Introduction: John Gumperz' Approach to

Contextualization*
Peter Auer, University of Constance
In: Peter Auer: The contextualization
of language. Amsterdam: Benjamins,
1992, S. [1] - 37

1. What is contextualizatio~z?

Since 1976, when Jenny and John Gurnperz started to use the term, the notion of
"contextualizing language" has become increasingly popular among researchers on
natural language and natural interaction. Yet, despite the fact that a number of
scholars have chosen to subsume their work under this notion, it is not easy to say
precisely what their work has in cornmon, let alone to define "contextualization".
This is due to the fact that despite some fifteen years of empirical work, few of the
theoretical issues conceming "contextualization" have been discussed. It is the aim of
the following remarks to raise some of these theoretical issues. This will be done by
vanous rneans: on the basis of an exemplary data analysis, by companson with other
traditions in the social sciences, implying other and similar conceptions of context,
and by reference to the main areas on which the research on contextualization has
focused over the last years.
Before we try to give a provisional answer to the question "What is
contextualization?", a metaphorical introduction of this concept may be helpful. The
best metaphor to introduce contextualization, so it seems, is one of its
transfomations into art: vocal music. Here is an example: In the chorus "Andern hat
er geholfen" of No. 67 in Bach's St. Matthew Passion, the High Priests go up to the
crucified Christ and say to him: 1st er der Koizig Israel, so steige er nun vom Kreuz,
so wollen wir ihm glaubeiz ('lf He be King of Israel, let Him now come down from
from the cross, and we will believe Him'). Taken literally, this could be understood
as the high priests' honest promise to become followers of Christ if only he were to
perform a miracle for them, proving his identity as the long-awaited Messiah. But
Bach underlies these words with music which makes it clear that this is not what the

*Thanks to Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen. Aldo di Luzdo, Fran-k M_U!!er and Sris~?neUünthne: f=r Lkii
comments on a preliminary version of this paper, and also to Chrishne Kutnar who made the h e
drawings in section two.
2
Peter Auer

High Pnests mean. Music provides the cues for ii counter-reading, revealing the 'tme'
interpretation of these lines: it is that of a mockeiy.
How does Bach rnanage to do that? I n the middle of an E major/a flat
passage, he starts a modulation on so wollen nlir ihm glauben, which leads into a
straightforward, almost primitively transparent C major, before he returns into G
major:
I .
Vla
I 1
\cm X r c u i , sa o i c i . ~ Or r n.
-
rcm
How can something 'abstract' like music steer the interpretation of much more
'rneaningful' linguistic signs? O d y for a handful of Bach's listeners (contemporary or
present) is it by tracing the harmonies while listening to a chorus like the one
mentioned above that such inferencing becomes possible; and even fewer of them
will be acquainted with Bach's compositions in such an intimate way as to know, as
modern musicologists te11 us, that Bach quite regularly switches into C major to
contextualize irony. But even for the average listener who has an ear for baroque
music, and who listens carefully, it is possible to notiice two things: first, a sudden
shift of harmonies, and second, in the midst of Bach's complicated composition, a
slhort spark of unexpected clarity and (pseudo-)naive sirnplicity. The first cue may do
nothing more than draw attention to the piece of music (and thereby text) marked in
such a way; it may have the effect of telling the attentive listener that this passage is
to be interpreted differently from the rest, without telling him or her how.
The second cue, on the other hand, is more specific: C major attributes to the
High Priests candid sincerity and child-like straightfonvardness. However, a direct
interpretation of their words in a mood of sincerity and straightforwardness, is
excluded by the narrative context in which the High Priests' words are uttered: it
contradicts their role in the story. A complex process of inferencing now comes into
' play. There is a clash between the expectations built up so far in the story, according
Krru,
--
ao uol-lcn
.
w rbm to which the High Priests are sly and malicious, and the particular harmonies
underlying their words now, which suggest the opposite. The conclusion of this
inferencing can only be that the High Priest's words are to be understood as ironic,
i.e. that they mean something different from what is saiid.
Bach's vocal music is full of similar cases, where harmonies and rhythm,
melodies and orchestration, although basically 'abstract' signs without any
('referential') meaning, are used to steer the interpretation of ehe words they
accompany; where music is used, not only to bnng out the inherent, pious meaning of
a sacred text, but in order to give it one interpretation to the exclusion of other,
ciompeting ones, and in order to put it in the nght emotional mood, Le.: to provide the
proper context for its interpretation.
The idea that lies at the heart of Gumperz' concept of contextualization is that
everyday language has to be 'orchestrated' and 'put to music' by everyday language-
users just as well; as Bach uses music to steer the interpretation of language,l

c.. e
t-*-i 7 -- : l l t is not by chance that Bach has been chosen as an example here; in fact, the metaphor with music
ab h
8 4 O 7 8 can be foiiowed a little further. There is a sense in which Bach iooked upon his music as a servant
of the word, particularly in his geistliche Musik, which is a direct consequence of his protestant
(creed.It is well known that cornposers of iater centuries freecl music from this l o g o c e n ~ cview,
and turned it into a purely absuact semiotic systern, independent (and indeed ernancipated) from
4 Peter Auer

everyday speakers use a repertoire of vocal m d non-.vocal means for the same 06 G: h& ich kenn noch-
purpose. In both cases, the semiotic resources ernployed ;are crucial in order to create
the proper context, in which the verbal message iis to be u.nderstood.
07 M:
08 G:
[
wart etz bin ich
vonner Kirche
In most general terms, contextualization bhereforr?comprises al1 activities by 09 M: no adesso Lo; Lo. - allora -
purticipants which make relevant, maintain, revise, cancel ... any aspect of context 1O eh: bo: Onon=lo=so=pi~o-
which, in turn, is responsible for tke interpretation of an utterance in its particular 1.l c'era u:na - una femrn.
locus of occurrence. Such an aspect of context niay be thi: larger activity participants [etc.]
are engaged in (the "speech genre"), the small-xale aci.ivity (or "speech act"), the
mood (or "key") in which this activity is pierformed, the topic, but also the Translation:
participants' roles (the participant constellation, compriising "speaker", "recipient",
"bystander", etc.), the social rela.tionship between paizicipants, the relationship (0.k.) my turn
between a speaker and the information he conve:ys via language ("modality"), even (0.75)
the status of "focused interaction" itself. 'hh 'hh
In addition to this wide notion of contextualization, a narrower tradition has [I know another one ab- 'h
developed out of Gumperz' and othlers' work on contextuailization,restricting the area lw ait
covered, by focussing on particular contextualization cues, and by adhering to ceríain
methodological standards. This alpproach will be described in section 3. Before
dealing with it in detail, it may be useful to consider ari exarnple which shows by
E
hey 1know another-
ait now it's rny~tuni=now=it~s=my=turn
labout a church
what means language is contextualized, and how these means are put to work. no now me; me. - 0.k. -
eh: we:llI forgot -
2. An example: Contextualization at work there was a - a woman. ((etc.))

