Scale of ‘Relevance’ and Complementarity: Focusing on Schematic and Poetic Formations of Interaction

Kuniyoshi Kataoka

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the scale of ‘relevance’ in interviews with disaster victims. Specifically, I observe how an interview question typically elicited several layers of relevant actions on at least linguistic, interactional, schematic, and poetic levels. The third and the fourth levels, the schematic, and poetic, are especially and closely examined by looking into dichotomous schemas (e.g., ‘depart-return’ and ‘action-thought’) that were embedded in the interviewees’ experience of surviving the Great East Japan Earthquake, as well as into the poetic configurations emerging online through those schemas.

I also consider somatic reactions that may support and enhance listenership by coordinating gazes and reactive tokens, and claim that they too are involved in poetic construction of various texts. I thus conclude that more in-depth attention should be paid to a holistic achievement of multi-layered relevance, which takes shape through speaker’s and listener’s plurimodal resources.