing can be inferred from this information. In addition,prosodic clauses are charactenzecl in terrns of pitch oniset, rate of articulation, andloudness. These cue s reveal more atbout tum-cornpetition, an d about the enactment ofthe teller's role than the previoils transcnption has done, in which only finalintonation contours were impressionistically indicat'rd by punctuation marks,prominentes by under lining, and o:ne instance of increase:d tempo by latching as wello oas one instance of reduced loudnesz;by xxx .

    A first information taken fsom prosody is that Mariella's first two phrases inlines 01 and 05 clearly belong together; in both cases, the onset of the intonationalcontour and loudness are low; pitch range is relatively narrow, particularly in 05,where no prominence is marked by pitch contour. Primaiy stress on the first syllablein llora - instead of the more usual1 stress on the second syllable - is the decisive cuefor the interpretation of this word as a projective particle instead of an adverb. Thisprojective particle foreshadows the upcoming joke-telling. By consequence, line 05(which is prosodically 'orchestrated' in the same ,way) is also spoken in the role of thejoke-teller.

    Contrary to these two utterances, Giulio's first phrase in line 04 displays aprosodic packaging which indicates competitiveriess: he c:hallenges Mariella's role asa projected joke-teller, and, at the same time, her preserit speaker-role. The phrasebuilds up a prosodic contrast with Mariella's phrases in many ways: pitch onset ishigh, pitch range wider, and the whole phrase is louder tham Mariella's. The inferenceto be drawn from this is that the cointext available right now for the interpretation offuture utterances is no longer that of a joke-te1lin.g (as presupposed by Mariella), butthat of a quarrel. Mariella seems to give in first, for after her aspetta (line 05), sheleaves the tum to Giulio. But Giulio does not act like the winner in this competition;he breaks off his phrase 04, arid in his next phra,se (06), he recycles hispreviousutterance 'as if it hadn't been heard (cf. the pre-posed sumrnons hej! ). Apossible prosodic reason for this r~ecycling s the wrong accent placemen t in 04,where the pitch movement on ein 'onie' indicates contrastiveness ('another one ' insteadof, say, 'another two') which clearly isn't intended. Giulio may want to correct thisaccent placement in phrase 06. Xn t e n s of prosocly , it is very similar to 04; also, it isbroken off like the previous phrase, ,when Mariella comes in sirnu ltaneously with the

    01 1M allora ichclow onset, piano>0 0 O

    4O

    04 G: ich kenn noch e@m/ ' hchigh onset, forte, faster than M.>

    k j fch kennlnah/d i g h onset, forte, same speed as before>I

    05 1M

    07 A4: etz bin fchJ dran=etz=bin=ich dranunuch faster, meno fo r t oI

    as ettaQow onset, piano>O o r o

    i o o Ovonner Kirchechigh onset, forte, distinct,more slowly thanG.>09 nd: no adesso io io - allord

    unol to presto , p>

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    10 Peter Auer

    two phrases of line 07.These phrases are prosodically very importani:: for prosody clearly markes

    them as a "competitive i ncomin gU6, oo, i.e. Mariella has taken up Giulio's chaliengean d is about to 'f ight ' for her tuni. She is now acting in the sarne context than he is,and has left the previous context. This is contextualized (apart from code-switchinginto German) by a clear deparnire from her fisrrner prissodic mode (in lines 01 and04): she talks louder (although riot as loud as Giu lio), and the phrase starts with ahigh pitch level (pro minenc e is marked by the fa11 on ich in the first phrase, not by arise which w ouldn't have be en possible from this high level); in addition, ail syllablesin the first phrase a elongated. The second phrase, which is a word-by-word repetitionof the first, is uttered while Giulio has already broken off his phrase, and seems tohave ceded the tum to Mariella; this is reflected by ari increase in tempo (from anaverage of ca. 0.2 seconds per syllable to an tiverage of less than 0.15 sec./syll.), noelongations, and a smaller pitch ra.nge in the repetition.

    Howe ver, Giulio starts anew with phrase 08, wh:ich is again contextualized asa competitive incoming, this tinie challenging M ariel. lals newly gained tum , andoverlapping M anella's tum (cf. high onset, loudness, wide pitch range). But M anelia- for reasons that will become clearer when non-verbal contextualization cues aretaken into account - now 'slows down' instea.d of coritinuing in the 'antagonistic'mood: the three prosodic phrases in line 09 continually reduce prosodic 'insistence'.No adesso io is not as loud as 07, and the pitch onset of the phras e is low, althoughpitch movement is still considerable, and very expressive because of the continuousand steep Fa11 throughout the phrase; the second phrase, i o , is again reduced inloudness and speech rate (pause!), but displays expressive pitch movement, too;finally, a l l ora (stressed on the j'irst syllable as in lirie 01) resumes t he leve l ofloudness of Mariella's first phrase. This marks the end o Marieila's fight for the tum(and for the role of the joke-teller),.

    Prosody a lso marks the fo l lowing phrases ( h e 10) as an aside. Low voice,alrnost no pitch movement and high tempo (appr. 0.15 sec./syll. on an average) set itoff , both against Mariella 's preceding (ca. 0.30 sec./syli. average) a nd her followingtalk (ca. 0.25 sec./syll. average).