The following extract is taken from an interairtion bet.ween two Italian-German In Pike's usage of the terms "etic" and "emic" in discourse analysis,2 this sequence
bilingual children (Marielia aged 12, Giulio aged 10) and an adult bilingual (m.). It is (excluding the last line) is etic trash. Emically, the eplisode consists of a series of
presented here first in the 'orthodox' conversation analytic transcription mode: jolre-tellings3; and occurring, as it does, inbetween two jokes, the second one
beginning in line 11, the extract up to this line belongs to neither of them. It is part of
[Giulio has been telling a joke; adjacent to the joke's punc:h line, the following sequence occurs] the trivia of the interaction about which participants will have forgotten as soon as
the episode is over; and it is the kind of event traditional ethnographers and other
03 M: (allora) L c h observers usually disregard in their protocols or coding schemata. Yet, noticed and
O2 (0.75) remembered activities such as jokes do not just happen - they have to be brought
03 G: 'hh [laughing inbreathl 'hh [simple iribreathl about. They are contexts ("schemata") for the interpretation of the events narrated in
O4 ich kenn noch ei.n vo- ' h them; but these contexts have to be enacted by participants in an interaction. There is,
then, the question of how we can hear the line c'era una femmina ... as being the
beginning of a joke; or, in other words, by what means this activity is 'orchestrated' in
order to be hearable as such. We want to know how transition between one joke and
language. Gumperz' approach to interaction is, like Bach's conception of music, 'logocenmc':
contrary to other scholars (particularly those working on kinesic, gestural and proxemic cues), the
vocal, and particularly the verbal part of interaction continues to te in the cenme of his attention.
Although the importante of other signalling channels is taken into account, they are still seen as 2~1'.Pike 1967, 21971, particularly pp 37-93.
'servants' of the WOm. 3 ~ 0 t hjokes in full length and a content analysis for them can be found in Bierbach 1986.
6 Peter Auer
the other, how starting again with ye!t another joke (after a first one has been told) is
accomplished.
There is good reason to believe that a lot of the w~orkwhich is necessary to
accomplish the transition in question is done in the "etic tr8ashusequence, lines 1-10,
and by the packaging of line 11 (the candidate begiming of the second joke) itself.
The enactrnent of the schema 'joke' is partly due to strategies which precede it in
time; partly, they occur 'on' it, so that line 11 is not only the beginning of a (second)
joke, but also displays that it is a secolnd joke in va:rious ways.
Some of this contextualizatiori work is observable iri the simple version of the
transcript given so far. Even on the basis of the information contained in it, it is clear
that lines 1-10 lay the ground for the activity of ainother joke's teiling to occur; they
do so, although there is no overt deiccription or niaming of this activity. There are,
however, clear indications that the activity to foliow wiil be of the same type as the
activity just terminated. This is indicated by Giulio's text-aníiphoric noch eig (04,06),
3nd by Manella's etz bin ich dranladesso io (07, 09, possibly 01). In the sequential
3osition post a joke by Giulio line:; 1-9 must be heard to refer to another joke's
:eliing. Transition into the new joke's telling is also marked by lexical means, mainly
)y allora (=std. ital. allora, 'now') in line 9, but also in line 1, and possibly by
zspetta in line 5. Both allora and as,oetta can be used to introduce 'big packages'
ike narratives, or more precisely: they can be used to mark the role of the participant
~ h is o about to 'perform' this activity. Finally, the joke (or, at least, a fictional
iarrative) is contextualized by its fonnulaic begiming (c'era... unafemm = std. ital.
Lna donna, 'there was...a woman').
The little sequence documented in our r:xtract iis, then, of considerable
.elevance for the enactment of a joke schema, which in turn provides the context in
vhich utterances lines 1lff have to be interpreted. But in adtlition to that, participants
iegotiate another dimension of context in these few seconds., This is the dimension of
~articipantroles. There is an explicit quarrel between Giulio and Marielia about the
uture roles of the speaker and the r~~cipient. Not only are: participant roles in the
uture activity of joke-telling a problem, roles of pa:rticipation are also disputed in the
ire-joke sequence itself: Mariella antl Giulio start to speak: sirnultaneously in lines
14/05, and Mariella 'intempts' Giuliol,ssentence ick!kenn noch einen anderen vonner
rirche '1 know another one about a ch.urchl,which is begun in line 06, but broken off
s a consequence of Marieila's 'interruption' and only completed in fragments in line
8. It is only from line 09 onwards thiat Mariella holds the tum unchailenged. How
articipant roles are negotiatied in this sequence, how participants' turns are
brchestrated' as antagonistic (turn-competitive), cannot yet be reconstmcted in
dficient detail on the basis of the transcript as it stands; but it seems evident that the
question of what the participant constellation will Pook like in the future activity of
joke-telling is determined by who 'wins' in the turn-competition that takes place in the
pre-sequence. And it is Manella who tums out to be the winner.
What has been said so far about the data extract goes little beyond an analysis
in terms of orthodox conversation analysis, although it has been stated in slightly
different t e m s ; in fact, conversation analysis has shown for an abundante of cases
that individual utterances lay the grounds for the interpretation of subsequent (mainly
adjacent) utterances, which are therefore contextualized by them. However, this kind
of mainly preparatory contextualization is only a smail part of the issue, as will be
become apparent as soon as other means for contextualizing language are taken into
consideration, which play little or no role in orthodox conversation analysis.
13ne of these is linguistic variation. The transcript captures one of its many
variants: switching between codes (here, between dialectal Italian and German). It
wiil be noted that the language of the joke itself is Italian, while some of the
preceding talk is German. This language choice for the joke is determined by the fact
that it is based on a linguistic pun which can only be rendered in Italian, as it wili turn
out later;4 however, it also plays an important role in the transition from inter-joke
talk irito the joke. Here, it becomes relevant that code-switching into Italian does not
coincide exactly with the beginning of the joke in line 11. The Italian-only passage
starts in line 9, and there is Italian talk even prior to this point (in lines 1 and 5).
From this, it follows that language choice doesn't mark the joke's beginning; instead,
it is used as an indicator of the role of the joke's teller. Mariella uses Italian when she
assumes this role. There is, then, a difference betweei? the joke itself and its
performance; this performance starts earlier (and includes more) than the joke. Allora
in lines 1 and 9 is part of it, aspetta in line 3 , and the disclaimer eh: bo:
non=lo=so=pizi 'eh: we:il 1 forgot' in line 10, too. All these utterances are produced
by Marieiia qua her teller role, whereas intervening talk in which this teiler role is
disputed between herself and Giulio is mainly German. (The one exception from this
conelation between language choice and activity type, the no adesso io; io 'no now
me; me' in line 9, may contextualize 'insistente', as it occurs on the repetition of
German warr etz bin ich dran=etz=bin=ich=dran 'wait now it is my turn now it is
my turn' in line 7; such a pattern - code-switching on repetitions/second
versioils/second attempts is frequent in bilingual conversation.5 Alternatively, it may
be interpreted as a gradual approaching of the joke, which is foreshadowed in
language choice.)
%e., the baby taikpronunciation of cascare 'to fall' as caccare 'to shit' - see again Bierbach 1986.
5 ~ fAuer
. 1983,1984.
 Peter Auer Introductíon

