A multimodal analysis of assessment sequences in Chilean Spanish interaction

This thesis presents a study of food assessments in Chilean Spanish interaction. The data consists of video recordings of six pairs of Chilean participants sampling British foods unknown to them. They tried each food at the same time and discussed their opinions. They were asked to do a joint ranking of these products to elicit sequences of agreement and disagreement. The data is analysed combining the methods of conversation analysis with those of interactional linguistics and the study of embodied interaction.

There are three analytic chapters. The first one explores what constitutes a canonical assessment, i.e. aspects of the turn design of assessments in the particular context of the data and how they compare to the literature in English. The second analytic chapter is about the lead-up to an assessment. I explore how speakers initiate assessments (with particular attention to the role of eye gaze). The third analytic chapter deals with how non-lexical (and other) tokens and the co-occurring embodied aspects of their production (prosodic features, gestures, etc.) are designed and understood as projecting a stance towards the food.

All things considered, this thesis contributes to filling a knowledge gap in relation to the study of assessments in the Spanish language. It also contributes the novelty of studying food assessments among non-experts. Finally, this thesis sheds light on how assessments arise in interaction and about the emergence of linguistic organisation through other non-verbal activities.