Cover not available

In:Mobile Eye Tracking: New avenues for the study of gaze in social interaction
Edited by Elisabeth Zima and Anja Stukenbrock
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 351] 2025
► pp. 165–187

Get fulltext
PDF logo with download linkDownload Chapter PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Chapter EPUB

Chapter 6
Gaze aversion as a marker of disalignment in interactions

 | University of Duisburg-Essen
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 13 May 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.351.06kru
Abstract
Social interaction requires participants to be aligned with each other. Interactional disalignment occurs when actions are inappropriate for a given situation or when actions are not followed up by interlocutors. This study examines gaze aversion as a visual practice in which participants display and maintain interactional impasses that result from disalignment. As the data suggest, the participants redirect their foveal attention to interactional less relevant areas of interest to avoid visually addressing other participants and show self-involvement as a state of unavailability. The data basis is two video recordings (40 min each) of triadic interactions in a laboratory. The participants wear mobile eye-tracking glasses (Tobii Pro Glasses 2). The data are in English.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The role of gaze in disalignment sequences
  • 3.Data and methodology
  • 4.Analysis
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
References (58)
References
Auer, Peter. 2018. “Gaze, Addressee Selection and Turn-Taking in Three-Party Interaction.” In Eye-Tracking in Interaction: Studies on the Role of Eye Gaze in Dialogue, edited by Geert Brône and Bert Oben, 197–231. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Auer, Peter, and Elisabeth Zima. 2021. “On Word Searches, Gaze, and Co-participation.” Gesprächsforschung — Online — Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion 22: 390–425.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brône, Geert, Bert Oben, Annelies Jehoul, Jelena Vranjes, and Kurt Feyaerts. 2017. “Eye Gaze and Viewpoint in Multimodal Interaction Management.” Cognitive Linguistics 28 (3): 449–483. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, and Dagmar Barth-Weingarten. 2011. “A System for Transcribing Talk-in-Interaction: GAT 2.” Gesprächsforschung — Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion 12: 1–51.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Duchowski, Andrew T. 2007. Eye Tracking Methodology: Theory and Practice. London: Springer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zima, Elisabeth, Peter Auer and Christoph Rühlemann, this volume. “Why research in gaze in social interaction needs mobile eye tracking.”
Frank, Stefan L., Irene Fernandez Monsalve, Robin L. Thompson, and Gabriella Vigliocco. 2013. “Reading Time Data for Evaluating Broad-Coverage Models of English Sentence Processing.” Behaviour Research Methods 45 (4): 1182–1190. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Geise, Stephanie. 2011. “Eyetracking in der Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft: Theorie, Methode und Kritische Reflexion.” Studies in Communication/Media 2: 149–263. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1963. Behaviour in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles. 1980. “Restarts, Pauses, and the Achievement of a State of Mutual Gaze at Turn Beginning.” Sociological Inquiry 50 (3–4): 272–302. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1981. Conversational Organization: Interaction Between Speakers and Hearers. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1986. “Between and Within: Alternative Sequential Treatments of Continuers and Assessments.” Human Studies 9: 205–217. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. “Participation, Stance and Affect in the Organization of Activities.” Discourse & Society 18 (1): 53–73. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles, and Marjorie H. Goodwin. 2004. “Participation.” In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, edited by Alessandro Duranti, 222–244. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heller, Vivien. 