However, there is much more signaU.ing goirig on (and relevant for the
enactment of schemata for act.ivities or framew0rk.s of participation) in this
interaction than is captured in the first version of the transcript. The version on the
01 1M: allora ich
following page takes into account prosody and provides a good deal of this additional clow onset, piano>
serniotic material. It contains ico:nically codecl information about pitch movement 4
0 0 O O
(dots), prominence by elongation (elongated dots) arid pitch accents (dots with
curves); prosodic phrasing can be inferred from this information. In addition, 04 G: ich kenn noch e@ m/ ' h
chigh onset, forte, faster than M.>
prosodic clauses are charactenzecl in terrns of pitch oniset, rate of articulation, and
loudness. These cues reveal more atbout tum-cornpetition, and about the enactment of
the teller's role than the previoils transcnption has done, in which only final 05 1M: as etta
Qow onset, piano>
intonation contours were impressionistically indicat'rd by punctuation marks,
prominentes by underlining, and o:ne instance of increase:d tempo by latching as well O ' O o r o
o o
as one instance of reduced loudnesz;by xxx . k j fch kennlnah/
A first information taken fsom prosody is that Mariella's first two phrases in d i g h onset, forte, same speed as before>
lines 01 and 05 clearly belong together; in both cases, the onset of the intonational I
contour and loudness are low; pitch range is relatively narrow, particularly in 05,
where no prominence is marked by pitch contour. Primaiy stress on the first syllable 07 A4: etz bin fchJ dran=etz=bin=ich dran
in állora - instead of the more usual1 stress on the second syllable - is the decisive cue unuch faster, meno f o r t o
for the interpretation of this word as a projective particle instead of an adverb. This I
projective particle foreshadows the upcoming joke-telling. By consequence, line 05
o o

i
O
(which is prosodically 'orchestrated' in the same ,way) is also spoken in the role of the vonner Kirche
joke-teller. chigh onset, forte, distinct,
Contrary to these two utterances, Giulio's first phrase in line 04 displays a more slowly than G.>
prosodic packaging which indicates competitiveriess: he c:hallengesMariella's role as
a projected joke-teller, and, at the same time, her preserit speaker-role. The phrase
builds up a prosodic contrast with Mariella's phrases in many ways: pitch onset is 09 nd: no adesso io io - allord
<meno forte, uneno fone, <low onsel
high, pitch range wider, and the whole phrase is louder tham Mariella's. The inference lower onset, low onsev mp. same s p e b
to be drawn from this is that the cointext available right now for the interpretation of more slowly>
future utterances is no longer that of a joke-te1lin.g (as presupposed by Mariella), but
that of a quarrel. Mariella seems to give in first, for after her aspetta (line 05), she
10 ]M: - e k bo: non=lo=so=piu-
leaves the tum to Giulio. But Giulio does not act like the winner in this competition; cmp> unolto presto, p>
he breaks off his phrase 04, arid in his next phra,se (06), he recycles his
previousutterance 'as if it hadn't been heard (cf. the pre-posed sumrnons hej! ). A
possible prosodic reason for this r~ecyclingis the wrong accent placement in 04,
where the pitch movement on ein 'onie' indicates contrastiveness ('another one' instead
of, say, 'another two') which clearly isn't intended. Giulio may want to correct this
accent placement in phrase 06. Xn t e n s of prosocly, it is very similar to 04; also, it is
broken off like the previous phrase, ,when Mariella comes in sirnultaneously with the
10 Peter Auer
two phrases of line 07.
These phrases are prosodically very importani:: for prosody clearly markes
them as a "competitive incomingU6,too, i.e. Mariella has taken up Giulio's chalienge
and is about to 'fight' for her tuni. She is now acting in the sarne context than he is,
and has left the previous context. This is contextualized (apart from code-switching
into German) by a clear deparnire from her fisrrner prissodic mode (in lines 01 and
04): she talks louder (although riot as loud as Giulio), and the phrase starts with a
high pitch level (prominence is marked by the fa11 on ich in the first phrase, not by a
rise which wouldn't have been possible from this high level); in addition, ail syllables
in the first phrase a elongated. The second phrase, which is a word-by-word repetition
of the first, is uttered while Giulio has already broken off his phrase, and seems to
have ceded the tum to Mariella; this is reflected by ari increase in tempo (from an
average of ca. 0.2 seconds per syllable to an tiverage of less than 0.15 sec./syll.), no
elongations, and a smaller pitch ra.nge in the repetition.
However, Giulio starts anew with phrase 08, wh:ich is again contextualized as
a competitive incoming, this tinie challenging Mariel.lals newly gained tum, and
overlapping Manella's tum (cf. high onset, loudness, wide pitch range). But Manelia
- for reasons that will become clearer when non-verbal contextualization cues are
taken into account - now 'slows down' instea.d of coritinuing in the 'antagonistic'
mood: the three prosodic phrases in line 09 continually reduce prosodic 'insistence'.
No adesso io is not as loud as 07, and the pitch onset of the phrase is low, although
pitch movement is still considerable, and very expressive because of the continuous
and steep Fa11 throughout the phrase; the second phrase, io, is again reduced in
loudness and speech rate (pause!), but displays expressive pitch movement, too;
finally, allora (stressed on the j'irst syllable as in lirie 01) resumes the level of
loudness of Mariella's first phrase. This marks the end o €Marieila's fight for the tum
(and for the role of the joke-teller),.
Prosody also marks the following phrases ( h e 10) as an aside. Low voice,
alrnost no pitch movement and high tempo (appr. 0.15 sec./syll. on an average) set it
off, both against Mariella's preceding (ca. 0.30 sec./syli. average) and her following
talk (ca. 0.25 sec./syll. average).
Although prosody is an important resouirce of coi~textualizationwork, it does
not tell the whole story. Among many other thirigs, what the role of the third party is
in this episode, i.e. adult m. He is silent during the extralit considered here, and both
on the basis of the 'orthodox' and ithe prosodic transcript, his interactional relevance
seems to be zero. This, however, tiirns out to be inadequate as soon as further details
6 ~ fFrench
. & Local 1981.
of how the sequence evolves as an interactional event are taken into account, in
particular, the participants' gaze. In the transcnpt on the following page, eye contact
1
I
between Manella and Giulio and between m. and each of the children is marked by
full lines, eye movement by broken lines. For instante, Mariella moves her gaze
1 towares Giulio during her first prosodic phrase, and leayves it there, while Giulio first
1 moves his gaze towards m., on whom it rests for a very short while, and then abruptly
1
switches to Marielia. From this point onwards, eye contact between Giulio and
i Mariella is established.7
l A first result of an analysis of gaze and eye contact is that m. is a ratified
participant in this sequence, although he remains silent throughout it. Thus, Giulio
looks at m. and not at the speaker, while Manella says allora in line 01; Mariella
looks at m. and not at the other speaker while Giulio says 'hh 'hh ich kenn noch eip
(line 04) and while she says aspetta (line 05) herself; Giulio looks at m. and not at
the speaker while Marielia says a&sso io io - allora (line 09), during her aside in line
10 and even at the beginning of her joke (line 11); and Mariella looks at m. for a short
period while Giulio also looks away from her (during - eh: in line 10). Thus, m.
receives gaze repeatedly during the sequence, although Mariella and Giulio have eye
contact both in the beginning and in the end of the extract (when the telling of the
joke is unarnbiguously assigned to Mariella) and during the climax of the children's
quarrel about who is aliowed to tell the next joke (lines 06-08). First of all, therefore,
gaze contextualizes a participant constellation in which m. is a ratified participant. In
addition, gaze also indicates to whom an utterance is addressed (by speaker's gaze in
the beginning), and who acts as its recipient (by hearer's gaze).
One of the best-established findings of research on gaze is that speakers have
to secure recipient's gaze in order to engage in the activity they are about to engage
in, and that absence of recipient's gaze can result in recycled tum-beginnings.8
Applied to our transcript, this finding sheds new light on Giulio's recycling in line06;
in addition to the prosodic reason given for ist before (correction of wrong stress
placement), a gaze-related explanation can be given now. In line 04 (while he says
'hh 'hh ich kenn noch eiv ) Giulio looks at MariePla, but she fails to remm gaze and
looks at m., instead; Giulio is therefore without recipient. Only when he breaks off
his phrase does Manella direct her gaze towards him, and it is at this point that the
recycled hej ich kenn nochl (line 06) begins. (hcidentally, this interpretation also
explains the use of the tum-initial summons hej whicfi locates non-hearing as the
7Unfortunately, m. is placed outside the angle of the camera, so tiiat his gaze cannot be taken into
account.
8 ~ fGoodwin
. 1981.
 Peter Auer Introduction 13

