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Dropping out of overlap is a frequent practice for overlap resolution (Schegloff, 2000, Jefferson, 2004) in interaction, as it re-establishes the “one-at-a-time” principle of the turn-taking system (Sacks et al., 1974). While it is appropriate to analyze the practice of dropping out of overlap as a verbal and thus audible phenomenon, a close look at video data reveals that withdrawing from an action trajectory is also an embodied practice. Based on a fine-grained multimodal analysis (C. Goodwin, 1981, Mondada, 2007a, Mondada, 2007b) of videotaped interactions in French, this paper illustrates how overlapped speakers organize the momentary suspension of their action trajectory in visible ways. Indeed, participants do not instantly withdraw from their action trajectory when they stop talking. By using bodily resources, they are able to display continuous monitoring of the availability of their co-participants and of the next possible slot for resuming their suspended action. I therefore suggest analyzing the drop out of overlap as the first step of withdrawal, as definitive, embodied withdrawal can occur later, or, in case of resumption, not at all. Consequently, my paper analyzes withdrawal as a good example of strengthening the analytic concept of embodiment with regard to turn-taking practices in interaction.
To date, little is known about prosodic accommodation and its conversational functions in instances of overlapping talk in conversation. A major conversational action that happens in overlap is turn competition. It is not known whether participants accommodate prosodic parameters locally in the overlapped turn (initialisation) or access a repertoire of prosodic patterns that refer to general prosodic parameter norms (normalisation) when competing for the turn in overlap. This paper investigates the initialisation and normalisation of fundamental frequency (f0) and assesses its role as a resource for turn competition in overlap. We drew instances of overlapping talk from a corpus of conversational multi-party interactions in British English. We annotated the overlaps on a competitiveness scale and categorised them by overlap onset position and conversational function. We automatically extracted f0 parameters from the speech signal and processed them into f0 accommodation features that represent the normalising or the initialising use of f0. Using decision tree classification we found that f0 accommodation is only relevant as a turn competitive resource in overlaps that start clearly before a speaker transition. In this turn context, we found that normalising and initialising f0 features can both be relevant turn competitive resources. Their deployment depends on the conversational function of overlap.