Language and bodily resources: ‘Response packages’ in response to polar questions in English

Abstract In this paper, using English conversational data, we examine type-conforming responses ( Raymond, 2003 ) to polar (yes/no) interrogatives, and find that such responses show recurrent patterns in terms of their linguistic and bodily production. Specifically we show that these type-conforming responses often occur in sync with bodily-visible movements to form units that we call ‘type-conforming response packages’, or ‘response packages’ for short.