reason for repair, not a speaker's error, and is therefon: to be preferred to the prosodic
me.)
A second case where gaze is an important cue for allocating and taking over
01 M: abra ich (O. 75)
M: ------ the role of the recipient is observed in lines 09ff. It has been said before that the three
G. lprosodic phrases in line 09 are characterized by a gradual relinquishing of those
lprosodic cues that indicate competitiveness. Mariella seems to know that she has
k o n ' in the competition about the right to speak. One reason for this is apparent from
04 G: 'hh 'M rkh kenn rwch eip vol 'h iGiulio's gaze: after a prolonged sequence through which both children look at each
jother (the climax of their competition), Giulio withdraws gaze from Mariella shortly
after the begiming of the phrase no adesso in line 09, and looks at m. On the one
hand, this withdrawal contextualizes his submission and can be interpreted by
05 M: Laspett(1~ Mariella as 'giving in'. On the other hand, it also creates a problem for her; for in

06 E, k j ich kenn
order to tell a joke, she needs a recipient. Giulio's withdrawal of gaze both allocates
the speaker role to her and refuses the role of the recipient for himself. Mariella is at a
loss; and in fact, the interspersed allora and the aside in line 1 0 may be a
consequence of this predicament. She tnes m. as a recipient in the first part of line 10
(on eh: ) but her gaze begins to wander again short1:y after (presurnably because m.
does not gaze at her either). With the begiming of the joke itself (line 1l), her gaze
retums to Giulio, who still does not look at her; and the hesitation and repair in line
11 may be related to this. It is only during this reyair that Giulio finally gazes at
09 M: no adesso lo lo - allord1
Mariella, and the joke begins.
M: -- - - - - - - - There can be no doubt that gaze is substantially involved in the enactment of
frameworks of participation in this extract.
Finally, there is the whole complex of gesrure, mimics and posture that
10 M: - e k bo: non=lo =so=pfi provides an irnmensely rich resource for contextualization. Before some examples of
these signalling resources and their local use for contextualization purposes are
discussed, it is irnportant to know the seating arrangement of the scene which is given
in the foilowing diagram; the two children are sitting at a table on a balcony, m. is
11 M: c'ed Lcna - ur;d femm standing opposite to them at some distance:
M:
railing LO garden
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
14 Peter Auer Introduction

.--*--_--->-.-----_-+----.*----------.--~--------,---<------<.---------<--.-----------,
In the transcript on pages 15/16, some of the more important gestual and facial right elbow propped up on the railng, left arm rested on
parameters are represented informally.9 Giulio's movements are described on top of lap, sits upright on cha.ir. smiling ............
the verbal transcript, Mariella's beneath it. The synchronization of verbal and
L... as soon as he looks at M., G. lifts his shoulders
nonverbal channels is indicated by association linies.10 { like laughing, the nght palm of he hand, open so far,
Some of the movements giveci here extend over longer periods of time, or are :<-i!-~!92@!2-+-g!L-.2::2::-.2::=
::-.: -.---.-------.-.----
-.-------- *;

repeated severa1 times (such as the rhythmic rocking of the chair). These larger 01 M: allora ich O. 751
(sequences of) movements provide a clear segmentation of the interaction; in fact,
each context enacted has its own coinsteliation of gross gestual and postural features.
Four contexts are differentiated in this way:

context 1, the role of the joke teller in the first joke: told by Giulio

context 2, the role of the teller in the second joke

...... shoulders back to normal ,fist
opens, index fmger points at Marieila .......
context 3, the context of the quarrel about the turn ;md
04 G: 'hh 'Ni r ich kenn noch ety uo 'h
context 4, the context of the second joke ii.self (told by Mariella)

There is no exact synchronization in the enactrnent of these contexts between Giulio rocL r k k s r&ks
and Mariella; thus, for instance, while Manella enacts cisntext 2, Giulio is still in with ciap with clap
context 1, and while he initiates conlext 3, Mariella remairis in context 2 for a while.
The relationship between talk and the enactrnent of the four contexts by participants'
gross gestual and postural features is summarized in the schematic representation
onpages 18/19, where the drawings represent some of the features typical for the
11 - r upper part of boiiy t
index finger of right
~ slightiy
s towards M ........
1
segment of interaction concerned.
When Maneiia assumes teller's position and prepares for the joke in 01/05,
this position is contextualized by her posture (boih hands in rest position on knees)
I l hand points
claps at M., left hand
hands propped up on hip ........
two pointing move-
ments

and the rocking of the chair (context 2, scene 2). Both are terminated exactly when 06 G: hej tchkenn
she begins her turn-competitive phrase 07 (context 3) - she stops, sits more upright 07 M: wart jetz bln ich =tch=dran
and starts a movement of her left am?. But as so011 as she has succeeded in securing 08 G: n nerKirche
for herself the speaker's and teller's role against Giulio's intnision, she resumes a

M.:

)I am indebted to Fred Erickson for discusiiing this part of the analysis with me.
l01t was felt that this kind of anchoring thit gestural-kinesic anaiysi:; in the verbal one was doing
more justice to Gumperz' approach to contextualizatiori than a non-verbal transcript which is
completely independent of the verbal one and only related indirectly to it, say, by an objective
time counter. Remember that the final purpose of contextualization analysis is not an overall
analysis of behaviour; instead, it focusses on language, and relates non-verbal levels of signalling
to language only to the degree that they participate in puning in into context. The gestural (or, for -
that salce, gaze) channel is therefore never independent of the verbal one.
 Peter Auer Ini3wluction 17

