Issues in Applied Linguistics

This article investigates the directives and responses used in a tea ceremony demonstration lesson in Japanese. It moves beyond the talk of the lesson and incorporates explanations of the gestures into the analyses. Among the responses to the directives, there are occasional breakdowns of intersubjectivity. When the teacher chooses to deal with the breakdowns, her spoken turns resemble third position repair from conversation analysis. These repair turns are accompanied by gestures, which become a critical component in the achievement of understanding within this embodied activity.