The topic of this chapter is a varied class of phenomena, most of them small if not tiny, some elaborate and large, which occur in all kinds of visible and audible shapes in all kinds of contexts in human talk and interaction. What is common to all of them is that they occur as prefatory components to bigger things to come. Prefaces range from rather minimal units such as uh, well, or micro-moments of silence, to fully developed pre-sequential utterances such as can I ask you a question? (Schegloff 1980). Gestures also are quite often performed in prefatory slots. The role of prefaces – or pre's (as conversation analysts have fondly nicknamed these pet phenomena) – is to ‘foreshadow’ or ‘project’ (Sacks et al. 1974) something that comes after them, to bring it into play and ‘prepare the scene’ (Schegloff, 1984b). They allow other participants a certain premonition as to what this actor might be up to next.

Vague as it is, this description is not likely to yield a neatly bounded set of phenomena. The collection I describe is eclectic at best. The chapter is loosely organized around a sequence of talk between two nurses from Thailand who discuss weather conditions and proper attire in Germany. This sequence was chosen because it nicely illustrates the theme that runs through all of the examples, namely that interactional units foreshadow one another: moment by moment, the speaker's gestures prefigure the next moment, allowing the participants to negotiate joint courses of action until, finally, a communication problem is solved collaboratively.