as soon as gaze is averted, G. withdraws index finger and similar pose as in 01/05, with a less upnght position of the upper part of the body
right hand and props elbow ori railng, stisps
smiling and puts on grudging face;lerns back on than in 07ff, and with both hands in rest position on the chair, and re-starts rocking
chair.. .........................., (context 2, scene 5). (The three changes occur in the pause preceding allora in line
09, with the beginning of this allora and in the smali pause after it, respectively.)
Gesture and posture therefore clearly are different in the two contexts in play: that of
movements the assurned teller's role, and that of the tum-defendent. The two contexts are held
apart by the way Marieiia moves.
1 09 M: no adesso io io - nllnr2 The resumption of Marieila's teller-role posturc at the end of 07 is itself a
response to another gross change of gesture, miunics and posture in Giulio, which
occurs only a very short time before it: at the moment when he averts gaze from
Marielia in line 09, Giulio withdraws his right hand, which has been extended for a
pointing gesture so far, and props his elbow on the railirug, he stops smiling and puts
on a grudging face, and leans back on his chair. His 'giving in' in this competition is
--
signalled, not only by gaze withdrawal, but also by posture, mimics and gesture
M: - e k bo: nori=lo= (scene 5). (After he has left context 3, he nevertheless doesn't acknowledge context 2
as re-enacted by Marieiia, but finally accepts context 4 - the joke-teiiing itself - by his
minimal hand movement and the srnaii nod in line 11.)
Another gross change of partly permanent non-verbal parameters
lirtle smile ................... coniextualizes the beginning of the joke, i.e. the transition between context 2 and
r
- context 4 (line 11). Exactly when she looks at Giulio, selecting him as an adressee for
the joke after the aside in line 10 (contextualized as a disclaimer by a Little smile),

1 "'1 smaü indistinct

movement of
right hrnd smal:l nod
Mariella also stops smiling, touches her chin shortly with the index fuiger of her right
hand (which had been resting on the chair so far), props her left elbow on the table
and tums the upper part of her body right towards Giulio (scene 6). Interestingly
enough, this posture is very similar to the one she had assumed during Giulio's joke-
1
1
11 M: c'erd u n a - und ~ m m .
--
chin shortly
telling (scene l), so that the end of the first joke, and the beginning of the second, are
contextualized on the part of Mariella, by the sarne posture, and scene 6 (context 4)
can be seen as a continuation of scene 1 (context 1).
on chin in order to perfc~m The gestual and postura1 pararneters considered so far are synchronized with
('thinking') a smaii pointing gaze and vocalizations (i.e., co-occur with the begiming of a context - such as a
extended upwards, hand movement towards
touches chin shonly G. and goes back newactivity or a new participant constellation - marked by gaze or language as weli);
yet, ibis is not always the case. This is particularly true for the smalier or less

