Face as an indexical category in interaction

Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) 2131–2146

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Face as an indexical category in interaction S¸ u¨kriye Ruhi Dept. of Foreign Language Education, Faculty of Education, Middle East Technical University, I˙no¨nu¨ Blvd., 06531 Ankara, Turkey

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history: Received 17 December 2009 Accepted 23 December 2009

Informed by the understanding of indexicality and membership categorization in ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967; Sacks, 1986, 1989), the paper proposes that face is a Janus-like indexical concept which categorizes the self-in-interaction, as it indexes and is indexed by (linguistic) acts, and features of underlying conceptualizations of social practices relevant to the interaction. According to this understanding of face, affective responses, such as pride, liking, solidarity, dissociation, embarrassment or resentment, and other orientations to face derive from (perceived) categorizations emerging in the unfolding interaction. To examine the indexicality of face, membership categorization analysis (Sacks, 1986) is adopted as an analytic tool, and applied to a sequence of interactions in a ceremonial event. The paper further demonstrates that face may be made accountable by employing ‘parallel documents’ in research, defined in the study as data that stand in indexical relations to the situated interaction. ß 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Face Indexicality Membership categorization analysis Affective responses Parallel documents

1. Observing face in interaction Just as in the case of relationships, which have been described as being both shaped by and shaping communicative behavior (Heritage, in Arundale, 2006), Haugh underscores that face too is ‘‘co-constituted in interaction’’ and ‘‘constitutive of interaction’’ (2009:12). The present study addresses this proposal in the context of naturally occurring interaction, with a focus on unraveling its constitutive role in interaction. Face and facework have been described as permeating interaction such that interlocutors cannot but attend to face (see, e.g., Spencer-Oatey, 2007; Terkourafi, 2007). However, accounting for face in a manner that corresponds to participant interpretations is a complex task, as face and self-presentational concerns are very often ‘background’ events (Ruhi, 2008; Schlenker and Pontari, 2000; Spencer-Oatey, 2007). Furthermore, short and/or long-term interactional goals and understandings of the social interaction order, which interact with the interpersonal dimension of talk, may not be easily discernable in talk-in-interaction (Hak, 1995). It thus behooves researchers to render analyses accountable in a manner that does justice to the multi-faceted nature of face and participant interpretations. Enhancing theory and research methodology research in this regard in studies on face is crucial, as understanding how people construe the interaction underway is as important as how such interaction is constructed (Hammersley, 2003).1 To capture the multi-faceted nature of face, the paper argues that it is an indexical, categorial concept pointing to the ‘selfin-interaction’ (Ruhi, 2005; Ruhi and Is¸ık-Gu¨ler, 2007). It shows that participant positionings toward (perceived) emergent categorizations and affective responses therein are effects of this categorization. In terms of research methodology, the paper

E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected]. 1 Research on face (and communication, in general) has moved toward epistemologies grounded in constructionism, so that the interpretative work of the analyst and the theoretical/conceptual understanding of the phenomena investigated should be consistent with the understandings of the participants (see, Arundale, 2010; Haugh, 2007; Schegloff, 1991 on interpretative criteria). This position is also valid for the present study. 0378-2166/$ – see front matter ß 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2009.12.020

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proposes that the indexicality of face may be made accountable through what might be called ‘parallel documents’, that is, data that stand in indexical relations to the situated interaction. The following section presents a very brief overview of etic understandings of face and discusses how its conceptualization can be informed by the notions of indexicality and membership categorization analysis in ethnomethodology. The talk and social action investigated in the paper come from a video recording of an engagement ceremony. Section 3 analyzes and contextualizes a moment of ‘trouble’ in taking a picture within the relevant social practices, as displayed both within the social event and documents from similar events. This moment is discussed for its implications regarding face, and the analysis is further grounded by drawing on research techniques in ethnomethodology and ethnography, namely, documents and interviews with people on photographs in similar ceremonial events. To steer the discussion toward the proposal that face is an indexical concept, I first dwell on the reported dialogue in (1) below. The dialogue is a re-construction from field notes on face and (im)politeness in Turkish discourse. The participants, Aynur and Canan, are close friends and students at the same university. Aynur sees Canan just as the latter is going to get some photocopies done. In the dialogue, Aynur implicitly refers to a scholarship application and tells Canan about the result2: (1)

1

Aynur:

Canan! Sonuçları açıklamı s¸lar biliyor musun? Canan result-PLU-ACC announce-PERF-AGR know-PROG Q-AGR

2

Canan:

(Canan! You know what? They’ve announced the results) O¨yle mi! like.that Q (Ohh really!)

3

Aynur:

Kabul etmis¸ler accept do-PERF-PLU (They’ve accepted [my application])

!

4

Canan:

Yaa! Senin adına çok sevindim is.that.so youT-GEN name-AGR-DAT very happy.be-PAST-AGR3 (Literal gloss: I’m very happy in your name) (Really! I’m so happy for you)

5

Aynur:

(smiling) Nusret hanım so¨yledi bugu¨n Nusret hanım say-PAST today4 (Nusret hanım told [me] today)

Aynur’s narration occurred during a chat with her as a neighbor, where she asked the question ‘‘If someone said ‘I’m so happy for you’ to you when you tell them some very good news about yourself, what would you think that person actually felt?’’ (line 4). Feeling that some form of evaluation would follow, I prompted her with the question ‘‘Something has happened, hasn’t it?’’ and Aynur gave her version of the conversation, adding the following comments (the double quotation marks indicate translations of Aynur’s wordings that were recorded in the notes soon after the conversation): (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

‘I’m so happy for you’ is ‘‘odd’’ in this context since she was telling something that was very important for her ‘‘Canan wasn’t really so happy’’ She would have expected someone ‘‘close’’ to her to ‘‘really share her happiness’’ ‘‘Canan lacked warmth’’ She herself would have responded differently: ‘‘kissing and hugging her; saying ‘‘Oh, I’m so happy’’

Aynur’s comments, her initial question and her comment in (c) reveal that the utterance, ‘I’m so happy for you’, was noticeable to her. Through the question and comment (c), she contextualizes the dialogue as an occasion for well-wishing and delineates her understanding of her relationship with Canan vis a` vis Canan’s response. Comments (b) and (d) further show Aynur’s impressions on Canan’s interactional style. They clarify Aynur’s understanding of what a participant described in the interaction as ‘‘close’’ should have practiced. In this manner, (b) and (d) are linked to Aynur’s categorizing and indexing of the relationship and the linguistic act therein in the talk. We observe that Aynur’s assessment of the dialogue crucially revolves around the appropriateness of the expression I’m so happy for you, which is grounded on what she thinks it conveys and her own assessment of the relationship. For Aynur, the expression indexes Canan’s assessment of Aynur’s accomplishment, her affective response to this accomplishment, and her relationship to Aynur. Taking face to provisionally be related to self, Aynur’s comments suggest that her face was not constituted in the interaction in accordance with her understanding of what is appropriate in this setting. Given the fact that Aynur’s comments crucially rely on her expectations, face becomes not only co-constituted but also constitutive of 2 3 4

Pseudonyms are used throughout the paper. Morphological glosses have been listed in Appendix A. Turkish is a T/V language. hanım: a deferential form of address for females.

