Accountability in Social Interaction 0190210559, 9780190210557

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A C C O U N TA B I L I T Y I N   S O C I A L I N T E R A C T I O N

FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN INTERACTION General Editor: N.J. Enfield, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Radboud University, Nijmegen, and the University of Sydney This series promotes new interdisciplinary research on the elements of human sociality, in particular as they relate to the activity and experience of communicative interaction and human relationships. Books in this series explore the foundations of human interaction from a wide range of perspectives, using multiple theoretical and methodological tools. A premise of the series is that a proper understanding of human sociality is only possible if we take a truly interdisciplinary approach. Series Editorial Board: Michael Tomasello (Max Planck Institute Leipzig) Dan Sperber ( Jean Nicod Institute) Elizabeth Couper-​Kuhlen (University of Helsinki) Paul Kockelman (University of Texas, Austin) Sotaro Kita (University of Warwick) Tanya Stivers (University of California, Los Angeles) Jack Sidnell (University of Toronto) Recently published in the series: Agent, Person, Subject, Self Paul Kockelman

The Instruction of Imagination Daniel Dor

Exploring the Interactional Instinct Edited by Anna Dina L. Joaquin and John H. Schumann

How Traditions Live and Die Olivier Morin

Relationship Thinking N.J. Enfield

The Origins of Fairness Nicolas Baumard

Talking About Troubles in Conversation Gail Jefferson Edited by Paul Drew, John Heritage, Gene Lerner, and Anita Pomerantz

Requesting Responsibility Jörg Zinken Accountability in Social Interaction Jeffrey D. Robinson

ACCOUNTABILITY IN SOCIAL INTERACTION Edited by Jeffrey D. Robinson

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1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Robinson, Jeffrey D., editor. Title: Accountability in social interaction / edited by Jeffrey D. Robinson. Description: New York: Oxford University Press, [2016] |Series: Foundations of Human Interaction | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015040584 | ISBN 978–0–19–021055–7 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 978–0–19–021056–4 (ebook) | ISBN 978–0–19–021057–1 (online resource) Subjects: LCSH: Oral communication. | Social interaction. | Public speaking. | Responsibility. | Conversation analysis. | Speech acts (Linguistics) Classification: LCC P95.A23 2016 | DDC 302.34—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015040584 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed by Sheridan, USA

CONTENTS

Series Editor’s Preface 

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Contributors 

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1. Accountability in Social Interaction—​J effrey D. Robinson

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SECTION 1: Accountability and Trouble

2. On Failure to Understand What the Other Is Saying: Accountability, Incongruity, and Miscommunication—​Paul Drew & Claire Penn

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3. Defending Solidarity: Self-​Repair on Behalf of Other-​Attentiveness—​D ouglas W. Maynard

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4. Delicate Matters: Embedded Self-​Correction as a Method for Adjusting Possibly Available Inapposite Hearings—​J enny Mandelbaum

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SECTION 2: Accountability, Stance, and Status

5. Political Positioning Sequences: The Nexus of Politicians, Issue Positions, and the Sociopolitical Landscape—​S teven E. Clayman 141 6. Epistemic Asymmetry and Accountability in Service Interaction—​S eung-​H ee Lee

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Contents

7. Subjective Assessments: Managing Territories of Experience in Conversation—​K aoru Hayano

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SECTION 3: The Accountability of Action

8. Increments—​E manuel A. Schegloff

239

9. The Accountability of Proposing (vs. Soliciting Proposals of ) Arrangements—​J effrey D. Robinson & Heidi Kevoe-​F eldman

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10. When Speakers Account for Their Questions: Ani-​Prefaced Accounts in Korean Conversation—​S tephanie Hyeri Kim

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11. The Omnirelevance of Accountability: Off-​Record Account Solicitations—​C hase Wesley Raymond & Tanya Stivers Index 

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S E R I E S E D I T O R ’ S P R E FA C E

Social accountability is arguably the single most important causal mechanism in establishing the norms and conventions that define our social, cultural, and linguistic worlds. Yet the concept of accountability is seldom foregrounded in research on social and cultural life, and it plays little if any role at all in linguistics. This book is a much-​needed response, a concerted effort to explicate and explore accountability and its role in the forms and uses of language and other tools of social interaction. These essays build on the early breakthroughs of micro-​sociologists Harold Garfinkel and Harvey Sacks, and are a fitting tribute to the inimitable John Heritage, a pioneer in research on the nature of accountability and its importance for human sociality. N. J. E. Sydney, January 2016

CONTRIBUTORS

Steven E. Clayman (Ph.D., Sociology, University of California at Santa Barbara) is professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles. Paul Drew (Ph.D., Sociology, University of Lancaster, UK) is professor of Conversation Analysis at Loughborough University, UK. Kaoru Hayano (Ph.D., Linguistics, Radboud University, Nijmegen) is associate professor in the Department of English at Japan Women's University. Stephanie Hyeri Kim (Ph.D., Applied Linguistics, University of California at Los Angeles) is assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics/​TESL at California State University, Northridge. Heidi Kevoe-​Feldman (Ph.D., Communication, Rutgers University) is assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Northeastern University. Seung-​Hee Lee (Ph.D., Applied Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles) is associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Yonsei University. Jenny Mandelbaum (Ph.D., Communication, University of Texas, Austin) is professor in the Department of Communication at Rutgers University. Douglas W. Maynard (Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara) is Conway-​Bascom Professor and Garfinkel Faculty Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, as well as Research Affiliate at the University of Wisconsin-​Madison’s Center for Demography of Health and Aging. Claire Penn (Ph.D., Health Communication Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand) is professor and chair of the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology at the University of the Witwatersrand.

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Chase W Raymond (Ph.D., Hispanic Linguistics, University of California at Los Angeles) is an assistant professor in the Departments of Linguistics and Spanish & Portuguese at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Jeffrey D.  Robinson (Ph.D., Sociology, University of California at Los Angeles) is professor and chair of the Department of Communication at Portland State University, and affiliate professor of Radiation Medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University. Emanuel A.  Schegloff (Ph.D., Sociology, University of California at Berkeley) is distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles. Tanya Stivers (Ph.D., Applied Linguistics, University of California at Los Angeles) is professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles.