l as soon as M. looks at G., her smiling stops, left elbow is propped on

the table with her hand pointing rpwards; the upper part of her body is
tumed nght towards Giulio.......
permment movements. For instante, one of the details of the original transcript not
taken into account so far is the two instances of inbreath by Giulio in line 03, the first
of which is clearly part of 'laughing'. Body movement shows that Giulio is in fact
:nd: :'---f
I
context 1, context 2. contcxt 3: E] context 4:
O quarrel engaged in an activity which relates back to the joke which he had told before the
g-----2 Giulio's Mariella
joke as teller (pre- Mariella's
joke sequence considered in our transcnpt begins: he laughs about his own joke, Le., he is
paratory)
still incontext 1. In addition to the two instances of inbreath, this laughing also
Peter Auer Introduction
22 Peter Auer
construe context in order to communicate. This means: language is not only a
semiotic system the actual usage of svhich is determined by the context; this semiotic
system (or, as we should better say, this system of semiotic systems) is in itself also
responsible for the availability of the very context which is necessary in order to
interpret the structures encoded in it. Context, therefore, i ~ not
i just given as such in
an interaction, but is the outcome of participants' joint efforts to make it available. It
is not a collection of material or social 'facts' (such as the interaction taking place in
such-and-such locality, between such-and-such roles-bearers, etc.), but a (number of)
cognitive schema(ta) (or model(s)) about what is relevant for the interaction at any
given point in time. What is relevanit in this sense may exclude or include certain
facts of the material and social surroundings of the interaction as they might be stated
by an 'objective' on-looker who tries to describe context without looking at what
:&es place in it (as, for instance, the social scient:ist of sonne former theoretical and
nethodological conviction), but it may also include infomiation not statable before
he interaction begins, or independeritly of it. T k s e emergent context parameters
,efer, e.g., to types of linguistic activities not prirdictable from the 'materially' or
cocially' environment of the interaction at all, but also to facets of knowledge which
nay 'in fact' be shared by co-participants from the very beginning, but have to be
umed from 'unvisible' (and interactionaily irrelevant) cogriitive dispositions of the
~articipantsinto comrnonly available grounds on which to conduct the interaction.
Gumperz' theory concurs with (or was influenced by) severa1 others in this
vflexive view of context, most obvi~ously,perhaps, with (by) Goffman's work on
frames" (Goffman 1974), and with ethnomethodology (e.g,., Garfinkel 1967). Both
ioffrnan and Garfinkel, among other things, turried role .theory upside down, by
howing that social roles have to be rnade relevant in intera~rtionin order to provide
le context for interpretation. (A 'doctor' is not a doctor because he or she holds a
iploma and a 'patient' isn't a patient because s k e has entered a 'doctor's office'; but
0th become incumbents of the complementary roles of 'doctor' and 'patient' because
f the way in which they interact, taking on the righirs and obligations of the partners
i this unequal relationship; etc.) Thus, although there may be a preexistent
:pertoire of possible roles people can take over in a society, the actualization of one
)r more) of these roles has to be achieved as soon as the interaction begins, and
uoughout it, and is therefore also subvertible: 'patient' and 'doctor' may become 'old
iends' or 'neighbours', and vice versa.
Gumperz was also influenced by the tradition of "context analysis",*3 i.e. by
ork by Scheflen, Bateson, Birdwhist<:ll and others, dating back to the late 50ies. It
Kendon (1990, Ch. 2) gives an excellent summary of this approach.
may be remembered that context analysis was an interdisciplinary endeavor,
including linguists, psychiatrists, anthropologists and computer theorists, which
worked for the first time with small-scale ('micro-level') observation of naturally
occurring encounters on the basis of film recordings. Bateson's concept of
I "metacornmunication" (Bateson 19561, developed in this tradition, is almost identical
i
to Gumperz' notion of "contexualization cues"; it refers to the information
l interactants need to send off in addition to what they want to convey as a message, in
1
order to mark the boundaries of the message and in order to indicate its type.
1I! (Bateson, as is well known, formulated part of his theory on the basis of his
1 observations of chimpanzees 'playing' a fight; he was wondenng what kind of cues
indicated to the participants of this pseudo-fight that there uras no real fighting going
on.) The cynbemetic notion of feed-back, another offspring of context theory, also
played an important role in the development of a flexible notion of context.
In linguistics proper, the swing-over from an unidirectional, non-reflexive
notion of context towards a dynamic, flexible one carne some years later. It can be
observed most clearly in certain parts of linguistic pragmatics, but also in later
i
I
developments of formal and A1 oriented semantics. For instance, Chafe's dichotomy
1 "givednew" has replaced the older distinction between "old" and "new" information
in much of the recent, text-oriented studies. W e r e a s the old/new distinction is an
I
extemal one, in which the status of information is seen objectively from the point of
I view of the observer/linguist, the givednew distinction takes the participants' point of
~ view: it recognizes that even old (Le., aforementioned, or general background)
1 information has to be mude available in order to be treated as given. Many of the so-
caiied copicalization strategies do precisely that: they upgrade old information to
given information; thereby they constme context (instead of being deterrnined by it).
1 Note that the givednew distinction, although primanly usedl in connection with co-
1 text or background information, applies to deixis as well. Even the spatio-temporal
surroundings cannot be taken for granted. Many (or possibly all, depending on
definition) uses of deictics are in fact topicalizing, i.e. they refer to objects in the
! surroundings of the speaker and hearer which have always been there in a material
I sense, but are only tumed into given objects of context by this particular type of
reference.
A similar approach to context is advocated by Sperber & Wilson (1986), who
see context as a set of assumptions which have to be selected by the individual from a
l larger set of assumptions (including the perceived situation, short-term memory and
i long-term memory including the whole of encyclopedic memory). As soon as such a
set has been chosen, the processing of a new utterance (coinprehension) can take
place; but at the same time, context formation can be revised, i.e. assumptions can be
l
24 Peter Auer
removed or added to it. They also nnake the veqr importamt point that activating a
context involves an effort, just like th'e processing of information in this context.
Since the mid-80ies, reflexive notions of context have become integrated into
artificial intelligence. For instance, Reichman (1985) approaches discourse as a
hierarchical organisation of so-called context-spaces whiirh provide the necessary
information for the processing of subsequent utterances. Participants, so she argues,
generate and interpret utterances in the context of these c:ontext-spaces; but at the
same time, they must be able to identify the re1ev;ant (focused) context at any given
moment. It is not always the irnmediately preceding context space which is relevant
for a given utterance. Therefore, participants attribute focus to context spaces,
omitting passages of discourse, or pointing back to distant ones, mainly by the choice
of referential means. Thus, the selectiion of a relevant context space is as important as
the processing of new information gi~renin the light of it.
Gumperz' notion of contextuialization certainly ties in with or is, at least,
compatible with these and other developments in the theoji of context. This leads to
the question of what the specifics of his approach are. Through the praxis of
contextualization research, a numtier of differences have emerged. They have
rstablished a research tradition which is now distinct from conversation
analysis/ethnomethodology,context sinalysis or Goffman's naturalistic sociology, but
also distinct from the trends in linguiistic pragmatics mentic~nedabove. The two most
important characteristics of this more specific appioach to contextualization are the
following:
3) FOCUS
on particular classes of conte:xtualization cues.
"Contextualization cues" are, generally speaking, al1 the: form-related means by
which participants contextualize language. Given the general notion of a flexible und
reflexive context as outlined above, it is clear that any vertial and a great number of
~on-verbal(gestual etc.) signantia c8anserve this purpose. There is therefore no a
xiori restriction to the class of contextualization cues. However, contextualization
-esearch has restricted this class :for practica1 reasons (which, in tum, have
nethodological consequences) to the class ~of non-ireferential, non-lexical
:ontextualization cues, most notably: prosody, gesture/poslnre, gaze, backchannels,
ind linguistic variation (including "spleech styles"). The resiiriction to non-referential
:ues excludes mainly two classes of signantia. First, al1 explicit formulations of
:ontext are outside the field of contextualization re:search ir1 this narrower sense, i.e.
~rospectiveor retrospective statements by participants abou,t what is going to happen
ir has happened. For instance, announcements of the upcoming activity as a 'joke' (as
in t'he example discussed in the second section of this paper) would be excluded.
Typical contextualization cues such as an increase in loudness, code-switching or
gaze aversion do not have a referential meaning of their own. Second, the restriction
to non-referential cues excludes the class of deictics which certainly serve a
contextualizing function in that they locate language in time and space, and therefore
construe the environrnent (Umfeld, in K. Bühler's terms) in which interaction takes
place. However, they do this by establishing points of reference in this environrnent
and are therefore referential means.14 The class of conte>ctualizationcues considered
sets off contextualization research in the framework established by Gumperz from
most of conversation analysis, but also certain parts of pragrnatics.
b) Naturaily occurring interaction as data.
Contrary to most research on information structuring, and also unlike Goffman's
naturalistic sociology of the "interaction order", contextualization research is
unthinkable without work on naturally occurring data. Gumperz deals with fine-
grained contextualization cues which which cannot be reconstructed from the
analyst's memory or competence as a member of a speecli comrnunity but have to be
observed in mechanically recorded data. By focussing on these cues, he goes beyond
the more general descriptions of (hierarchies of) frames given in AI or by Goffman,
towards an empirical analysis of how they these frames are made to work as contexts
for actual linguistic utterances.
4. Processes of contextualization: Some suggestions for typologies
Within the more narrow tradition of work on contextualization cues,
contextualization is now defined as a relationship between a speaker, a context (a
"cognitive construct"l~like a frame, schema,...), an utterance and a (non-referential)
contextualization cue. Contextualization cues are used by speakers in order to enact
a context for the interpretation of a particular utterance. 14ccording to this definition,
a number of distinctions suggest themselves: processes of contextualization can be
charactenzed by the form of the cue employed, by the ternporal relationship between
cue and utterance, and by the context schema involved. Only the latter two will be
considered here.
1 4 ~ fAuer
. 1988.
l5TIne term is used by Cook-Gumperz & Gumperz in their first article on contextualization (1976:
10).
26 Peter Auer
Let us begin with the major types of contexts that rnay be evoked through
contextualization cues. Giveni the reflexive notion of context implied in
contextualization research, it makes little sense to e.numerate aspects of context
independently of the contextualization stra.tegies by which they are enacted.
However, another question is useful: we rnay ,ask if anii to what degree a context is
amenable to and dependent on strategies of contextualization at all, Le., we rnay ask
(following Giddens 1976; cf. Hirtnenkamp 1989) how much of context is "brought
along", and how much of it is "br~oughtabout" in interaction. For although context is
in principie an endogenous constiuct achieved in the seme interaction which makes
use of it, this endogenous ("eme:rgent") character of context certainly allows for
degrees. Thus, in some cases context is "brought along" and merely has to be indexed
in the interaction in order to become (or remaii-i) relevax~t,whereas in others, context
emerges only as a consequence of interactanits' contextualization work, i.e. it is
"brought about" exclusively.
Given the distinction between "brought about" an!d "brought along" aspects of
context, individual contextual frames or schemata can be characterized by their
distance from these two extreme poles of contextualization. In our Western culture, at
least three groups of context schemata rnay be distinguislied. There is a first group of
context schemata which is exclusively deterrnined by participants' intra-episode
contextualization work. Provided the interactioci is not what is called
"institutionalized", this group mainly comprises script-like pattems of interactional
sequencing (involving activity-frarnes like 'telling a joke', and the "footing"/"keying"
of these activities), schematic knowledge about speakership and recipiency at any
particular moment (participation frameworlcs), knowledge about the topical
development of the interactional episode, and about how participants relate to the
information they convey (modality); in these cases, al1 the relevant contexts emerge
in thejnteraction at hand, without bleing "brought along" into it. Surely, the enactrnent
of activity fiames, of participation frameworkis, and the development of topics is
based on cultural background knowledge (e.g., on the verbal ecology of a
cnrnrnunity). Yet, within the limits of such a 'verbal culture', it is wholly endogenous
to the individual episode.
A second group of contextual schemata is taken for relevant right in the
beginning of an episode in the senise of a "default assignment". Usualiy, interactive
episodes of this kind are "institiitionalized"; the mere act of approaching the
institution and dealing with it then implies the rellevance of the contextual schemata -
'social roles' - by default assignment already. Thieis, calling the police one expects a
certain behaviour on the part of the answerer even before h e interaction starts. Apart
from "institutions", default assignment of context rnay a.lso be the consequence of
Introduc tion 27
interactional histories between two or more rnernbers of a society. ?hese interactional
histories rnay establish expectations about the behaviour of each of the parties. For
instance, the social roles of parents and children are "brought along" into any new
encounter in a lifelong history of interaction.
Maintaining the relevance of social roles as context categones dunng an
episode requires continuous work, however. For al1 participants, there is the
possibility of degressing frorn the default assignments of social roles; a call to the
police by the husband of a policewoman will receive the same call answering at first,
but will quickly turn into a non-institutionalized conversation between two
pa~ticipantswho enact the cornplementary roles of husband and wife, instead of
caller-to-the-police and policewoman. Altemative role relationships are available
throughout the interaction. This means, that the the rnaintenance of any "brought
along" role constellaíion needs to be affirmed continuously, which is done by
contextualization cues.
In so-called institutionalized settings, topics, activities and tums rnay become
sukjected to default assignment as well and turn into context schernata of the second
time. Pre-aliocation of speaker roles, and pre-determination of speech activities and
of topics, will then turn context parameters of the first group into brought-along
features. On the other hand, social roles rnay also ernerge as contextual schemata of
the first kind in an interaction in which no "default assignment" is posible; for
instance, rapid intra-epísode changes of social role constellations rnay occur in certain
interactions between persons who are both in a hierarchical, institutionalized
relationship with each other (such as: 'student/professor'), and in a non-hierarchical
relationship of 'friends'.
A third group of context pararneters can be "brought about" even less than
those that are assigned be default. These are the physical surroundings in which an
interaction takes place, including the time of its occurrence, and visible features of
the participants to it (like gender, and, in part, ethnicity). Deixis and gesture/posture/
kinesics certainly relate to these surroundings. They bnng certain aspects of these
surroundings into participants' consciousness and therefore have a contextualizing
effect. Altematively, lack of such contextualization work rnay render visible features
of the situational context irrelevant for interaction; a participant's gender rnay then be
as interactionally unimportant as the presence of a piano in the roorn.
Yet, although they need being brought into consciousness, these surroundings
resist change; contextualization cues can bring certain aspects into the foreground,
backgrounding others, but they cannot (as in the case of social roles) substitute one
physical context for the other.
28 Peter Auer introduction

