This article discusses three characteristics useful in defining the relations between speakers in the turn-taking aspects of conversation: the derivational history of personal relationships, stop-action pseudo-history versus dynamic compacted posing, and the criss-crossing of verbal versus kinetic axes. (Available from Semiotica, Co-Libri, P.O.…

This article discusses the interactive behavior that accompanies verbal exchange. It specifically describes a set of experiments designed to isolate an important subset of interactive behavior, the vocal (as opposed to the verbal) and to relate this information to a wide range of social impressions resulting from verbal exchange. (Available from…

This paper studies meaning as a construct of human interaction. Basic to this approach is the concept of the act of communication, which may be realized verbally or non-verbally. In order to integrate non-verbal behaviors into descriptions of discourse and interaction, a series of functional, not anatomic, categories is needed. For the kinesic…

The ontogenetic development of human vocal utterances and their role in early interaction processes were studied with a three-month-old baby. Recordings were made of infant vocalizations in the home and the sounds were classified. During a five-minute segment between the mother and infant, the infant produced 59 utterances, 93 percent of which had…

This study investigated the linguistic characteristics of speech addressed to the child and the features of the verbal environment critical for learning language. The study focused on the prosodic and paralinguistic features of adult speech to the young child. Adult speech directed to children was compared to other kinds of systematic speech…

This is a report on a proposed research project on the interaction processes (verbal, non-verbal, and kinesic) present in a seminar situation, with a view towards positing a model of interaction in this type of situation. The seminar was chosen as a setting because it provides a structured context with a variety of discursive acts, favoring the…

The correlation of verbal, paralinguistic, and kinesic features in the context of student-student and student-teacher interaction is studied in a semester linguistics course at Vanderbilt University. The purpose of the research is to delineate some of the major problems of group interaction in the college classroom and to show how the various…

This study investigates the ways adult second language learners deal with errors and trouble sources in their conversations with one another. Specifically, it describes the repair work done by the second language learners, the extralinguistic features accompanying these repairs and the differences between repairs made by speakers at different…