A C C O U N TA B I L I T Y I N   S O C I A L I N T E R A C T I O N

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A C C O U N TA B I L I T Y I N   S O C I A L I N T E R A C T I O N

Jeffrey D. Robinson

In his forward to Richard Buttny’s (1993) book, Social accountability in communication, Marvin Scott—​coauthor of the influential article titled Accounts (Scott & Lyman, 1968)—​wrote: The term “accounts” was the label first employed by Harvey Sacks, who formed a circle in Berkeley of fellow students who were writing their doctoral dissertations under Erving Goffman—​Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, David Sudnow, Sherri Cavan, and myself. A typical weekly session (which was held at Sacks’ apartment) consisted of each person reporting on his or her work, submitting it in effect to Sacks’ ethnomethodological critique. My dissertation was on horse racing, and in my report I described material from a chapter I was writing on a distinctive pattern of talk (involving “excuses” and “justifications”) that characterized certain race track regulars. When I completed my description, Sacks said that my topic had been on “accounts.” He went on to say that the “restoration talk” that I had described was only one kind of “accounting practice,” and the study of such practices was the core concern of “ethnomethodology” (p. x). To be fair, in addition to Sacks’ (1992a) earliest published lectures beginning in 1964 dealing with accounting (see also Sacks, 1992b, 1992c, 1992d, 1992e, 1992f, 1992g, 1992h, 1992i), which drew on Garfinkel’s (1952, 1963)  earlier work, there were even earlier treatments of one particular “kind” of accounting (i.e., “restoration talk,” as Sacks reportedly put it above) by a variety of scholars, such as Burke (1935/​1984), Mills (1940), Austin (1956/​1957),

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and Goffman (1959). Subsequently, there have been a number of insightful monograph-​length works dealing with accountability more broadly (Antaki, 1988, 1994; Benoit, 1995; Buttny, 1993; Garfinkel, 1967; Goffman, 1971; Heritage, 1984; Pollner, 1987; Potter, 1996; Schlenker, 1980; Semin & Manstead, 1983; Shotter, 1984), not to mention hundreds of journal articles and book chapters. In the study of language and social interaction (for review, see Tracy, Ilie, & Sandel, 2015), which is the specific focus of this chapter, the term “account” (including related terms, such as “accountability,” “accountable,” and “accounting”) is polysemous, with different senses being rather dramatic. Even today this fact is not always remembered or fully recognized or appreciated by scholars. The goal of the present chapter is to re-​expose these multiple senses of accountability, reiterate their interrelationships and, in doing so, hopefully break a little new conceptual ground through a synthesis of research to date on accountability in social interaction. Of course, given the enormity of related prior research and the complexity of the topic, the present chapter-​length review is not exhaustive of prior research. Nonetheless, this chapter both provides a basic map of the pertinent conceptual terrain and identifies pathways of future research. This chapter is organized into two main sections, reflecting two main (and interrelated) senses of accountability: (1) The account-​ability of conduct’s action; and (2) Accounting for conduct in interaction. Rather than ending by reviewing contributions to this volume en masse, they will be woven into the present chapter as they pertain.

The Account-​ability of Conduct’s Action This first main section is divided into four subsections dealing with: (1) Accountability as intelligibility; (2) Domains of practices of action; (3) Relevance rules; and (4) “Possible” actions. Accountability as Intelligibility The “central recommendation” of Garfinkel’s (1967) Studies in ethnomethodology was “that the activities whereby members produce and manage settings of organized everyday affairs are identical with members’ procedures for making those settings ‘account-​able’ ” (p. 1). By “account-​able,” Garfinkel was interested in how—​that is, in the “resources,” “procedures,” “methods,” or “practices” (all terms that get used roughly interchangeably in the



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conversation-​analytic literature) that—​people rely on and/​or use to make “settings of organized everyday affairs” “definite and sensible” (p. 3). By “definite and sensible,” Garfinkel meant recognizable and understandable (p. 9; see also Garfinkel & Sacks, 1970). Within Garfinkel’s (1967) “settings of organized everyday affairs,” conversation analysis (hereafter, CA) has focused on one (admittedly large) setting, that being persons’ “conduct in interaction.” “Conduct” includes not only verbal, vocal, and nonvocal (e.g., gestural) conduct (re. gaze, see Rossano, 2013), but also the use of artifacts, and even the situatedness of conduct in particular contexts (Heath & Luff, 2013). “Interaction” involves two or more people who are physically (or at least vocally) co-​present, who have organized themselves as potential conversational participants relative to each other, and whose communication occurs in real (or virtually real) time (Goffman, 1983). Thus, CA is focused on the “account-​ability,” or intelligibility, of conduct in interaction (this sense of accountability is the focus of Drew & Penn, ­chapter 2). A vast amount of conduct in interaction is organized on a turn-​by-​turn basis (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974)  whereby a procedural notion (Schegloff, 1992b) of mutual understanding is created through what Heritage (1984) termed a “sequential architecture of intersubjectivity”:  (1)  In constructing a turn of talk, participants normally address themselves to the preceding or adjacent turn of talk and, most commonly, the immediately preceding/​adjacent unit of talk (see also Robinson, 2014); (2) Turns (and their constitutive units) are vehicles for actions that typically “project (empirically) and require (normatively) that some ‘next action’ (or one of a range of possible ‘next actions’) should be done by a subsequent participant,” thereby creating, maintaining, or renewing a context for the next person’s talk (Heritage, 1998a, pp. 4–​5); and (3) In and through the production of their next turns/​ actions, participants claim, display, or demonstrate (re. these terms, see Enfield, 2013b, p. 58) their understanding of prior actions at a multiplicity of levels. This architecture operates similarly across significant differences of linguistic structure and cultural context (for review, see Sidnell, 2014). The operation of this architecture of intersubjectivity fundamentally relies on interlocutors making their action(s) “account-​able” (i.e., intelligible), the mechanics of which have been a central focus of CA. For example, according to Schegloff & Sacks (1973), “[a]‌pervasively relevant issue (for participants) about utterances in conversation is ‘why that now’, a question whose analysis may … also be relevant to finding what ‘that’ is” (p. 299). As Heritage (1984) put it, understanding “what that is” “is not, in the first instance, a matter of