Another dimension on which contextualization can be described follows from

5. Some properties of contextualization cues
the analysis of how contextualization cues areplaced with respect to the utterance to
be contextualized. In particular, it can be asked if the cue is placed externally, i.e.
I:n the discussion of contextualization so far, few things have been said about the
before or after the relevant contirxt is valid, or internally, i.e. during this period.
semiotic nature of contextualization cues: what are the properties that make them
Contextualization cues of the first, extemal type are antii:ipatory (when placed before
useful for steering the interpretation of 'what is going on'? And how are they used in
h e contextualized unit, cf. some of the postura1 cues in the exarnple discussed in
the process of inferencing which leads towards such an interpretation? Some of the
section 2), or retrospective (when place after it). Interna1 contextualization cues rnay
theoretical features of contextualization cues will be considered in this section.
be penpheral or non-peripheral; in the first case, they occur at the (initial or final)
inargin of, but inside the contextualized unit. Prosodic ~narkersare an example; e.g.
1 ) Redundancy of coding and co-occurrence of cues.
raised onsets of new intonational phrases rnay signal a new topic (initial peripheral
contextualization), final intonation contours rnay sig,nal tum completion (final
13e relationship between contextualization cues on the the vanous levels is a
peripheral contextualization). Non-peripheral cues may be singular, recurrent or
complex one, As can be observed in the extract discussed in section 2, cues bundle
permanent cues. Singular non-peripheral cues are n~ostlyrelatively large, for
together in time to varying degrees. There are some points in the interaction where
instance, a gesture accompanying an utterance. Recurrent cues maintain the relevance
there is a dense synchronization of contextualization cues on ali levels. Mariella's
of a given context by re-invoking it. Thus, the 'role' of a doctor in doctorlpatient
allora (line 09) is an example. Taken as such, the word a l l o r a , even when its
interaction is repeatedly invoked by how the dolctor conlrols the floor and the topic,
sequential position is taken into account, cannor, be given an unambiguous
ethnic group solidarity rnay be repeatedly invoked by usage of the minority language,
interpretation. In particular, it is not clear if the utterance introduced by allora is part
etc. Among the permanent cues, we find pararneters such as posture or "creaky
of Mariella's fighting for the tum, i.e. a continuation of her previous talk (for
voice". Peripheral cues rnay be singular or recurrent.
instance, the first part of an allora basta! ), or a return into the role of the story-teller
The following schema sumrnarizes the ways in wfiich cues and contextualized
(i.e. a resumption of the first line). Contextualization cues on various levels aUow a
unit can relate to each other in time:
process of inferencing which clearly excludes the first possibility. First of all, initial
stress on allora establishes similarity with the allora in line 116; in addition, Mariella
contextualization cues
lets her arms fall down and grasps the chair, and she sits slightly more upnght - both
movements refer to her previous teller's role, too. Furthetmore, gaze is averted from
Giulio and begins to wander in m.'s direction, a cue that sets off the new activity
against the old one. Al1 in all, it is clear that there is a redundancy of coding here:
accent placement, gaze, and gesture/posture all point into the same direction.
anticipatory retrospective /-
penpheral \
non-penpierai The same happens in the case of Mariella's phrase non=lo=so-piu shortly
after. It is set off against previous and following talk prosodically (by high rate of
articulation, piano, hardly any pitch movement), but also by gaze (averted), and
mimics (faint smile). The phenomenon is frequent: contextualization cues often co-
occur, so that a change on one leve1 is synchronized with one on the other(s). The
process of inferencing is facilitated by such a redundancy of coding; not only in the
sense that a negligent participant rnay fail to monitor col-participant's behaviour on al1
singular recurrent