    Although prosody is an important resouirce of coi~textualizationwork, it doesnot tell the wh ole story. A mong m any other thirigs, what the role of the third party isin this episode, i.e. adult m. He is silent during the extralit considered here, and bothon the basis of the 'orthodox' and ithe prosodic transcript, his interactional relevanceseems to be zero. This, however, tiirns out to be inadequate as soon as further details

    of how the sequence evolves as an interactional event are taken into account, inparticular, the participants' gaze. In the transcnpt on the following page, eye contact1 between Mane lla and Giulio and between m. and each of the children is marked by

    I full lines, eye movement by broken lines. For instante, Mariella moves her gaze1 towares G iulio during her first prosodic p hrase, and leayves it there, w hile Giulio first1 moves his gaze towards m., on whom it rests for a very short while, and then abruptly1i switches to Marielia. From this point onwards, eye contact between Giulio andMariella is established.7l A first result of an analysis of gaze and eye contact is that m. is a ratified

    participant in this sequence, although he remains silent throughout it . Thus, Giuliolooks at m. and not at the speaker, while Man ella says allora in line 0 1; Mariellalooks at m. and not at the other speaker while Giulio says 'hh 'hh ich kenn noch eip(line 04) and while she says aspetta (line 05) herself; Giulio looks at m. and not atthe speaker while Marielia says a&sso io io - allora (line 09), during her aside in line10 and even at the beginning of her joke (line 11);and Mariella looks at m. for a shortperiod while Giulio also looks away from her (during - eh : in line 10). Thus, m.receives gaze repeatedly during the sequence, although Mariella and Giulio have eyecontact both in the beginning and in the end of the extract (when the telling of thejoke is unarnbiguously assigned to Mariella) and during the climax of the children'squarrel about who is aliowed to tell the next joke (lines 06-08). First of all, therefore,gaze contextualizes a participant constellation in which m. is a ratified participant. Inaddition, gaze also indicates to whom an utterance is addressed (by speaker's gaze inthe beginning), and who a cts as its recipient (by hearer's gaze).

    One of the best-established findings of research on ga ze is that speakers haveto secure recipient's gaze in order to engage in the activity they are about to engagein, and that absence of recipient's gaze can result in recycled tum-beginnings.8Applied to our transcript, this finding sheds new light on G iulio's recycling in line06;in addition to the prosodic reason given for ist before (correction of wrong stressplacement), a gaze-related explanation can be given now. In line 04 (while he says'hh 'hh ich kenn noch eiv ) Giulio looks at MariePla, but she fails to rem m gaze andlooks at m., instead; Giulio is therefore without recipient. Only when he breaks offhis phrase does Manella direct her gaze towards him, and it is at this point that therecycled hej ich kenn nochl (line 06 ) begins. (hcidentally, this interpretation alsoexplains the use of the tum-initial summons he j whicfi locates non-hearing as the

    6 ~ f .rench & Local 1981.7Unfortunately, m. is placed outside the angle of the camera, so tiiat his gaze cannot be taken intoaccount.8 ~ f .oodwin 1981.

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    Peter Auer Introduction 13

    01 M: a b r a ich (O. 75 )M: - - - - - -G.

    04 G: 'hh'M kh kenn rwch eip vo l 'h

    05 M: Laspett(1~06 E, kj ch kenn

    09 M: no adesso lo lo - allord1M: - - - - - - - -

    10 M: - e k bo: non=lo =so=pfi

    1 1 M: c'ed Lcna - ur;d femmM:

    reason for repair, not a speaker's error, and is therefon: to be preferred to the prosodicm e . )

    A second case where gaze is an important cue for allocating and taking overthe role of the recipient is observed in lines 09ff. It has been said before that the threelprosodic phrases in line 09 are characterized by a gradual relinquishing of thoselprosodic cues that indicate competitiveness. Mariella seems to kno w that she hask o n ' in the competition about the right to speak. One reason for this is apparent fromiGiulio's gaze: after a prolonged sequence through which both children look at eachjother (the climax of their competition), Giul io withdraws g aze from Mariella shortlyafter the begim ing of the phrase no adesso in line 09 , and looks at m. On the onehand, this withdrawal contextualizes his submission and can be interpreted byMariella as 'giving in'. On the other hand, it also creates a problem for her; for inorder to tell a joke, she needs a recipient. Giulio's withdrawal of gaze both allocatesthe speaker role to her and refuses the role of the recipient for him self. Mariella is at aloss; and in fact, the interspersed a l lora and the as ide in l ine 1 0 may be aconsequence of this predicament. She tnes m. as a recipient in the first part of line 1 0(o n eh : ) but her gaze begins to wander again short1:y after (presurnably because m.does not gaze at her either). With the begiming of the joke itself (line 1 l) , her gazeretums to Giulio, who still does not look at her; and the hesitation and repair in line11 may be related to this. It is only during this reyair that Giulio finally gazes atMariella, and the joke begins.

    There can be no doubt that gaze is substantially involved in the enactment offrameworks of participation in this extract.

