Constructed action and dialogue

Constructed action and constructed dialogue are pragmatic features of languages where the speaker performs the role of someone else during a conversation or narrative. Metzger defines them as the way people "use their body, head, and eye gaze to report the actions, thoughts, words, and expressions of characters within a discourse". Constructed action is when a speaker performs the actions of someone else in the narrative, while constructed dialogue is when a speaker acts as the other person in a reported dialogue. Constructed action is very common cross-linguistically.

Constructed action

Constructed action is common in many languages when telling stories or reporting the actions of others. During a narrative, the speaker not only reports the actions of others but performs them as well. The actions performed are not the exact actions of the person but an action constructed by the speaker. Liddell gives the example of a speaker patting their pockets when talking about someone having lost their keys. Since the speaker has not lost their own keys, the only reason they would pat their pockets would be to illustrate the story they are telling. The addressee then understands these actions not as the speaker's but of a character within the story.

Constructed dialogue

Constructed dialogue is when a speaker assumes the role of a character in the discourse. It often includes role-shifting, directed gaze, and body movement. For example, in American Sign Language, a speaker may utilize constructed dialogue by shifting their body to denote different characters and directing their gaze to particular points. The signs produced are then understood as the signing of the character, not of the speaker themselves.

References

• Liddell, Scott. 2003. Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language, 157–175. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Braga, Tiffany, and Emily Talbot. 2009. Constructed Action & Constructed Dialogue and Lexical Variation in Black ASL. Accessed 25 November 2015.