161t should be added that the rernaining prosodic contextualizailion cues are also compatible with
the interpretation "continuation of previous fight for the tum"; there is no clear break between
allora and the previous talk on this level.
 Peter Auer
r leaves this role in order to engage in the competition with Giulio over the tum,
~y be a case in point. What the rocking, its tennination and later resumption
ntribure to the interpretation of the interaction at hand is to punctuate the activity in
ee phrases: the pre-competition teller's role, the competition, and the post-
npetition teller's role. Had the rocking occurred in the completition phase and been
*en lacking before and after, the inferences prompted would not have changed in
irnportant way.
Alrnost al1 the other contextualization cues discussed in section 2 do not stand
; test, however. In some cases (like clapping hands, or pointing at the other person)
s not clear how a contrast could be established, as the cue involved is neither
ary nor scalarlpolar. in other cases, changing the direction of the change of cues
~ l dalter the interpretation of the activity considerably. Just consider Giulio's
lpetitive phrase in line 4, ich kenn noch ei.n vo-. Had it been spoken in a low
:e, and with a low onset, and had Manella's pr~ecedingline allora ich been
ractenzed by a high onset, and been spoken in forte, the emerging contrast would
e been the sarne as in the actual case. But in this case, prosody would not have
1 able to display Giulio's phrase as competitive; instead, it n~ighthave been heard
n aside, a cornrnent spoken to a third party, or an sifterthought, but not as a claim
he tum and the teller's role.
From the conversion test, it follows that many if not niost contextualization
,, though no referential signs, do have some kind of inhereni meaning or, in a less
iguous fonnulation, an inherent meaning base or meaning plotential.
on-arbitrariness vs. conventionalization of cues.
value of an inherent semantic potential of a cue is that of giving the direction of a
ential process, not of replacing it. Still, such a direction-giving is a good deal
: than what a merely contrastively used cue can achieve in the interpretation
:SS, i.e. more than the knot-in-the-hankerchief use of contextualization cues.
Many contextualization cues do two things aa the sarne time. First, they
ilish a contrast and thereby indicati: that sometlhing new is going to come;
id, they restrict the number of possible plausible jnferences of what this might
h e basis for such an inherent meaning potential may be conventionalized
xary) or natural (non-arbitrary), or a mixture of both.
An example for a purely conventionalized meaning potential of
xtualization cues is code-switching between languages. In a given speech
mnity, switching from language A into B may be meaningiful not only because
: contrast established, but also becaiise of the attitudes and values associated
Introduction 33
with these languages. These may differ from one community to the next, even when
the sarne pair of languages is involved; e.g., switching from Italian into German
evokes different associations in South Tyrol than it does in a West German migrant
community. What is associated with a particular language in a repertoire is a matter
of conventions only and therefore arbitrary.
Another example for the conventional nature of some contextualization cues
is reported in Gumperz 1982 (173): in a London airport staff cafetena tensions were
reported between the personnel, mainly Pakistani and Indian women, and the
customers. The customers perceived the women as unfriendly and uncooperative. For
instance, when serving the customers, the Pakistani and Indian women used to ask the
customers if they wanted gravy with their meal, by saying gravy. , i.e., they used an
intonation phrase with a falling final contour. For the Bntish recipients, this phrase
sounded like a statement - but in the given sequential contexf, a statement was neither
necessary nor polite. According to British expectations, a question would be cailed
for, marked by rising final contour: gravy? The Indian personnel, on the other hand,
spoke Indian English; in this variety, an activity like "offering" is not marked by
rising, but falling contours according Gumperz. There was a clash then between
British English and Indian English prosodic conventions for marking activity types;
what sounded to British ears like a statement was in fact rneant as an offer.
Many cues have a inherent meaning base, however, which is only partly, or
not at all, conventionalized but, in a specific sense of the word, "natural". "Natural"
here must be understood in the sense of Natural Phonology, Natural Morphology,
etc., Le., as having its basis in some universal requirement of hurnan interaction, of
the working of the human mind, or of the articulatory andlor auditory mechanisms
involved in speech production and perception. Such natural cues do not have to be
acquired by the child in and as part of a given culture; they are at the disposition of
every hurnan interactant. On the other hand, natural cues can be suppressed or given a
counter-reading by convention. This convention, of c o m e , has to be leamed.
An example is tum-final (and, by extension, sentence-final) intonation
contour. There is a natural expectancy that the end of a speaker's contnbution or of a
syntactic unit should be marked by diminishing fundamental frequency.18 This
expectancy is based on an iconic-metaphorical relationship between 'bottom'l 'restl/
'termination'. In fact, unit-final intonation contours for assertive phrases are fallimg in
many speech communities. However, it is well known that some vaneties (such as
Australian English, Tyneside English, north-west Alemaimic) have rising final
l 8 ~ fBoiinger
. 1983, Auer 1990.
34 Peter Auer
contours; these have to be seen as conventio~nalized suspensions of the natural
correlation between termination and falling contour.
Another case of a natural contextualization cue which is frequently
suppressed by convention is gaze. Given the fact that human interaction is multi-
channeled, a natural expectation is that more intense (or focused) interaction is
accompanied by mutual gaze, and riot by gaze aversion; tlle reason is that eye contact
both enables a full monitoring of the other's non-verbal activities, and displays this
monitoring ('attention'). This natural correlation underllies the use of gaze in the
intl~ractionbetween Giulio and Mariella; in order to procerd with her telling, Mariella
has to secure Giulio's gaze as a recipient. 111 many cultures, however, verbal
interaction must not be accompanied by frequent or pem,ment eye contact, even if it
is an intense and highly focused one, unless it will be iriterpreted as threatening or
aggressive.
Many other cues with a nahlral meaning base are involved in the example in
section 2: sitting back vs. upright, loud?ess, volwel elongations, pitch range, pitch
onset, rate of articulation/speech may be mosit striking ones. In al1 these cases,
hoyvever, it should not be forgottei? that despite this very general natural meaning
base, the cue can only provide help for a process of interpretation which as a whole,
is deeply embedded into the culture at hand, as has been d'emonstrated by many cases
of intercultural misunderstanding 'based on the divergirig use of certain semiotic
means for contextualization.
5 ) Lhuble-indexing of contexts via a single cue.
In nnany cases, contextualization cues seem to be an index not only for one context
schema, but for two, hierarchically arganized schemata. Usuaily, one of the schemata
involved is related to turn-taking, topical organization, or type of activity, the other
schema is one of social roles. Consider, as a typical example, an institutional context
like doctorjpatient interaction. Here, the social roles of the doctor and of the patient,
although "brought along", have to be: "brought about" be specific cues. Among these
cues, there are certain regularities of turn-taking (the 'patient' has limited rights to
self-selection when compared to the 'doctor'), of sequencing (for instance, a typical
question-answer structure in the diagnosis part), and of topical organization
(restrictions on the topics that can be brought up, the 'doctor' being responsible for the
initiation of topics exclusively). Al1 these cues do an additional job as context-
ualization cues for lower leve1 context frames or schemata, i.e. the allocation of
speaker and hearer roles, the organization of topics, and the enactment of activity
Introduction 35
frames. There is, then, a double indexing of contexts at the two levels, which is done
sirnultaneously with the same cues.
6. C'onclusion
The concept of contextualization has been successful in interactional (interpretive)
linguistics, microethnography and similar disciplines because it relates verbal
interaction and aspects of verbal and non-verbal behaviour such as linguistic
variation, prosody, and gesturelposture to each other. Contextualization research has
proven to be an effective way of analysing these often neglected areas of
communication not only in structural, but also in functional terms. Yet, the concept is
not entirely unproblematic and has fuzzy theoretical contours.
In this paper, the working of contextualization cues was demonstrated on the
basis of a smaii data extract; starting from this empirical analysis, some attempts at a
theoretical explication of the notion of contextualization were made. In particular, it
was proposed that the contextualization (implying a reflexive and flexible notion of
context) should be distinguished from contextualization cues. The notion of
contextualization at large is not specific enough to describe the particular approach
chosen by Gumperz and coiieagues. Such a descnption is however possible via the
notion of contextualization cues. These were defined as non-referential signantia
whicln have to be related to the verbal message by processes of inferencing in order to
provide these with the contexts in which they can be interpreted.
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