    Finally, there is the whole complex of gesrure, mimics and posture tha tprovides an irnmensely rich resource for contextualization. Before some examples ofthese signalling resources and their local use for contextualization purposes arediscussed, it is irnportant to know the seating arrangement of the scene whic h is givenin the foilowing diagram; the two children are sitting at a table on a balcony, m. isstanding opposite to them at some distance:

    railing LO garden\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

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    14 Peter AuerIn the transcript on pages 15/16, some of the more important gestual and facialparameters are represented informally.9 Giulio's movements are described on top ofthe verbal transcript, Mariella's beneath it. The synchronization of verbal andnonverbal chan nels is indicated by a ssociation linies.10

    Some of the movements giveci here extend over longer periods of time, or arerepeated severa1 times (such a s the rhythmic rocking of the ch air). These larger(sequences of) movements provide a clear segmentation of the interaction; in fact,each context enacted h as its own coinsteliation of gross gestual and postural features.Four contexts are differentiated in this way:

    context 1, the role of the joke teller in the first joke: told by Giuliocontext 2, the role of the teller in the second jokecontext 3, the context of the quarrel about the turn ;mdcontext 4, the cont ext of the second joke ii.self (told by Mariella)

    There is no exact synchronization in the enactrnent of these contexts between Giulioand Mariella; thus, for instance, while Manella enacts cisntext 2, Giulio is still incontext 1, and while he initiates conlext 3, Mariella remairis in context 2 for a while.The relationship between talk and the enactrnent of the four contexts by participants'gross gestual and postural features is summarized in the schematic representationonpages 18/19, where the drawings represent some of the features typical for thesegment of interaction concerned.

    When Maneiia assumes teller's position and prepares for the joke in 01/05,this position is contextualized by her posture (boih hands in rest position on knees)and the rocking of the chair (context 2, scene 2). Both are terminated exactly whenshe begins her turn-competitive phrase 07 (context 3) - she stops, sits more uprightand starts a movem ent of he r left am?. But as so011 as she has suc ceeded in securingfor herself the speaker's and teller's role against Giulio's intnision, she resumes a

    )I am indebted to Fred Erickson for discusiiing this part of the analysis with me.l01t was felt that this kind of anchoring thit gestural-kinesic anaiysi:; in the verbal one was doingmore justice to Gumperz' app roach to contextualizatiori than a non-ver bal transcript which iscompletely independent of the verbal one and only related indirectly to it, say, by an objectivetime counter. Remem ber that the final purpose of contextualization analysis is not an overallanalysis of behaviour; instead , it focusses on language, and relates non -verbal levels of signallingto language only to the degree that they participate in puning in into context. The g estural (or, forthat salce, gaze) channel is therefore never independent of the verba l one.

    Introduction.--*--_--->-.-----_-+----.*----------.--~--------,---

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    Peter Auer Ini3wluc ion 17

    as soon as gaze is averted, G. withdraws index finger andright hand and props elbow ori railng, stispssmiling and puts on grudging face;lerns back onchair.. .... . . .. ..... .

    movements

    1 09 M: no adesso io io - nllnr2

    --: - e k bo: nori=lo=lirtle smile................... -sma indistinctmovement of1 "'1 right hrnd smal:l nod

    1 11 M: c'erd u n a und ~ m m .1 --

    hin shortlyon chin in order to per fc~ m('thinking') a smaii pointingextended upwards, hand move ment towardstouches chin shonly G. and goes backl as soon as M. looks at G., her smiling stops, left elbow is propped onthe table with her h and pointing rpwards; the upper part of her body istumed nght towards Giulio ......:nd: :'---fontext 1,I context 2. O contcxt 3: E]

    g - - - - - 2 Giulio's Mariella context 4:quarreljoke as teller (pre- Marie lla'sjokeparatory)

    similar pose as in 01/05, with a less upnght position of the upper part of the bodythan in 07ff, and with both hands in rest position on the chair, and re-starts rocking(context 2, scene 5). (The three changes occur in the pause preceding allora in line09 , with the beginning of this allora and in the smali pause after it, respectively.)Gesture and posture therefore clearly are different in the two contexts in play: that ofthe assurned teller's role, and that of the tum -defendent. The two contexts are heldapart by the way Marieiia moves.

    The resumption of Marieila's teller-role posturc at the end of 07 is itself aresponse to another gross change of gesture, miunics and posture in Giulio, whichoccurs only a very short time before it: at the moment when he averts gaze fromMarielia in line 09, Giulio withdraws his right hand, which has been extended for apointing gesture so far, and props his elbow on the railirug, he stops smiling and putson a grudging face, and leans back on his chair. His 'giving in' in this competition issignalled, not only by gaze withdrawal, but also by posture, mimics and gesture(scene 5). (After he has left context 3, he nevertheless doesn't acknowledge context 2as re-enacted by M arieiia, but finally accepts context 4 - the joke-teiiing itself - by hisminimal hand movement and the srnaii nod in line 11 )Another gross change of partly permanent non-verbal parametersconiextualizes the beginning of the joke, i.e. the transition between context 2 andcontext 4 (line 11).Exactly when she looks at Giulio, selecting him as an adressee forthe joke after the aside in line 10 (contextualized as a disclaimer by a Little smile),Mariella also stops smiling, touches her chin shortly with the index fuiger of her righthand (w hich had been resting on the chair so far), props her left elbow on the tableand tums the upper part of her body right towards Giulio (scene 6). Interestinglyenough, this posture is very similar to the one she had assumed during Giulio's joke-telling (scene l), so that the end of the first joke, and the beginning of the second, arecontextualized on the part of Mariella, by the sarne posture, and scene 6 (context 4)can be seen as a continuation of scene 1 (context 1).

