In:Enabling Human Conduct: Studies of talk-in-interaction in honor of Emanuel A. Schegloff
Edited by Geoffrey Raymond, Gene H. Lerner and John Heritage
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 273] 2017
► pp. 299–314
On the practical re-intentionalization of body behavior
Action pivots in the progressive realization of embodied conduct
Published online: 24 May 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.273.15ler
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.273.15ler
Body behavior can be both observable and recognizable as realizing a particular action in interaction with others. In addition, participants have a range of ways to conspicuously adjust their actions to coordinate or synchronize their actions with others. For instance, there are methods to suspend or abandon handing off an object to another and methods to suspend or abandon pointing at an object in preparing to request it. In addition to such conspicuous action adjustments, participants sometimes employ more or less covert methods of suspension and abandonment that seem to be aimed at pivoting from the originally begun action into another action so that the ensuing action appears to be what they were doing all along. These are, in effect, practices aimed at re-intentionalizing action in interaction.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.On the emergent structuring of human conduct
- 3.Adjusting actions
- 3.1Adjusting Turn Construction
- 3.2Adjusting Hand Gestures
- 3.3Adjusting Manual Action
- 4.Action Pivoting
- 4.1Turn-constructional pivots
- 4.2Gestural pivots
- 4.3Manual action pivots
- 5.Concluding remarks
- 5.1“One more thing”: Auto-involvement as a ready-made pivoting resource
Acknowledgement Notes References
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.