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understanding sentences but of understanding actions—​utterances—​which are constructively interpreted in relation to their contexts” (p. 139, emphasis original). As Schegloff (1995) put it, notwithstanding the importance of the “propositional content and information distribution of discourse units,” conduct in interaction “is constructed and is attended by its recipients for the action or actions it may be doing” (p. 187; emphasis added; see also Levinson, 2006). CA’s focus on the “account-​ability” (i.e., intelligibility) of conduct’s action has been referred to as the puzzle of “action formation” (Schegloff, 2007c): [H]‌ow are the resources of the language, the body, the environment of the interaction, and position in the interaction fashioned into conformations designed to be, and to be recognizable by recipients as, particular actions … in a class of unknown size? (p. xiv). The corresponding puzzle for hearers involves “action recognition,” or what Levinson (2013) referred to as “action ascription,” or the assignment of actions and stances to units/​turns of talk. As a grossly simple illustration, in an interaction between “Speaker A” and “Speaker B,” what are the practices that “Speaker A” uses to design a request—​or an offer, proposal, complaint, criticism, apology, compliment, self-​deprecation, assessment, acceptance, agreement, rejection, confirmation, and so on—​such that it is “account-​able,” that is, recognizable and understandable as a request by “Speaker B”? This illustration is “grossly simple” at least because vernacular, single-​word labels for actions (e.g., for requests and offers, as in “He offered me a ride …”) artificially reduce the phenomenal complexity of action and has been an obstacle to analysts’ descriptions of its “account-​ability” (Schegloff, 1996a). For example, in the same way that dogs and cats, as relatively large classes of different families of carnivorous mammals, are commonly recognizable and differentiatable “at a glance,” so are actions “account-​able” at this molar level. For instance, requests and offers are large classes of action that are constituted by relatively distinct linguistic formats (Couper-​Kuhlen, 2014; Curl, 2006; Clayman & Heritage, 2014). In Tomasello’s (2008) terms, “requests” and “offers” are primordial types or classes of action (Rossano & Liebal, 2014), and in Levinson’s (2013) terms, they are “account-​able” as “main” actions, or the “more-​official” business of the action. However, single actions are almost always more complex, with accompanying “less-​official” business that can implement “secondary” actions, and index stances, that have implications for subsequent conduct (re. stance, see Kockelman, 2004). For example, it is likely that, in the same way that there are different breeds of dogs that are commonly recognizable (e.g.,



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Labrador, poodle, bulldog), so are different “breeds” of actions “account-​ able.” For instance, within the action “offer of service,” there might be offers of services that can, versus cannot, be readily delivered by their speakers, and thus a difference between a “token” offer of service and “genuine” offer of service (as discussed by Clayman & Heritage, 2014, this distinction can be achieved by manipulating the (in)congruence between benefactive stance and status). And action’s complexity can increase further. Just as there are commonly recognizable subtypes of a single breed of dog (e.g., yellow, chocolate, or black Labrador), the same is likely true for a single “breed” of offer. For example, among “genuine” (vs. “token”) offers of services, there might be “conditional offers” (perhaps achieved through additional manipulation of linguistic format; Curl, 2006), “counter offers” (perhaps achieved through additional manipulation of sequential positioning and prosody; Schegloff, 2007c), “socially obligated offers,” “standing offers,” and so on. Domains of Practices of Action As Garfinkel & Sacks (1970) put it, “the work” of forming/​ascribing action “is done as assemblages of practices” (p. 340; see also Schegloff, 1992, 1996a). Practices are patterns of conduct that involve “normative structures of reasoning which are involved in understanding and producing courses of intelligible interaction” (Heritage, 1988, p.  128; Heritage, 1984). Thus, practices are themselves “account-​able.” Actions are the products of orchestrations of multiple practices—​or “multiple semiotic resources in concert” (Enfield, 2013b, p. 64)—​which combine to “provide a behavior’s sense as an action” (via their relevance rules, discussed below; Garfinkel, 1963, p. 195, emphasis original). The assembly of practices into action has a temporal character (Garfinkel, 1967; see also Enfield’s, 2013b, notion of “enchrony”), such that it is accomplished bit by bit in the course of a turn-​constructional unit (and of a turn, if it contains more than one unit), with an action pattern (or patterns) progressively “shaping up” and potentially “morphing” over the course of the unit/​turn (See Garfinkel’s, 1967, discussion of the “documentary method of interpretation”). The following is a non-​exhaustive and non-​prioritized list of some (not necessarily distinct) domains of practices that participants use to form/​ ascribe social action(s). I  present them summarily as domains because it is impossible to either pre-​specify, or exhaustively review research on, their component practices (the citations should guide readers along these lines). I offer these domains in a similar way that Garfinkel (1967) offered his studies in ethnomethodology as “aids to a sluggish imagination” (p. 38). These domains are analogous to a set of lenses usable when analyzing data; in fact,

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in CA data sessions (ten Have, 2007), it is not uncommon to use one or more of these domains as a guiding pedagogical and analytical frame: 1. The domain of grammar and syntax (Ford, 1993; Mazeland, 2013; Selting & Couper-​Kuhlen, 2001). This domain includes what Schegloff (2007c) referred to as the “word-​selection” problem (which admittedly overlaps with other domains below): “[H]‌ow do the components that get selected as the elements of a turn get selected, and how does that selection inform and shape the understanding achieved by the turn’s recipients?” (p. xiv). 2. The domain of phonetics and prosody (Couper-​Kuhlen & Ford, 2004; Sicoli, Stivers, Enfield, & Levinson, 2015; Walker, 2013). 3. The domain of turn taking, including practices associated with turn construction and turn allocation (Clayman, 2013b; Hayashi, 2013; Lerner, 1996; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, 1996b). 4. The domain of referring to persons, places, and things (Egbert, Golato, & Robinson, 2009; Enfield, 2013a; Enfield & Stivers, 2007; Sacks & Schegloff, 1979). 5. The domain of membership categorization (Sacks, 1972; Schegloff, 2007a, 2007b; Watson, 1978; Whitehead & Lerner, 2009). 6. The domain of generalized-​ conversational implicature (Haspelmath, 2006; Levinson, 2000). 7. The domain of nonvocal behavior (Heath & Luff, 2013; Robinson, 1998, 2006b; Rossano, 2013). 8. The domain of sequence organization, including practices associated with preference organization (Pomerantz & Heritage, 2013; Schegloff, 2007c; Stivers, 2013). 9. The domain of overall structural organization, including practices associated with “activities” (Levinson, 1992; Robinson, 2013b), including institutional ones (Drew & Heritage, 1992, p. 24). 10. The domain of repair, including practices associated with its generic organization (Robinson, 2014), as well as its initiation and resolution (Hayashi, Sidnell, & Raymond, 2013; Kitzinger, 2013; Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977). 11. The domain(s) of social status, including epistemic status (Heritage, 2013; Robinson, 2013a), deontic status (Stevanovic, 2013), and benefactive status (Clayman & Heritage, 2014). Harkening back to Goffman’s (1983a) felicity’s condition and Brown & Levinson’s (1987) theory of politeness, we might also entertain relational closeness as a status (see Arundale, 2006).