    The gestual and postura1 pararneters considered so far are synchronized withgaze and vocalizations (i.e., co-occur with the begiming of a context - such as anewactivity or a new pa rticipant constellation - marked by gaze or language as weli);yet, ibis is not always the case. This is particularly true for the smalier or lesspermment movements. For instante, one of the details of the original transcript nottaken into account so far is the two instances of inbreath by Giulio in line 03 , the firstof which is clearly part of 'laughing'. Body movement shows that Giulio is in factengaged in an activity which relates back to the joke which he had told before thesequence considered in our transcnpt begins: he laughs about his own joke, Le., he isstill incontext 1. In addition to the two instances of inbreath, this laughing also

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    Peter Auer Introduc ion

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    22 Peter Auerconstrue context in order to communicate. This means: language is not only asemiotic system the actual usage of svhich is determined by the context; this semioticsystem (or, as we should better say, this system of sem iotic systems) is in itself alsoresponsible for the availability of the very context which is necessary in order tointerpret the structures encoded in it. Context, therefore, i ~ i ot just given as such in Iian interaction, but is the outcome of participants' joint efforts to make it available. Itis not a collection of material or social 'facts' (such as the interaction taking place in l1such-and-such locality, betwee n such-and-such roles-bearers, etc.), but a (num ber of)cognitive schema(ta) (or model(s)) about what is relevant for the interaction at any 1!given point in time. What is relevanit in this sense may exclude or include certain 1facts of the material and social surroundings of the interaction as they might be statedby an 'objective ' on-looke r who tries to describ e context withou t looking at what:&es place in it (as , for instance, the soc ial scient:ist of sonne former theoretical andnethodological conviction), but it may also include infom iation not statable beforehe interaction begins, or independeritly of it . T k s e e m e r g e n t context parameters,efer, e.g., to types of lin guistic activities not prirdictable from the 'm aterially' or icocially' environment of the interaction at all, but also to facets of know ledge which Inay 'in fact' be shared by co-participants from the very beginning, but have to be 1umed from 'unvisible' (and interactionaily irrelevant) cogriitive dispositions of the I~articipantsnto comrnonly available grounds o n which to conduct the interaction. IGumperz' theory concurs with (or was influenced by) severa1 others in this

    ~vflexive view of context, most obvi~ously, erhaps, with (by) Goffman's w ork onframes" (Go ffman 1 974), and with ethno method ology (e.g,., Garfinkel 1967).Both 1ioffrnan and Garfinkel, among other things, turried role .theory upside down, byhowing that social roles have to be rnade relevant in in tera~rtion n order to providele context for interpretation. (A 'doctor ' is not a doctor because h e or she holds a 1iploma and a 'patient ' isn 't a patient because s k e has entered a 'doctor 's office'; but 10th become incum bents of the complementary roles of 'doctor' and 'patient' becausef the way in which they interact, taking on the righirs and obligations of the partners !i this unequal relationship; etc.) Thus, although there may be a preexistent I:pertoire of possible roles people can take over in a so ciety, the actualization of one)r more) of these roles has to be achieved as soon as the interaction begins, anduoughout it, and is therefore also subvertible: 'patient' and 'doctor' may become 'oldiends' or 'neighbours', and vice versa.

    Gumperz was also influenced by the tradition of "context analysis",*3 .e. by lork by Scheflen, Bates on, Birdwhist

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    24 Peter Auerremoved or added to it. They also nnake the veqr importamt point that activating acontext involves an e ffort, just like th'e processing of information in this context.

    Since the mid-80ies, reflexive notions of context have become integrated intoartificial intelligence. For instance, Reichman (1985) approaches discourse as ahierarchical organisation of so-called context-spaces whiirh provide the necessaryinformation for the processing of subsequent utterances. Participants, so she argues,generate and interpret utterances in the context of these c:ontext-spaces; but at thesame time, they must be able to identify the re1ev;ant (focused) con text at any givenmoment. It is not always the irnmediately preceding context space which is relevantfor a given utterance. Therefore, participants attr ibute focus to context spaces,omitting passages of discourse, or pointing back to distant on es, mainly by the choiceof referential means. Thus, the selectiion of a relevant context space is as important asthe processing of new information gi~renn the light of it.

