Home Position (2002)

Schegloff Media Archive clips for:

Harvey Sacks, Emanuel A. Schegloff, (2002), “Home position”, Gesture, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 133–146.

This paper describes a possible formal organizational device that serves to bound episodes of body movement such as gestures, fidgets, instrumental moves and the like. It involves a spate of movement — whether a single move or a series of moves — being completed by returning the moving body part to the position from which it departed at the outset. A series of specimens are examined which display this organizational device across a number of dimensions of variation — in the body part being moved, the characteristics of the mover, the amplitude of the move, etc., underscoring the formality and adaptability of the device.