Hostname: page-component-55f67697df-zh294 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-13T10:19:55.789Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The concept of preference in conversation analysis1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Jack Bilmes
Jack Bilmes
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii, Manoa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Preference is treated as a single concept in conversation analysis, but it has in fact developed into an assemblage of loosely related concepts. It has also been construed in a variety of mutually incompatible, and sometimes meth-odologically questionable, ways. This is due, at least in part, to a confusion between preference in its everyday usage and preference as a technical notion. This paper attempts to present a clear and unitary concept of preference and investigate the properties of that concept, differentiate related concepts (including conversational implicature), and reveal common confusions. (Conversation analysis, preference, methodology, implicature)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1988 , pp. 161 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Atkinson, J. M., & Drew, P. (1979). Order in court: The organization of verbal interaction in judicial settings. Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bilmes, J. (1985). “Why that now?” Two kinds of conversational meaning. Discourse Processes 8: 319–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bilmes, J. (1986). Discourse and behavior. New York: Plenum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burling, R. (1969). Linguistics and ethnographic description. American Anthropologist 71: 817–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Button, G., Drew, P., & Heritage, J. (eds.) (1986). Interaction and language use. Special issue of Human Studies 9.Google Scholar
Coulter, J. (1983). Contingent and a priori structures in sequential analysis. Human Studies 6: 361–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geoghegan, W. H. (1969). Decision-making and residence on Tagtabon Island. Working Paper No. 17, Language-Behavior Research Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1972). Remedial interchanges. In Goffman, E., Relations in public. New York: Harper & Row. 95–187.Google Scholar
Goodenough, W. H. (1956). Residence rules. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 12: 22–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, M. H., & Goodwin, C. (in press). Children's arguing. In Philips, S., Steele, S., & Tanz, C. (eds.), Language, gender, and sex in comparative perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. L. (eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts. New York: Academic. 41–58.Google Scholar
Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Heritage, J. C., & Watson, D. R. (1979). Formulations as conversational objects. In Psathas, G. (ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology. New York: Irvington. 123–62.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1972). Rules for ritual insults. In Labov, W., Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 297–353.Google Scholar
Labov, W., & Fanshel, D. (1977). Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDermott, R. P., Gospodinoff, K., & Aron, J. (1978). Criteria for an ethnographically adequate description of concerted activities and their contexts. Semiotica 24: 245–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owen, M. (1983). Apologies and remedial interchanges: A study of language use in social interaction. Berlin: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Philips, S. U. (1976). Some sources of cultural variability in the regulation of talk. Language in Society 5: 81–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, A. (1975). Second assessments: A study of some features of agreements/disagreements. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Irvine.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In Atkinson, J. M. & Heritage, J. (eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversational analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 57–101.Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (in press). On the preferences for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation. In Button, G. & Lee, J. R. (eds.), Talk and social organization. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. (First presented in 1973 as a public lecture at the Linguistic Institute, University of Michigan. Edited by E. A. Schegloff with the assistance of J. Mandelbaum.)Google Scholar
Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. A. (1979). Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons in conversation and their interaction. In Psathas, G. (ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethomethodology. New York: Irvington. 15–21.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1968). Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropotogist 70: 1075–95. Reprinted in J. J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (eds.). Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. 349–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1970). Opening sequencing. Manuscript.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53: 361–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica 8: 289–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharrock, W., & Andersen, B. (1986). The ethnomethodologists. Chichester: Ellis Horwood.Google Scholar
Toolan, M. (1986). Review of Stephen C. Levinson, Pragmatics. Journal of Literary Semantics 15: 145–51.Google Scholar
White, D. R. (1973). Mathematical anthropology. In Honigmann, J. J. (ed.), Handbook of social and cultural anthropology. U.S.: Rand McNally. 369–446.Google Scholar