    Gumperz' notion of contextuialization certainly ties in with or is, at least,compatible with these and other developments in the theoji of context. This leads tothe question of what th e specifics of his approa ch are. Through the praxis ofcontextualization research, a numtier of differences have emerged. They havers tablished a research tradit ion which is now dis t inct f rom conversat ionanalysis/ethnomethodology, ontext sinalysis or Goffm an's naturalistic sociology, butalso distinct from the trends in linguiistic pragmatics mentic ~ned bove. Th e two mostimportant characteristics of this more specific appioach to contextualization are thefollowing:3) F O CU Sn particular classes of conte:xtualization cues."Contextualization cues" are, generally speaking, al1 the: form-related means bywhich participants contextualize langua ge. Given the general notion of a flexible undreflexive context as outlined above, it is clear that any vertial and a great number of~on -ve rba l gestual etc.) signantia c8an erve this purpose. There is therefore no axiori restriction to the class of con textualization cues. However, contextualization-esearch has restricte d this class :for practica1 reasons (w hich, in tu m, havenethodological consequences) to the class ~of non-ireferential , non- lexical:ontextualization c ues, most notably: prosody, gesture/poslnre, gaze, backchannels,ind linguistic variation (including "spleech styles"). The resiiriction to non-referential:ues excludes mainly t wo clas ses of signantia. First, al1 explicit form ulation s of:ontext are outside the field of contextualization re:search ir1 this narrower sense, i.e.~rosp ecti ve r retrospective statements by participants abou,t what is going to happenir has happened. For instance, announcements of the upcoming activity as a ' joke' (as

    in t'he example discussed in the second section of this paper) would be excluded.Typical contextualization cues such as an increase in loudness, code-switching orgaze aversion do not have a referential meaning of their own. Second, the restrictionto non-referential cues excludes the class of deictics which certainly serve acontextualizing function in that they locate language in time and space, and thereforeconstrue the environrnent (U m fe ld , in K. Bhler's terms) in which interaction takesplace. However, they do this by establishing points of reference in this environrnentand are therefore referential means.14 The class of conte>ctualization ues consideredsets off contextualization research in the framework established by Gumperz frommost of conversation analysis, but also certain parts of pragrnatics.b) Naturaily occurring interaction as data.Contrary to most research on information structuring, and also unlike Goffman'snaturalistic sociology of the "interaction order", contextu alization research isunthinkable without work on naturally occurring data. Gumperz deals with fine-grained contextualization cues which which cannot be reconstructed from theanalyst's memory or competence as a member of a speecli comrnunity but have to beobserved in mechanically recorded data. By focussing on these cues, he goes beyondthe more general descriptions of (hierarchies of) frames given in AI or by Goffman,towards an empirical analysis of how they these frames are made to work as contextsfor actual linguistic utterances.4. Processes of contextualization: Some suggestions for typologiesW ith in the m ore na r row t r ad i t ion o f w ork on con tex tua l i za t ion cues ,contextualization is now defined as a relationship between a speaker, a context (a"cognitive cons tru ct" l ~ike a frame, schema, ..), an utterance and a (non-referential)contextualization cue. Contextualization cues are used by speakers in order to enacta context for the interpretation of a particular utterance. 14ccording to this definition,a number of distinctions suggest themselves: processes of contextualization can becharactenzed by the form of the cue employed, by the ternporal relationship betweencue and utterance, and by the context schema involved. Only the latter two will beconsidered here.

    1 4 ~ f . uer 1988.l5TIne term is used by Cook-Gumperz & Gumperz in their first article on contextualization (1976:10).

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    26 Peter AuerLet us begin with the major types of contexts that rnay be evoked through

    contextual izat ion cues. Giveni the ref lex ive not ion of context implied incontextualization research, it makes little sense to e.numerate aspects of contextindependently of the contextualization stra.tegies by which they are enacted.How ever, anoth er question is useful: we rnay ,ask if anii to what degree a context isamenable to and dependent on strategies of contextualization at all, Le., we rnay ask(following Giddens 1976; cf. Hirtnenkamp 1989) how much of context is "broughtalong", and how m uch of it is "br~ought bout" in interaction. For although context isin principie an endogenous constiuct achieved in the seme interaction which makesuse of it, this endogenous ("eme:rgent") character of context certainly allows fordegrees. Thus, in some cases context is "brought along" and merely has to be indexedin the interaction in order to become (or remaii-i) relevax~t, hereas in others, contextemerges only as a consequence of interactanits' contextualization work, i.e. it is"brought about" exclusively.

    Given the distinction betwee n "b rought about" an!d "brought along" aspects ofcontext, individual contextual frames or schemata can be characterized by theirdistance from these two extreme po les of contextualization. In our Western culture, atleast three groups of context schemata rnay be distinguislied. There is a first group ofcontext schemata which is exclusively deterrnined by participants' intra-episodecontextual izat ion work . Provided the in teract ioci is no t what is ca l led"institutio nalized" , this group mainly compris es script-like pattems of interactionalsequencing (involving activity-frarnes like 'telling a joke', and the "footing"/"keying"of these activities), schematic knowledge about speakership and recipiency at anypar t icu lar moment (par t ic ipat ion f rameworlcs) , knowledge about the top icaldevelopment of the interactional episode, and about how participants relate to theinformation they convey (m odality); in these cases, al1 the relevant contexts emergein thejnterac tion at hand, without bleing "brought along" into it. Surely , the enactrnentof activity fiames, of participation frameworkis, and the development of topics isbased on cultural background know ledge (e.g., on the verbal ecology of acnrnrnunity). Yet, within the limits of suc h a 'verbal culture', it is wholly en dogenousto the individual episode.