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Some of the above domains of practices are arguably more basic and prevalent than others. For example, virtually all verbal actions will involve grammar and phonetics, will be formed inside turns, will be formed relative to a generic organization of repair, and will be positioned both sequentially and overall-​structurally. The relationship of many of these domains to multiple senses of accountability is addressed in numerous contributions to this volume. For example, regarding the domain of grammar and syntax, Hayano (­chapter 7) examines word selection in the formation of subjective (vs. objective) assessments, and Kim (­chapter 10) examines the turn-​initial negative response particle “ani” that prefaces accounts. Regarding the domain of turn taking, Schegloff (­chapter 8) and Mandelbaum (­chapter 4) examine the “increment” as a practice of turn continuation and action re-​formation. Regarding the domain of membership categorization, Drew & Penn (­chapter 2) examine the accountability of the principal of congruity in descriptions. Regarding the domain of sequence organization, Clayman (­chapter  5) examines the preference organization of interviewers’ marginalizing questions, and Robinson & Kevoe-​Feldman (­chapter 9) examine the preference organization of arrangement-​making proposals. Regarding the domain of repair and the goal of dealing with possible problems of action formation, Maynard (­chapter 3) examines “I mean” as a practice of self-​initiated self-​repair, and Mandelbaum (this volume) examines embedded self-​correction. Regarding the domain of social status, Lee (this volume) and Hayano (this volume) examine epistemic status and stance, and the present chapter argues for “accountability status and stance.” Relevance Rules This subsection argues that understanding processes of action formation and ascription—​and, indeed, understanding the link between this sense of account-​ability and that discussed in the next main section of this chapter—​ fundamentally relies on identifying, describing, and explicating the relevance rules of both practices and actions (here and throughout, when the term “rule” is used, it refers to a “constitutive” versus “regulative” sense of rules; for review, see Heritage, 1984). Relevance rules involve both normative structures of reasoning and normative patterns of conduct. Relevance rules not only have “implications” for interlocutors’ understandings of “what just happened,” but also, and importantly, for interlocutors’ immediately subsequent conduct. Schegloff & Sacks (1973) referred to these latter “implications” in terms of “sequential implicativeness”:  “By ‘sequential implicativeness’ is meant that

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an utterance projects for the sequentially following turn(s) the relevance of a determinate range of occurrences (be they utterance types, activities, speaker selections, etc.). It thus has sequentially organized implications” (footnote 6, p. 296, emphasis added). There has been some confusion in the CA literature surrounding the term “relevance rule,” largely due to its conflation with the term “conditional relevance.” Schegloff (2007a) acknowledged a distinction between these two terms when he wrote, referring to Harvey Sacks’ work on membership categorization: The consistency rule and corollaries … are relevance rules. Readers and practitioners of CA will have encountered relevance rules before—​for example, in the context of next-​speaker selection in turn-​taking organization, in the context of conditional relevance of next turns in adjacency pairs and sequence organization, in the context of repair (its preferences are relevance rules) (p. 474, emphasis added). Here, at least implicitly, Schegloff suggested that “conditional relevance” is a subset, or only one type, of “relevance.” Relative to the broad term “relevance rule,” the aspect of “conditional relevance”—​for example, the first-​pair part of an adjacency-​pair sequence makes a second-​pair part conditionally relevant (Schegloff, 2007c)—​was introduced to address two problems: The first of these is: How can we rigorously talk about two items as a sequenced pair of items, rather than as two separate units, one of which might happen to follow the other? The second problem is: How can we, in a sociologically meaningful and rigorous way, talk about the “absence” of an item; numerous things are not present at any point in a conversation, yet only some have a relevance that would allow them to be seen as “absent.” Some items are, so to speak, “officially absent” (Schegloff, 1968, p. 1083). Along these lines, Schegloff & Sacks (1973) observed: [W]‌henever one party to a conversation is specifically concerned with the close order sequential implicativeness of an utterance he has a chance to produce, the use of a first pair part is a way he has of methodically providing for such implicativeness (p. 296, emphasis added).



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Here, akin to the distinction between “relevance rule” and “conditional relevance,” Schegloff and Sacks distinguished between the larger category of “sequential implicativeness” and one subset or type, that being “close-​order sequential implicativeness.” In sum, at least one critical difference—​at least one that will be critical for the study of accountability in interaction—​between “relevance rules” generally (and their “sequential implicativeness” generally) and ones that impose “conditional relevance” (or a “close-​order sequential implicativeness”) specifically is the “degree” to which whatever is relevant “bears upon” recipients’ conduct. For example, relative to some relevance rules, those that impose “conditional relevance” appear to have a high(er) degree (e.g., “strength” or “force”) of implicativeness, or normative expectation. Stated differently, relevance rules can be arrayed along a cline or level of implicativeness. The relevance rules of actions are constituted by a specific orchestration of practices that have their own relevance rules, and these practices and their associated relevance rules can modulate actions’ sequential implicativeness. Stivers & Rossano (2010) made just this type of argument regarding the response relevance of one type of action (e.g., assessments) being modulated by syntax, prosody, gaze, etc. While adjusting the orchestration of practices constituting an action may modulate its sequential implicativeness, doing so may also alter the very sense of the action (if not in terms of its first-​order or main business, perhaps in terms of its second-​order business, stances, etc.). In sum, CA’s central focus on understanding action ascription/​formation fundamentally relies on identifying, describing, and explicating relevance rules of both practices and actions. “Possible” Actions As social structures (Heritage, 1984), actions have a social life—​an identity and a “validity”—​independent from: (1) speakers’ intentions in terms of what they “wanted” to do or “thought” they were doing by producing a particular orchestration of practices; (2) other participants’ treatments of (e.g., responses to) the action in terms of what such treatments publicly index regarding the nature or “meaning” of the action for those other participants; and (3) other participants’ beliefs and claims about the nature or “meaning” of the action. For example (regarding #1, above), many readers will have found themselves in situations where they did not intend (i.e., privately) to criticize their interlocutor, yet nonetheless formed their action in a manner that is recognizable/​ understandable—​not only by other interlocutors, but by the speaker him/​ herself—​as a criticism. In these situations, speakers (at least in the United States) sometimes provide the apologetic excuse that the action “came out the

