HUMSS - Martin Pfeiffer

Noticing and assessing nature: Exclamatives in walks through the forest

In my FRIAS project, I investigate how exclamatives (e.g. Wie groß die ist! ‘How tall she is!’ or Das ist aber ein schönes Bild! ‘What a beautiful picture!’) are used in face-to-face interaction. Existing studies have largely been based on introspective analyses of invented sentences. Therefore, the aim of this project is to develop an empirically based perspective on exclamatives. This contribution results from a cooperation with the Black Forest National Park between sociologists and linguists in which we use recordings of German dyadic interactions between persons wearing mobile eye-tracking glasses with integrated microphones. Our focus is on how walkers establish joint attention to noteworthy observables in nature. The data allow us to investigate human experience with nature and understand how subjective perception is made interactionally relevant in order to create the social event of ‘jointly experiencing nature’ in situ. I will show how interactants systematically deploy verbal resources such as attention-getting perception imperatives (‘look’) and exclamatives (‘how beautiful!’), as well as bodily resources – gaze patterns, pointing gestures, body posture, and reducing walking speed – to accomplish different social actions.