This presentation approaches the multimodality or polysemioticity of sign language interpreter-mediated deaf-hearing interaction between co-present sighted individuals. Interpreter-mediated deaf-hearing interaction is here conceptualized as multiparty interaction in which all participants, i.e. the deaf and the hearing party and a professional sign language interpreter, mobilize multimodal/polysemiotic resources for meaning-making and managing interaction. As the interaction unfolds, the primary participants may flexibly orient to their mutually shared semiotic resources and interpreter’s renditions
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With this as a starting point, three authentic data excerpts are presented to discuss the semiotic resources mobilized by the participants, firstly, in terms of their accessibility, i.e., perceivability and understandability, and secondly, the challenge they pose to transcription. The languages used in the data are Finnish Sign Language and spoken Finnish.The excerpts originate in situations where mobility, i.e., human movement through space, plays a role in interaction. The analysis draws on conversation analysis.

The first excerpt shows how the participants manage access to the resources. The second excerpt illustrates how all participants utilize describing, indexing, and depicting while negotiating a meaning. In the third excerpt, the primary participants negotiate how to use a shared resource for mutual understanding. The observations on the data shed light on meaning-making practices in deaf-hearing interaction and sign language interpreter-mediated interaction as well as the challenges in transcribing these practices.

This presentation will be connected to my ongoing Ph.D. project where I am doing research on interaction where one of the participants perceives some of the interaction through the use of haptices. Haptices are “single messages shared by touch on the body” (Lahtinen, 2008, p. 147). The content of the haptices is strongly connected to the specific context where they are used (Raanes & Berge, 2017). In my material the haptices are used by interpreters on the body of participants, with a combination of sight and hearing loss, participating in training sessions. The interpreter uses haptices to give information about for example environmental changes which would otherwise not have been available for this participant (Lahtinen, 2008, p. 149, Raanes & Berge, 2017).

The data in this project consists of video recordings of interpreter mediated training sessions, both individual training and group training. Mondada (2014) describes how we use a range of different communicative resources like language, objects, body positions etc. in face-to-face interaction. By doing a multimodal interaction analysis (Broth & Keevallik, 2020) I hope to describe some of the different functions of haptices and how haptices as a tactile communicative resource is used in training sessions together with other communicative resources. In my presentation I would like to present some early findings and attempts to transcribe this type of material using a combination of different transcription conventions.


Broth, M., & Keevallik (2020). Multimodal interaktionsanalys. Studentlitteratur AB.
Lahtinen, R. M. (2008). Haptices and haptemes: a case study of developmental process in social-haptic communication of acquired deafblind people. [Doktorgradsavhandling] A1 Management UK.
Mondada, L. (2014). The local constitution of multimodal resources for social interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 65, 137-156.
Raanes, E. & Berge, S. S. (2017). Sign language interpreters’ use of haptic signs in interpreted meetings with deafblind persons. Journal of Pragmatics, 107, 91-104.

This study aims to gain insight into participants’ use of gaze in sign language-interpreted consul-tations in health centres for babies and toddlers in the Norwegian context. The study investigates how gaze direction and eye contact frame the interaction between the participants where the mothers are deaf, and the health personnel are hearing. The empirical material is based on five video recordings of interpreted health consultations, and multimodal interaction analysis is used to examine the participants’ use of gaze in these interactions. The analysis demonstrates differences in eye contact, providing participants access to different footings because of their language modalities and language knowledge. The mothers and the sign language interpreters take responsibility for the interaction when the health professional is unaware of the importance of a specific gaze in sign language. When taking responsibility, they shift between frontstage activity and backstage activity. In addition, the mothers do not have full access to the interaction, even with sign language interpreters present. The findings show that it is imperative that health personnel know how to communicate with deaf parents and how to work with sign language interpreters.

Studies on multimodality show how people use the human body as a multimodal conveyor of meaning in communication, applying diverse semiotic resources (Kendon 2004, Mondada 2011, Enfield 2009, Goodwin 2000, 2013). However, there is still a knowledge gap regarding interpreters’ utilization of a wide range of different multimodal resources, such as pointing, gestures, head movements, gaze, posture/positioning, use of artefacts etc. How do interpreters render interlocutors’ embodied utterances and how does embodied action contribute to the collaborative construction of meaning in interpreted interaction?

My presentation discusses PhD-project findings from 7 video recordings of authentic GP-patient-encounters, from the points of departure of dialogism (Bachtin, 1981, Linell 2009, 2011, Wadensjö 1998, 2001), coherence (Coates 1995, Goodwin 1995, Korolija/Linell 1996) and multimodality (Kendon 2004, Enfield 2009, Dimitrova 1991, Goodwin 2000, 2013, 2018, Vranješ 2018).
I will discuss some findings regarding interpreters’ strategies when juggling the simultaneous verbal/non-verbal conveying of meaning; how they render and recombine the interlocutors’ use of composite utterances (Enfield, 2009) in their efforts to achieve accuracy in rendition (Skaaden 2013, Wadensjö 1998; 2018).
This presentation will have a particular focus on the distribution and understanding of role, on participation and footing (Goffman 1981). Based on some excerpts from a multi-party conversation, I will discuss Wadensjö’s (1998) response to Goffmans production formats with her reception formats – listening to repeat, to rapport or to respond to what is being uttered. How does the interpreter deal with the intricate layers of footing in an encounter with several participants?

The study examines interpreters’ repair-initiation during mediation discussions. Mediation in criminal and civil cases in Finland is a public service where volunteer mediators mediate discussion between the parties to a crime or a dispute (Christie, 1977). When the participants don’t share a language, the discussion is conducted with the help of an interpreter.

In a previous study on repair in this setting (Saarenmaa, in prep.), I have examined interpreters’ candidate understandings that specify or make an inference regarding a prior turn. If the original speaker confirms it, the interpreter usually renders the specified or inferred information in the next possible occasion. This serves to maintain or elaborate information in relation to how it was expressed in the original utterance.

In this presentation, I expand the analysis to instances of repair that extend beyond the first repair sequence. Repair can extend from orienting to one trouble source, e.g. when its solution becomes a new trouble source (Skedsmo, 2020), or separate repair initiations can target different trouble, e.g. during a lengthy telling. Previous research (Gavioli & Baraldi, 2011) shows that the rendition following a multiple repair sequence is often not an exact but summarizing translation. I examine how the multiple repairs are sequentially organized in the present data and how the interpreter renders them.

The method of the study is conversation analysis (Sacks et al., 1974). The data (~3,5 hrs) consist of four authentic video-recorded interpreter-mediated mediation discussions in Finnish and Arabic, Dari or Russian. Transcripts include English translations.

This study examines the acquisition of V1-conditionals in Dutch, which share the syntactic structure of polar questions, with the finite verb in clause-initial position. This structural similarity presents a learnability challenge: Do children confuse V1-conditionals with questions? The existence of canonical IF-clauses challenges children, too. Do they need to acquire V1-conditionals if IF-clauses suffice? Research on this topic is limited, though V1-conditionals are argued to originate from question-answer pairs in dialogues, later evolving into fictive discourse patterns. Since such dialogues are frequent in child-caregiver interactions, this study hypothesizes that V1-conditionals emerge in acquisition similarly to their historical development.

To test this, a corpus study analyzed spontaneous speech from 10 monolingual Dutch children (1;05-6;00) using 402 transcripts from the CHILDES database, comprising 122,196 child utterances and 240,014 child-directed utterances. The study first examined the roles of children and caregivers in question-answer pairs, then classified these interactions into types based on discourse roles. Results show that children’s use of interaction patterns mirrors the historical development of V1-conditionals. As they grow, they increasingly take on both roles—initiating a polar question and providing a consequence THEN-clause in interactions.

Findings suggest that V1-conditionals emerge naturally from discourse patterns, in both synchronic and diachronic contexts. The study provides strong evidence that discourse interactions drive complex syntactic development. As children engage in frequent question-answer sequences, they gradually incorporate V1-conditionals into their speech, demonstrating that syntax evolves dynamically through interaction. This supports the broader claim that grammatical structures are shaped by conversational experience rather than mere rule learning.

The languages of the world exert large variation in the implementation of copulas, i.e., expressions like be used for the ascription of properties to entities, among other functions. They are present in many practices. In Danish, the frequent lack of an audible copula verb in copula clauses has been studied as part of various interactional practices (in, e.g., Jensen 2021, Kjær et al. 2020, Kragelund 2015).

In this presentation, I come at this from the other side, with an interactional analysis of cases where the copula is clearly present, mainly the stressed cases (which have received comments in previous literature). It turns out that stressed copulas are used for indexing a relation to something previous, either as a contrast or an upgrade. The previous turns often contain a copula relation (including “inaudible” copulas). However, copulas in Danish are also overt when they are placed in certain positions in the turn, traditionally described through the syntax of stress placement.

The description feeds various theoretical questions: Are the two overt copula types related? And can we account for both at the same time? This touches on the question of phonology and other features and their role in the grammar of interaction. The notion of “stress” or emphasis is another discussion point, regarding its interactional function. This also opens for a discussion of what, exactly, constitutes a “modified repeat” (Stivers 2005) both in terms of form and function – a term used for various Danish constructions, both with and without any copulas.