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wrong way.” For another example (regarding #2, above), recipients can recognize/​understand an action as having been designed as a back-​handed (or left-​handed) compliment (and thus as a thinly veiled criticism), yet respond in ways that do not “rise to the bait,” and thus that do not publicly treat the action as a criticism. For a final example (regarding #3, above), domestic arguments tend to escalate when one partner “intends” (i.e., privately) to criticize the other, and in fact publicly designs a recognizable/​understandable criticism, yet subsequently denies both issues when “taken to task” by their partner for having criticizing them (e.g., The offended might accuse, “Don’t criticize me,” and the offender might retort, “I wasn’t criticizing, I was merely observing …”, and the offended might pursue with, “You know full well that was a criticism!”). It is for all of these reasons that CA refers not to actions, but to “possible” actions. Schegloff put it as follows (1996b): To describe some utterance, for example, as a “possible invitation” … or a “possible complaint” … is to claim that there is a describable practice of talk-​in-​interaction which is usable to do recognizable invitations or complaints … and that the utterance now being described can be understood to have been produced by such a practice, and is thus analyzable as an invitation or as a complaint. This claim is made, and can be defended, independent of whether the actual recipient on this occasion has treated it as an invitation or not, and independent of whether the speaker can be shown to have produced it for recognition as such on this occasion. Such an analytic stance is required to provide resources for accounts of “failures” to recognize an utterance as an invitation or complaint (pp. 116–​117). “Possible” understandings “are methodically accessible graspings of what another has said or done” (Schegloff, 2006, p. 147). This notion is exposed in various ways by Kim (­chapter  10), Mandelbaum (­chapter  4), Maynard (­chapter 3), and Schegloff (­chapter 8). Caution is necessary, though, in regards to the notion of a “possible” action, insofar as it might incorrectly imply that the process of action formation/​ascription is automatic, infallible, or absolutely certain. Even if it were “proven” that the orchestration of practices A, B, and C was a sufficient method for implementing possible action X, there is still no guarantee of absolute intersubjective agreement regarding the meaning/​understanding of action X. As Garfinkel (1967) argued: Apparently no matter how specific the terms of common understandings may be—​a contract may be considered the prototype—​they attain



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the status of an agreement for persons only insofar as the stipulated conditions carry along an unspoken but understood et cetera clause (p. 73; emphasis original). Garfinkel continued: The et cetera clause provides for the certainty that unknown conditions are at every hand in terms of which an agreement, as of any particular moment, can be retrospectively reread to find out in light of present practical circumstances what the agreement “really” consisted of “in the first place” and “all along” (p. 74; emphasis original). Importantly, though, the et cetera clause does not, and did not for Garfinkel, deny the status of “possible actions” as social structures. In fact, very similar to the notion of a “possible” action, Garfinkel (1967) referred to a “reasonable account” of action (footnote 12, p. 73), while nonetheless recognizing that participants can, post hoc, work to manipulate et cetera considerations “for cause” (p.  74). These ideas are echoed in Enfield’s (2013b) idea that “signers are to some degree able to [subprehend] the interpretants that their signifying behavior will elicit” (p.  21), or that:  “[T]‌here are interpretants that would not surprise us. Though we might not have anticipated them as such, if they occurred we wouldn’t be able to say that we had not anticipated them” (p. 23). To conclude the first section of this chapter, one sense of “accountability”—​which I  termed “the account-​ability of conduct’s action”—​involves interlocutors’ abilities to form and ascribe (i.e., recognize and understand) possible actions, which are themselves orchestrations of practices of conduct, which embody relevance rules, or normative structures or reasoning and normative patterns of conduct. This leads to a second, interconnected sense of “accountability” having to do with breaching relevance rules, intentionally or otherwise.

Accounting for Conduct in Interaction This second main section is divided into seven subsections, including:  (1)  Accountability as responsibility; (2)  Accountability versus atypicality; (3) What is an account?; (4) Different types of accounts relative to different types of relevance rules; (5) A relevance rule: Account for accountable conduct; (6)  The preference for self-​accounting; and (7)  “Status” and “stance” regarding accountability.

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Accountability as Responsibility In the previous main section, it was argued that relevance rules undergird the processes of action formation and ascription, and thus the very intelligibility of conduct itself. CA is primarily concerned with relevance rules that are intersubjectively understood by a large swath of a culture/​society (for a review of intersubjectivity, see Heritage, 1984; for a review of possible permutations of intersubjectivity, such as Searle’s “collective intentionality,” see Sidnell, 2014). CA is only secondarily concerned with idiosyncratic relevance rules, or those shared uniquely by a single dyad, such as two relational partners (see Sigman, 1980). Adopting ideas from Garfinkel (1963), who extended Alfred Schutz’s notion of the “attitude of daily life,” relevance rules are not merely intersubjectively recognized and understood, but intersubjectively “constraining”:  (1)  Speakers operate as if relevance rules are constraining upon themselves (with varying degrees of “force,” as discussed in the previous section); (2) Speakers expect that the same relevance rules are similarly constraining upon their interlocutors; and (3) Speakers expect that, just as they (i.e., speakers) have such expectations of their interlocutors, their interlocutors have the same expectations of them (i.e., of speakers). These three interrelated facts make up what Garfinkel (ibid.) might have called the “constitutive expectancies” of possible actions (p. 190). Garfinkel (1963) conceptualized “trust” in terms of interlocutors’ mutual expectations that they will recognize, understand, and adhere to relevance rules. Garfinkel (1988) argued that there is “no time out” from such trust (p.  103). Furthermore, such trust is a moral imperative (Garfinkel, 1963, 1967), and thus breaching relevance rules can reflect poorly on one’s “moral character” (as Sacks, 1992e, noted was the case for Adam in Genesis; p. 121). This point was echoed by Goffman (1971): “[H]‌e who fails to guide himself by a particular rule has done so at best because of a momentary lapse, at worst because of faulty character” (p.  99) (see also Bergman, 1998). The bulk of Garfinkel’s (1967) studies in ethnomethodology suggest that persons orient to breaches of relevance rules as not merely indexing “special, if presently undisclosed, motives,” (Heritage, 1984, p. 99), but also as being sanctionable and as warranting “righteous hostility” (ibid., p. 99). Although interlocutors may try to repair such breaches—​by, for example, offering justifications, excuses, or apologies (see subsection “What is an account?” below)—​doing so rarely ever completely or quickly erases the moral transgression. As Austin (1956/​ 1957) said: “[F]ew excuses get us out of it completely: the average excuse, in a poor situation, gets us only out of the fire into the frying pan—​but still, of