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interaction. What needs to be unraveled then are the indexing feature(s) of (non)-verbal acts within their situation of occurrence relative to participant orientations, and interactants’ face expectations in the relevant interaction orders, since they are consequential to evaluations of face phenomena. The foregoing preamble suggests that re-interpreting face as an indexing phenomenon of self/other is a fruitful way toward its conceptualization. In the subsequent sections, I will argue that moving face into the realm of indexicality and categorization allows for an investigation of the manner in which underlying social practices and participants’ (linguistic) acts co-index each other, thereby rendering an accounting of face that is entrenched in features of situated interaction. 2. Indexicality in ethnomethodology and face Ethnomethodology considers all language to be indexical5: meanings are contingent on the local context of the talk, and talk itself indexes underlying social practices (Garfinkel, 1967). Indexicality in this broader sense requires the consideration of ‘‘larger chunks of discourse such as other texts, sociocultural discourses’’ and ‘‘the sociocultural background of speakers and hearers’’ (Anderson, 2008:paras 3 and 4). Indexicality thus defined assumes that the larger sociocultural setting is not exogenous to the text, but is always there, indexing and being indexed via the ‘what is said’ and done. Both the talk-ininteraction and the sociocultural space then become ‘texts’ for investigating evaluative judgments on face. To illustrate this first at the de-contextualized, linguistic level with the utterance, Senin adına çok sevindim ‘I’m so happy for you’, the formula, senin adına ‘in your name’ indexes the speaker as oriented toward the other. In this manner, the act of ‘owning’ the emotion of ‘being happy’ is perspectivized from the point of view of the other. While the emotion is positively evaluative for the recipient, the speaker’s positioning relative to the emotion is one that is dislocated from the deictic center of ‘speaker’. The utterance then is explicit in symbolically referencing the locations of self and other, but implicit with respect to its potential to point to other social practices in well-wishing. A (linguistic) act can thus index face in interaction from the macro-sociocultural setting by indexically invoking other discourses that impinge on its situated use (see, Silverstein, 2005). At this sociocultural level, the expression points to a context of usage that is not typical of face-to-face interaction among intimates (Ruhi, 2009b). That talk stands in indexical relations to the wider context of (linguistic) acts relevant to situated interaction is implicit in the ‘documentary method of interpretation’, where it is ‘‘interpreted on the basis of ‘what is known’ about the underlying pattern’’ (Garfinkel, 1967:78). Situated actions and their meanings emerge relative to underlying patterns and ‘‘anything else will create incongruities that have to be handled’’ (Rawls, in Garfinkel, 1948/2006:93; emphasis added). In the case of face, the assumption that incongruities can be perceived presumes that participants are knowledgeable of practices or that ‘‘in a given situation only certain forms of practice are expected and recognizable’’ (Garfinkel, 1948/2006). Thus, invoking social practices through documents that may be shown to stand in indexical relations to the talk-in-interaction falls out from the documentary method of interpretation itself. The indexicality of face has been interpreted in two ways in recent scholarship. According to one understanding, face indexes the relationship (Yu, 2001). Yu remarks that face is ‘‘a sign, indexical or iconic, of interpersonal relationship’’ (2001:12). Recent proposals in face theory such as that of Arundale (2006), Terkourafi (2007) and O’Driscoll (2007) are consonant with this understanding. Despite divergences in epistemological grounding and definitions, which lay varying emphases on face as opposed to facework, face is interpreted as states of connection/separateness (Arundale, 2006), or acts of approach/withdrawal in Terkourafi’s (2007) terminology (see also O’Driscoll, 2007:474, for the use of the terminology positive/negative face(work) as ‘‘connection and belonging’’ and ‘‘separation and individuation’’). Arundale (2006) elaborates on the meaning of connection and separateness as follows: ‘‘Connectedness’’ in relationships indexes a complex of meanings and actions that may be apparent as unity, interdependence, solidarity, association, congruence, and more, between the relational partners. . . . [C]onnectedness is always linked reflexively with ‘‘separateness’’, which indexes meanings and actions that may be voiced as differentiation, independence, autonomy, dissociation, divergence, and so on’’ (p. 204). Such conceptualizations diverge from Goffman’s (1967) or Brown and Levinson’s (1987) notion of face as ‘image of self’. Terkourafi’s approach is slightly closer to this understanding of face. She argues that face exhibits intentionality in the phenomenological sense, wherein mental states such as beliefs, desires, emotions and intentions are directed to or about something (Searle, 1983). Face thus presupposes a self and other toward which one approaches or withdraws. Terkourafi’s analyses of interactions are, however, ambivalent as to whether something of self/other triggers acts of approach/ withdrawal or whether evaluations of self/other are grounded in such acts. The second approach draws from Goffman’s description of face as ‘‘an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes’’ (1967/1982:5), and links it to aspects of self or identity (e.g., Tracy, 1990; Spencer-Oatey, 2007). Building on a self-aspect theory of identity, Spencer-Oatey (2007) maintains that ‘‘in cognitive terms, face and identity are similar in that both relate to the notion of ‘self’-image’’ . . ., and both comprise multiple self-aspects or attributes. However, face is only associated with attributes that are affectively sensitive to the claimant’’ (p. 644). While face is analyzed as being accorded by others and as emerging in interaction in Spencer-Oatey’s work, it is essentially a ‘want’ of self, which draws from self’s individual, relational and collective self-attributes. Considering the two approaches in terms of indexicality, we observe that both submit that face emerges in relations. However, the nature of face as a theoretical construct and its deictic center are different. In the first approach, which may be 5 Indexicality in this study is understood in the broader anthropological linguistic sense, wherein (linguistic) acts are inherently interdiscursive in nature by indexically invoking their co-text, and other discourses and sociocultural concepts from their macro-context (Silverstein, 2004, 2005).