    A second group of contextual schemata is taken for relevant right in thebeginning of an episode in the senise of a "default assignment". Usualiy, interactiveepisodes of this kind are "institiitionalized"; the mere act of approaching theinstitution and dealing with it then implies the rellevance of the contextual schemata -'social roles' - by default a ssignm ent already. Thieis, calling the police one expects acertain behaviour on the part of the answerer even before h e interaction starts. Apartfrom " institutions ", default assignme nt of context rnay a.lso be the con sequenc e of

    Introduc ion 27

    interactional histories between tw o or more rnernbers of a society. ?hese interactionalhistories rnay establish expectations about the behaviour of each of the parties. Forinstance, the social roles of parents and children are "brought along" into any newencounter in a lifelong history of interaction.

    Maintaining the relevance of social roles as context categones dunng anepisode requires continuous work, however. For al1 participants, there is thepossibility of degressing frorn the default assignments of social roles; a call to thepolice by the husband of a policewoman w ill receive the same call answering at first,but will quickly turn into a non-institutionalized conversation between twop a~ t i c ip an t swho enact the cornplementary roles of husband and wife, instead ofcaller-to-the-police and policewoman. Altemative role relationships are availablethroughout the interaction. This means, that the the rnaintenance of any "broughtalong" role constellaion needs to be affirmed continuously, which is done bycontextualization cues.

    In so-called institutionalized settings, topics, activities and tums rnay becomesukjected to default assignment as well and turn into context schernata of the secondtime. Pre-aliocation of speak er roles, and pre-determination of speech activities andof topics, will then turn context parameters of the first group into brought-alongfeatures. On the other hand, social roles rnay also ernerge as contextual schemata ofthe first kind in an interaction in which no "default assignment" is posible; forinstance, rapid intra-epsode changes of social role constellations rnay occur in certaininteractions between persons who are both in a hierarchical, institutionalizedrelationship with each other (such as: 'student/professor'), and in a non-hierarchicalrelationship of 'friends'.

    A third group of context pararneters can be "brought about" even less thanthose that are assigned be default. These are the physical surroundings in which aninteraction takes place, including the time of its occurrence, and visible features ofthe participants to it (like gender, and, in part, ethnicity). Deixis and gesture/posture/kinesics certainly relate to these surroundings. They bnng certain aspects of thesesurroundings into participants' consciousness and therefore have a contextualizingeffect. Altematively, lack of such contextualization work rnay render visible featuresof the situational context irrelevant for interaction; a participant's gende r rnay then beas interactionally unimportant as the presence of a piano in the roorn.

    Yet, although they need being brought into consciousness, these surroundingsresist change; contextualization cues can bring certain aspects into the foreground,backgrounding others, but they cannot (as in the case of social roles) substitute onephysical context for the other.

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    28 Peter AuerAnother dimension on which contextualization can be described follows from

    the analysis of how contextualization cues areplaced with respect to the utterance tobe contextualized. In particular, it can be asked if the cue is placed externally, i.e.before or after the relevant contirxt is valid, or internally, i.e. during this period.Contex tualization cues of the first, extema l type are antii:ipatory (when placed beforeh e contextualized unit, cf. some of the postura1 cues in the exarnple discussed insection 2) , or retrospective (when plac e after it). Interna1 contextualization cues rnaybe pen pheral or non-peripheral; in the first case, they occur at the (initial or final)inargin of, but inside the contextualized unit. Prosodic ~nark ers re an exam ple; e.g.raised onsets of new intonational phrases rnay signal a new topic (initial peripheralcontextualization), fin al intonation contours rnay sig,nal tum completion (finalperipheral contextualization). Non-peripheral cues may be singular, recurrent orpermanent cues . Singular non-per ipheral cues are n~o st ly e la tively large , forinstance, a gesture accompanying an utterance. Recurrent cues maintain the relevanceof a given con text by re-invoking it. Thu s, the 'role' of a doctor in doctorlpatientinteraction is repeatedly invoked by how the dolctor conlrols the floor and the topic,ethnic group s olidarity rnay be repeatedly invoked by usage of the minority language,etc. Among the permanent cues, we find pararneters such as posture or "creakyvoice". Peripheral c ues rnay be sing ular or recurrent.