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course, any frying pan in a fire” (p. 3, emphasis original). In sum, interlocutors are morally responsible at all times (i.e., omnirelevantly) for recognizing, understanding, and adhering to relevance rules. Shirking this responsibility can be “accountable” in the sense that it becomes relevant for the “irresponsible” party to somehow “account” for their action in terms of its breach of relevance rules. Here we are dealing with a second sense of “accountable,” now not in terms of action being intelligible (which was previously referred to as being “account-​able”), but in terms of interlocutors’ (moral) responsibility for forming, ascribing, and being guided by action in accordance with relevance rules (see also Buttny, 1993; Linell & Rommetveit, 1998). Accountability versus Atypicality In the above paragraph, the addition of the qualifier “can be” (i.e., “Shirking this responsibility can be ‘accountable’ …”) is meant to recognize that conduct that is not completely consistent with “typical” relevance rules is not always or necessarily “accountable.” To be sure, such “marked” conduct (for a review of markedness, see Haspelmath, 2006) will “attract special attention” (Enfield, 2013b, p. 22) and is often referred to (by professional analysts and lay members alike) as being “atypical” (vs. “typical”), “irregular” (vs. “regular”), “uncommon” (vs. “common”), “abnormal” (vs. “normal”), “exceptional” (vs. “ordinary”), “rare” (vs. “frequent”), “unusual” (vs. “usual”), or “unexpected” (vs. “expected”). But conduct that is not completely consistent with “typical” relevance rules is not always or necessarily “accountable” in the sense that it becomes relevant for the “irresponsible” party to somehow “account” for their action in terms of its breach of relevance rules. In fact, deviation from such typicality (vs. outright violation or flouting of relevance rules) is yet another resource for action formation/​ascription. Such marked conduct “is a positive signal for us to initiate a search for an explanation that is appropriate to the circumstances” (Heritage, 1988, p. 140). As Garfinkel (1963) argued: On the occasions of discrepancies between expected and actual events, persons engage in assorted perceptual and judgmental [and, as Schegloff, 1992, argued, interactional] work whereby such discrepancies are “normalized.” By “normalized” I mean that perceivedly normal values of typicality, comparability, likelihood, causal texture, instrumental efficacy, and moral requiredness are restored (Garfinkel, 1963, p. 188; re. the process of “normalization,” see also Pollner, 1987).

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Especially given Schegloff ’s (1996b, 2006) notion of “possible” actions and Garfinkel’s (1967) notion of “et cetera” clauses (see previous main section), in the face of marked conduct, interlocutors might reassess their initially ascribed action for some other action that might be afoot. Using Garfinkel’s (1963) terms, interlocutors may initially search for a different “constitutive accent” of the conduct in question. For example, in English, while certain word-​order constructions, such as WH-​clefts and left-​dislocations (e.g., Mister Henry, he came up), are relatively infrequent, they can be recognizable/​understandable practices of action involving topicality (Kim, 1995). For another example, Stivers (2007) demonstrated that “alternative” uses of person-​reference forms, while again relatively infrequent, can be recognizable/​understandable practices of action involving managing relationships. While these practices are relatively infrequent, and thus referred to by their authors as being “marked,” they are also commonly and seamlessly “normalized” in terms of the “possible” actions they contribute to forming. In the same vein, Hayano (­chapter 7) examines the practice of designing a “subjective” assessment (e.g., I love chocolate ice cream!) and its entailing actions, as compared to the more frequent/​default “objective” assessment (e.g., Chocolate ice cream is the best!). In addition to cognitive processes of normalization, interlocutors may also employ procedural ones (Schegloff, 1992b). For example, in the midst of an action’s formation, or in the midst of a projectably multi-​unit turn (or action or activity), such as an extended telling, interlocutors can bypass places of “conditional” entry (Lerner, 1996) where they might otherwise initiate repair (Robinson, 2014), effectively “waiting” for some sense to be made of atypical conduct. As Schegloff (2000) put it (reflecting on Garfinkel’s, 1967, notion of “let it pass”), sometimes there are instances in which there is a problem, but what people do is let it pass—​for now. It’s not “let it pass”; it’s “let it pass for now,” in the hope, expectation, or in allowing for the possibility, that things said subsequently will clarify the problem and avoid the need to initiate repair, and if they don’t, then you can ask later on when it’s next relevant (p. 116, emphasis original). For another, related example, interlocutors may employ the machinery of repair (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977)  to resolve “possible” mis-​ ascription, for example by waiting for the speaker of the atypical conduct to repair themselves, or by initiating repair (e.g., Huh?) (see below for how these strategies can also be ones for soliciting accounts).



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The analytic “rub” is determining when marked conduct that might otherwise be normalized—​that is, when conduct that does not so much breach, violate, or flout relevance rules as it does constitute them—​crosses the threshold into less certain conduct, and ultimately into accountable conduct that does breach relevance rules. These thresholds are themselves fuzzy (at least in the abstract). At some point, when conduct has sufficiently strayed from relevance rules, the field of possible action becomes increasingly ambiguous, such that interlocutors’ “bets as to ‘what happened’ over the set of alternative possibilities becomes more equiprobable” (Garfinkel, 1963, p.  196). In the remainder of this second main section, this chapter addresses accountable conduct, per se, recognizing that grounding such a characterization is a serious topic of empirical inquiry for any particular, contextualized action. It was said earlier that accountable conduct raises the relevance of the accountable party “accounting” for their action in terms of its breach of relevance rules. This claim certainly needs to, and will, be further discussed and supported (see below), but first I turn to defining an “account,” which is a fundamental tool used to “restore” relevance rules. What Is an Account? The depth of interlocutors’ responsibility for restoring breaches of Garfinkel’s (1963) trust is found in the fact that even 3-​to 4-​year-​old children give accounts for pragmatic violations (Becker, 1988). According to Scott & Lyman (1968)—​and very much in accordance with Garfinkel (1963, 1967)—​ “[a]‌n account is a linguistic device employed whenever an action is subjected to valuative inquiry” (Scott & Lyman, 1968, p. 46). That is, an account is a device for “bridging the gap between action and expectation” (ibid., p. 46). Scott and Lyman went on to say: “By an account, then, we mean a statement made by a social actor to explain unanticipated or untoward behavior” (ibid., p. 46; see also Garfinkel & Sacks, 1970). Scott and Lyman introduced their article by saying that “[a]n account is not called for when people engage in routine, common-​sense behavior in a cultural environment that recognizes that behavior as such” (pp.  46–​47), and concluded their article by arguing that the study of accounts is “the study of what constitutes ‘acceptable utterances’ ” (p. 61), a term they borrowed from Chomsky (1965): “[L]et us use the term ‘acceptable’ to refer to utterances that are perfectly natural and immediately comprehensible … and in no way bizarre or outlandish” (p. 10). In sum, an account is an attempt by one interlocutor to modify (e.g., change, explain, justify, clarify, interpret, rationalize, (re)characterize, etc.),