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called ‘relational’ accounts, face is a relational effect and its deictic center is the dyad. The ‘face as image of self’ approach describes face as an attribute of self and its deictic center is self. Elsewhere, I have proposed that the lexical concept ‘face’ functions like a social indexical pronoun: ‘‘It indicates that self is being represented in the discourse with regard to its (preferred) social image’’ (Ruhi, 2009a). I extend this grammatical understanding of face to the concept itself, and argue that it has a categorizing function in indexing and being indexed by (linguistic) acts. What the concept points to for self/other emerges in interaction, but it does so through interaction of the knowledge of participants and their expectations regarding face, without which face and facework/relational work effects would not emerge. In other words, cognitive representations of face and cultural knowledge on facework/relational work function as a backdrop to ongoing interaction. In this sense, the indexical feature of the concept embodies self’s conceptual knowledge of face. It is this feature of the concept, I maintain, that generates both metaphorical uses of the lexeme ‘face’ in languages that evince such usage, and face-related talk and interaction (see, Escandell-Vidal, 2004 on the cognitive architecture underlying social action).6 In line with Spencer-Oatey’s description, I agree that face references aspects of self toward which self shows sensitivities, but I submit that it is not necessarily a want or claim, as face can be attributed independent of self’s expectations. I take its deictic center to encompass self and other, where image of self is claimed and/or attributed in relation to ‘image of other’, that is the categorizing(s) of others. Similar to grammatical, indexical expressions, whose content is determined relative to features of the setting/text, face is relative to ‘image of other’, where the other might be the participant(s) to an interaction or significant others who may not be present in the interaction. To better reflect the interpersonal nature of self in its relation to face, I describe this aspect of self as the self-in-interaction (Ruhi, 2005; Ruhi and Is¸ık-Gu¨ler, 2007). This description shares with the ‘face as relational’ approach the deictic grounding of face in the dyad. The emergent value of face, however, relates to attributed features of self. In this respect, face is a multi-faceted concept and not dualistic in nature in the sense of marking separation or connectedness, as is the case in the relational paradigm. Meanings emerging from the management of face such as pride, embarrassment, solidarity or dissociation are considered to be affective effects, and not a part of self’s face value (Ruhi, 2009c). Keeping face value and face effects distinct is motivated on empirical and theoretical grounds. Languages with metaphorical uses of the lexeme ‘face’ evince that it is inherently associated with the person. To illustrate, when one says that a person has ‘lost face’, the reference is to an attribute of the person in relation to self’s or other’s attributes. From a theoretical perspective, face and relational management and their effects need to be held distinct as, for instance, a gain in face through approval need not imply connectedness/separateness. 2.1. Face and membership categorization Because face is always an entity that is in relation to other(s), viewing face as a (perceived) membership categorization opens a window to its multi-faceted indexical nature, because membership categorization analysis (MCA) does not propose a priori conceptualizations of membership and identity (Sacks, 1986, 1989; Antaki and Widdicombe, 1998), and because it affords a way to systematically observe face-related acts through the connections it establishes between categories and ‘category-bound activities’. MCA emerged from Sacks’s work in the 1960s (1986, 1989), but has become a field of research in its own right, with its major, though not exclusive, foci of analysis being institutional discourse (e.g., Egbert, 2004; Antaki and Widdicombe, 1998). To the best of my knowledge, MCA has not been implemented in face/politeness research, except in Ferencˇı´k’s (2007) study and his work cited therein, where he examines the use of membership categorization as a strategy of positive/negative politeness (Brown and Levinson, 1987) in radio call-in programs. Echoing Sacks’s work, Ferencˇı´k notes that ‘‘[a]t least in theory, almost any feature of participants’ identities may be utilised for categorization and, . . . [that] more than one category may be applied to a given person’’ (2007:356), producing ‘‘layers of categorization’’ in the unfolding interaction (Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002:582). In the following, I refer to Sacks’s notion of membership categories, stressing its significance for conceptualizing face. Sacks identifies membership categorization as a ‘‘very central machinery of social organization’’, and notes that any person may be categorized in an indefinite number of ways (1989:271). Categorization is central because it is ‘‘inferencerich’’ in that people store knowledge about categories of people, leading them to expect/predict certain types of behavior (p. 272). It is also central in its constitutive role in interpretative work, as the identification of certain actions (activities) is bound to certain categories in the form of relational pairs. Thus Sacks works out the common sense understanding of the story produced by a two-year old, ‘‘The baby cried. The mommy picked it up’’ (p. 330) in the following way: ‘crying’ categorizes ‘baby’ as a ‘stage in life’, but the category ‘baby’ is also a categorization device in the notion of ‘family’ so that the ‘mommy’ is inferred to be ‘‘the mommy of the baby’’ (p. 335). Sacks calls this dynamic interpretation of actors and their actions the ‘‘membership categorization device’’ (MCD) (see, Sacks, 1986). The notion of a category-bound activity has a strong potential in the study of the indexicality of face, as a specific verbal or non-verbal act can lead to a particular categorization of a participant in interaction. The formulaic expression, ‘I’m so happy for you’, referred to in section 1, is one illustration of how the formula indexes non-intimate interaction, which led the recipient to infer implications about self and other’s attributes, in other words, their emergent face values, in comparison with her expectations in the situated interaction. Close scrutiny of membership categorization can thus elucidate how 6 Space does not allow for a full discussion of the nature of concepts that may not necessarily have lexical counterparts or ‘fixed’ semantic content. I refer the reader to Carston (2002) (see also, Ruhi, 2007:139–142 for a discussion in the context of ‘complimenting’).

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knowledge of categories of persons, and their rights and obligations constitutes the ‘‘moral praxis’’ in the ‘‘social world’’ (Jayussi, 1991, cited in Housley and Fitzgerald, 2002:66), and, one may add, the moral order of the interpersonal dimension of talk, in which face is embedded (Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003). As I will clarify in the following section, knowledge of categories and category-bound actions, and expectations concerning these lie at the foundation of face effects. Section 3 elaborates on how participants accomplish implicit and/or explicit categorizations, how they orient to categorizations, and how a study of emergent categorizations offers the analyst a way of conceptualizing face in interaction. 3. Taking pictures and self/other categorization The excerpts of interaction brought under scrutiny come from a video recording of an engagement ceremony. The reason for focusing on a ceremonial event is that it can be assumed that participants have highly scripted knowledge of the underlying practices so that they take a lot for granted in accomplishing interaction. The very ‘scriptedness’ of the event creates a rich ground for studying face phenomena in that incongruities with participants’ interpretations of social practices can be expected to be accessible to co-participants and the analyst. The video recording was done by family members in the ceremony. The recording is thus ideally natural since it was not produced for research purposes (Have, 2007). It is possible, however, that there were moments of non-recorded interaction that might have been of interest to the analyst. The stage in the event that I take up for discussion is the taking of pictures with the engaged couple. As lucidly discussed by Sudnow, posing for a picture is a serious activity: ‘‘Persons regard the photograph to be produced . . . as a document of their appearances, actions, movements, relationships, aspects, moods, etc.’’ (1972:264). Such attention is manifest in the recordings, but the analysis will concentrate on what photographing reveals about relations. One moment in the photographing stage is identified as a ‘trouble’. I need to note that this owes much to my being a member of the cultural setting. Thus whether the moment is interpreted as such by the participants in the talk and how it relates to categorization and face concerns are the foci of the discussion. The troubled moment occurs during the taking of one picture with the newly engaged (Excerpt 6). This moment is contextualized in the discussion with reference to one participant’s (Hasan) entry to and exit from the photographing space, and participant references to ‘missing members’ in picture frames. I then look into the photographs emerging from the ceremony to discern whether a repair occurred in the event. These moments in the recording are then set against photographs of two wedding ceremonies in the same urban setting.7 3.1. Accomplishing pictures in an engagement ceremony The photographing of the engaged couple with family members is done by three of the adult family members, and invitations to the participants to enter picture frames are co-constructed by nuclear members of family. The participants who appear or who are referred to in the excerpts and picture frames are: the fiance´e, Suna; the fiance´, Ayhan; the fiance´’s mother, Neslihan; the fiance´’s father, Ahmet; the fiance´’s brother, Aykut; the fiance´’s relatives: Hu¨seyin and Zuhal, and their six-year-old son, Hasan; and Selin – a cousin, aged 19; the fiance´e’s mother, Aslıhan; the fiance´e’s father, Ali; the fiance´e’s relatives: Suzan, Necati, Banu and Mehmet.8 The pictures taken with the newly engaged until Excerpt 6 are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

the the the the the

fiance´’s relatives (Hu¨seyin, Zuhal and Hasan) fiance´’s parents (Neslihan and Ahmet) and Hasan younger members of the fiance´’s (extended) family (Aykut, Selin and Hasan) fiance´e’s relatives (Suzan and Necati) fiance´e’s relatives (Banu and Mehmet)

In Excerpt 2, the fiance´e’s father, Ali, is getting ready to take picture frame 2, and Aykut, the fiance´’s brother, is doing the recording.9 Excerpt (2) ((The fiance´’s parents are moving into the photographing space. The camera is rather close up. During lines 5–6, Hasan is standing close to Neslihan, and is making little movements in and out of the picture frame)) 1

Aslıhan:

Ayhan ıı( )?= Ayhan ee (Ayhan ee)

7 Owing to the nature of the social activity investigated, the accounting of categorization and face makes frequent reference to inclusion/exclusion in picture frames and membership categorization. I do not intend to imply that face is essentially a matter of inclusion/exclusion (see, section 2.1). 8 As is the case in this recording, engagement ceremonies are hosted by the fiance´e’s family in Turkish culture. The sequences of talk and action in the recording are: (1) chatting; (2) putting on the engagement rings, with the ceremonial speech of an elder in the family; (3) taking pictures of the newly engaged with family members and invitees; (4) having dinner; (5) cutting the cake; (6) chatting. 9 Transcriptions of talk follow Jefferson (1979), as summarized in Schiffrin (1994: 424-431), except for the notation of overlaps, which follow Vine et al. (2002). The descriptions of the embodied action provided in double parentheses are best viewed as glosses of the analyst.

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!

2

Neslihan:

=Aykut haha= Aykut yea (Yea, Aykut)

3

Hu¨seyin:

=Aykut (.) ben çekiyim sen" geç oraya istersen (.) ben çek//iyim\ Aykut take-OPT-AGR you go.over there-DAT want-AOR-AGR take-OPT-AGR (Aykut, let me take [the picture]. You go over there, if you like, and I’ll take [the picture])

4

Ali:

/almaz"\\ ama (.) s¸e:y (.) Take-AOR.NEG but DISC.PART move.away-AOR.NEG-PROG-AGR DISC.PART (But [the camera], eem, won’t take [everyone into the frame]) uzaklas¸amıyorum ya? (.)

5

Move.away-AOR.NEG-PROG-AGR DISC.PART (I can’t move away, y’know) ya ancak do¨rt kis¸ilik (.)

6

DISC.PART only four person.for (Y’know, only four persons [fit in]) !

7

abi" ortaya gel (.) abi" cimbomlu? elder.brother center-DAT come elder.brother cimbomlu (Abi! Come to the center. Abi! Cimbomlu!)

8

Participants outside the frame:

9

Suna:

//((laughter))\ /gel gel gel\\ come come come (Come along, come along)

((Hasan, smiling, closes in and stands in front of the fiance´, who puts his arm around his shoulder.)) 10

Ali:

tamam (Okay)

In line 1, Aslıhan’s utterance, in which only the fiance´’s name is intelligible, is interpreted by Neslihan in line 2 as an invitation for the fiance´’s brother, Aykut, to enter the picture frame. This is evidenced by the agreement ‘Yea’. So it can be assumed that Aslıhan’s reference to Ayhan was a slip of the tongue. The recording does not display any call or gesture for Hasan to enter the photographing space until line 7, where Ali calls out to him with an address form that marks intimacy and respect, and functions as an MDC: Abi is a kinship term to refer to an elder brother but it is also a ritual kinship address form showing respect and intimacy toward older males. It is usual for adults to honor young adults and children in this manner. Cimbomlu, on the other hand, is a way of addressing people who are fans of a Turkish football team. It functions as an MCD in the local setting since the event contains talk which shows that Ali and Hasan are fans of this team. Hasan appears to notice that Ali is calling out to him only when he hears cimbomlu, after which he starts moving toward the center. Fig. 1 shows the alignment of the participants following this excerpt (picture frame 2). After the picture frame in Excerpt 2, the fiance´’s parents move out of the photographing space, and Ali calls the ‘next in line’ in Excerpt 3, line 1. The interaction shows Ayhan’s attempt to accomplish a grouping which includes the second generation adult members of his nuclear and extended family (line 3):

Fig. 1. Photograph with the fiance´’s parents and Hasan.

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Excerpt (3) 1

Ali

buyrun (.) sıradaki? command-AGR line-LOC-REL (If you please, the next in line)

!

!

2

Several participants:

//((laughter))\

3

Ayhan: ((hand touching Hasan’s shoulder, and gently pushing him away from the photographing space))

Aykut-COM Selin-ACC together take-OPT-AGR

4

Neslihan:

/Aykut’la\\Selin’i beraber alalım (Let’s take [the picture], together with Aykut and Selin) Aykutcum sen de geç Aykut-DIM-AGR you FOC go.over (Aykut, dear, you go over too)

((During line 4, Hasan, who had moved out of the photographing space after the picture taken in Excerpt 2 (Fig. 1), walks back, looks up at Suna and Ayhan, who does not display any expression or gesture that might be interpreted as ‘taking him into the picture frame’, and turns toward the camera to pose for the picture.)) Excerpt 3 constitutes one moment in the photographing stage, where Hasan was not meant to be a part of the group in the frame (see, lines 3–4). Picture frame 3, which emerges from the interaction in this excerpt, was meant to include only Aykut and Selin but evolves into a picture with ‘young adults and children’ (Ayhan later attempts what seems to be a repair of this frame; see, Excerpt 9). The talk surrounding picture frame 4 (i.e., the engaged with two of the fiance´e’s relatives) also demonstrates a moment in which Ayhan co-constitutes the group in the frame. As the fiance´e’s relatives move into the photographing space, he touches Hasan’s shoulder and gently pushes him aside, outside the photographing space. During this gesture, Neslihan says, Excerpt (4) Hasancım" sen gel Hasan-DIM-AGR you come (Hasan, dear! you come [over here]) While the relatives are lining up in the picture frame, she says Excerpt (5) 8sen Ali amcagilin yan ( )810 you Ali uncle-PLU.coll-GEN next (You next to Uncles Ali) While pictures 4 and 5 are being taken (i.e., pictures with the fiance´e’s relatives), Hasan remains outside the photographing space. The talk in Excerpt 6 occurs after picture 5. The fiance´e’s parents are lining up for a photograph (Mehmet, Aslıhan’s relative, is taking the picture.). Excerpt (6) !

1

Neslihan: ((to Hasan))

sen geç Ali amcanın yanına= you go Ali uncle-GEN next-AGR-DAT (You go next to uncle Ali)

((Hasan walks toward Ali, turning round to face the camera)) 2

Ali:

((places his hands on Hasan’s shoulder)) =gel come (Come [along])

!

10

3

Neslihan ((to Hasan))

cimbomlu=

4

Some of participants outside the frame:

=//((laughter))\

amcagil: lit. ‘uncle and those associated with uncle’. It is used here as a ritual kinship term, marking respect and intimacy.

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((The photograph is taken. Hasan moves out of the photographing space, the engaged remain still, while the fiance´e’s parents have just started to move, looking toward a few participants who are saying things that are unintelligible in the recording. During line 6, Aslıhan gazes toward Ali, who is standing at the other end of the line in the frame.)) !

5

8bi tane daha çek (//

Mehmet:

\)8

one item more take ([Let me] take another one) 6

Hu¨seyin:

/s¸ey\\ (.) Ahmet abi (.) sen?= DISC.PART Ahmet abi you (em, Ahmet abi you)

!

!

Aslıhan ((pointing with right hand in the direction of Ali)) ((gazes toward Mehmet))

=bi tane daha alabilir misiniz ( ) one item more take-ABIL Q-AGRV (Could you take another one?)

8

Participants outside the frame:

(

9

Hu¨seyin:

//(

10

Mehmet:

/bi tane\\ daha=

7

) )\

one item more (Another one) 11

>=gel gel gel abi

Ali: ((motioning with his hand for Hasan to move into, the frame))

come come come abi

((placing hands on his shoulder.))

gel abi<

(Come, come, come [along], abi) come abi (Come [along] abi)

((A second picture of the same group is taken.)) Fig. 2 represents the two pictures taken in Excerpt (6). Excerpt 6 constitutes one of the two frames that are photographed twice with the same participants posing. The second one is a frame that is repeated because one participant’s face was covered by another’s in the first try. It is thus is not clear from the talk why Aslıhan and Mehmet are calling for another picture in lines 5, 7 and 10. That Mehmet repeats ‘Another one’ in line 10, suggests that he might be seeing a problem in the frame too. If we consider the fiance´’s motioning of Hasan outside the frame for picture 4 (the couple with the fiance´e’s relatives), it is possible to offer a first interpretation and say that, since lines 5, 7 and 10 occur after Hasan exits the frame, ‘another one’ might mean ‘another picture without Hasan’. It could be argued that the fiance´ was simply creating space for the fiance´e’s relatives in Excerpt 3 when he pushed him aside for picture 4. However, given that Hasan is a small child, he cannot be expected to take up a large space in the frame as would an adult (see, Excerpt 2 (Fig. 1), lines 4–6, concerning the lack of space for an adult family member). The recording shows that Hasan is present in nine out of thirteen photographs with members of the families. That his presence or attempts to enter the picture frames is noticeable to some participants is revealed in Excerpts 2–4. Excerpts 7 and 9 also display talk where explicit reference is made to Hasan’s presence. Excerpt (7) ((Just as the newly engaged and the parents and relatives of the fiance´e have lined up for the photograph, Hasan moves swiftly into the frame and poses in front of Ayhan)) !

1

Aykut:

heh- (.) Has- (.) Hasan bu¨tu¨n fotoğraflarda var hehe- Has- Hasan all picture-PLU-DAT EXIS (hehe, Hasan is in all the pictures)

Fig. 2. Photograph with the fiance´e’s parents and Hasan.

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Fig. 3. Photograph with the fiance´e’s extended family.

Fig. 4. Photograph with the fiance´’s extended family.

!

2

Ali ((jocularly, looking toward Hasan)):

o Kamber he Kamber (He’s Kamber)

3

Several of the participants:

((laughter))

4

Aykut:

o fiks = herkes değis¸iyo ((voice trailing)) he fixed everyone change-PROG (He’s permanent [in the pictures]. Everyone [in the pictures] changes continually)

Fig. 3 represents the picture taken during the talk in Excerpt (6). Line 2, makes an allusion to a humorous saying, Kambersiz du¨ğu¨n olmaz (lit., A wedding cannot be without Kamber). It means ‘Of course, s/he cannot be left out/passed over’, and is often used either with positive or with negative evaluative connotations to describe persons who are ever-present in social events. With the laughter that the allusion provokes, the evaluative tone created by bu¨tu¨n ‘all’ is turned into a humorous situation.11 Following Excerpt 7, the fiance´ calls his extended family into the photographing space and the picture in Fig. 4 is taken. At this moment of the event in Excerpt 8, Aykut, the fiance´’s brother, was taking the pictures, and he is called into the photographing space, as happened in Excerpt 2. This is the second case where a frame is interpreted as ‘missing a member’, which is repaired through Neslihan’s and Ali’s joint action: Excerpt (8) !

1

Neslihan

Aykut sen de gel? (.) Mehmet beye ver istersen ha? ( ) sen de gel=12 Aykut youT FOC come Mehmet bey-DAT give-AOR-AGR eh youT FOC come (Aykut, you come along too. Give [the video camera] to Mehmet bey if you like, eh? You come along too)

!

2

Ali

=hakkaten //sen hiç\ fotoğraflarda çıkmadın Aykut Really youT at.all picture-PLU-LOC appear-NEG-PAST-AGR Aykut (That’s right, you haven’t appeared in the pictures at all, Aykut)

3

Neslihan

/haha\\ (Yea)

Examining other pictures in the recording, we notice that Aykut appears in picture 3 (the couple, the cousin, Selin, and Hasan). But there is no picture of him with his parents and the couple. The repair can therefore be interpreted as ‘taking a picture of the couple with nuclear family members’. Comparing Fig. 4 with Neslihan’s preventing Hasan from entering the picture frame in Excerpt 4 (i.e., the picture of the engaged with the fiance´e’s relatives) and the noticing accomplished by Aykut in Excerpt 7 (Fig. 3), we may conclude that 11 Kamber is a name of Arabic origin for males in Turkish, originally meaning, devoted slave, servant. The history of the idiom with reference to Kamber is uncertain in Turkish. 12 bey: a deferential address form for adult males.

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what is noticeable for Neslihan and Aykut is that both involve picture frames where there are missing or ‘mismatching’ participants who are being photographed with the engaged and the family. As seen in Excerpt 6, line 1, however, Neslihan suggests that Hasan enter a picture frame with the fiance´e’s parents. So it is not possible to infer whether she would regard the picture of the engaged couple with the fiance´e’s parents and a relative of the fiance´ as deviant (Fig. 2).13 My contention is that Excerpt 6 (Fig. 2) involves a ‘trouble’ which is noticed by Aslıhan, and possibly by Mehmet too, because in this cultural setting first pictures with parents in engagement or wedding ceremonies generally do not include members of the extended families, friends or acquaintances. Comparing Fig. 2 with its counterpart, Fig. 1 (the couple with the fiance´’s parents), we observe that it is only through Ali’s noticing Hasan on the side and his calling him into the frame that Hasan becomes part of the group. A reviewing of the full recording, however, does not display any talk where participants might be said to be noticing the pictures in Figs. 2 and 3 as deviant other than that implied in Excerpt 7. If we consider the repaired action in Excerpt 8 (i.e., Fig 4) to constitute an analogical case, it is possible to re-interpret Mehmet and Aslıhan’s utterances in lines 5, 7 and 10 in Excerpt (6) as repair work to get a picture that includes only the engaged couple and the fiance´e’s parents. Aykut’s noticing of Hasan in Excerpt 7 might be also be taken as evidence that membership in a ‘family picture’ in this setting includes only the nuclear and the extended family, but this contradicts Neslihan’s directive to Hasan to enter the frame in Excerpt 6 (Fig. 2). It is also possible that Aykut’s noticing Hasan is different way from Neslihan’s ‘creating’ his presence in Fig. 2. He might be simply referring to the fact that Hasan is present in most of the pictures, whereas Neslihan might be creating his presence as a face-anointing act. Excerpt 9 below strongly suggests that Aykut’s remark is negatively evaluative. Excerpt 9, which constitutes the talk around the last picture frame in the event, takes place after Excerpt 8 and sheds light on possible understandings of ‘appropriate membership’ in photographing. After the picture in Fig. 4 is taken, all the participants, except the engaged couple, move out of the photographing space. During these two seconds, Ayhan gazes first at Aykut and then at Selin, and motions them into the photographing space with his hand. This interaction brings together the grouping that Ayhan had wanted to achieve in Excerpt 3. The talk occurs after this gesture. Excerpt (9) ((The couple, Aykut and Selin are lining up for the picture, when Hasan walks into the space, gazing at Aykut.)) 1

Aykut, Suna, Ayhan, Selin:

((short laughter))

((Aykut gazing at Hasan)) !

2

Ahmet:

oğlum (.) oğlum olacak son-AGR son-AGR be-FUT (My son, [yes], my son must to be [in the picture])

3

Mehmet:

bu sarsıntılardan = aradaki sarsıntılardan o¨zu¨r dileriz tabi this tremble-PLU-ABL between shake-PLU-ABL apology ask-ASK of.course (Owing to these trembles – we apologize for these trembles, of course)

4

Ali:

yo onları s¸ey yapmıno that-PLU-ACC DISC.PART. do-NEG-PROG (No, [it] doesn’t, I mean)

5

Mehmet:

almıyo mu take-NEG-PROG Q (Doesn’t [it] register [them]?)

6

Ali:

hallediyo handle-PROG ([It] handles [them])

!

7

Aykut ((in a jocular tone: pointing to Hasan with his hand))

yakı s¸ıklı olsa içim yanmayacak da? handsome be-COND inside-AGR burnNEG-FUT FOC (If only [he] were handsome, I wouldn’t be deeply concerned but . . .)

Between lines 3–6, Ali is helping out Mehmet, who thinks that the picture will come out blurred because his hand is shaking. In line 7 Aykut picks up on Mehmet’s apology, and implies either (1) that, if Hasan ‘were handsome’ that would compensate for a blurry photograph, or (2) that, if only he were handsome, he would not mind Hasan’s presence in the frame (The second inference is derivable if Aykut’s utterance is taken as a rejoinder to Hasan’s moving into the picture frame.). Even though 13 It is only through the adjacent placement of line 1, Excerpt 6 (Fig. 2) with Excerpt 5 that it can be inferred that Ali amcagil ‘Uncles Ali’ in Excerpt 5 indexes the fiance´e’s parents, since the suffix – gil literally means anyone associated with the person referenced – in this case, Ali’s family and his in-laws.

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Fig. 5. The photograph with the parents of the fiance´e.

Aykut has a jocular tone of voice, his description of Hasan as ‘not handsome’ is derogatory, and it may be inferred that other participants take it as a threat to Hasan’s face, and possibly, Hasan’s nuclear family members, since it does not provoke laughter/smiling on their part. Aykut’s assessment allows one to infer that his noticing of Hasan in the picture frame in Excerpt 7 (Fig. 3) was possibly meant to be negatively evaluative, too. To see whether photographs emerging from this ceremony might shed light on the moment of trouble identified in Excerpt 6 (Fig. 2), all the groupings of participants in the pictures were examined. One showed the engaged couple, together with the fiance´e’s parents. It is reasonable to assume that this did not occur in the photographing stage 3 of the event, as all the other ‘family pictures’ are present in the recording for that stage. Thus how and by whom this picture was accomplished is not available for analysis. But the presence of the photograph validates the identification of Excerpt 6 as a potentially deviant case of categorization for at least some members of the local setting. Fig. 5 represents this ‘repaired’ picture: 3.2. Categorizing a participant and face The references to ‘present’ and ‘missing’ participants in the excerpts, the fiance´’s motioning Hasan out of picture 4 (i.e., the couple with the fiance´e’s relatives) and the frame in Excerpt 3 (the couple with the young adults of the fiance´’s family), and his mother’s calling Hasan out of the frame in Excerpt 4 suggest that there might be differing understandings of the practice of taking family pictures. Beyond that, however, the analysis of the talk-in-interaction would not be able to convincingly account for the relevance of lines 5, 7 and 10 as repairs of trouble in Excerpt (6) (Fig. 2) in a manner that may be consonant with Aslıhan and Mehmet’s projections. There is still the possibility that ‘another picture’ might have been requested/called for because of a technical problem. The excerpts and the existence of the photograph of the couple with the fiance´e’s parents (Fig. 5) do suggest, however, that the participants have taken the categorization of participants in photographing seriously. Excerpt (2) (Fig. 1) and Excerpt (8) (Fig. 4) demonstrate that one grouping involves nuclear family membership. This implies that Excerpt (6) needs to be further scrutinized in terms of the social indexing accomplished not only with respect to Hasan but also other categories to which Hasan belongs. Recapitulating the moments where Hasan’s presence in the photographing spaces was commented on through gestures or utterances, we observe that Hasan is: called into the middle of a picture frame with the fiance´’s parents by the fiance´e’s father (Excerpt 2, Fig. 1); moved out of a frame with the fiance´e’s relatives by the fiance´ and his mother (Excerpts 3 and 4, picture frames 4 and 5); is told to move into a frame with the fiance´e’s parents by the fiance´’s mother (Excerpt 5, line 1; Excerpt 6, Fig. 2); described as ‘being forever present’ and ‘a must’ by the fiance´’s brother, and the fiance´e’s father and the fiance´’s father, respectively (Excerpt 7, lines 1–2, Fig. 3; Excerpt 9, line 2); and 5. described as ‘not being handsome’ (Excerpt 9, line 7). 1. 2. 3. 4.

The video recording for Excerpt 2 (Fig. 1) shows that Ali is trying to get a ‘neat’ frame where the participants’ face and body are totally visible (instead of being cut). Ali has two options here: either he needs to tell Hasan to move away or to close in. Ali apparently prefers the second route and calls out to him, first with a kinship term, and then with an in-group identifier (abi ‘elder brother’, and cimbomlu). These references index him both in terms of ritual family membership and in terms of a category that is viewed favorably in the local setting. Compared to this social indexing, being moved out of a frame in Excerpts 3 and 4 (Fig. 1, and pictures 4 and 5) function as exclusion and are potentially hurtful. Neslihan’s utterance in Excerpt 6 (‘You go next to Uncle Ali’) may be a compensatory action in the form of inclusion in a transient membership categorization (i.e., a picture frame). Inclusion is further enhanced by Neslihan’s categorization of Hasan as a fan of a football club in Excerpt 6, line 2, which echoes Ali’s call in Excerpt 2. This description is indexical at a number of layers: it makes Hasan’s presence in the frame accountable since it identifies a commonality between Ali and Hasan. It implicitly suggests that Neslihan approves of the feature, and via the family membership that Neslihan and Hasan share, it creates a commonality between the fiance´ and fiance´e’s families. Owing to the presence of such positively evaluated features in the talk preceding lines 5–10 in Excerpt 6, accomplishing a ‘picture group’ according to the social practice of ‘taking a picture of the engaged with parents only’ becomes problematic for participants who would wish it to be that way. It would require indexing Hasan as an out-group member for that picture, and by implication, it could index Hasan’s family and his relatives as out-groups too. The nature of the social event probably makes this an undesirable indexing. Instead of the implicit repair, ‘another one’, the uttering of an explicit repair referring to membership categorization by a member of the fiance´e’s family, who are the

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hosts to the ceremony, could hurt Hasan’s feelings and members of his family too. The recording during Excerpt 6 (Fig. 2) shows that the timing of Aslıhan’s utterance in line 7, ‘Could you take another one’, is after Hasan exits the photographing space. The placement of the utterance after Hu¨seyin’s utterance in line 6, ‘em, Ahmet abi you’, reveals that Aslıhan is interpreting the turn as a possible change in the photographing frame. Her utterance could then be an attempt to forestall a change in the then-current grouping (i.e., the couple and the fiance´e’s parents). Her utterance refers back to Mehmet’s incomplete utterance in line 5, and she requests another picture of the group. This call is repeated in line 10 by Mehmet, where he says ‘another one’. It is plausible to infer that Aslıhan does not wish to perform an explicit exclusion of Hasan. She uses implicit verbal and non-verbal language to index her understanding of the picture group in Fig. 2. Mehmet too might be indexing the same understanding in lines 5 and 10. That categorization is a sensitive and value-laden issue in the event is evident in Excerpt 7 (Fig. 3), too. After Aykut’s evaluative description (line 1, ‘Hasan is in all the pictures’), Ali makes the humorous second assessment by invoking the saying, Kambersiz du¨ğu¨n olmaz ‘Of course, s/he cannot be left out/passed over’. Within the cultural setting, people viewing pictures often notice and comment upon the omnipresence of a person, if they do not know the relevance of the person in the various pictures, or if they have negative affect toward that person. Ali’s remark thus smoothes over a possible negative evaluation. In Excerpt 9, the fiance´’s father also offers an account of Hasan’s presence in response to the laughter in line 1 with a reference to Hasan that marks close ritual kinship, ‘his son’ (see, line 2). These various ways of indexing Hasan are thus in sharp contrast to Aykut’s description in Excerpt 9, line 7 (i.e., he is not handsome). Aykut’s disparaging utterance appears to be a punitive act triggered by Hasan’s entry into a frame in which, according to Aykut and Ayhan, he does not have membership. As mentioned previously, the attempted grouping in Excerpt 9 is that of the young adults of the fiance´’s (extended) family (see also, Excerpt 3). The laughter provoked by Hasan’s entry evinces that other participants in the frame (Suna and Selin) also index his entry as noticeable, and possibly unwarranted. Given that Aykut commented on his presence in Excerpt 7 (Fig. 3) too, his description might be indexing all unwarranted entries into picture frames. In this regard, Excerpts 3 and 9 also reveal that membership categorization in the current interaction is not restricted to family membership, and that age constitutes a relevant category, triggering the brothers’ attempts to exclude Hasan. In the previous section, little has been said about Hasan’s responses to descriptions of himself and to acts that include or exclude him from the frames. Throughout the recording, there is no facial expression showing that he is disconcerted by exclusion from the frames. He appears to be enjoying the all the photographing, as he often playfully smiles while entering picture frames, and when reference is made to him in Excerpt 2 and Excerpt 6 with the categorization, cimbomlu. It is also apparent that he is trying to make sense out of the picture groupings, as demonstrated by his hesitance to enter or exit the picture frame in Excerpt 2 (Fig. 1), his gazes toward Suna and Ayhan in Excerpt 3, and toward Aykut in Excerpt 9. Hasan was explicitly called out of a picture frame (Excerpt 4) but he was present with his parents in the very first picture frame with family members. So achieving an understanding of the social practices underlying this stage and acting accordingly in the interaction would be quite a feat for a child of his age. That compliance is expected, however, emerges through Aykut’s offensive remark in Excerpt 9.14 The description is not verbally contested by participants in the event, which might be an indication that they are aware of Aykut’s underlying motivation. Their silence, while projecting a disagreement with the description could then be a sanctioning of the implicit indexing of ‘where Hasan should be’ in photographs. At Hasan’s expense, then, Aykut displays an understanding of a social practice that is analogous to that of Aslıhan and Mehmet’s understanding of family membership in the pictures. Viewed as such, what is hurtful for Hasan, and those who are likely to share sensitivities arising from their categorial commonality with Hasan, is potentially compensatory for Aslıhan and Mehmet, and others who might be sharing the same conceptualization of categorization at this stage of the interaction. In this sense, the emotive response in Aykut’s comment on Hasan’s appearance emerges from his understanding of the current categorization, and displays his alignment with respect to Hasan’s emergent categorizations. The foregoing discussion shows that a participant to an interaction displays implicit or explicit categorizations regarding self in relation to other, and/or is categorized through verbal and category-bound activities (in this case, entry and exit from picture frames). The description of categorizations also shows that there are chains of inferencing of categorizations through the commonalities/differences that self may co-constitute with others in interaction. Hasan’s being grouped as cimbomlu or being excluded from a picture frame are two such cases. As revealed through the excerpts, participants may make any set of categories of self/other – family, age, football teams, appearance, etc – relevant to their then-current understanding of the social action underway. The alignments that participants display towards such self/other categorization are then stances and responses toward categorization, which in turn impact the accomplishment of social action and relational work. Hasan’s smiling when he is referred to as cimbomlu is a display of his positive assessment of this self-aspect, and is likely to enhance/ create a sense of pride in being so. Neslihan, in turn, uses the same categorization to account for Hasan’s inclusion a picture, and implicitly creates a commonality with a wider range of participants – crucially here, the engaged couple and their nuclear families. Ayhan’s disparaging description is an illustration of a categorization of Hasan, implying that he is unfit for the then-current picture frame. Aslıhan’s implicit categorization of Hasan through the linguistic act ‘another one’ indexes her understanding of membership in the picture frame, while simultaneously indexing that those categorially related to him do 14 I leave open the possibility that Hasan actually develops/displays an understanding of how participants form groups in entering picture frames in the unfolding discourse, and turns his entries into picture frames as a game of ‘doing grouping’.

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not belong to the group in the picture frame. The implicitness of the categorization, though, can be interpreted as an attempt to show due sensitivity to those excluded (see, Ferencˇı´k (2007) for a similar analysis of implicit categorizations). In this sense, the linguistic act projects both her face expectations while constituting the face of other. It is thus possible to say categorizations lie at the root of face and that these impact the nature of the relational effects. These aspects of the interaction reveal that participants in interaction ground their (linguistic) acts both on categorizations of self/other that they judge as being relevant to the social action and on emergent categorizations. Thus (in)consistencies with underlying expectations may trigger both verbal and non-verbal acts, and emotive responses to make whatever occurs consistent with their conceptualization of the social practice. It is at this point that the interpretative analysis of the excerpts of talk is tentative, owing to the implicitness of Aslıhan’s and Mehmet’s alignment toward the face constituted in Excerpt 6 (Fig. 2), that is, Hasan’s being depicted as a ‘core’ member of the then-current picture frame. Independent of the accounts above, if it can be shown that Excerpts 3, 6, and 7 (Figs. 2 and 3) have co-constructed deviant pictures, we can assume that the repair work attempted in Excerpt 6 by Aslıhan and Mehmet, and Aykut’s comments in Excerpts 7 and 9 are grounded on accomplishing ‘appropriate’ categorizations. In other words, data that may be assumed to share the sociocultural properties of the situated interaction may shed light on the constitutive role of face in interaction, and clarify why some of the participants attempted categorizations or commented on groupings as displayed in the excerpts. The existence of the picture of the couple with the parents of the fiance´e offers one source of validation (Fig. 5). 3.3. Parallel documents: accomplishing pictures at a wedding Following Hak’s (1995) research technique of documenting interaction through other documents created in relation to the talk-in-interaction, the next set of documents that are described briefly below is photographs from weddings. A compilation of 47 pictures from two weddings were examined with the help of the brides in the ceremonies. Their descriptions of the relation between the individuals in the photographs were noted during interviews conducted with them. The types of frames in one set of photographs showed the couple with 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

parents of the bride parents and brothers/sisters of the bride brothers/sisters of the bride parents of the bridegroom parents and brothers/sisters (and their spouses) of the bridegroom the extended family of the bride the extended family of the bridegroom the parents of both the bride and the bridegroom close friends of the bride and the bridegroom at work co-workers of the bride and the bridegroom at work a large number of the couple’s students a smaller number of the couple’s students who were present in picture 11

For only one picture in this set did the informant comment that there was a member who did not ‘‘fit in with the rest’’. This frame included a person whom she could no longer remember. On asking about the difference between pictures 11 and 12, the informant remarked that some of the students in picture 11 had explicitly requested a separate photograph. She added that these students were particularly ‘‘fond of the couple as teachers’’. The second set of pictures comprised the frames in 1–9. The pictures of the couple with co-workers were taken separately in this case. The informant explained that she and her husband have different workplaces and that few of them know each other. There was also a frame including the couple, and close friends of the bride and her parents. These friends, the informant said, had a ‘‘very longstanding relationship’’ with them. The common feature of these photographs with those in the video-recorded ceremony is that there is no ‘cross-over of categorization’. We observe that the relevant categorization criterion takes its social deictic center as either a commonality between the couple or a commonality that only one of the partners has with the co-participants in the frame. This criterion demonstrates that the picture frames that gave rise to noticing and/or repair work in the engagement ceremony are deviant owing to the presence of two deictic centers. Photographs are permanent documents of relations, and they are there to be viewed over long periods of time. Thus any incongruence between what the participants would want to display of self and what the pictures ‘say’ is likely to generate much talk and action, as has been demonstrated through the excerpts in the section 3.1. That participants show sensitivity toward the identification and the co-constitution of self/other social deictic centers and their categorization therein is evident in the excerpts. So even though the recording does not evince Aslıhan and Mehmet’s alignment with respect to the emergent categorization in Fig. 2, it is possible to infer from the photographs of the wedding ceremonies that their interpretation of the troubled moment would be consonant with the analysis proposed in sections 3.1 and 3.2, and support my rendering of the underlying social practices in indexing face. In the following, I round up the implications of the discussion for examining face as an indexical category.

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4. Researching the indexicality of face The present study has proposed that face is an inherently indexical concept that categorizes the social self in terms of its attributes vis a` vis categorizing(s) of others. This proposal has been motivated on the grounds that cultural knowledge regarding face, as implicitly or explicitly invoked in interaction, has a constitutive role in talk-in-interaction, and that linguistic practices index emergent face value(s) of self. Taking face to be indexical in nature highlights an analytic perspective that needs to dwell on those features of (linguistic) practice where self/other are categorized in terms of selfattributes. Unraveling the categorial functions of language and action can be a fruitful way of investigating face. To this end, I have suggested that MCA offers an analytic tool that allows accounting of face both in terms of stereotypical and nonstereotypical strategies of categorization. The present study has scrutinized a case of interaction where highly scripted types of categorizations feature as foreground phenomena in people’s assessments of emergent self/other categorization. This may give the impression that categorization of the kind investigated and its interaction with self-in-interaction is not representative of the nature of face in mundane talk. However, considering the degree to which the categorization accomplished by ‘another one’ (Excerpt 6, Fig. 2) is implicit, its similarity with much of ‘common sense’ categorizations that are taken for granted in ordinary talk shows, in my view, the deeply entrenched nature of face – deep in the sense that its constitutive presence in talk and embodied action calls for much ‘digging out’ of locally contingent conceptualizations of social practice. In this respect, there is much to be gained through employing naturally occurring data (documents) that are contingent on the situated interaction. To unravel such social practices, I have proposed the use of parallel documents produced in similar social events. These documents have shown underlying understandings regarding how aspects of self-in-interaction are likely to impinge on interaction. Moving beyond the co-constructed text of talk to documents that display participants’ construals of self/other has made it possible to identify participants’ resources of social practices and their face expectations therein. In a similar manner, the discussion on the reported dialogue in (1) also calls for the investigation of the formulaic well-wishing in similar settings to elucidate its potential to index face. In this regard, research on face has much to benefit from the conversationanalytic tradition of recording large numbers situated interaction to investigate the interplay between recurring categorizations and face (see, Ferencˇı´k, 2007 for a study that combines CA with MCA and politeness theory). In the paper, I have portrayed instances of interaction where participants employ verbal and non-verbal acts to index the categories that they see as being relevant to the social action. These acts have been demonstrated to be part of participants’ common sense understandings of self/other aspects. The alignments that participants display toward categorizations are then best viewed as face effects, which may range from positively to negatively evaluative affective responses, and deserve to be investigated in their own right. Acknowledgments I am grateful to Michael Haugh and Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini for their guidance in the revision of an earlier version of this paper. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, which have been very helpful in developing a more coherent presentation. All errors, however, are entirely mine. The study has been partially supported by ¨ BI˙TAK. a grant conferred by TU

Appendix A Morphological Glossary ABIL ABL ACC AGR AOR COM DAT DISC.PART EXIS FOC FUT GEN LOC NEG

abilitative ablative accusative person agreement aorist commitative dative discourse particle existential focus/additive particle future genitive locative negation

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OPT PAST PERF PLU PLU.coll Q REL

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optative past perfective plural collective plural question particle relativizer singular form of the second person pronoun or 2nd person singular agreement plural form of the second person pronoun or 2nd person plural agreement, used as deferential form for second person singular

T V

Transcription notation : = hehe (.) ? // \ / \\ 8 ( ) [ ] (( ))

lengthening of the sound of the preceding letter incomplete word latching utterances representation of short laughter a noticeable pause less than one second rising or question intonation start of simultaneous or overlapping speech of current speaker end of simultaneous or overlapping speech of current speaker start of simultaneous or overlapping speech of incoming speaker end of simultaneous or overlapping speech of incoming speaker speech uttered markedly softer compared to surrounding speech unclear speech for which no approximation is made words added to preserve idiomaticity description of gaze, movements and gestures

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