CHAPTER 3 DATA AND METHODOLOGY
3.3 Framework of the study
To study the linguistic and gestural representations of viewpoints, a framework which identifies and defines the viewpoints that could possibly emerge from clausal events within conversational contexts should be developed. In communicating third-person past events within a face-to-face interaction, speakers not only recount the propositional contents of the events, but might also simultaneously focus on the ongoing conversation. Several studies have urged the necessity of taking interactive contexts into consideration to study speakers’ footings or perspectives, but have not explicitly established a framework for analysis. Koven’s (2002) framework of speaker role inhabitance was the first study that clearly discussed speakers’ attempts to describe the referential contents of personal experiences and to maintain the ongoing conversations, and a framework for analysis was developed. He explicitly distinguished between three speaker’s perspectives including interlocutory, authorial and character role perspectives, and defined these terms according to the speech events they arise from:
(1) There is the larger context of the interview or conversation in which the stories are told. (Here the relevant speaker roles are those of co-conversationalists or interlocutors.)
(2) There is the event of narration itself, in which the speaker takes on the role of storyteller, obtaining an extended turn at talk in which he/she narrates. (Here the relevant speaker roles are those of narrator/author).
(3) There is the narrated speech event, which is presupposed and invoked in
the event of narration. (Here the relevant speaker roles are those of the narratable and performable characters).
Koven’s framework especially recognized interlocutory role inhabitance as the speaker’s attempt to maintain the ongoing conversation, which was not mentioned in earlier studies. With the interlocutory role perspective being identified, we can see how speakers might also speak on behalf of themselves as the current speaker within a conversation while describing third-person past events. The present study thus follows Koven’s concept of interlocutory role inhabitance and adapts it for convenience to the term speaker viewpoint for the purpose of the present study.
Concerning how speakers present the propositional contents of third-person past events, this study follows McNeill’s (1992) notion of viewpoints and the two viewpoints that he recognized. McNeill has defined the notion of viewpoints as the speakers’ feelings of distance in relation to the past events, and he also brought up two viewpoints—observer and character viewpoint. His discussion on viewpoints, albeit gestures are the main focus, has taken care of both linguistic and gestural manifestations. The present study, since it is also aimed at the study of linguistic and gestural viewpoints, therefore follows McNeill’s notion of viewpoints as a basis for the analysis of viewpoints that arise from the descriptions of third-person past events.
Despite the fact that McNeill’s descriptions of observer and character viewpoint are aimed for use in the study of both linguistic and gestural manifestations, his
definitions regarding these two terms are characterized only in regard to the gestural aspects. In other words, since McNeill’s primary focus is on gestures, he has defined the two terms by describing the differences in their gestural performances. He has defined observer and character viewpoint based on two gestural attributes of iconic gesture—how the gesture represents the characters in narratives and the gestural space used:
Observer viewpoint (O-VPT): The iconic gesture appears to display an
event like the narrator keeps some distance from the story, and the speaker’s hands play the part of the character in the narrative as a whole. The gestural space excludes the speaker’s body.Character viewpoint (C-VPT): The iconic gesture seems to re-enact the
roles of the character in the narrative, and we feel that the narrator is inside the story. The speaker’s hands represent the hands of the character, and the speaker’s body the body of the character. The gestural space incorporates the speaker’s body.Since both observer and character viewpoints are defined by purely gestural perspectives, the ways in which the observer viewpoint and character viewpoint can be distinguished by the use of language are not clearly stated. Koven’s illustrations of
authorial role and character role inhabitance, which in their kernel concepts are
similar to that of McNeill’s observer and character viewpoint, can be used to complement McNeill’s definitions of observer and character viewpoint.
To conclude, building on Koven’s notion of interlocutory role perspective and
McNeill’s terms of observer and character viewpoint, the framework of the present study further identifies three viewpoints—that of speaker, observer and character to account for both linguistic and gestural representations. The definitions can be stated as the following:
Speaker viewpoint (S-VPT): To maintain the larger conversational context
in which the description of third-person past events are embedded or interwoven, the speaker constantly reveals his here-and-now relationship with the co-conversationalists by interacting with them, making comments on, or injecting emotions toward the past events.Observer viewpoint (O-VPT): Concerning the description of third-person
past events, the speaker keeps some distance from the past events, describing the clausal event like an observer outside of the event. The speaker refrains himself either from re-enacting the roles of characters or attempting to maintain the ongoing conversation.Character viewpoint (C-VPT): Concerning the description of third-person
past events, the speaker walks into the temporal and spatial frame of the past events, reconstructing the scene of the past events from the perspective of different characters and enacting their thoughts, speech and other deeds.The analyses of linguistic and gestural representations of different viewpoints in this study will follow the definitions developed here.