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either prospectively or retrospectively, other interlocutors’ understandings or assessments of conduct-​in-​interaction in terms of its “possible” breach of relevance rules (i.e., to the point of accountability). This definition is intentionally more narrow than is sometimes used, even though it may end up having wider application. For example, authors sometimes use the terms “providing an account for something” or “accounting” to refer more broadly to “narratively reconstructing a past event” or “recounting past experiences” (e.g., Edwards & Middleton, 1986). The present definition of “account” is also, in line with Heritage (1988), limited to “some current action going on in the conversation, rather than accounts that focus on events that are wholly external to the conversation in which they occur” (p. 127). People produce accounts, in large part, “in order to forestall the negative conclusions which might otherwise be drawn” (Heritage, 1988, p. 140). Heritage (1988) elaborated: Accounts function to “repair” the ubiquitous relevance of rules of conduct by protecting them from the “entropic” process of attrition that could otherwise arise from the incidence of non-​compliant actions. Ordinary explanations of action, no matter how trivial and apparently inconsequential, thus play a crucial role in maintaining the foundations of social organization itself (Heritage, 1988, p. 141, emphasis added). In this sense, at least some accounts are part of the organization of conversational repair, albeit not as traditionally construed by Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks (1977). Along these lines, Kim (­chapter 10) compares Korean ani-​ prefaced accounts (for possibly accountable prior questions) with English, no-​prefaced, self-​repairs in third position. Similarly, Maynard (chapter 3) and Mandelbaum (chapter 4) both examine practices for repairing possibly inapposite prior actions that can constitute instances of trouble “speaking,” again not in a traditional sense of grammatical troubles, but in terms of trouble with action formation. As Heritage (1988) noted, accounts not only (and perhaps simultaneously) function to “save face” (Goffman, 1967), but also to “save intelligibility” (Garfinkel, 1963, 1967). Moreover, as Heritage (1988) summarized, relevance rules are sustained by accounts: The exceptions with their explanations thus become “the exceptions that prove the rule” because the provision of such explanations maintains the rule’s presuppositional status both as a rule of conduct and as a rule of interpretation. Once again, we encounter a closed circle



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of interpretation. Presuppositional rules of action and interpretation interlock with the organization of account giving to form a seamless web—​a self-​motivating, self-​sustaining and self-​reproducing normative organization of action (p. 140). Different Types of Accounts Relative to Different Types of Relevance Rules If an account is an attempt by one interlocutor to modify other interlocutors’ understandings of conduct in terms of its “possible” breach of relevance rules, then we can begin to identify different types of accounts by virtue of different types of relevance rules. Insofar as (courses of ) actions are “not only made but judged in their making” (Shotter, 1991, p. 62), accounts can be both prospective and retrospective, that is, can be positioned both before and after target conduct (Houtkoop-​Steenstra, 1990; Scott & Lyman, 1968; Waring, 2007b; see Schegloff, c­ hapter 8, for how increments can modify actions so as to prospectively manage the possible accountability of subsequent action). Furthermore, we will need to extend our conception of accounts beyond “overt explanations,” such as clausal and sentential excuses and justifications (Scott & Lyman, 1968), to much less overt forms. What follows are three (non-​exhaustive) different classes of relevance rules and examples of related accounts, including relevance rules associated with:  (1)  actions’ sequential implications; (2) the formation of action; and (3) the use of action. Relevance Rules Associated with  Actions’ Sequential Implications  As discussed earlier, immediately prior actions, once formed, establish relevance rules that inform and constrain subsequent conduct, including the range and types of actions and stances that are normatively produced next, and the “degree” to which their production is normatively expected (and thus accountable). For example, as a sequence-​initiating action, a “flirtatious invitation” likely establishes the relevance not only of responding to it (vs. not at all; Schegloff, 2007c), but also of a particular person responding to it (e.g., the selected speaker vs. others; ibid.), of responding without delay after the transition-​relevance place (i.e., in a contiguous manner; Sacks, 1987), of responding in a manner that either aligns or disaligns with it as an invitation (i.e., in a “pair-​type-​related” manner, including acceptance or rejection, vs. something like “elephant”; Schegloff, 2007c, p. 13), and perhaps also of responding in a manner that somehow takes up its flirtatious stance (vs. not at all). For another example, as a sequence-​responding answer to a “flirtatious invitation,” a “coy rejection” might establish the relevance of pursuing the

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invitation (vs. closing down the sequence; see Schegloff, 2007c, p. 117, re. dispreferred answers being “expansion-​relevant,” emphasis added). Note that, relative to practices of sequence organization, those of grammar can independently embody relevance rules, as when an invitation’s wording, such as “You’ll go out with me, right?” (vs. “You wouldn’t want to go out with me, would you?”) sequentially implicates agreement, which is tantamount to acceptance (vs. disagreement, which is tantamount to rejection; Sacks, 1987). This raises a range of interesting (and, as of yet, largely unanswered) questions about how different relevance rules from different domains of practice (or even from different practices within a same domain), such as sequence organization and grammar, interact or “mix” with each other, sometimes “cooperatively” (as when relevance rules from both sequence organization and grammar sequentially implicate “agreement/​acceptance”) and other times “competitively” (as when relevance rules from sequence organization implicate “acceptance” and those from grammar implicate “disagreement”).1 Clayman (­chapter  5) discusses this type of competition in reference to interviewers’ marginalizing questions (see also Pomerantz, 1978; Sacks & Schegloff, 1979). One type of account, then, is tailored to breaches of these types of relevance rules. For example, as Heritage (1984) demonstrated via Extract 1 (below), recipients of requests for information sometimes account for not being able to answer with relevant information by responding with I don’t know (line 2), which explains the rule violation (truthfully or not) in terms of a lack of sufficient knowledge (see also Beach, 1990/​1991; Drew, 1992; Heritage, 1988). Extract 1 [Trio:2:II:1] 01 M: What happened at (.) wo:rk. At Bullocks this evening.= 02 P: =.hhhh Well I don’  kno:::w::. While P’s claim of insufficient knowledge, as an overt explanation, is a relatively canonical account, note that other “stuff ” happens before it that might also be conceptualized as an account. For example, unlike sequence-​initiating actions that make relevant two alternative types of second-​pair-​part answer (e.g., as do many invitations, which make relevant some form of either acceptance or rejection), M’s question, “What happened at (.) wo:rk. At Bullocks this evening.” (line 1) arguably only makes relevant one type of second-​pair-​ part answer involving a candidate “happening.” In this type of sequential context, Schegloff & Lerner (2009) argued that P’s “Well” (line 2):



