Prosody in Interaction

“It is most fascinating how much has been found out about the previously elusive medium of prosody since a small group of scholars have begun to investigate it within the environment in which it has evolved and keeps evolving, social interaction. This book provides us with a thorough understanding of the systematic ways in which we use the musical parameters of speech — melody, voice, rhythm — to manage interactions and social relationships, beat by beat, turn by turn. We learn to appreciate the immense range of social and symbolic tasks accomplished by prosodic choices and formats, as well as the wealth of research that is still to be done.”

“This wonderful collection of papers contributes to the already longstanding tradition of studies on prosody in interactional linguistics. It pays a significant tribute to the outstanding work done by Elisabeth Couper-Kuhlen who has radically contributed to our understanding of the role of prosody in interaction.

The volume not only shows the central role of prosody for the organization of interaction, but also demonstrates the interplay of prosody and other multimodal dimensions, going from syntax to gesture and embodied conducts. In this sense, the volume invites to integrate in a holistic way all of the resources participants mobilize in constructing the emergent order of social interaction.

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“With contributions from some of our most prominent scholars, Prosody in Interaction honors one of the primary originators of this CA-inspired line of work by offering revealing accounts of the place of prosody in action. There can be no question that prosody plays an indispensable role in producing action in talk-in-interaction, and the contributions to this volume furnish solid empirical evidence of just what roles it plays across languages and circumstances. Accompanying commentaries to most of the contributions give added depth to the volume.”

“Though the analytic chapters vary in their specific goals, their sources of data, and so on, they hang together well due to their shared focus on the sequential organization of interaction, drawing upon evidence from a combination of current-speaker action and next-speaker action, and in several cases,
embodied as well as spoken. Each takes a detailed, qualitative approach to one interaction at a time, with several authors stating explicitly that the examples they choose to illustrate their points are representative of a larger set of similar cases. In the chapters that use them, acoustic analyses are, overall, rigorous and convincing. The commenting chapters encourage the reader to think more deeply about some aspect(s) of the preceding chapter; I found these to enhance the reading experience greatly. It cannot be overstated how helpful the accompanying website was for reading this book. Being able to hear, and in many cases watch, interactions unfold -- and being able to listen to clips of individual words and phrases that are the focus of an author’s analysis -- made the analysis come to life. I believe this feature of the book can serve as an example for any publications that take sound variation into account for an analysis of interaction.”

“The volume Prosody in Interaction provides a multi-faceted collection of papers addressing a variety of prosodic aspects and the roles they play in spoken natural interaction. It impressively reflects the establishment of the conversation analytic and interactional linguistic framework over the last decades and confirms the need for a socially-oriented functional analysis of linguistic concepts in spontaneous data. [...]
The book is not only highly relevant for specialists in the field - in fact for all linguists adhering to approaches that deal with prosody or spoken language in general - but also for graduate and undergraduate students of linguistics.”

“The studies presented are interesting, varied and show much vitality in this research area. The subfield is an important addition to prosodic research, which has largely been focused on controlled settings, and Conversation Analysis, where much of the research has been based on written transcriptions. Also pleasing to see is an effort to incorporate multimodal cues, including gesture and facial expression.”

“This is a very interesting book on the application of prosody in live communication and is a good read for both students and researchers of the field.”

“The main advantage of the book is the emphasis placed on experimental, as opposed to impressionistic, phonetics. Moreover, the authors base their research on corpora, highlighting the importance of naturally occurring speech in the analysis of prosody. Yet another crucial factor that contributes to the high quality of the volume is the fact that the papers show an important academic direction which researchers of prosody in interaction may follow. The contributions are thought-provoking, which applies also to the commenting papers which are of immense value to the readers, as they provide them with instantaneous criticism or elaboration of the preceding articles. [...] The volume is a fine collection of papers, which should be of interest to many researchers of interaction and/or prosody.”