2016. “‘das_s VOLL verARsche hier’: Aligment und Disalignment mit jugendsprachlichen Praktiken in der Unterrichtsinteraktion.” In Jugendsprache in Schule, Medien und Alltag, edited by Carmen Spiegel and Daniel Gysin. 91–108. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hoey, Elliott M. 2018. “Drinking for Speaking: The Multimodal Organization of Drinking in Conversation.” Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality 1(1). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holler, Judith, and Kobin H. Kendrick. 2015. “Unaddressed Participants’ Gaze in Multi-Person Interaction: Optimizing Recipiency.” Frontiers in Psychology 6: 1–14. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holmqvist, Kenneth, Marcus Nyström, Richard Andersson, Richard Dewhurst, Halszka Jarodzka, and Joost van de Weijer. 2011. Eye Tracking: A Comprehensive Guide to Methods and Measures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holmqvist, Kenneth, Marcus Nyström, and Fiona Mulvey. 2012. “Eye Tracker Data Quality: What It Is and How To Measure It.” Proceedings of the Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications, 45–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kendon, Adam. 1967. “Some Functions of Gaze-Direction in Social Interaction.” Acta Psychol. 26: 22–63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kendrick, Kobin H., and Holler, Judith. 2017. “Gaze Direction Signals Response Preference in Conversation.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 50(1): 12–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kidwell, Mardi. 2006. “‘Calm Down!’ The Role of Gaze in the Interactional Management of Hysteria by the Police.” Discourse Studies 8: 745–770. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klatt, Marie, and Maximilian Krug. 2023. “Von der Disalignierung zum Disengagement. Aushandlung von Partizipation in konfliktären Eltern-Kind-Interaktionen.” fokus:interaktion 1: 29–66. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krug, Maximilian. 2023. “Overcoming Blanking: Verbal and Visual Features of Prompting in Theatre Rehearsals.” Human Studies 46: 221–246. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kurzhals, Kuno, Michael Burch, Tanja Blascheck, Gennady Andrienko, Natalia Andrienko, and Daniel Weiskopf. 2017. “A Task-Based View on the Visual Analysis of Eye-Tracking Data.” In Eye Tracking and Visualization: Foundations, Techniques, and Applications, edited by Michael Burch, Lewis Chuang, Brian Fisher, and Albrecht Schmidt, ETVIS 2015: 3–22. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laner, Barbara. 2022. “’Guck mal der Baum’ — Zur Verwendung von Wahrnehmungsimperativen mit und ohne mal.” Gesprächsforschung — Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion 23: 1–35.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mondada, Lorenza. 2018. “Multiple Temporalities of Language and Body in Interaction: Challenges for Transcribing Multimodality.” Res. Lang. Soc. Interact. 51: 85–106. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019. “Contemporary Issues in Conversation Analysis: Embodiment and Materiality, Multimodality and Multisensoriality in Social Interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 145: 47–62. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morek, Miriam. 2016. “‘watt soll ich dazu Sagen’ — (Dis)Alignment bei der interaktiven Manifestation epistemischer Asymmetrien.” In Wissen in institutioneller Interaktion, edited by Alexandra Groß and Inga Harren. Forum Angewandte Linguistik 55, 145–175, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oben, Bert, Clarissa de Vries, and Geert Brône. This volume. “Mobile eye-tracking and mixed-methods approaches to inter-action analysis”.
Park, Innhwa. 2010. “Marking an Impasse: The Use of Anyway as a Sequence-Closing Device.” Journal of Pragmatics 42(12): 3283–3299. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pekarek Doehler, Simona, Hilla Polak-Yitzhaki, Xiaoting Li, Ioana Maria Stoenica, Martin Havlík, and Leelo Keevallik. 2021. “Multimodal Assemblies for Prefacing a Dispreferred Response: A Cross-Linguistic Analysis.” Frontiers in Psychology 12: 1–24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rasmussen, Gitte and Elisabeth Dalby Kristiansen. This volume. “The influence of the specificities of gaze behaviour on emerging and ensuing interaction — A contribution to the discussion of the use of eye-tracking recordings for EMCA analysis.”