    The following schema sumrnarizes the ways in w fiich cues and contextualizedunit can relate to eac h other in time:

    contextualization cues

    anticipatory retrospective penpheral- on-penpierai

    singular recurrent

    introduction

    5. Some properties of contextualization cuesI:n the discussion of contextualization so far, few things have been said about thesemiotic nature of contextualization cues: what are the properties that make themuseful for steering the interpretation of 'what is going on'? And how are they used inthe process of inferencing which leads towards such an interpretation? Some of thetheoretical features of contextualization cues will be considered in this section.1 )Redundancy of coding and co-occurrence of cues.13e relationship between contextualization cues on the the vanous levels is acomplex one, As can be observed in the extract discussed in section 2, cues bundletogether in time to varying degrees. There are some points in the interaction wherethere is a dense synchronization of contextualization cues on ali levels. Mariella'sa l l o r a ( li n e 09) is an example . Taken as such , the word a l lo ra , even when i tssequential position is taken into account, cannor, be given an unambiguousinterpretation. Inparticular, it is not clear if the utterance introduced by all ora is partof Mariella's fighting for the tum, i.e. a continuation of her previous talk (forinstance, the first part of an allora basta! ), or a return into the role of the story-teller(i.e. a resumption of the first line). Contextualization cues on various levels aUow aprocess of inferencing which clearly excludes the first possibility. First of all, initialstress on allora establishes similarity with the allora in line 116; in addition, Mariellalets her arms fall down and grasps the chair, and she sits slightly more upnght - bothmovements refer to her previous teller's role, too. Furthetmore, gaze is averted fromGiulio and begins to wander in m.'s direction, a cue that sets off the new activityagainst the old one. Al1 in all, it is clear that there is a redundancy of coding here:accent placement, gaze , and gesture/posture all point into the same direction.

    The same happens in the case of Mariella's phrase non= lo= so-p iu shortlyafter. It is set off against previous and following talk prosodically (by high rate ofarticulation, piano, hardly any pitch movement), but also by gaze (averted), andmimic s (faint smile). The phenomeno n is frequent: contextualization cues often co-occur, so that a change on one leve1 is synchronized with one o n the other(s). Theprocess of inferencing is facilitated by such a redundancy of c oding; not only in thesense that a negligent participant rnay fail to m onitor col-participant's behaviour on al1

    161t should be added that the rernaining prosodic contextualizailion cues are also compatible withthe interpretation "continuation of previous fight for the tum"; there is no clear break betweenallora and the previous talk on this level.

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    Peter Auerr leaves this role in order to engage in the competition with Giulio over the tum,~y be a case in point. W hat the rocking, its tennination and later resumptionntribure to the interpretation of the interaction at hand is to punctuate the activity inee phrases: the pre-competition teller's role, the competition, and the post-npetition teller's role. Had th e rocking occu rred in the completition phase and been*en lacking before and after, the inferences prompted w ould not have changed inirnportant way.

    Alrnost al1 the other contextualization cues discussed in section 2 do not stand; test, however. In some cases (like clapping hands, or pointing at the other person)s not clear how a contrast could be established, as the cue involved is neitherary nor scalarlpolar. in other cases, changing the direction of the change of cues~ l dlter the interpretation of the activity considerably. Just consider Giulio'slpetitive phrase in line 4, ich kenn noch ei.n vo-. Had it been spoken in a low:e, and with a low onset, and had Manella 's pr~eceding ine allora ich beenractenzed by a high onset, and been spok en in forte, the emerging contrast woulde been the sarne as in the actual case. But in this case, prosody would not have1 able to display Giulio's phrase as competitive; instead, it n~ ig ht ave been heardn aside, a cornrnent spoken to a third party, or an sifterthought, but not as a claimhe tu m and the teller's role.

    From the conversion test, it follows that many if not niost contextualization,, though no referential signs, do have som e kind of inhereni meaning or, in a lessiguous fonnulation, an inherent meaning base o r meaning plotential.on-arbitrariness vs. conventionalization of cues.value of an inherent semantic potential of a cue is that of giving the direction of aential process, not of replacing it. Still, such a direction-giving is a good deal: han what a merely contrastively used cue can achieve in the interpretation:SS, i.e. more than the knot-i n-the-han kerchief u se of contextualizatio n cues.

    Many contextualization cues do two things aa the sarne time. First, theyilish a contrast and thereby indicati: that sometlhing new is going to come;id , they restrict the number of possible plausible jnferences of what this mighth e basis for such an inherent meaning potential may be conventionalizedx a r y ) or natural (non-arbitrary), or a mixture of both.

    An example for a pure ly conventiona lized meaning potentia l ofxtualization cues is code-switching between languages. In a given speechmnity, switching from lang uage A into B may be meaningiful not only because: ontrast established, but also becaiise of the attitudes and values associated

    Introduction 33

    with these languages. These may differ from one community to the next, even whenthe sarne pair of languages is involved; e.g., switching from Italian into Germanevokes different associations in South Tyrol than it does in a West German migrantcommunity. Wh at is associated with a particular language in a repertoire is a matterof conventions only and therefore arbitrary.Another example for the conventional nature of some contextualization cuesis reported in Gumperz 19 82 (173): in a London airport staff cafeten a tensions werereported between the personnel, mainly Pakistani and Indian women, and thecustomers. The customers perceived the women as unfriendly and uncooperative. Forinstance, when serving the customers, the Pakistani and Ind ian women used to ask thecustomers if they wanted gravy with their meal, by saying gravy. , .e., they used anintonation phrase with a falling final contour. For the Bntish recipients, this phrasesounded like a statement - but in the given sequential contexf, a statement was neithernecessary nor polite. According to British expectations, a question would be cailedfor, marked by rising fin al contour: gravy? The Indian personnel, on the o ther hand,spoke Indian English; in this variety, an activity like "offering" is not marked byrising, but falling contours according Gumperz. There w as a clash then betweenBritish English and Indian English prosodic conventions for marking activity types;what sounded to B ritish ears like a statement was in fact rneant as an offer.

