In conversation-analytic literature, the term ‘newsmarks’ has been applied to freestanding epistemic markers such as English really or did she. Newsmarks have been claimed to treat prior talk as new (Jefferson, 1981), request confirmation (Stivers & Enfield, 2010), elicit sequence expansion (Maynard, 1997), and display ‘ritualized disbelief’ (Heritage, 1984), doubt, or an intermediate position between K+ and K- (Thompson, Fox & Couper-Kuhlen, 2015). However, recent studies have shown that newsmarks do not necessarily index a divergent epistemic stance per se; rather, doubt and disbelief emerge as possible epiphenomena of newsmarks in only certain contexts. At a more basic level, newsmarks can be shown to treat prior talk as non-trivial and unexpected, hence as tellable (Gubina & Betz, 2021) and remarkable (Marmorstein & Szczepek Reed, forthc.). In epistemically divergent and disaffiliative contexts, the treatment of prior talk as remarkable can be found to show doubt and thus result in challenge; in affiliative sequences, it can be treated as a display of interest and involvement.

The present paper asks what the role of prosodic and embodied resources is for newsmarking sequences, specifically in relation to the expression of divergent or convergent epistemic stances. It does so by investigating English really and Hebrew be’emet (lit. ‘in truth’) in video-recordings of ordinary conversations among students in each language. The paper explores the prosodic features and the bodily-visual resources that accompany these tokens, including their temporal coordination within the sequence. We observe marked and unmarked design patterns. Marked or ‘rich’ multimodal designs may involve facial movements, specifically eyebrow raising and holding (Dix & Groß 2021), which may precede and/ or continue after the verbal newsmark delivery; lip movements and degrees of opening the mouth; and sustained eye gaze. Typically, a marked design also involves pitch jumps or other types of strongly accented delivery. The paper explores how different multimodal design patterns contribute to the contextualization of the specific interactional role of the newsmark and how they correlate with sequential positioning and the subsequent treatment of newsmarks. The cross-linguistic element of the research will allow the presenters to formulate comparative claims regarding the two tokens with a focus on the prosodic and embodied negotiation of epistemic stance in the two languages.

Interaction research has demonstrated how different bodily resources can be deployed for managing knowledge in social interaction. We investigate one specific body movement in German interaction that is related to the domain of epistemicity: shoulder lift, both one-sided and two-sided. Using multimodal Conversation Analysis (Sidnell and Stivers 2013; Mondada 2018), we trace its use in a range of interaction types and sequences.

In existing research, shoulder lifts (commonly with both shoulders) have been described as one core component of 'shrugs' (Debras 2017; Givens 1977; Morris 1994; Streeck 2009), i.e., complex ensembles including such elements as head tilts, shoulder lifts, or certain mouth configurations. It has been suggested that the 'shrug' has a more general unified meaning (disengagement, Streeck 2009: 189-91; cf. Debras and Cienki 2012), but that individual elements (e.g., mouth movement) may be associated with specific contextualized meanings (e.g., ignorance; Debras 2017).

The present study heeds the call for more research on the body movements commonly associated with 'shrugs' in a broader range of interactions and languages. It approaches one-sided and two-sided shoulder lifts as distinct interactional phenomena in their own right and asks (a) where/how speakers use each of them systematically in unelicited, real-time interaction, (b) what specific function(s) they can serve, and (c) what are the differences between one-sided and two-sided shoulder lifts. We analyze a collection of n=259 cases of shoulder lifts, which consists of

• n=119/259 cases of one-sided shoulder lifts,
• n=109/259 cases of two-sided shoulder lifts, and
• n=31/259 unclear/in-between cases.

The data come from more than 80 hours of video recordings of naturally occurring face-to-face interaction in everyday and institutional contexts and in stationary as well as mobile configurations (for a description of the German FOLK-corpus, see Schmidt 2016).

The conversation-analytic methodology allows us to relate shoulder lifts to the precise turn and sequential positions in which they occur. In our data, we find them in different positions (e.g., preceding a verbal response; completing an unfinished verbal turn), in coordination with talk but also as a completely embodied action (e.g., responding with only a one-sided shoulder lift). We will demonstrate how the functions accomplished with such shoulder lifts are connected not only to downgrading the speaker’s agency or negotiating deontic rights, but also – and primarily – to managing rights to know as well as building epistemic stances and practices. Thus, our work expands our understanding of the context-specific use of the body for action in interaction.

In our paper, we aim at shedding light on the knowledge-related functions of non-articulatory lip protrusion in f2f interaction and at describing it as a facial epistemic marker, i.e. for negotiating knowledge and expressing one’s own stance in talk-in-interaction.

While the frowning of the forehead and the raising of the eyebrows have already been described in terms of knowledge management in interaction (e.g. Goodwin & Goodwin 1986, Heller 2018, Dix & Groß i.p.), the analysis of the conversational use of lip protrusion (=LP) is still underrepresented within multimodal interaction analysis. So far, research on spoken language already described LP as articulatory movement or as part of second articulation / coarticulation processes in spoken language (Noiray et al. 2011), and sign language research shed light on its use as a grammatical marker, a recipient signal and marker of knowledge growth (Mohr 2014). In multimodal CA studies the LP has been described as part of a facial configuration called the thinking face (Goodwin & Goodwin 1986, Heller 2021) for displaying inner cognitive processes (of retrieving a word) as well as an embodied resource involved in multimodal practices of noticing extra-conversational occasions and initiating repair (Kääntä 2014).

Taking up this line of research, this contribution asks for the interactive functions of protruding lips as facial gesture in its own right focusing on two manifestations of LP as epistemic markers: the open exolabial LP and the closed endolabial LP (Catford 1988).

Based on the analysis of video-recorded German interactions (a dyadic car-ride interaction, a multiparty dinner-event and a games evening), we specifically analyze the use of LP as responsive stand-alone or pre-beginning element in terms of how they contribute to local knowledge management.

We will show that the two manifestations of LP operate differently in displaying or modulating the producer’s epistemic stance: The endolabial LP displays validating processes relating to new pieces of knowledge brought up to the surface of talk while sometimes projecting non-straightforward responses. In contrast, the exolabial LP operates as (part of) an embodied newsmark practice and therefore emphasizes the newsworthiness of information.

Taking up the growing multimodal CA research on facial movements as specific facial gestures in talk-in-interaktion, this paper could be linked to the conference topic 2 “Epistemicity and Multimodality”.