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Self-authorizing action: On let me X in English social interaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2020

Elliott M. Hoey Open the ORCID record for Elliott M. Hoey [Opens in a new window]
Elliott M. Hoey*
Affiliation:
University of Basel, Switzerland and University of Siegen, Germany
*
Address for correspondence: Elliott M. Hoey, University of Basel, University of Siegen, Department of Linguistics and Literature, Maiengasse 51, 4056Basel, Switzerland, [email protected]
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Abstract

This article contributes to conversation analytic research on the formatting of imperative actions by focusing on the English first person imperative let me/lemme X as it appears in a range of naturally occurring interactions. I argue that lemme X is a practice for displacing what was projectably relevant in a given environment in favor of a self-authorized action. This as a result tends to advance the speaker's interests/initiatives. The analysis accounts for speakers’ apparent presumption of permission in unilaterally undertaking their lemme X action by reference to the placement, design, and subsequent orientations to the self-authorized action. The construction is discussed in terms of the distribution of agency and it is suggested that lemme X is particularly suited to advancing activities that favor autonomous action by the speaker and which involve the recipient only minimally. (Conversation analysis, imperatives, directives, English, agency)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 95 - 118
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

Previous versions of this article were presented in 2018 at meetings of LISO at UC Santa Barbara and DARG at Loughborough University, and in 2019 at the International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis in Mannheim. I gratefully acknowledge the feedback received from audiences there. For their comments on the article special thanks are owed to Geoff Raymond, Sandy Thompson, Lorenza Mondada, and two reviewers for Language in Society.

This research was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, Rubicon grant number 44617010.

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