    Many cues have a inherent meaning base, however, which is only partly, ornot at al l, conventionalized but, i n a specific sense of the word, "natural". "Natural"here must be understood in the sense of Natural Phonology, Natural Morphology,etc., Le., as having its basis in som e universal requirement of hurnan interaction, ofthe working of the human mind, or of the articulatory andlor auditory mechanismsinvolved in speech production and perception. Such natural cues do not have to beacquired by the child in and as part of a given culture; they are at the disposition ofevery hurnan interactant. On the other hand, natural cues can be suppressed or given acounter-reading by convention. This convention, of co m e , has to be leamed.An example is tum-final (and, by extension, sentence-final) intonationcontour. There is a natural expectancy that the end of a speaker's contnbution o r of asyntactic unit should be marked by diminishing fundamental frequency.18 Thisexpectancy is based on an iconic-metaphorical relationship between 'bottom'l 'restl/'termination'. In fact, unit-final intonation contours for assertive phrases are fallimg inmany speech communities. However, it is well known that some vaneties (such asAustralian English, Tyneside English, north-west Alemaimic) have rising final

    l 8 ~ f .oiinger 1983, Auer 1990.

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    34 Peter Auer Introduction 35

    contours; these have to be seen as conventio~nalized suspensions of the naturalcorrelation between termination and falling contour.

    Another case of a natural contextualization cue which is frequentlysuppressed by convention is gaze. Given the fact that hum an interaction is multi-channeled, a natural expectation is that more intense (or focused) interaction isaccompanied by mutua l gaze, and riot by gaze aversion; tlle reason is that eye contactboth enables a full monitoring of the other's non-verbal activities, and displays thismonitoring ('attention'). This natural correlation underllies the use of gaze in theintl~raction etween Giulio and M ariella; in order to proc erd with her telling, Mariellahas to secure Giulio 's gaze as a recipient. 111 many cultures, however, verbalinteraction must not be accompanied by frequent or pem ,m en teye contact, even if itis an intense and highly focused on e, unless it will be iriterpreted as threatening oraggressive.

    Many other cues with a nahlral meaning base are involved in the example insection 2: sitting back vs. upright, loud?ess, volwel elongations, pitch range, pitchonset, rate of articulation/speech may be mosit striking ones. In al1 these cases,hoyvever, it should not be forgottei? that despite this very general natural meaningbase, the cue can only provide help for a process of interpretation which as a whole,is deeply embed ded into the culture at hand, as has been d'em onstrated by many casesof intercultural misunderstanding 'based on the divergirig use of certain semioticmeans for contextualization.

    frames. There is, then, a double indexing of contexts at the two levels, which is donesirnultaneously with the same cues.6 . C'onclusionThe concept of contextualization has been successful in interactional (interpretive)linguistics, microethnography and similar disciplines because it relates verbalinteraction and aspects of verbal and non-verbal behaviour such as linguisticvariation, prosody, and gesturelposture to each other. Contextualization research hasproven to be an effective way of analysing these often neglected areas ofcommunication not only in structural, but also in functional terms. Yet, the concept isnot entirely unproblematic and has fuzzy theoretical contours.

    In his paper, the working of contextualization cues was demonstrated on thebasis of a smaii data extract; starting from this empirical an alysis, some attempts at atheoretical explication of the notion of contextualization were made. In particular, itwas proposed that the contextualization (implying a reflexive and flexible notion ofcontext) should be distinguished from contextualization cues. The notion ofcontextualization at large is not specific enough to describe the particular approachchosen by Gumperz and coiieagues. Such a d escnption is however possible via thenotion of contextualization cues. These were defined as non-referential signantiawhicln have to be related to the verba l message by processes of inferencing in order toprovide these with the contexts in which they can be interpreted.

    5 ) Lhuble-indexing of contexts via a single cue.In nnany cases, contextualization cues seem to be an index not only for one contextschema, but for two, hierarchically arganized schemata. Usuaily, one of the schematainvolved is related to turn-taking, topical organization, or type of activity, the othersche ma is one of social roles. Consider, as a typical examp le, an institutional contextlike doctorjp atient interaction. Here, the soci al roles of the doctor and of the patient,although "brought along", have to be: "brought about" be specific cues. Among thesecues, there are certain regularities of turn-taking (the 'patient' has limited rights toself-s elec tion when compared to the 'docto r'), of sequencin g (for instance , a typicalquestion-answer structure in the diagnosis part) , and of topical organization(restrictions on the topics that can be brought up, the 'doctor' being responsible for theinitiation of topics exclusively). Al1 these cues do an additional job as context-ualization cues for lower leve1 context frames or schemata, i .e. the allocation ofspeaker and hearer roles, the organization of topics, and the enactment of activity

    Auer, P. [1983/1984]. Zweisprachige Konversationen: Code-switching i ~ n d ransferbei itallenischen Mcgrantenkindern in Konstanz. Schriften des S FB 9 9, Konstanz.Revised English version as: Bilingual Conversation. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1984.

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