TY  - JOUR
A1  - Sugita, Yuko
T1  - Minimal affect uptake in a pre-climax position of conversational "scary" stories
JF  - Journal of pragmatics : an interdisciplinary journal of language studies
N2  - Analyzing pre-climax positions of everyday affect-laden telling activities, this paper shows that particular facial expressions, such as raised eyebrows with an open mouth or jaw-dropping, are the devices which are preferably deployed by story recipients as a minimal uptake to display affiliation, especially in the case of "scary" stories.
 During the course of conversational storytelling, it is structurally necessary that recipients warrant the tellers speakership. At the same time, a particular affective display-not only in response to what has been said but also to what comes at the climax-appears to become relevant. Immediately prior to the climax, when the teller employs elaborate multimodal cues, the recipient's display of an "anticipatory affect" is made relevant. A particular type of affect signals the anticipation of what kind of climax is approaching. The present paper explores how story recipients accomplish this two-fold task, namely to display alignment with the speaker's role allocation and listenership on the one hand and affiliation on the other. The study argues that a minimal uptake is called for, requiring only a minimal slot in the flow of storytelling and facial expressions that are most likely to fit this slot.
KW  - Affiliation
KW  - Alignment
KW  - Anticipatory affect
KW  - Multimodal analysis
KW  - Minimal uptake
KW  - Scary stories
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.05.012
SN  - 0378-2166
VL  - 44
IS  - 10
SP  - 1273
EP  - 1289
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -