Abstract
In this paper, we present a comparative analysis of compliments and other evaluative comments in French and Lebanese Arabic. The analysis is based on naturally-occurring interactions, video-recorded during dinner invitations among friends and relatives. The analysis focuses on two specific types of compliments related to being offered and savoring food. The description takes into account not only the linguistic forms of assessments and compliments (on the syntactic and lexical levels), but also vocal productions like “hm”, as well as gestures, mimics, gaze and other multimodal resources. In the first part of the paper, we discuss the main aspects of previous studies on compliments that will be used as reference points for our own study. We then present the corpora we used and our methodology. The last part of the paper is devoted to the interactional multimodal analysis of specific types of compliments related to being offered food in the two corpora.
About the authors
Véronique Traverso is a full-time researcher (Directrice de Recherche) at the National Center for Scientific Research, in Lyon (ICAR research group). Her research field concerns conversation analysis, interactional linguistics and multimodality. Her recent books are Interactions, dialogues, conversations (2015), with E. Ravazzolo, E. Jouin, G. Vigner and Décrire le français parlé en interaction (2016). In addition to French, she also works on Arabic interaction and multilingual situations.
Loubna Dimachki is Associate Professor in the Department of “Sciences du Language et de la Communication” at the Lebanese University. She studies interactions using the following approaches: conversational analysis, interactional linguistics and pragmatics, comparative analysis (French /Arabic), intercultural (mis-)communication. She has worked on different social situations, including services encounters, interactions in taxis, exolingual conversations, work meetings and dinners among friends.
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Transcript conventions
Data have been transcribed according to the ICOR convention. A developed version of these conventions can be found at the following address: http://icar.univ-lyon2.fr/projets/corinte/
- []
overlap
- (1.8)
pause
- xxx
inaudible
- :
lenghtening
- =
latching
- exTRA
salient syllabe
- ((en riant))
comment
- #
in the pseudonyms column indicates an image
- lou
the pseudonym in small letters indicates that the line is devoted to the description of actions
- (.)
micro-pause
- ?
unrecognized participant
- / \
raising / falling\ intonation
- par-
truncation
- °well°
low voice
- &
the same turns goes on
We have made an intra-linear translation. We have reported the prosodic feature of the original talk in the transcript for the sake of making the correspondence between the two versions easier. Elements that are necessary in the translation but not present in the original talk appear between {}.
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