Rayner, Keith. 2009. “Eye Movements in Reading: Models and Data.” J Eye Mov Res. 2(5): 1–10. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Robinson, Jeffrey. D. 2020. “One Type of Polar, Information-Seeking Question and Its Stance of Probability: Implications for the Preference for Agreement.” Res. Lang. Soc. Interact. 53: 425–442. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rossano, Federico. 2013. “Gaze in Conversation.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 308–329. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1987. “On the Preferences for Agreement and Contiguity in Sequences in Conversation.” In Talk and Social Organisation, ed. by Graham Button and John R. E. Lee, 54–69. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson. 1974. “A Simplest Systematics for the Organisation of Turn-talking in Conversation.” Language 50 (4): 696–735. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steensig, Jakob. 2019. “Conversation Analysis and Affiliation and Alignment.” In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ed. by Carol A. Chapelle, 1–6. John Wiley & Sons. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya. 2008. “Stance, Alignment, and Affiliation During Storytelling: When Nodding Is a Token of Affiliation.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 41 (1): 31–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. “An Overview of the Question-Response System in American English Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (10): 2772–2781. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, and Jeffrey D. Robinson. 2006. “A Preference for Progressivity in Interaction.” Lang. Soc. 35(03). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig. 2011. “Knowledge, Morality and Affiliation in Social Interaction.” In The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation, ed. by Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stokoe, Elizabeth, Bogdana Humă, Rein O. Sikveland, and Heidi Kevoe-Feldman. 2020. “When Delayed Responses are Productive: Being Persuaded Following Resistance in Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 155: 70–82. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stukenbrock, Anja. 2018a. “Blickpraktiken von SprecherInnen und AdressatInnen bei der Lokaldeixis: Mobile Eye Tracking-Analysen zur Herstellung von joint attention.” Gesprächsforschung — Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion 19: 132–168.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018b. “Forward-Looking: Where Do We Go with Multimodal Projections?” In Time in Embodied Interaction. Synchronicity and Sequentiality of Multimodal Resources, ed. by Arnulf Deppermann and Jürgen Streeck, 31–68. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018c. “Mobile Dual Eye-Tracking in Face-to-Face Interaction: Tue case of deixis and joint attention.” In Eye-Tracking in Interaction: Studies on the Role of Eye Gaze in Dialogue, ed. by Geert Brône and Bert Oben, 265–300. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stukenbrock, Anja, and Anh N. Dao. 2019. “Joint Attention in Passing: What Dual Mobile Eye Tracking Reveals About Gaze in Coordinating Embodied Activities at a Market.” In Embodied Activities in Face-to-face and Mediated Settings: Social Encounters in Time and Space, ed. by Elisabeth Reber and Cornelia Gerhardt, 177–213. Cham: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tobii Pro. 2007. “Eye Tracker Data Quality Report: Accuracy, Precision and Detected Gaze Under Optimal Conditions — Controlled Environment.” Tobii Pro Glasses 2 firmware v1.61 (Methodology version: 1.0), 1–16.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vranjes, Jelena, Hanneke Bot, Kurt Feyaerts, and Geert Brône. 2018. “Displaying Recipiency in an Interpreter-Mediated Dialogue: An Eye-Tracking Study.” In Eye-Tracking in Interaction: Studies on the Role of Eye Gaze in Dialogue, ed. by Geert Brône and Bert Oben, 301–321. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weiß, Clarissa. 2018. “When Gaze-Selected Next Speakers Do Not Take the Turn.” Journal of Pragmatics 133: 28–44. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019. “Blickverhalten des nicht-blickselegierten Sprechers während Korrekturen und Elaborierungen.“ Gesprächsforschung — Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion 20: 1–28.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weiß, Clarissa, and Peter Auer. 2016. “Das Blickverhalten des Rezipienten bei Sprecherhäsitationen: eine explorative Studie.“ Gesprächsforschung — Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion 17: 132–167.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zima, Elisabeth. 2020. “Gaze and Recipient Feedback in Triadic Storytelling Activities.” Discourse Processes 57 (9), 725–748. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zima, Elisabeth, Clarissa Weiß, and Geert Brône. 2019. “Gaze and Overlap Resolution in Triadic Interactions.” Journal of Pragmatics 140: 49–69. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zima, Elisabeth, Peter Auer, and Christoph Rühlemann. This volume. “Why research in gaze in social interaction needs mobile eye tracking.”
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Krug, Maximilian
2025. Integrating quantitative methods into conversation analysis. Nota Bene 2:1 ► pp. 41 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 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.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue