Empathy displays as interactional achievements—Multimodal and sequential aspects

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Empathy displays as interactional achievements---Multimodal and sequential aspects

www.elsevier.com/locate/pragmaJournal of Pragmatics 61 (2014) 4--34

Maxi Kupetz *

University of Potsdam, German Department, Am Neuen Palais 10, 14469 Potsdam, Germany

Received 6 April 2013; received in revised form 10 September 2013; accepted 2 November 2013

Abstract

In this conversation analytic/interactional linguistic study, I aim to show which kinds of resources can be used by participants to displayempathy in response to affect-laden tellings of personal experiences in German everyday interaction. ‘Empathy’ refers to the display ofunderstanding of the other person’s emotional situation. It will be shown that a whole range of resources such as facial expressions,response cries + assessments, expressions with mental verbs, formulations, and second stories can be used, and that these resourcesare deployed at specific sequential positions, and in a specific order from kinetic and ‘fleeting’ to verbal and ‘substantial’, in the course ofthe telling of a personal experience.© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Empathy; Understanding; Affectivity; Conversation Analysis; Interactional Linguistics; Multimodality

1. Introduction

In Conversation Analysis (CA), the study of affectivity and emotion in social interaction has developed from a sideshowto a main field of interest in recent years (see e.g. Couper-Kuhlen, 2009; Peräkylä and Sorjonen, 2012). Taking up thelatest research on affect and emotion in interaction, I will investigate displays of empathy in German everyday interaction.My aim is to show how empathy displays evolve in interaction over time. Empathy here refers to displays of understandingof the other person’s emotional situation. The main questions of the paper are: Which multimodal resources doparticipants deploy to display empathy in response to affect-laden tellings of personal experiences? How are theseresources sequentially organized? First, I will outline how to approach the phenomenon affectivity from a conversationanalytic perspective (section 2). Second, I will provide an account of how understanding, affiliation, and empathy areconceptualized in the CA literature, and I will argue that (a) displays of empathy inherently involve the participants’orientation to an asymmetry in their experiential rights and/or emotive involvement, something which is not constitutive of(the much broader field of) affiliative actions; and that (b) empathy is not merely an analytic category but something whichparticipants make relevant themselves and display in responses to affect-laden tellings of personal experiences, andwhich they may even be able to address meta-communicatively in the sense of an ethno-category (section 3). I will thenmove to the main part of the paper, which is a detailed analysis of a lengthy telling about the loss of beloved familymembers (section 4). Such a chronological analysis allows us to account for the sequential orderliness of different types ofempathic responses in the course of a telling of personal experiences, ranging from kinetic resources such as raisedeyebrows to substantial verbal resources such as second stories. In the first discussion (section 5), I will argue for apreference structure of empathic responses from ‘immediate and fleeting’ kinetic practices to ‘late and substantial’ verbal

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M. Kupetz / Journal of Pragmatics 61 (2014) 4--34 5

practices. I will then show further examples from other recordings in order to provide evidence for this overall sequentialorderliness of responses (section 6). This is to demonstrate that the phenomenon does not always occur as systematic asin the lengthy piece shown in detail, but that it is a recurrent phenomenon which can be observed on a smaller scale inmany instances of tellings of personal experiences in everyday interaction (cf. Jefferson, 1988). Furthermore, in a seconddiscussion part, I will argue why it may be beneficial to make use of the notions apprehension and comprehension toaccount for the different types of resources involved, ranging from affect-laden to cognition-oriented (section 7). The paperfinishes with a summary of the phenomena observed and an outlook on possible future research (section 8).

2. Methodological approach and data

In line with the methodology of Conversation Analysis (cf. e.g. Schegloff, 2007; Sidnell, 2010) and InteractionalLinguistics (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting, 2001; Barth-Weingarten, 2008), a number of studies on affectivity in socialinteraction have evolved, on the one hand in everyday conversation (cf. e.g. Selting, 1994, 2010, 2012; Christmann andGünthner, 1996; Goodwin and Goodwin, 2000; Günthner, 2000; Wilkinson and Kitzinger, 2006; Local and Walker, 2008;Couper-Kuhlen, 2009, 2012a,b; Sugita, 2012), and on the other hand in institutionalized talk-in-interaction (cf. e.g. Heath,1988; Sandlund, 2004; Ruusuvuori, 2005, 2007; Gülich and Couper-Kuhlen, 2007; Peräkylä, 2008; Reber, 2009;Voutilainen et al., 2010). For an insightful compilation of recent studies on emotion in interaction, see Peräkylä andSorjonen (2012), for a summary, see Ruusuvuori (2013). These studies have in common a social constructionistapproach to affect, which will be adopted in this paper as well:

1 TheMargre

2 Thedata, inparticipthese dshows,questionot speuse of tfor pointhe con

CA can make a specific contribution to the study of affect and emotion if we adopt the following as axiomatic:

- A

dt S

i wana

itnscihetinte

ffect and emotion are performed as displays [. . .] in interaction.
- T hese displays are realized as embodied practices. - T he practices are situated at specific sequential positions within interaction. - T he practices are interpreted in a context-sensitive fashion.
(Couper-Kuhlen, 2009:96)

In this paper, I investigate stretches of talk in which one participant reports personal experiences and displays affectivityrelated to these experiences, and in which the other participant’s display of understanding this affect display is maderelevant and locally constructed. When affectivity is made publicly available -- either by contextualizing talk as affect-ladenor by talking about an emotional situation or feeling (cf. e.g. Fiehler, 1990:96ff; Reber, 2009:194) -- it becomesinterpretable for the co-participants and thus analyzable for the researcher. This study goes in line with Peräkylä (2012),who provides a detailed account of the relevance of interactional studies for the field of emotion research, assuming thatemotions are ‘‘socially constructed phenomena occurring in the sequential time of human social interaction, involvingexpressions that are responsive to the expressions of cointeractants and designed for these cointeractants to perceiveand to respond to’’ (Peräkylä, 2012:288).

The main data used for the present paper consist of 9 h of video-recorded mundane talk-in-interaction among friends,mainly German university students. The recordings were made with three cameras and a high quality audio recorder in thehomes of the interlocutors. For these recordings, labelled LoE_VG_X, the participants did not receive any instructions asto which topics should be discussed.1 Furthermore, three recordings were made in which the participants were asked totalk about ‘happy moments’ and ‘moments of loss’ in their lives.2 These recordings are labelled AGmT_X. As this paper ispart of a larger project on the display of empathy in social interaction, 10 h of audio-recordings of phone-in radio shows arealso part of the corpus. However, apart from the discussion on empathy as a participant’s category in section 2, where I

ata were recorded in the project Emotive involvement in conversational storytelling under the direction of Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen andelting in the framework of the cluster of excellence Languages of Emotion at the Free University Berlin.

dea to make recordings with such instructions is borrowed from Voutilainen et al. (submitted). Still, it requires some reflection. Thesehich the participants are supposed to talk about specific topics, need to be treated with caution. By talking about the topics imposed, thets show their orientation to the recording situation and thus they are ‘doing everyday interaction for the camera’. However, by comparingta to the data from the recordings without instructions, and also to recordings from other interaction contexts such as phone-in radio

becomes obvious that the resources used by participants in response to affect displays (facial expression, sound objects, follow-up, utterances with mental verbs, formulations, second stories/analogies) do occur in various settings. Thus, it can be inferred that they arefically produced for the camera in these instructed settings. What might be specific for these settings, however, is the frequency of these resources, as more stories involving affect displays are produced than in non-instructed settings. I would like to thank Christian Meyerg this methodological issue out to me. For a reflection on utterances with mental verbs in everyday interaction and radio phone-ins, andxt-specificity of second stories for everyday interaction, see Kupetz, 2013.

M. Kupetz / Journal of Pragmatics 61 (2014) 4--346

use an example from a radio show, I will focus on everyday non-institutional interaction in this paper. The data aretranscribed according to the GAT 2 conventions (Selting et al., 2009; Couper-Kuhlen and Barth-Weingarten, 2011), whichcan be found in Appendix.

In order to make my argument on the sequential orderliness of empathic response types in affect-laden tellings ofpersonal experiences clear, I will guide the reader through the development of one lengthy telling about the loss of twobeloved family members and depict in chronological order the types of responses used by the recipient (section 4). Theseresponses consist of a number of multimodal resources such as facial expressions, response cries + assessments, follow-up questions, formulations, expressions with mental verbs, and second stories/analogies. As this sequential orderliness from‘immediate and fleeting’ kinetic practices to ‘late and substantial’ verbal practices has shown to occur (on a smaller scale) inmany other instances as well, further empirical evidence will be provided later on (section 6). Before turning to the empiricalpart, I will provide a brief overview of the state of the art of interactional research on understanding, affiliation, and empathy.

3. Understanding, affiliation, empathy

In the light of current research in Conversation Analysis, Interactional Linguistics and Discursive Psychology(Ruusuvuori, 2005; Stivers, 2008; Heritage, 2011; Mondada, 2011; Hepburn and Potter, 2012; Deppermann, 2013;Lindström and Sorjonen, 2013 to name only a few), I will briefly describe how the notions understanding, affiliation, andempathy have been conceptualized from a social constructionist and interactional perspective so far. This allows me topoint out research desiderata and the relevancies of these terms and concepts for the present study.

Already in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations the main focus in the study of understanding is on observablebehaviour in opposition to approaches focusing on inner processes, as understanding is not conceived of as a mentalprocess but rather as the ability to act appropriately (Wittgenstein, 1958:58ff; Harré and Tissaw, 2005:176). One mainunderlying assumption of conversation analytic studies is that understanding is an interactional phenomenon which at thesame time is a result of and provides the grounds for social interaction (Deppermann and Schmitt, 2008). It is not aunidirectional phenomenon in the sense of B shows that she understood A. Rather, mutual understanding is constantlytacitly upheld, as it is the basis for the progression of actions in interaction (see e.g. Heritage, 2007). At the heart of socialinteraction lies mutual recognition of what is going on in each moment:

Intersubjectivity would not, then, be merely convergence between multiple interpreters of the world (whetherunderstood substantively or procedurally) but potentially convergence between the ‘doers’ of an action or bit ofconduct and its recipients, as coproducers of an increment of interactional and social reality

(Schegloff, 1992:1299).

Displays of understanding may take all sorts of linguistic and embodied forms (Mondada, 2011) and differ a lot with regardto their explicitness. Thus, Deppermann and Schmitt (2008) suggest differentiating between three areas of investigation:(i) actions which do not address understanding but which make understanding of the prior action inferable, as they arelocally fitted to their sequential environment and become explicable in it (Schegloff, 1992); (ii) implicit manifestations ofunderstanding, e.g. through change-of-state tokens such as English oh (Heritage, 1984) or German ach or ach so (Betzand Golato, 2008; Imo, 2009; Golato, 2010), and explicit manifestations, e.g. through formulations (Heritage and Watson,1979, 1980; Drew, 2003); and (iii) thematizations of understanding, e.g. through expressions with mental verbs (tounderstand, to get sth., to see, etc.), addressing explicitly the process of understanding or its result (Deppermann,2008:230). In that sense, displays of empathy may take the form of manifestations and/or thematizations of social-emotional understanding (Deppermann, 2010:364) in affect-laden interaction.

Sacks (1995:252f) distinguishes between claiming understanding and exhibiting understanding. Whereas somemeans, e.g. formulations, transform prior talk and thus exhibit (some kind of) understanding, other means such asrepetitions merely claim understanding. In this paper, I use displays of understanding as an umbrella term for bothclaiming and showing/exhibiting understanding.

For Sacks, entitlement to experience (1995:242ff) is an important notion when investigating displays of empathy.Sacks points out the ‘‘distributional character of experience’’ (1995:246), saying that experiences are not distributedequally among participants and that therefore the participants’ entitlement to experience may be asymmetric. As a result,participants have different rights and constraints with regard to the feelings which may be related to an experience, andalso with regard to the telling about this experience. They have different experiential rights (Sacks, 1995:243ff). With this inmind, Heritage points out that different experiential rights can produce problems of experience:

[T]here are [events, activities and sensations, MK] to which the experiencer has primary, sole and definitiveepistemic access. Because persons conceive experience as ‘owned’ by a subject-actor, and as owned in asingular way, a ‘problem of experience’ arises. In particular, when persons report first-hand experiences of


any great intensity (involving, for example, pleasure, pain, joy or sorrow), they obligate others to join with them intheir evaluation, to affirm the nature of the experience and its meaning, and to affiliate with the stance of theexperience toward them. These obligations are moral obligations that, if fulfilled, will create moments of empathiccommunion.

(Heritage, 2011:160)

Heritage describes the recipient’s dilemma of having to show affiliation without having the same experiences or epistemicrights as the teller (Heritage, 2011:161). This is an important observation which may help illuminate the relationshipbetween the notions affiliation and empathy.

In conversation analytic studies, the terms empathy and affiliation have often been used synonymously and/or in thesame breath, e.g. ‘‘affiliative responses are maximally pro-social when they match the prior speaker’s evaluative stance,display empathy and/or cooperate with the preference of the prior action’’ (Stivers et al., 2011:21). Jefferson pointed to theaffective import of affiliative responses, in terms reminiscent of empathy: affiliative responses arguably ‘‘could beunderstood as ‘I feel the same way’, ‘I’d do the same thing’, etc., i.e. ‘I’m with you’, whereas the acknowledgement tokensdid not affiliate, but merely indicated ‘I understand what you said’’’ in her data (2002:1345). With regard to recipients’ nodsin storytellings, Stivers (2008) describes affiliation as ‘‘the hearer displays support of and endorses the teller’s conveyedstance’’ (Stivers, 2008:35), where stance is defined as ‘‘the teller’s affective treatment of the events he or she is describingwhether that is communicated explicitly or implicitly’’ (Stivers, 2008:37). From these accounts, the impression might arisethat affiliation and empathy are somewhat similar phenomena. However, it has been recognized that there is a need to‘‘unravel more clearly the relationship between displays of (dis)affiliation and displays of emotion and affect (e.g. empathy,pity, envy, etc.)’’ (Lindström and Sorjonen, 2013:367).

Sorjonen states that ‘‘[a] display of stance makes relevant the recipient’s display of affiliation or disaffiliation in thenext turn’’ (2001:167). These affiliative responses can occur regardless of whether mutually known issues or issuesknown to one participant only are dealt with. A more specific route to follow when exploring affectivity and empathymight be the participants’ negotiation of experiential or feeling rights (Couper-Kuhlen, 2010; Peräkylä and Silverman,1991). Reconsidering Heritage’s work mentioned above, one might argue that affiliative responses are made relevantin a number of sequential positions when all types of epistemic, evaluative or affective stances are negotiated,whereas empathic responses are made relevant in more specific interactional contexts when one participant’spersonal experiences and related affects are being dealt with. Thus, displaying an understanding of the other person’semotional situation, while orienting to an asymmetry regarding their experiential rights and/or emotive involvement,seems to be a defining criterion for empathy displays, which can be observed from the participants’ perspective. This iscompatible with Heritage’s work (2011). He describes five types of resources which can be used in response to tellingsof personal experiences either to decline or to address ‘empathic’ moments. Response cries are at the most empathicend of the continuum and can be used to ‘‘express empathic sentiments primarily through prosody’’ (Heritage,2011:176). Subjunctive assessments ‘‘which suggest that if the recipient[s] were to experience the things describedthey would feel the same way’’ (2011:169) and observer responses ‘‘in which recipients claim imaginary access to theevents and experiences described, but position themselves as observers’’ (Heritage, 2011:171) come off as moreempathic than parallel assessments and ancillary questions, which decline empathic moments according tothe author. This suggests that (a) the role of the participants’ orientation to an asymmetry in experiential rights oremotive involvement seems to be crucial for the interactional negotiation of empathic moments, and that (b) bothdimensions, understanding and affectivity, may play a role in empathic moments. Both ideas are to be furtherdeveloped throughout the paper.

The question of disentangling the notions of affiliation and empathy might not be of much interest when working withinstitutional data such as psychotherapeutic interaction, doctor patient interaction, or helpline interaction (see e.g.Ruusuvuori, 2005; Hepburn and Potter, 2007; Vehviläinen et al., 2008; Voutilainen et al., 2010; Voutilainen, 2012), as inthese cases, asymmetries with regard to experiential rights and emotive involvement are inherent to the communicativesituation, and are tied to the participants’ role-specific activities and interactional contingencies. Ruusuvuori (2005) usesaffiliation as an umbrella term for empathy, which is tied to the participants’ orientation to understanding, and sympathy,which is tied to the participants’ orientation to sharing experiences. Voutilainen (2012:236), e.g. explicitly states that sheuses the terms affiliation and empathy interchangeably. However, in everyday interaction, the participants’ entitlement toexperience (Sacks, 1995) is not predefined as asymmetric. It can be symmetric, e.g. in joint storytellings of similarexperiences, but it does not have to be. The participants’ entitlement to experience is subject to negotiation in everydayinteraction, and should therefore be considered in its sequential development.

The discussion of the literature so far shows the need for exploring the relation between affiliation and empathy wheninvestigating everyday interaction. A conversation analytic approach calls for an emic perspective, i.e. trying todisentangle these notions requires showing that participants themselves orient to affiliation and empathy as distinctinteractional phenomena. By considering example (1), I would like to substantiate two lines of argument: (a) displays of


empathy inherently involve the participants’ orientation to an asymmetry in their experiential rights and/or emotiveinvolvement, something which is not constitutive of (the much broader field of) affiliative actions; (b) displays of empathyare not merely an analytic category, but are something which participants themselves make relevant when negotiatingpersonal experiences and affectivity in interaction, and which they may even be able to address meta-communicatively inthe sense of an ethno-category.3

The extract is taken from a phone-in radio show recorded in January 2012. The show’s topic is apologies, which relatesto the affair in 2011/2012 when the German President Christian Wulff was accused of accepting from and grantingadvantages to influential friends, which finally lead to his resignation in February 2012. The show’s host (Mod) criticizesthe President’s behaviour and his handling of the media, while the caller (An) defends the President’s position:

1) lateline_2012010505:07

001 Mod: ch_fand_s irgendwie so_so_so ʔ k !GLATT! und

i found it somehow like like like cool and

KÜ:HL son bisschen [<<dim> diese

calculating somehow this

002 An: [(STIMMT),=

right

Mod: [performance;>

performance

003 An : =[man MUSS sich aber auch in <<crea k> sEine
but one has to put oneself in his
lage ver↓sEtzen;> ʔ

shoes

004 Mod : ˚h=

005 An : =also [(X X )

i mean

006 Mod : [du TUST das offenbar; =

you’re doing that obviously

007 =VOLler emp(h)athIe[(hehehe) ;

empathically (laughs)

008 An : [ja_ja_ja ;

yeah yeah yeah

In line 1, the host assesses the President’s performance in a TV interview negatively as !GLATT! und KÜ:HL (cool andcalculating). The caller confirms this impression (line 2), but immediately adds: man MUSS sich aber auch in<<creak> sEine lage ver↓sEtzen;> (but one has to put oneself in his [the President’s] shoes) (line 3).4 The utterance is produced with a focus accent on the auxiliary verb. This narrow focus signals a contrast to theconfirmation in line 2 and contextualizes it as a concession (Barth-Weingarten, 2003). After the host’s short inbreath (line4) which indicates that she is about to take the floor, the caller launches an utterance with also (I mean) (line 5) whichmight have turned out to be an elaboration of his statement (Deppermann, 2011). The host, however, competitively takesover the floor and states that the caller is obviously doing just that, putting himself in the President’s shoes (line 6). Thispositioning is then explicitly labelled by the host as being VOLler emp(h)athIE [(hehehe); (full of empathy/empathically) (line 7). Putting oneself in the other person’s shoes is thus labelled as something which is doneempathically. This ascription is confirmed by the caller in line 8.

It becomes obvious that being able to see the other person’s (emotional) situation is treated as being empathic. What isinvolved here is an understanding of the other person despite an asymmetry in experiential rights. The young caller whoarguably has not had the same experiences as the President, still relates to him. Of course, not every speaker attributes

3 For a short discussion on empathy as a participants’ category see also Pfänder and Gülich (2013).4 ‘Sich in die Lage des Anderen versetzen’ (‘to put oneself in another one’s shoes’) has become an everyday expression and lay description for

empathy in German as well as in English. A phenomenological account can be found in Stein (1917).


the same meaning to the term ‘empathy’, nor uses it him-/herself in everyday interaction. Still, the (pro-)social action ofshowing to someone else that his (emotional) situation and consequential behaviour are understandable and legitimate issomething with which people are familiar. Thus, empathy is not only an analytic category but is part of the social worldwhich participants themselves produce and orient to, and which lies at the heart of social togetherness. It is the analyst’stask to uncover which practices and routines are used by participants to achieve intersubjectivity (Schegloff, 1992), whenaffectivity is made relevant and negotiated in interaction.

4. Resources to display empathy in response to affect displays

In the following, I will present a detailed analysis of one long instance of a telling which involves recipient’s actions thathave been observed in my corpus as being typical forms used in response to affect-laden tellings of personalexperiences. Such an extended account is suitable to show that each type of response has its specific sequentialposition in the course of the telling, and that there seems to be an interactional logic regarding the progression ofresponses, ranging from minimal kinetic and vocal resources to extended verbal accounts. The telling is divided into sixsegments (ex. 2a--2f).

4.1. Facial expression: raised eyebrows and dropped corners of the mouth

The participants Sina (on the left) and Isolde (on the right) are college friends. So far, they have been talking aboutbroken friendships. This is when Sina begins her story about the loss of her grandfather:

2a) AGmT_0110:23

001 Sin : naja; gut; =

well okay

002 =also bei MIR muss ich sage n-

in my case i have to say

003 (-- -)

004 (X X da war ich )

(unintelligible) i was

005 also (-) wenn man jetz wIrklich ma von

so if you really talk about

verLUSten spricht, (--)

losses

006 ↓GROße verlUste ,

major losses

007 das war mein co u↓SIN; =

that was my cousin

008 =der is |(.) da war ich (1 .5)

he is at the time I was

009 Iso : |((gazes at Sin) )

010 Sin : << pp> kurz (LEgen); warte ,> (-- -)

quickly think wait

011 ELF, (-- -)

eleven (years old)

012 |da war meine SCHWESter gerAde

|((looking at Iso) )

at the time my sister was just

geboren; geNAU;

born, exactly


013 da is mIrko äh tödlich ve r|UNglückt ;

|((gaze at Iso) )

that’s when mirko uh had a fatal acciden t

014 (-)((Iso minimally raises her eyebrows) )

015 [AUtounfall ;

car crash

016 Iso : [|hmhm ,

|((looking a t Sin, chewing) )

017 Sin : (-- -)((swallows) )

018 →Sin : n jahr spÄter is mein Opa |gestOrben, =

|((gaze at Iso) )

a year later my grandpa died

019 =an nem HIRNschlag ,

from a stroke

020 → ((1 .0 mutual gaze between Sin + Iso ,

Iso raises her eyebrow s))

021 Sin : also |das war schon |<<al l> das war

|((slightly nodding,

gazing into space))

so that was ( PTC L) that was

022 Iso : |((dropping the corner s of her mou th) )

Sin: scho n> HEFtig; (. )

(PTCL) tough (indee d)

Sina introduces her story by focusing on her experience: also bei MIR muss ich sagen- (in my case i have to say)(line 2) and beginning to recall background information about her age (line 4). This story’s beginning is interrupted by aninsertion in lines 5 and 6, which frames the upcoming story as a dramatic experience having had an important impact onthe teller: also (-) wenn man jetz wIrklich ma von verLUSten spricht, (--) ↓GROße verlUste, (so if youreally talk about losses/ major losses). In line 7, Sina explicitly states that it was her cousin whom she lost, and,with latching, she immediately continues to explicate the circumstances of his early death in line 8 der is (he is). Fromlines 8 through 12, in the form of an insertion, she provides more background information on her and her sister’s ages atthe moment of the tragic event; she was eleven years old and her sister was just born. In line 13, the teller then makes explicitthat this was the time when her cousin had a fatal accident. Towards the end of line 13, Sina establishes eye contact with therecipient as if to check whether the impact of what she has said has been conveyed to the recipient (see e.g. Goodwin, 1980;Peräkylä and Ruusuvuori, 2012). So far, Isolde has been attentively looking at Sina while chewing her breakfast roll. In thefollowing short pause (line 14), mutual gaze is established between the participants, and Isolde minimally raises hereyebrows. This minimal reaction seems to be sufficient in this sequential position to present herself as an active recipient whoacknowledges the impact of Sina’s telling. Following this short pause, Sina specifies through a simple noun phrase how hercousin was killed: AUtounfall;(car crash) (line 15). Isolde, in overlap, reinforces her display of being an attentiverecipient by using the continuer hmhm, (line 16). After swallowing, which indicates trouble in speech production, but projectsmore to come (line 17), Sina continues her story of loss by adding the next dramatic component: n jahr spÄter is meinOpa gestOrben,= (a year later my grandpa died) (line 18), again directing her gaze at the recipient towards the endof the utterance. The utterance ends with a rush through (Schegloff, 1982:76; Selting, 1995:92ff) to line 19, explicatingincrementally the reason for the grandfather’s death: =an nem HIRNschlag, (from a stroke) (see picture 1 for theparticipants’ gaze and facial expressions at the end of the segment). Due to its mid-rising final intonation, the turn-constructional unit (TCU) in line 19 is not constructed as the climax of the story; it projects more to come. However, in thefollowing long pause (line 20), Sina maintains the mutual gaze, and in doing so makes a recipient reaction relevant. Towardsthe end of the pause (see picture 2), Isolde raises her eyebrows, acknowledging the impact of what has just been said. Thisprovides for the teller’s next assessment (line 21): also das war schon <<all> das war schon> HEFtig; (so that was(PART) that was (PART) tough (indeed)). With this assessment, Sina makes explicit that the reported events, the


Picture 2. AGmT_02_end of segment 20.

Picture 1. AGmT_02_end of segment 19.

death of her cousin and only a year later the death of her grandfather, have been emotionally difficult to handle. Right in thebeginning of Sina’s utterance in line 21, after the introductory particle also (so), Isolde drops the corners of her mouth,still keeping her eyebrows raised, and thus reinforces her acknowledgement of the difficulty of the events described (seepicture 3). Interestingly enough, the recipient Isolde uses these facial expressions before the teller has finished herassessment in line 21. Thus, Isolde shows that she can relate to the emotional impact that the reported events must have hadfor the teller before the precise difficulty of the situation has been made explicit.

To sum up, facial expressions provide a means not only for the teller to reinforce, explicate, or modify her affectivestance (Peräkylä and Ruusuvuori, 2012), but also for the recipient to demonstrate early on in the telling that she is ‘with’the teller. Comparable displays of the recipient’s ‘anticipatory affect’ have been described in the pre-climax position ofscary stories (Sugita, 2012). Obviously, on the recipient’s side, facial expressions such as raising one’s eyebrows anddropping the corners of one’s mouth are not aligned with verbal resources and thus only provide vaguely for what theyrefer to: Is the story recipient acknowledging the impact that tragic events have on families in general? Is sheacknowledging how hard the loss of two family members within a year must have been for Sina and/or her family? Is sheshowing her own emotive involvement? However this may be, facial expressions do comment on what is being said; theydo acknowledge the affective dimension (possibly) related to the reported events.

Another example of facial expressions commenting on the experiences reported will be provided in the followingextract from the continuation of the conversation. In this case, the facial expression is followed by a response cry+ assessment which further indicates the recipient’s acknowledgement of the affective dimension involved in thestorytelling, and further disambiguates the valence of the response (Hakulinen and Sorjonen, 2012).


Picture 3. AGmT_02_segment 21_between 2nd and 3rd syllable.

4.2. Facial expression + response cries + assessment

Response cries have recently been intensely studied from a conversation analytic perspective, taking into accountnumerous affective dimensions such as surprise, disappointment, or empathy (e.g. Wilkinson and Kitzinger, 2006;Couper-Kuhlen, 2009, 2012a; Reber, 2009, 2012; Heritage, 2011; Golato, 2012). As shown in some of these studies,when investigating empathy displays, response cries constitute an important resource which may be used whenreceipting affect-laden talk. Let us consider the continuation of Sina’s telling about the loss of her cousin, and focus on thecluster of resources used by Isolde in response.

2b) AGmT_01((11 segments left out: Si na tells that the death of her cousin made her sad, but that she and her

family were not able to go back to Germany immediately because they were on vacation in the States.

She then explicates the circumstances of the car crash.) )

10:56

034 Sin : der fAhre r hatte DROgen genommen; =

the driver was on drugs

035 =und die ham BLÖDsinn gemacht; =

and they were fooling around

036 =auf ner ˚h auf ner alLEE ham se versuch t

in an alley they were trying

wie im_wie im ähm: (-- -) ((smacks her lips) )

as in as in uhm

wie im FILM; hh

as in the movies

037 ↓wir beSCHLEUnigen ma so |so so schnEl l

we accelerate as as as fas t

038 Iso : |((raises her eyebrows))

Sin: es geht und ziehen dann ma die HANDbremse; =

as possible and then we put on the hand brak e

039 =|da drEht sich doch das AUto so cool ;

that’s when the car spins so nicely

040 → Iso : |((opens her eyes widely) )

041 (-- -) ((Sin looks to the side, nods) )


044 Sin : der is gestOrben aus nem völlig NICHtigen grUnd; =

he died for no reason

045 =[also da is kein UNfall passiert; =

i mean there was no acciden t

046 Iso : [|ja ;

|((still gazing at Iso) )

yes

047 Sin : =nichts; GAR nichts; =

nothing, nothing at all

048 =die ham MIST gebaut; =

they were fooling around

049 =die ham wIrklich MIST gebaut ;

they were absolutely fooling around

050 h h˚

11:14

051 Sin : und ähm: ( 1.6)

and uh

052 mein Opa hat sich (.) Also (. )ʔ

my grandpa has i mean

so rEden_also so ham wIr das jetz

so talk i mean so we now

langsam ( X ) |denn mein Opa hat sic h

slowly because my grandpa ( )

053 Iso : |((withdraws gaze) )

Sin: daran die SCHULD gegeben; (. )

blamed himself for i t

054 Sin : |der hat_n nämlich noch ne stund e

because he (let) him (go out) an hour

055 Iso : |((reaches out for her glas) )

Sin: länger rAus (-)|gelassen als sein vate r

longer (go out) than his father

056 Iso : |((sips, gaz ing at Sin) )

Sin: geSAGT hatte ;

had told him

057 (-- -)((mutual gaze established, Iso sips) )

058 Sin : |und mein opa s_fAst (.) |geNAU auf_ n

|((withdrawing her gaze) )

and my grandpa (died) almost exactly on tha t

042 → Iso : |ach [du SCHEI[ße ;

oh shit

|((gazing at Sin) )

043 → Sin : [|idiOTen;[RICHtige idiOten ;

idiots, true idiots

|((noddingly, gazing sidewards) )

059 Iso : |((orient s to table) )

Sin: tAg n jahr <<dim> spÄter |gestOrben ;>

day a year later (died )

060 → Iso : |((puts her gl ass on the table, frowns) )

061 (-- -)


063 → Sin : |<<l> ʔhmhm, >

|((noddingly, gazing into spac e, pushing her ton gue under

her lower lip))

064 (1 .2)((Iso still traces her eyebrows with her finger s))

065 → Sin : |abe r dAs fand ich SCHLIMmer ;

|((still gazing into space) )

but i found that wors e

066 Iso : |( (starts gazing at Si n))

067 Sin : ich weiß nich waRUM; =

i don’t know wh y

068 =aber an meinem Opa hing ich unglaublich DOLle; =

but i was very much attached to my grandp a

062 → Iso : |<<p, breath y> ↑ACH du |schEi:ße ;>

|((gazing downwards) )

oh shit

|((traces her eyebrows with her fingers, downwards gaze) )

I will focus on lines 34 through 44, and on lines 51 through 68. In lines 34 through 38, Sina successively explicatesthe details of her cousin’s accident: the driver was intoxicated, the car’s occupants were in a foolish moodwhen driving down an alley (lines 34--36). She systematically builds up suspense by using reported thought in lines37ff for describing the plans of her cousin and his friends: speeding up and pulling the hand break to make thecar spin. During the whole passage, Isolde gazes directly at Sina. In the course of Sina’s utterance in line 37,Isolde raises her eyebrows/frowns, which can be interpreted as astonishment and doubt about the car’s occupants’common sense. In the course of line 39, Isolde relaxes her forehead, and opens her eyes widely to produce a‘shocked’ face. She thus displays that she recognizes the inconceivability of such an idea and its possibleconsequences. In the following response cry this becomes even more evident: ach du SCHEIße; (oh shit) (line42). This kind of ‘ach + assessment’ within one intonation contour has been described by Golato (2010) (for English‘oh’ + assessment see Heritage, 1984). While the ach receipts the information without making any claims aboutunderstanding and signals that the information is new and somehow astonishing (Imo, 2009:75f), it is the assessmentwhich indicates that the import of the information conveyed has been understood (Pomerantz, 1984:57f; Golato,2010:167f). This is especially true as the teller Sina has not made any explicit assessments in her prior TCUs.The lexical content of Isolde’s response cry shows that it is not merely a change-of-state token, but that it is astrongly affect-laden response which acknowledges the dramatic import of the reported events. This observationgoes in line with Couper-Kuhlen’s findings on responses to affect-laden complaint stories: ‘‘[P]urely vocal affiliativedisplays are as a rule reinforced verbally in following turns, suggesting that they may be perceived as momentaryand fleeting. Participants who wish to show affiliation and to go on record as showing affiliation will as a rulechoose a combination of response cry and verbal reinforcement’’ (2012a:142f). Whether Isolde’s response in line42 orients to the outrageousness of the car’s occupants’ irresponsible behaviour, or the emotional consequencesfor their relatives, or the affect this story arouses in her remains unclear at this point. Sina’s overlappingutterance, however, shows what the teller herself orients to, as she explicitly assesses the car’s occupants asidiOTen; RICHtige idiOten;(idiots, true idiots) (line 43), further explicating the fact that they died for noreason, out of sheer foolishness (line 44).

Quite similar observations can be made from lines 51 through 68. Sina relates her cousin’s accident to hergrandfather’s death by providing background information: her grandfather blamed himself for her cousin’s death as hehad allowed him to stay out longer (lines 51--56). This culminates in her account in line 58: und mein opa ist fast(.) geNAU auf den tag n jahr SPÄter gestOrben; (and my grandpa (died) almost exactly on that daya year later). During this utterance, Sina withdraws her gaze and looks sideways into space, while Isolde startsorienting to the table in order to put her glass back down. Towards the end of Sina’s utterance, Isolde starts frowning which,however, is presumably not perceived by Sina. Following this account, Sina continues to gaze into space, while Isolde orientsher gaze towards her glass on the table. This may explain why the pause in line 61 is not treated as disturbingly long. As soonas Isolde has finished her by-action of putting the glass back on the table, she produces the response cry + assessment: Achdu SCHEIße; (oh shit) in piano and breathy voice (line 62). While producing the utterance, she keeps her gazedownwards and starts tracing her eyebrows with her fingers. Sina continues to gaze into space. By using the response cry


‘ach + assessment’, Isolde shows, as in line 42 before, that she acknowledges the impact of the reported event and theaffective dimension possibly involved for the relatives, including the teller Sina. The latter confirms and reinforces this byproducing the token <<l> ʔhmhm, >(line 63), while nodding, gazing into space, and pushing her tongue under her lower lip asif to express sadness or concern. During the following 1.2 s pause, Sina keeps gazing into space, and Isolde continues totrace her eyebrows with her fingers. Sina then makes explicit that her grandfather’s death affected her emotionally more thanher cousin’s death (lines 65, 67, 68).

To sum up, both in lines 42 and 62, the recipient’s response cry + assessment occurs after the teller’s description of arelative’s death, and before the affective dimension caused by the reported events is made explicit lexico-semantically. Inthis specific sequential position, response cry + assessment show the recipient’s early orientation to the dramaticemotional impact the reported events must have had, which corresponds with the story’s preface to talk about ‘majorlosses’ (Sacks, 1995). As in the case of facial expressions above, the deployment of response cry + assessment leavesopen what exactly the recipient is orienting to:

2c) AG((Lin

visit

befor

11:58

093

094

095

096

097

098 099

By not discriminating between feelings that the teller associated with the event, and the sentiments the telling isarousing in the respondent, response cries evoke and claim a degree of empathic union and affiliation betweenteller and recipient.

(Heritage, 2011:176)

Response cry + assessment thus not only convey that the reported events in the story have been understood, but theycomment on the events described (Goffman, 1978) and the potential experiences and feelings associated with them, andthey encourage the ongoing telling activity (Goodwin, 1986).

4.3. Follow-up questions (in form of candidate understandings)

Another practice found in responses to affect-laden tellings are so-called ancillary questions (Heritage, 2011) or follow-up questions (Couper-Kuhlen, 2012a). Neither one of the practices has been described as empathic so far: ‘‘factual follow-up questions lack affiliation because they do not engage empathically with the display of affect the teller has made’’(Couper-Kuhlen, 2012a:126); similarly, Heritage writes about ancillary questioning: ‘‘at the point where an empathicresponse to the telling would be due, the recipient raises a somewhat related question about the matter’’ (Heritage,2011:164). Still, as shown in the aforementioned studies and as has become obvious in my data, follow-up questionsseem to have their place in affect-laden telling and some of them may well come off as empathic after all. Let us considerthe next part of Sina’s telling in order to illuminate possible functions of such a practice.

mT_01es 69 through 92 omitted: Sina tells that she was mad at her father because she was not allowed to

her grandfather in the hospital, as her parents wanted her to keep hi m in mind the way he was

e his stroke.))

Sin: und wenn ich das so SEhe ;

and when i look at that

dass das (also) der VAter von

that the father of

meinem VAter mit vier_n_fünzig

my father (died) at the age of fifty four

ja:hren verSTORben is,

(years) (died)

↓mein papa is jetz achtundVIERzi g;

my dad is now forty-eight (years old )

(-) ((Iso starts smiling, continues to look at Sin ))

Sin: |↓da gEht einem die MUFfe; ja: ,

|((nods strongl y, still gazing at table) )

you're scared stiff

Iso: |((smi les mildl y, still cu ppin g her hand i n her chin , looking at Sin) )

(1.5)((Sin makes a head movement fo rwar ds, presses her lip s togethe r, swallo ws))


100 Sin : und die sind sich SEHR Ähnlich ;

and they resemble each other a lot

101 (1 .2)( (Sin looks at the tabl e, Iso looks at Si n))

102 Sin : << < DIE sind sich crea k> SEHR Ähnlich ;>>

they resemble each other a lot

103 (1.0)( (Sin raises her upper lip, still gazes at table,

Iso still looks at Sin))

104 → Iso : einfach von (.) von ihrem WEsen her ,

just with regard to their character105 [ode r

or

106 Sin : [|von ihrem WEsen her ;

|((nods slightly) )

with regard to their character

107 ʔ (sind) h bEides U nglaublich AU F|brausend e

|((gaze at Iso) )

(they are) both incredibly quick-tempere d

charaktE:re;=

characters

108 =al(s)o mein Opa hat sich unglaublic h

so my grandpa (used to get upset) incredibl y

schnell geÄRgert;=

quickly (upset)

109 =mein VAter Ärgert sich schn Ell; =

my dad gets angry easily

110 =(sind) bEide ganz schnell Ausgerastet; =

they both snap(pe d) easil y

111 =ham bEide was mi_m HERzen ;

they both have a heart condition

112 (1 .1)

Sina has been talking about the circumstances of her grandfather’s death and compares her grandfather’s age when hepassed away with her father’s actual age (lines 93--95). During the pause in line 96, Isolde keeps her gaze directed at Sinaand starts to smile soothingly. Again, as shown in extracts (2a) and (2b), the recipient displays an ‘anticipatory affect’through facial expression, even before the actual affective dimension has been made explicit by the teller. This is whathappens next, as Sina states: ↓da gEht einem die MUFfe; ja:, (you’re scared stiff) (line 97). In the followingpause (line 99), Sina reinforces her emotive involvement nonverbally by pressing her lips together and swallowing whilemaking a head movement forwards (see picture 4). At the end of the pause, Isolde stops smiling. Sina then states that hergrandfather and her father resemble each other a lot (line 100), which is followed by a lengthy pause of 1.2s (line 101).Then, possibly due to a lack of uptake, she produces a quiet, but still accentuated repetition (line 102), again followed by alengthy pause (line 103). During this pause, Sina raises her upper lip, making interpretable how deeply worried she isabout her father. From lines 100 through 103 no mutual gaze is established between the participants. Sina looks at thetable in front of her; Isolde constantly looks in Sina’s direction, still cupping her hand in her chin. After Sina’s strong facialexpression of mouth wrinkling in line 103, Isolde elicits more information about the resemblance of Sina’s father andgrandfather: einfach von (.) von ihrem WEsen her, (just with regard to their character) (line 104). This isan affiliative candidate understanding (Antaki, 2012), suggesting one possible aspect of resemblance, yet to be confirmed bySina. Even though not explicitly orienting to Sina’s emotional situation, Isolde provides for Sina to elaborate more about hergrandfather and her father and what it is about their resemblance that makes her worry so much (lines 106--111). Accordingly,this type of follow-up question may not come off as empathic as other more explicit displays of understanding, butnevertheless, by offering a candidate understanding, the recipient shows her strong orientation to the problem, andseemingly asks the question in order to understand even better why Sina is so worried. This aiming at a better understandingof the other person’s emotive state by allowing him/her to elaborate on it in the course of the interaction has been described as‘Empathieangebot’ (empathy offer) (Pfänder and Gülich, 2013). It constitutes a fundamentally prosocial and interactively


Picture 4. AGmT_02_mid pause segment 99.

accomplished action. As a result of the empathy offer, on-topic talk continues (Maynard, 1980; Selting, 1995), thus emotivestates and/or the reasons for them can be made more explicit.5

4.4. Expressions with mental verbs

The practices discussed so far, such as raised eyebrows, response cries + assessments, and follow-up questions,have been shown to play an important role for displays of understanding in the course of an affect-laden telling. There are,however, practices which make understanding even more explicit, such as expressions with mental verbs. An examplewill be shown in the following extract, in which the circumstances of the grandfather’s death are elaborated (this extractfollows on immediately from 2c):

2d) AGmT_0112:21

113 und ähm ((smacks lips)) h

and uhm

114 ja; mein Opa hat halt im Endeffekt

yeah (well) in the end my grandpa

|zwei GIEßkannen im garten hOchgehoben; =

|((looking at Iso))

(lifted) two watering cans in the backyard (lifted )

115 =das war schon zu VIEL; =

that was already too much

116 Iso : =|`hm:´hm, =

|((nods slightly, still gazing at Sin) )

117 Sin : |das war zu VIEL; (. )

|((withdrawing her gaze))

that was too much

5 For psychotherapeutic interaction, follow-up questions have been shown to serve the purpose of diagnostic examination (Voutilainen,2012:245ff), which can be preceded or followed by more explicit empathic recognition of the patient’s experience.


well now i need a sho t

128 Sin : ((laughs out loud, grabs the fruit juice from the table) )

129 Iso : ja; dann (.) GEH doch mal in die

well then go to the

kÜche und <<smilin g> HOL |einen ;>

|((grabs her cup) )

kitchen and get on e

130 Sin : <<

<<

smile voic e> nee_ch HAB kEinen;>no i don’t have any

131 p> (ch_hab nur W EIN; )>

i only have wine

132 → Iso : [|nee; n_Aber das (.) das verSTEH ich totAl; (-)

|((holding her cup in front of her, looking at it) )

no but that tha t I understand completel y

133 h äh (. )

uhm

134 Sin : also [DA ging des lO:s; ne, =

i mean that’s when it started, right

135 Iso : [( X )

118 Iso : ja ;

yeah

119 Sin : und da is ihm äh: (1 .1 wiping her eyes)

and so uh m

(ne) Ader im gehirn geplAtzt;

a blood vessel in his brain ruptured (aneurysm)

120 und dann (1 .2) <<all, al l> wars das; =

and then that was it

121 =wenn sie ihn noch in ne richtig e

if they had (taken) him to the right

KLInik geflogen hätten;=

clinic (taken )

122 =und nich in HALberstadt im krAnkenhau s-=

and not to the hospital in Halberstadt

123 =( X X )wir wissen Auch nich was

we don’t know what‘s

mit ihm LOS is-=

wrong with him

124 =|würd_er vielleicht noch LEben ;>

|((orienting her gaze away from Iso) )

he might still be alive

125 (3 .1) ((Sin takes a sip, gazes into space) )

126 Iso : |hmhm ,

|((cupping her chin in her hand, looking at Iso) )

127 Sin : |<< t> ʔ so; jetz (will ich) n SCHNAPS;>

|((putting down her cup) )

Sina reports the circumstances of her grandfather’s death (lines 113--120), and concludes that he might still be alive if hehad been taken to another hospital (lines 121--124). In line 124, Sina orients her gaze away from Isolde. In the following


3.1 s pause, she takes a sip of her coffee. One could argue that due to the withdrawal of gaze and the sipping movement,no immediate uptake is made relevant (compare e.g. lines 13ff where the establishment of mutual gaze towards the end ofthe utterance makes an immediate uptake relevant). It is after the sipping movement that Isolde utters a quiet recipiencytoken (line 126). However, there is evidence in the following sequences that this uptake is somehow insufficient.

In line 127, a shift in modality from seriousness/sadness to joviality occurs, introduced by Sina herself: <<t> ʔ so;jetz (will ich) n SCHNAPS;> (well now i need a shot). The low pitch register in line 127 as well as the snortinglaughter in line 128 mark these utterances as bitter but jovial, and thus constitute an abrupt shift away from the formerdramatic and serious telling (Müller, 1983). By shifting the focus from the story world to the need for a drink in the here andnow, Sina shows her emotive involvement related to the events described. Needing a schnaps is a rhetorical device fromwhich sadness and/or agitation can be inferred. Isolde in return, in line 129, orients to this shift from the seriousness of thestory world to the bitter-sweetness of the here and now, and confirms it by suggesting that Sina go to the kitchen to get adrink. She finishes her utterance with a smiling voice, indicating that she acknowledges and goes along with this jokingmode. Sina stays in this joking mode in line 130, realized with smiling voice, and in line 131, realized in piano voice andwith lax articulation, already indicating a possible sequence end. Evidence for the interpretation that lines 127 through 131are treated by the participants as an insert sequence can be seen in line 132 when Isolde -- in overlap with 131 --reestablishes a serious interaction mode, orienting to the problem telling before the insert sequence: nee; n_Aber das(.) das verSTEH ich totAl; (no but that that I understand completely). The change in interaction modeback to seriousness is established by using a ‘no but’ format and a ‘serious’ voice. The use of English ‘no’ for marking atransition from non-serious to serious has been described by Schegloff (2001). The function of ‘but’ seems to becomparable to the Dutch resumption marker ‘maar’ described by Mazeland and Huiskes (2001). ‘Maar’ can be used as amarker to return to an activity that has been abandoned due to a competing line of talk. However, in contrast to theresumptions described by Mazeland and Huiskes (2001), it is in this case not the teller who recycles the last unit of theabandoned activity in order to provide for its continuation, but the recipient who refocuses the abandoned line of talk as if toprovide a ‘still missing’ response and/or evaluation of the reported events. In line 132, Isolde produces the response whichwas suspended in line 125. Thus, in line 132, Isolde herself orients back to the previous serious storytelling activity,treating her former reaction to Sina’s dramatic telling as incomplete by providing an explicit claim of understanding.

The format ‘anaphoric ‘das’ (that) + mental verb + ‘ich’ (I)’ has frequently been found in responses to affect displays:‘das versteh ich’ (I understand it), ‘das kann ich mir vorstellen’ (i can imagine that), ‘das glaub ich’ (i believe it). The latter isdiscussed in Kupetz (2013). What is striking about these forms is that they can occur in response to affect displays withpositive valence as well as to affect displays with negative valence (see discussion). However, even though they makeunderstanding lexico-semantically relevant, they are still only a means of claiming understanding; the claim may needreinforcement through a specific prosodic package or further substantial accounts in order to come off as affect-oriented.Such ‘substantial’ accounts may take the form of formulations or second stories, as will be shown in the following.

4.5. Formulations

Formulations have been described in ethnomethodological and conversation analytic research as practices used byparticipants to make an explicit point about where-we-are-now-in-the-conversation. One participant puts previous talk intowords, thereby pinpointing the upshot or gist of it, and, at the same time, transforming it by selecting certain parts anddeleting others. Such formulations are then open for ratification and/or negotiation in third position (see e.g. Heritage andWatson, 1979, 1980; Drew, 1998; Antaki, 2008).

A similar practice can be found in the continuation of our telling:

2e) AGmT_01132 → Iso : [|nee; n_Aber da s (.) das verSTEH ich totAl; (-)

|((holding her cup in front of her, looking at it) )

no but that that I understand completel y

133 h äh (. )

uhm

134 Sin : |also [DA ging des lO:s; ne, =

|((pouring juice into her glass))

so that’s when it started, righ t

135 Iso : [( X )

136 Sin : =<<di m> also so > (--)so like


137 Iso : JA ;

yeah

138 → n oKAY; das also so die rIchtigen (. )

alright, that well so like the (first) really

KRASsen Ersten verlUste;

bad (first) losses

139 KLA:R ;

sure

After her resumptive remark in line 132 (discussed above), Isolde produces a turn-holding signal and a micro pause in line133, which Sina uses in order to come in and produce her own resumptive remark: also DA ging des lO:s; ne,= (sothat’s when it started, right) (line 134). Deppermann shows that German ‘also’-prefaced formulations are usuallya kind of a so-called notionalization, which ‘‘consists in the transformation of a description by a prior speaker into acategorization by the next speaker’’ (Deppermann, 2011:155). Interestingly, in our case, after the recipient’s generaldisplay of understanding (line 132), it is the teller herself who produces an ‘also’-prefaced summary (line 134). Theutterance is equivocal as to whether it indicates the termination of the telling or projects a continuation. The proform ‘da’ isa deictic device making reference to the temporal frame of the telling and could be paraphrased as ‘at the time whengrandpa died’. The reference of the proform ‘des’ (it) is less specified; at this point in interaction it is not yet made explicitwhat started. Sina herself seems to make an attempt to specify it in line 136 by initiating a next unit with ‘also so’ (so like),projecting a (noun) phrase that summarizes previous talk and/or specifies ‘des’ (Deppermann, 2011). But the turn-initiation is realized with diminuendo voice and a pause occurs afterwards, so Isolde can smoothly take the floor (line 137)and produce the projected summary by specifying ‘des’: n oKAY; das also so die rIchtigen (.) KRASsen ErstenverlUste; (alright, that well so like the first really bad losses) (line 138). The hesitation markers ‘yes’and ‘n okay’ may indicate that Isolde’s undertaking to summarize the story so far and formulate the gist of it is potentiallyrisky, as she is entering Sina’s territory sequentially -- by finishing her turn -- and epistemically -- by assessing Sina’s losswith the extreme case formulation ‘krass’. One could argue that this is merely a repetition of Sina’s former story preface:

(repe tition ex. 2a )005 Sin : also (-) wenn man jetz wIrklich ma von

so if you really talk about

verLUSten spricht, (--)

losses

006 ↓GROße verlUste ,

major losses

However, by using the extreme case formulation ‘krass’ and specifying the losses as ‘the first really bad losses’,
Isolde shows that she is not only repeating the former projection, but that she is putting into words the dramatic emotionalimpact that the reported events must have had on Sina.6 At this point in the interaction, when a formulation of where-we-are-in-the-interaction is jointly produced by both participants, intersubjectivity is made explicit.7
4.6. Second stories/analogies

Second stories have been described by Sacks (1995:3ff) as a way of showing understanding and agreement with thepoint made in the first story, and as a means for finishing a first story (Mandelbaum, 2013:504f). This is a resource thatIsolde now uses in response to Sina’s telling:

2f) AGmT_01((Segments 140-160 left out: Sina reports that one would think that the oldest family members would

pass away first, but that things happened quite differently in her famil y. An insert sequence follows

in segments 154-160 where Sina offers more juice to Isolde.))

6 She might also be indicating that she grasps the difference between the emotional import of the loss of childhood friends talked about earlierand the loss of deceased family members as just described by Sina.

7 Note that formulations do not have an empathic import per se, see e.g. formulations in news interviews (Heritage, 1985) and formulations inpsychotherapy (Antaki, 2008; Voutilainen, 2010).


h ver!STAN!den ( 1.3)

(understood)

171 ↓dass er halt jetz WEG is ;

that he is gone now

172 |o:der oder was das üb erhaupt beDEUtet; =

or even what it actually mean s

173 Sin : |((nods slightly) )

174 Iso : =wenn jemand STIRBT; =

when someone dies

175 Sin : =hmhm, =

((…))

161 (3.0) ((Sin scre ws the lid o f the juice bottl e back o n,

Iso puts her glass on the table) )

162 Iso : < also als MEIN opa |gestorben (-- -) i: s->

|((still cu ppin g her chin in her hand, gazing into spac e))

well when my grandpa die d

163 (1 .2) ((Iso gazes into space, Sin puts juice bottle on the floor))

164 →

→

Iso: < da da hAb ich das irgendwie noch gar nich so

at the time i somehow didn’t

richtig verSTANden;>

really understand

165 (-- -)

166 [da war ich zwar schon in_ner SCHUle un [alles ,

at the time i was already in school and everything

167 Sin : [((sobs) )

168 Sin : [hmhm ,

169 (--)

170 Iso : < aber ich hab ü berhAupt nic h>

but i didn’t really understand at al l

In this second story, the teller takes the same position the teller of the first story took in her story, that is to say, as Sina toldthe story of her grandfather’s death from a granddaughter’s perspective, Isolde now tells about her grandfather’s death inthe same way. Interestingly, there is a slight change in the reporting of experience and thus in the emotive involvementwith the events described. Whereas Sina reported her grandfather’s death as a dramatic event that affected her greatly(compare ex. 2b, lines 65--68), Isolde reports her grandfather’s death as an event that she could hardly grasp at the time(lines 164, 170ff.).8

To sum up, as second stories shift the focus from the experiential world of speaker A to the experiential world ofspeaker B, they seem to be the structurally ‘last’ resource for displaying empathy in a problem telling. As understanding isdisplayed and the emotive involvement of the person is legitimized, one can ‘go on’, and a shift of focus from theexperiential world of A to the experiential world of B is adequate (Jefferson, 1988; Arminen, 2004; Selting, 2012).9

8 One could argue that in a setting in which participants are asked to talk about loss in their lives, it is not surprising that second stories occur inwhich comparable losses by the recipient are addressed. That such practices are indeed also used in non-experimental everyday conversationsis shown below in example (3) which stems from a recording for which no topics were imposed.

9 This practice making analogue experiences relevant may be typical in everyday interaction among friends or in specific interactional contextssuch as meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous (Arminen, 2004), where the exchange of personal experiences constitutes the institutional goal, or itmay occur in specific conditions in personal health care visits (Heritage and Lindström, 2012). However, in many other institutional contexts suchas radio phone-ins, psychotherapy or doctor--patient-interaction, second stories may not be treated as an adequate response to tellings withemotional import, as the focus shift to the personal experience possibly conflicts with the institutional role of being a show host, being apsychotherapist or being a doctor (Ruusuvuori, 2005).


Table 1Overall sequential organization of Sina’s story.

Lin es Story phase Main res ponse type10 Moda lity

01-22 (ex. 2a) introduction, naming o f ‘major’ losses, ass essment

facial expression (ra ised eyebr ows, dropped corne r’s o f the mouth)

kinetic‘fleeting’

23-68 (ex. 2b) explication of circumsta nces o f t he cousin’s death, leading to grandfat her’s d eath

facial e xpress ion + response cry + a ssessment

69-93

(not shown)

complaint that she was not allowed to visit her grandfat her in th e hospital

93-112 (ex. 2c) comparison o f/p arallels between fat her and grandfat her

follow- up-q uestion

113-139 (ex. 2d,e)

(incl. insert sequence 127-131)

explication of t he grandfat her’s d eath

expression with menta l verb (e. g. ‚d as ver ste h ich’ (th at I understand),formulat ion

140-161

(not shown)

general concluding remark that in her family it’s n ot the oldest family members who pass away first

162-182 (ex. 2f) second sto ry verb al ‘substa ntial’

5. Intermediate discussion I

It must be stressed that none of the practices described in the present paper is inherently empathic. If these practicesfulfil the function of displaying empathy, it is due to the sequential contingencies in the telling of an experience (Couper-Kuhlen, 2012a; Selting, 2012). In other sequential environments these practices may have completely different functions.For English, e.g. it has been shown that the particle ‘oh’ can function either as a display of disappointment or as a display ofsympathy, depending on whether it occurs in rejection contexts or in news delivery sequences (Couper-Kuhlen, 2009);low-falling and tailed ‘ah’ can serve as a display of empathy in troubles receipts or as a display of sympathy in response tobad news (Reber, 2012); formulations have been shown to fulfil the functions of provoking a controversy, checkingunderstanding, or offering a compromise, depending on the institutional context in which they are used (Drew, 1998,2003), and even within the same interactional context, e.g. psychotherapy, they have been shown to fulfil severalfunctions (Antaki, 2008; Weiste and Peräkylä, 2013). As Selting (2012) shows, deploying a second story -- and thusshifting the focus from participant A to participant B -- may be treated as entirely non-affiliative when it occurs too early inan affect-laden complaint story. Thus, for each practice it needs to be kept in mind that is not empathic per se, but that itcan have its empathic impact within a specific sequential position.

All the resources described in examples 2a--2f have also been found in other tellings of personal experiences; it is theirco-occurrence in one single problem telling which is quite exceptional. However, their co-occurrence in this lengthyexample allows us to build a hypothesis concerning the sequential contingencies of empathy displays, and theinteractional logic regarding the order in which these resources are used.

In Table 1, the sequential unfolding of Sina’s telling is summarized. The development of the response types fromimmediate, kinetic responses to more substantial verbal responses becomes obvious (Table 1).10

This exemplary case suggests a hypothesis about the orderliness of empathic response types: there seems to be apreference for the ordering of response types from immediate, fleeting kinetic ones first to fleeting vocal ones next to more

10 Recipiency tokens such as ‘hm_hm,’ (and variants) are not explicitly dealt with in this study. They would require a separate, more thoroughinvestigation.


substantial verbal ones last. Preference here refers to principles which participants follow in the progression through aspecific multi-package activity (Jefferson, 1988; Pomerantz and Heritage, 2013), which is the affect-laden telling ofpersonal experiences (on preference and affectivity in rejection contexts see Couper-Kuhlen, 2012b).

Minimal responses such as facial expressions and response cries tend to occur in the beginning of a telling asimmediate recognition of the affective dimension involved in the telling. Response cries have been shown ‘‘to evoke andclaim a degree of empathic union and affiliation between the teller and recipient. These positive advantagesnotwithstanding, response cries normally pave the way for more propositional and substantive forms of understandingand affiliation’’ (Heritage, 2011:176; see also Couper-Kuhlen, 2012a: for the relevance of prosodic matching). Ihypothesize that the fleeting character and need for substantial reinforcement not only applies to response cries, but alsoto facial expressions. Furthermore, it has become clear that more ‘substantial’ forms may be expressions with mentalverbs, formulations, or second stories. It seems that the longer the problem telling is, the more lexicalized theunderstanding display needs to be. This observation goes in line with Stivers’ (2008) observations on nodding instorytelling: in mid-position, nods are treated as adequate resources to display affiliation with the teller, whereas in finalposition, more elaborate responses are made relevant. The structure of the resources observed here fits in neatly withFiehler’s ‘Anteilnahmemuster’, tanslated as sympathy pattern (1990:150ff; Fiehler, 2002).11 He demonstrates thatthematizations of positive or negative experiences are typically taken up by a number of response types which can beallocated to at least one component of the pattern: (i) acknowledgement of the singularity of the experience, (ii) demonstrationof believe and legitimization, (iii) expression of empathy/feeling for the other (‘Mitleidsbekundung’/’Bekundung desMitempfindens’), (iv) further exploration of the experience, (v) expression of compassion or advice-giving. The detailedanalysis of examples 2a--2f accounts for the multimodal resources which can constitute the pattern’s components(for comparison see also Jefferson, 1988).

In the present study, the sequential organization of empathic response types has been described for story tellings. Yet,recent research suggests that such a preference structure may also hold on a smaller scale for similar responses in othersocial activities. Reber (2012:179ff) for example shows that the English sound object ah used in response to troublesinformings or deliveries of bad news is often followed by further talk such as assessments or explicit expressions ofsympathy, which substantiates the sound object’s affective orientation (to empathy or sympathy).

6. Further evidence for the sequential orderliness of empathic response types

I will provide further examples of responses to affect-laden tellings of personal experiences in order to show that thepreference structure described, the responses’ orderliness from ‘less’ and ‘fleeting’ to ‘more’ and ‘enduring’, is a recurrentphenomenon. In example (3), Roland (Rol) has only recently moved into a new shared accommodation for five flat mates.Andrea (And), an acquaintance of Roland, asks Roland whether he has already settled into the new apartment, andRoland makes explicit that he finds it hard to feel at home, because there are so many people in the shared flat and hedoes not have a feeling for the other people yet. While his first account is responded to by an expression containing amental verb, his second -- further dramatized -- account is responded to by an expression with a mental verb and a secondstory which makes an analogue experience relevant. After this explicit recognition and legitimization of the problem,intersubjectivity with regard to the ‘affective’ dimension of settling into a new flat is explicitly achieved:

3a) LoE_ VG_08_ sha red acc ommodati on 30:04

038 → Rol : also es is für mich totAl SCHWIErig;

so it is really difficult for me

039 WEIL °hh ich vorher immer mit leuten zusammen=

because before i always ( ) with people

040 =ich hab immer nur in ZWEIer we ges gewohnt,

i’ve only shared accommodation with one other person

((11 lines omitted: explication of the problem))

30:19

052 → Rol : |un_dis is natürlich KRASS; (-)[irgendwo;

|((gazing at An d))

and that’s extreme of course someho w

11 Note that the term sympathy here can be understood in the (broad) sense of solicitousness. Fiehler has a more narrow conception ofexpressions of empathy in the sense of ‘I know how you must feel’ (1990:153).


056 (0.4) ((gaz es into space) )

057 → |[< ja ;_dis GLAU B ich ;>|((gazing into spac e))

yes-PTCL thi s-ACC *believ e*-PRS i

yeah i believe i t

058 → Rol : [< echt nich > |(1.5 )

really not

And: |((gazing at Ro l))

Rol: EINfach ;

easy

059 And : |[hm: :-

|((gazing into space))

hm

060 Rol : [und dazU natürlich der hohe ANspruch,

and of course also the high expectations

061 also die hohe di e_die idee der geMEINschaft,

the ideal of a community

((further explication of the problem) )

053 And : |[< hm_hm,>|(( nodding slightly))

hm hm

054 (1.5)((And nods slightly a few times) )

055 And : << pp> hm :->

hm

In lines 38--51, Roland explicates that he is having a hard time due to the fact that he has never lived with so manypeople before and that he ‘does not have a feeling yet for the people’. Following this explication of the problem, hemakes a strong assessment (line 52) using the extreme case formulation krass (Pomerantz, 1986). In overlap with theincrement which follows this assessment, Andrea produces a quiet recipiency token and nods slightly (line 53). Theseslight nods continue in the following 1.5 s pause; however, Andrea breaks off eye contact and then utters anotherbarely audible recipiency token in segment 55. After a further short pause she produces in overlap with Roland <ja;_dis GLAUB ich;> (yeah i believe it) (line 57). This utterance is realized in a piano voice, and Andrea’sgaze is directed into space. No eye contact is established with Roland. Syntactically, the utterance has the sameformat as the expressions with mental verbs described in example (2d): ‘anaphoric ‘das’ (that) + mental verb + ‘ich’ (I)‘. In thiscase, it follows the unstressed particle ‘yes’ which indicates responsivity and approval (Auer and Uhmann, 1982; Meer,2009). In segment 58, in overlap with line 57, Roland reinforces the problems by using the summary assessment: echtnich (1.5) EINfach; (really not easy), thereby treating Andrea’s previous responses (nods, recipiency tokens,gaze into space) as insufficient. The subdued realization, and the long intra-turn pause, as well as the downwardsdirected gaze contextualize Roland’s situation as problematic; he thus makes his emotionally difficult situationinteractionally relevant.

Obviously, by using the expression ja;_dis GLAUB ich; (yeah i believe it), Andrea claims understanding on alexico-semantic level (Sacks, 1995); however, the delayed realization in piano voice, and the lack of mutual gaze does notseem to be an adequate ‘packaging’ to display understanding in the sense of ‘I’m with you’. Evidence for this interpretationis shown by the teller himself, who continues with a further dramatization of his (emotional) situation by explicating anothertroublesome aspect of living together (Jefferson, 1978):

3b) LoE_ VG_08_ sha red acc ommodati on 30:52

077 Rol : =aber (.) °hh wobei dieses Extra daraufHINzielen,

but aiming on purpose a t

078 dieses (.) sich [(.) zuSAMmen zu rücken,

closing ranks


((16 lines omitted))

31:29

105 → And : aber ich brauch auc h Imme r

but i myself also always nee d

106 also bei mir liegts vIel auch an den RÄUmen ;

well in my case it often also depends on the rooms

107 in denen ich BIN;

that i am in

108 °h wenn ich irgendwo UMzieh in_in neue rÄume,

when i move somewhere i nto new room s

109 dann BRAUCH ich erst mal ne zeit;

then i need some time at first

110 mich dadran zu geWÖHnen; auch ;

to get used to them too

111 (0.9) ( (gazes at Ro l))

112 un_un irgendwie (.) mich da auch HEImisch zu fühlen;

and to feel at home someho w

113 Rol : (1.9) ((swallows)) h° ((sniffs))

114 → And : und mit neuen MENschen halt genAuso;_joa ;

and it’s the same with new people yeah

115 (0.7) ( (mutual gaze establishe d))

079 And : |[< hm_hm ,>

|((nodding slightly))

hm hm

080 Rol : und zuSAMmen zu Arbeiten ,

and at working together

081 und [diese geMEINschaft zu ähm:: pff (.) hh°

and at uhm (creating) a community

082 And : [< hm_hm ,>

hm hm

Rol: (-) zu schaffen ,

(creating)

083 → Rol : |<<t> dis is ECHT nicht Einfach. >

|((gazing at his plat e))

this really isn’t easy

084 And : << t> hm_hm ,>

hm hm

085 (2.1) ((And nods slightly,

Rol gazes at his plate and spoons his sou p))

086 → |< ja_nee;_dis G LAUB ich ;> (-)

|((gazi ng into spac e))

yes-PTCL n o-PTCL thi s-ACC *believ e*-PRS i

yeah i believe it

087 → °h wenn ich überLEG,

when i think about it

088 bei MIR in we ges ,

in my shared accommodations


In segment 83, the teller Roland produces an assessment in which he emphasizes the emotional import of his problem bystressing the particle ‘echt’ (really). The utterance is produced with a downward gaze to his plate.12 Thus, the followingminimal response token (line 84) and the long pause (line 85) do not come off as problematic, as Roland appears to beoriented to his meal. Andrea’s following utterance < ja_nee;_dis GLAUB ich;> (yeah i believe it) (line 86) isrealized in piano voice, and her gaze is directed into space. No eye contact is established with Roland. After a short pause,Andrea makes the process of constructing a comparable situation explicit by using a typical entry device for secondstories (Jefferson, 1978; Arminen, 2004): 8h wenn ich überLEG, (when i think about it) / bei MIR in we ges,(in my shared accommodations) (lines 87f). Andrea then recounts that in her case, she usually ‘got a feeling for herroommates after a while’. The report of a deviant case, in which she moved in with a friend and thus already knew herroommate well (lines 89--104) is not shown. In line 105, she returns to her experience, which is actively constructed asanalogue to Roland’s experience. By using the adverb ‘auch’ (also), Andrea shows that she can relate to his difficulties.However, she shifts the problem from the people who are hard to get used to, to the room, which she always needs time toget used to before feeling at home. In line 114, she makes the analogy explicit: just like she needs to get used to newrooms, Roland needs to get used to new people. At this point, Roland’s difficult emotional situation is explicitly recognized.It is striking that in this situation, Andrea and Roland do establish mutual gaze. The earlier expression ‘dis glaub ich’ (Ibelieve it) claims understanding, but no eye contact is established. The later more substantial analogy explicitly showsthat the recipient has analyzed the former story (Sacks, 1995:253) and is responding to it by making comparableexperiences relevant, and thus displaying empathy, ‘building empathic union’ (Heritage and Lindström, 2012). At this pointmutual gaze is established. In the course of the interaction, once the problem and the resulting emotional difficulties arerecognized and legitimized, the teller acknowledges and ratifies the display of understanding, so that intersubjectivity isexplicitly demonstrated at this point in interaction. He then downgrades his problem and concludes that it will improve inthe future. Together, the participants conclude this troubles telling episode with what has been described by Jefferson(1988) as optimistic projection and making light of the trouble. The second story, recognizing the affective dimension of thefirst story, and shifting the focus from the experiential world of one participant to the other participant, is thus thestructurally ‘last’ and most substantial resource when responding to an affect-laden (first) telling of a personal experience.

The next extract provides an example for the progression of responses from ‘less’ to ‘more’ on a somewhat smallerscale. For the sake of brevity, I will concentrate on two responses. Judith is telling her friend Carina about having spent aweekend with her friend Herbert in a cottage at the Baltic Sea. Apparently, Judith had been with the guy before, but theirrelationship had deteriorated. After this weekend, Judith’s relationship with Herbert is close but still somehow undefined.

4) AGmT_ 01_Baltic Sea26:11

002 Jud : und das war !ECHT! (--) rIchtig SCHÖN mit dem ;

and it was really absolutely nice with him

003 das war einfach to TA:L entspAnnt; so ;

it was just really relaxed somehow

004 (0 .9)

005 → Car : < kann ich mir VORstellen ;>

can i myself imaginei can imagine

006 (1 .2) ((Car gazes at Jud, smiles) )

((Carina asks what role this evening/this weekend plays for Judith’s relationship with the guy.

Judith states that she knows that this question needs to be asked, but that she does not have an

answer yet.) )

037 Jud : h also (-- -) weiß AUCH nich wo das

i mean i don’t know either where this

grade hErkommt; =

is coming from just now

038 =|<< f> aber s_Is ha lt irgendwie auch s o

|((rubbing her cheek, gazing upwards))

but it’s just somehow lik e

12 In face-to-face interaction, tellings of problematic experiences often seem to be accomplished without mutual gaze, as the experiencer tendsto gaze downwards (cf. ex. 3, lines 83ff, and ex. 2c, lines 97ff.) This phenomenon awaits more research.


039 → Car : < na ihr tUt euc h GUT; ne ,>

well you’re good for each other you kno w

040 (-- -)

041 → Jud : |JA: ;

|((rubbing her cheek, gazing upwards) )

yes

042 (2 .1)

043 |<<p,al l> auf jEden FALL ;>

|((rubbing her cheek, gazing at Ca r))

definitel y

After a lengthy description of the cottage itself and of the evening she spent with her friend (not shown), Judith concludeswith an assessment (lines 2f): und das war !ECHT! (--) rIchtig SCH ÖN mit dem;/ das war einfach toTA:LentspAnnt; so; (and it was really absolutely nice with him/ it was just really relaxed somehow).Carina responds to this positive assessment with an expression containing a mental verb: < kann ich mirVORstellen;> (i can imagine) (line 5). This utterance functions as a claim of understanding, similar to ‘observer’sresponses’, through which ‘‘recipients claim imaginary access to the events and experiences described, but positionthemselves as observers’’ (Heritage, 2011:171). In the subsequent course of the interaction, Judith and Carina discussthis evening’s significance or consequence for Judith’s relationship with Herbert. Judith points out that she does not havean answer yet to this question (not shown). She concludes in line 37: 8h also (---) weiß AUCH nich wo das gradehErkommt; (i mean i don’t know either where this is coming from just now). In line 38, Judith cuts offanother attempt to explicate her situation. She shows many signs of uncertainty: hedging, rubbing her cheek, gazingupwards. At this point Carina comes in with a formulation: < na ihr tUt euch GUT; ne,> (well you’re good foreach other you know) (line 39). This ascription of how Judith and Herbert relate to each other and make each otherfeel good is designed as a candidate understanding which calls for ratification from the experiencer. Even though Judithstill keeps her ‘thinking face’ (Goodwin and Goodwin, 1986) by gazing upwards and rubbing her cheek, she provides aclear affirmation (line 41) and further reinforcement (line 43). Thus, by using a formulation, Carina exhibits a specificunderstanding of Judith’s (and Herbert’s) emotional situation, which is in this form accepted and confirmed by Judithherself. Example 4 thus provides further evidence that there is a preference from less substantial types of responses,here an expression with a mental verb claiming understanding, to more substantial forms, here a formulation exhibitingunderstanding.

7. Intermediate discussion II

With regard to the work of Eisenberg and Fabes (1990), Heritage describes an empathic response as ‘‘an affectiveresponse that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another’s emotional state or condition’’ (2011:161). Iwould like to explain briefly why it may be useful to distinguish the notions apprehension and comprehension. In thediscussion of the literature and in the analysis, it has become obvious that empathic responses vary a lot, (a) withregard to their mode (whether verbal, vocal, and/or kinetic) (see e.g. Stivers and Sidnell, 2005; Deppermann andSchmitt, 2007), (b) with regard to their length, and (c) with regard to their explicitness in terms of their orientation toaffectivity or understanding both on the teller’s and on the recipient’s side. A response cry such as ‘Ach du SCHEIße’(oh shit) may show an orientation to the teller’s affective situation, and also the recipient’s emotive involvement,whereas a substantial verbal response such as ‘ich mErke dass es dir SEHR schlecht geht; SEElisch;’ (I realize/noticethat you’re having a hard time mentally/emotionally) shows the recipient’s orientation to the teller’s emotional situation,and makes her own understanding explicit in cognitive terms. In order to account for the different types of resourceswhich can be used to display empathy in social interaction, it may be useful to conceptualize empathy displays not onlyas displays of understanding the other person’s emotional situation, but as displays that range from -- more affect-oriented -- apprehension to -- more cognition-oriented -- comprehension. These terms may be seen to be somewhatempirical, interactional correlates to affective empathy and cognitive empathy as described e.g. in (counselling)psychology and psychotherapy (Duan and Hill, 1996). Yet, such a conceptual dichotomy does neither account for thevariety of resources found in responses to tellings of personal experiences, nor does it account for the complexity ofparticipants’ orientations described above. From an interactional perspective it is of special interest to reveal these(possibly blurred) participants’ orientations, as they are constantly re-negotiated in the unfolding of the sequence.


Table 2Practices for displays of empathy on an apprehension--comprehension continuum.

apprehe nsion compre hension

facial expression

respon se cr ies (+ ass ess ments)

follow-up question s(in form of c and . underst.)

expressio ns wit h men tal verbs

formu lation s

second s tories

Seq

uent

ial u

nfol

ding

Table 2 provides an attempt to account for the different types of resources which can be used in responses to affectdisplays in order to display empathy (Table 2).13

The disadvantage of such a table is that it locks each practice into a specific spot on the apprehension--comprehensioncontinuum and that it does not account for possible interactional modifications: e.g. an expression such as ‘dis glaub ich’ (Ibelieve it) with a specific prosodic package may be interpreted as a strong orientation to the affectivity in play. Thepossibility of such modifications needs to be kept in mind.

The relevance of prosody is also pointed out by Hepburn and Potter (2007, 2012). In their studies of crying receipts,they suggest differentiating between sympathic receipts and empathic receipts. The former are non-propositional,realized with sympathic prosody, i.e. higher pitch, increased breathiness, stretched and creaky delivery (2012:205): ‘‘Thistype of sympathetically inflected turn acknowledges the feelings of the other, without topicalizing them or going on therecord with propositional content’’ (Hepburn and Potter, 2012:204). Empathic receipts on the other hand are propositionaland involve ‘‘‘on the record’ claims of, or displays of, understanding of the other’s perspective’’ (Hepburn and Potter,2012). As it remains unresolved whether ‘empathic’ receipts and ‘sympathic’ receipts are oriented to as distinct by theparticipants, I suggest locating such ‘sympathic’ receipts on the ‘apprehension’ side, and ‘empathic’ receipts on the‘comprehension’ side of the continuum of empathy displays. Ruusuvuori (2005), in her study of homoeopathic and generalpractice consultations, uses the terms empathy and sympathy somewhat differently. She illustrates that ‘‘the participantsshowed an orientation to the importance of differentiating between understanding (‘empathy’), and sharing (‘sympathy’) inthe professional-client relationship’’ (Ruusuvuori, 2005:220, emphasis in original), where sharing experiences wasaccomplished through a second story.14 In that sense, as second stories both exhibit an understanding of prior talk andshift the focus from the teller’s experiential world to the recipient’s experiential world, they seem (a) to constitute aninteresting practice in-between the poles of apprehension and comprehension, and (b) to constitute a form of affiliationwhich moves away from ‘pure’ empathy.15

8. Final conclusions

In this paper, I investigated responses to affect-laden tellings of personal experiences in German everyday interaction.Empathy was conceived of as a display of understanding of the other person’s emotional situation and it was shown how

13 Note that I am not suggesting that apprehension and comprehension are participants’ categories. These are analytic terms to account for thediversity of the phenomena observed.14 Independently of the interactional contexts studied, showing that participants actually orient to the categories empathy and sympathy asdistinct, and investigating what it is that constitutes these distinct categories remains a challenge in conversation analytic research. Another routeto follow might be the valence of the affect responded to. As briefly mentioned above, expressions with mental verbs can occur in response totellings with positive affect displays as well as to tellings with negative affect displays. I suggest this might be a starting point in trying todisentangle forms of displays of empathy and of displays of sympathy from a participant’s perspective by revealing which resources are used ingeneral to display understanding of the other person’s emotional situation whether positive or negative, and which resources are used in specific,e.g. problematic, affect-laden sequences which, besides displays of understanding, also make comforting or being compassionate -- thusdisplays of sympathy (?) -- relevant.15 Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to me.


these displays evolve in interaction over time. The following response types have been described as possible practicesto display empathy in everyday interaction: facial expressions, facial expressions + response cries + assessments,follow-up questions (in the form of a candidate understanding), expressions with mental verbs (possibly in a specificprosodic package), formulations, second stories. In order to account for the different types of resources, I suggestedconceptualizing empathy not only as displays of understanding of the other person’s emotional situation, but as displaysthat range from -- more affect-oriented -- apprehension to -- more cognition-oriented -- comprehension. Furthermore,based on a detailed account of one lengthy telling and analyses of comparable instances, I hypothesized that there is apreference structure for the ordering of response types in the progression of affect-laden tellings of personalexperiences: from immediate fleeting kinetic responses first, to fleeting vocal ones next, to more substantial verbal oneslast.

The list of practices dealt with in this paper is not comprehensive. Previous research on empathy in everydayinteraction in English has focused on verbal and vocal resources (Heritage, 2011), and on the role of prosodicmatching and/or upgrading with regard to prior talk (Couper-Kuhlen, 2012a). A recent case study on German everydayinteraction has shown that so-called empathy offers are important interactional resources, that allow for theexperiencer to elaborate on his emotional situation in order to be better understood (Pfänder and Gülich, 2013). Thesestudies indicate that the palette of resources which are possibly interpreted as empathic by participants is vast andawaits further investigation. Future research may reveal further practices, e.g. the reduction of physical distance,touching, co-constructions (Hepburn and Potter, 2007), and/or provide more detailed accounts of each of thepractices, e.g. with regard to the holistic gestalt of substantial responses: How are they realized/modifiedprosodically? Which kinetic resources are coordinated with them? ‘‘Integrating analyses of several modalities, such asgaze, gesture and body posture, in particular sequential locations in a systematic way, would considerably contributeto our knowledge on the specific ways in which different modalities figure in displaying affect in relation to spokenaction’’ (Ruusuvuori, 2013:348).

In this paper, I have focused on data from German everyday interaction; other interaction contexts have onlybeen dealt with in passing. In the future, it would be worthwhile to consider e.g. comprehensive Finnish studies ondifferent types of health care encounters (see e.g. Vehviläinen et al., 2008; Ruusuvuori and Voutilainen, 2009;Voutilainen, 2010, 2012; Voutilainen et al., 2010; Weiste and Peräkylä, 2013) to compare more systematically thepractices used to display empathy (a) in institutional and non-institutional interaction contexts, and (b) in differentlanguages.16

Acknowledgements

I am most grateful to the members of the ‘‘Finnish Centre of Excellence in Intersubjectivity in Interaction’’ and to themembers of the ‘‘Kolloquium für linguistische Kommunikationsforschung’’ at the University of Potsdam for their ideas,encouragement and enthusiasm regarding my work on empathy displays. Furthermore, I am indebted to Margret Selting,Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Uwe Küttner for important comments on earlier versions of this paper. Many thanks also toBrandy Trygstad for helping me with the translation of the transcripts, to Timo Kaukomaa for helping me with thedescription of some of the facial expressions, and to two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and thoughtfulcomments.

Appendix

GAT 2 Transcription conventions (Selting et al., 2009; Couper-Kuhlen and Barth-Weingarten, 2011)

Sequential structure

[ ] overlap and simultaneous talk

[ ]

= latching

16 For example, there seem to be language-specific (syntactic) formats that can be used for empathy displays, such as 0-person constructions inFinnish (Ruusuvuori, 2005; Ruusuvuori and Voutilainen, 2009) or the format [anaphoric ‘das’ (that) + mental verb + ‘ich’ (I)] in German (Kupetz,2013).


Pauses

(.) micropause

(-), (-- ), (---) brief, mid, longer pa uses of ca. 0.25 - 0.7 5 secs.; until

ca. 1 sec.

(2.85) measured pause, more than ca. 1 sec. duration

Breathing

h, hh, hhh inbreath, according to duration

h , hh , hhh˚ outbreath, according to duration

Other segmental conventions

and_u h cliticizations within units

:, ::, ::: segmental lenghtening, according to duration

uh, uhm, etc. hesitation signals, so -called 'filled pauses'ʔ cut-off with glottal closure

Accentuation

SYLlable focus accent

sYllable secondary accent

!SYL!lable extra strong accent

Pitch at the end of units

? rising to high

, rising to mid

- level

; falling to mid

. falling to low

Continuers

hm, yes, no, yeah monosyllabic tokens

hm_hm, ye_es bi -syllabic tokens ʔhm ʔhm with glottal closure, often negating

Notation of pitch movement in and after accented syllable

`SO falling

´SO rising

¯SO level

ˆSO rising-falling

ˇSO falling-rising

Conspicuous pitch jumps

↑ to higher pitch

↓ to lower pitch

Changed register, end indicated by final '>'

<<l> > low register

<<h> > high register


<<f> > forte, loud

<<ff> > fortissimo, very loud

< > piano, soft

<<pp> > pianissimo, very soft

<<all> > allegro, fast

<<len> > lento, slow

<<cresc> > crescendo, continuously louder

<<dim> > diminuendo, continuously softer

<<acc> > accelerando, continuously faster

<<rall> > rallentando, continuously slower

Changes in voice quality and articulation, with scope

<<creaky> > glottalized

<<whispery> > change in voice quality as stated

Other conventions

<<surprised> > interpretive comment with indication of scope

( ) unintelligible according to duration

(X X X ) unintelligible syllables

(ma y i ) assumed wording

(may i say/let us say) possible alternatives(( ... )) omission in transcript

((nods )) non-verbal and extralinguistic activities and events

⎪talk talk talk parallel verbal and nonverbal actions

⎪((noddingly))

→ refers to a line of transcript relevant in the argument

Changes in loudness and speech rate, end indicated by final '>'

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Maxi Kupetz is employed at the German Department of the University of Potsdam (Germany), where she teaches German Linguistics and writesher doctorial thesis in the field of Interactional Linguistics. From 2009 to 2011, she was an affiliated researcher in the project ‘Emotive involvementin conversational storytelling’ within the Cluster of Excellence ‘Languages of Emotion’ at the Free University of Berlin.

Documents

Empathy displays as interactional achievements—Multimodal and sequential aspects