Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T02:40:09.979Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Resolving knowledge discrepancies in informing sequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2018

Lucas M. Seuren ,
Mike Huiskes  and
Tom Koole
Lucas M. Seuren*
Affiliation:
University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Mike Huiskes
Affiliation:
University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Tom Koole
Affiliation:
University of Groningen, The Netherlands & University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
*
Address for correspondence: Lucas M. Seuren, P.O. Box 716 9700 AS, Groningen, The Netherlands[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article investigates a specific practice that recipients in Dutch talk-in-interaction use when responding to turns that have as one of their main jobs to inform. By responding to an informing turn with an oh-prefaced nonrepeating response that has yes/no-type interrogative word order, recipients treat that turn as counter to expectation and request both confirmation of the inference formulated in his/her response, as well as reconciliatory information for the two discrepant states of affairs. This practice is compared to similar cases where the nonrepeating response is not oh-prefaced to show that such turns implement different actions. Data are in Dutch with English translations. (Counterexpectations, change-of-state, yes/no-type interrogatives, action formation, practions)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , June 2018 , pp. 409 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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.)

Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this article was presented during a workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics; we are grateful to the participants for their feedback. We would also like to thank four anonymous reviewers and the editors of this journal for their invaluable comments.

References

Button, Graham, & Casey, Neil (1985). Topic nomination and topic pursuit. Human Studies 8(1):3–55.Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth (2012). Some truths and untruths about final intonation in conversational questions. In de Ruiter, Jan-Peter (ed.), Questions: Formal, functional and interactional perspectives, 123–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ekberg, Stuart (2012). Addressing a source of trouble outside of the repair space. Journal of Pragmatics 44(4):374–86.Google Scholar
Enfield, Nick J. (2013). Relationship thinking: Agency, enchrony, and human sociality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Golato, Andrea (2010). Marking understanding versus receipting information in talk: Achso. and ach in German interaction. Discourse Studies 12(2):147–76.Google Scholar
Heinemann, Trine (2008). Questions of accountability: Yes–no interrogatives that are unanswerable. Discourse Studies 10(1):55–71.Google Scholar
Heinemann, Trine (2017). Receipting answers that are counter to expectations: The polar question-answer-nå sequence in Danish. Research on Language and Social Interaction 50(3):249–67.Google Scholar
Heinemann, Trine, & Koivisto, Aino (2016). Indicating a change-of-state in interaction: Cross-linguistic explorations. Journal of Pragmatics 104:83–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John (1984). A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In Atkinson, J. Maxwell & Heritage, John (eds.), Structures of social action, 299–345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heritage, John (2010). Questioning in medicine. In Freed, Alice & Ehrlich, Susan (eds.), Why do you ask? The function of questions in institutional discourse, 42–68. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heritage, John (2012). Epistemics in action: Action formation and territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction 45(1):1–29.Google Scholar
Hilmisdóttir, Helga (2016). Responding to informings in Icelandic talk-in-interaction: A comparison of nú and er það. Journal of Pragmatics 104:133–47.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1981). The abominable ‘ne?’: A working paper exploring the phenomenon of post-response pursuit of response. Manchester Sociology Occasional Papers 6:1–82.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In Lerner, Gene H. (ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation, 13–31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kärkkäinen, Elise O. (2009). I thought it was pretty neat: Social action formats for taking a stance. In Slembrouck, Stef, Taverniers, Miriam, & Herreweghe, Mieke Van (eds.), From ‘will’ to ‘well’: Studies in linguistics offered to Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, 293–304. Ghent: Academia Press.Google Scholar
Kasterpalu, Riina, & Hennoste, Tiit (2016). Estonian aa: A multifunctional change-of-state token. Journal of Pragmatics 104:148–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koivisto, Aino (2015a). Dealing with ambiguities in informings: Finnish aijaa as a ‘neutral’ news receipt. Research on Language and Social Interaction 48(4):365–87.Google Scholar
Koivisto, Aino (2015b). Displaying now-understanding: The Finnish change-of-state token aa. Discourse Processes 52(2):111–48.Google Scholar
Koshik, Irene (2002). A conversation analytic study of yes/no questions which convey reversed polarity assertions. Journal of Pragmatics 34(12):1851–77.Google Scholar
Koshik, Irene (2005). Beyond rhetorical questions: Assertive questions in everyday interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Labov, William (1970). The study of language in its social context. In Giglioli, Pier P. (ed.), Language and social context, 283–308. Middlesex: Penguin Education.Google Scholar
Local, John (1996). Conversational phonetics: Some aspects of news receipts in everyday talk. In Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth & Selting, Margret (eds.), Prosody in conversation, 177–230. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Maynard, Douglas W. (2003). Bad news, good news: Conversational order in everyday talk and clinical settings. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mazeland, Harrie, & Huiskes, Mike (2001). Dutch ‘but’ as a sequential conjunction: Its use as a resumption marker. In Selting, Margret & Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth (eds.), Studies in interactional linguistics, 141–69. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Persson, Rasmus (2015). Indexing one's own previous action as inadequate: On ah-prefaced repeats as receipt tokens in French talk-in-interaction. Language in Society 44(4):497–524.Google Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey (2003). Grammar and social organization: Yes/no interrogatives and the structure of responding. American Sociological Review 68(6):939–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey (2010). Grammar and social relations: Alternative forms of yes/no-type initiating actions in health visitor interactions. In Freed, Alice & Ehrlich, Susan (eds.), Why do you ask? The function of questions in institutional discourse, 87–107. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Reese, Brian J. (2007). Bias in questions. Austin: University of Texas dissertation.Google Scholar
Robinson, Jeffrey D. (2009). Managing counterinformings: An interactional practice for soliciting information that facilitates reconciliation of speakers’ incompatible positions. Human Communication Research 35:516–87.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff, Emanuel A. & Jefferson, Gail (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50(4):696–735.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1968). Sequences in conversational openings. American Anthropologist 70(6):1075–95.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1984). On some questions and ambiguities in conversation. In Atkinson, J. Maxwell & Heritage, John (eds.), Structures of social action, 28–52. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1992). Repair after next turn: The last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation. American Journal of Sociology 97:1295–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1996). Confirming allusions: Toward an empirical account of action. American Journal of Sociology 102(1):161–216.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Seuren, Lucas M., Huiskes, Mike & Koole, Tom (2016). Remembering and understanding with oh-prefaced yes/no declaratives in Dutch. Journal of Pragmatics 104:180–92.Google Scholar
Sidnell, Jack, & Enfield, Nick J. (2014). The ontology of action in interaction. In Enfield, Nick J., Kockelman, Paul, & Sidnell, Jack (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology, 423–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Michael S. (2013). ‘I thought’ initiated turns: Addressing discrepancies in first-hand and second-hand knowledge. Journal of Pragmatics 57:318–30.Google Scholar
Steensig, Jakob, & Heinemann, Trine (2013). When ‘yes’ is not enough – as an answer to a yes/no question. In Reed, Beatrice S. & Raymond, Geoffrey (eds.), Units of talk: Units of action, 213–48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Ten Have, Paul (2007). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide. London: SAGE.Google Scholar
Terasaki, Alene K. (1976). Pre-announcement sequences in conversation. Social science working paper 99, University of California, Los Angeles. Reprinted in Lerner, Gene (ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation, 171–223. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004.Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A.; Fox;, Barbara A. & Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth (2015). Grammar in everyday talk: Building responsive actions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Weidner, Matylda (2016). Aha-moments in interaction: Indexing a change of state in Polish. Journal of Pragmatics 104:193–206.Google Scholar