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serves as an alert to the questioner and others that the response will be in some respect not straightforward, and that it should therefore not be parsed as such, but rather requires attention to the way(s) in which it is not straightforward to allow a proper understanding (p. 101). If, by account, we mean any attempt by one interlocutor to modify other interlocutors’ understandings of conduct in terms of its “possible” breach of relevance rules, then P’s “Well” seems a likely candidate. Relevance Rules Associated with the Formation of Action  As discussed earlier, possible actions and their stances are formed as being intelligible by virtue of particular assemblies of particular practices. A much-​cited example of the action-​formation process comes from Schegloff (1996a), where he argued that: (1) in response to an utterance that offers a candidate observation, interpretation, or understanding of a recipient’s circumstances; (2) an answer by a selected speaker that “does agreement”; (3) by virtually identically repeating some or all of the prior utterance; (4) in a next turn; (5) that is second or third position in its sequence; (6) as the only (or first) part of that turn, is a method for implementing a particular action, which he termed “confirming an allusion.” For another example at a coarser level of action granularity, Couper-​Kuhlen (2014) argued that requests and offers have relatively distinct grammatical fingerprints (re. offers, see also Curl, 2006). Changing the “mix” of practices (including both their composition and position) can subtly or dramatically change the nature of the action or, as Garfinkel (1963) might have said, its “constitutive accent.” For example, Robinson (2004) demonstrated that changing either the position of an expression of personal regret (e.g., I’m sorry), or its verbal composition (e.g., I’m sorry vs. My bad), or its prosody (I’m sorry. vs. I’m sorry?, where the period and question mark symbolize falling and rising intonation, respectively) can transform an action from a possible sincere apology, to a possible insincere (or non-​g enuine) one, to a different action entirely, such as a condolence or an initiation of repair. Hayano (­chapter 7) demonstrates that, as part of the formation of assessments, changes in word selection (e.g., X is great vs. I love X) changes the nature of the assessing action. All of these examples support the normative character of action formation, which was powerfully exposed by Drew, Walker, and Ogden (2013), who demonstrated that, and how, speakers utilize practices of self-​repair to adjust offers and requests from less-​to more-​“appropriate” formats.

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Another type of account, then, is tailored to breaches of these types of relevance rules. Overt forms of such accounts are easily found, as in Extract 2 (taken from Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977, p. 364). Extract 2 [BS:2:1:6] 01 02 03 04 05

C:     G: C:

Can you tell me-​(1.0) D’you have any records of whether you-​whether you-​who you sent-​ Oh(hh) shit. What’d you say? I’m having the worst trouble talking.

In the wake of difficulty forming a unit of talk, and thus an action, C engages in a bit of perhaps lighthearted (i.e., laugh-​infused or breathy) profanity, “Oh(hh) shit.” (line 3; breathiness is symbolized in the transcript with “(hh)”), which accounts for the non-​normative character of his difficulty speaking by at least acknowledging his frustration with it. In response to G’s repair initiation (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977), “What’d you say?” (line 4), C even more overtly accounts for his difficulty: “I’m having the worst trouble talking.” (line 5). Again, though, something else happens right before C’s “Oh(hh) shit.” (line 3), that being his cut-​off of the word “sent-​” (Extract 2, line 2, above; re. cut-​offs, see Schegloff, 1979; the cut-​off is symbolized in the transcript by the hyphen). We see a similar situation in Extract 3 (below, taken from Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977, p. 370), this time without any overt account: Extract 3 [GTS:5:6] 01 Ken: He siz uh (1.0) W’l then what’r you so 02   ha-​er wuh-​unhappy about. Ken cuts off the word happy, “ha-​” (line 2), and then the word “what,” “wuh-​” (line 2), and then repairs himself by replacing the previous and nascent happy (“ha-​”) with “unhappy” (line 2), which radically changes the “meaning” of his action. The cut-​off is a relatively generic practice for projecting self-​repair (Schegloff, 1979), and thus can be a type of account, at least in contexts where immediately prior conduct is possibly accountable. Here, Ken’s “ha-​” projects happy, which is accountable given his story-​so-​far, which has projected something opposite of happy. Thus, Ken’s cut-​off, which projects self-​repair, is an attempt to modify his recipient’s understanding and/​or assessment of both



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Ken’s prior conduct (e.g., as being a “troubling” bit of accountable conduct) and future conduct (e.g., as being possibly “geared” toward repairing the accountable trouble). Other researchers have examined cut-​offs being used to repair a Freudian slip (and other such accountable errors; Jefferson, 1996), or “a clearly (or inferably) wrong referent” (Hepburn, Wilkinson, & Shaw, 2012, p. 176). To cut-​offs as a type of account, we might also add other practices of self-​repair, such as “I mean” (Maynard, 2013). Maynard (­chapter 3) examines “I mean” as a practice for repairing actions (e.g., invitations) that might otherwise be solidarity-​enhancing, but that, in certain contexts, are possibly inapposite (e.g., self-​serving) and, thus, accountable. Although no review is provided here, it is worth noting that at least overt accounts, such as excuses, justifications, apologies, and so on, are themselves actions and thus necessarily rendered intelligible as such via particular assemblies of particular practices and their relevance rules (more research is needed in this area). Thus, when the formation of accounts involves a breach of relevance rules associated their formation (e.g., an ill-​formed apology), accounts can themselves be accountable in these terms. Relevance Rules Associated with the Use of Action  There are relevance rules that guide what might be called the use of particular actions in particular moments. Many of these relevance rules involve participants’ concerns with managing social solidarity (for review, see Clayman, 2002) or affiliation (see Enfield’s, 2013b, notion of the “affiliational imperative”). For example, some actions, such as a sincere criticism of an interlocutor’s conduct (vs. a sincere compliment) is arguably more (vs. less) threatening to social solidarity, for example because it is more (vs. less) threatening of interlocutors’ positive face (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Independent of relevance rules guiding the formation of, say, one of these criticisms, there are relevance rules guiding the “appropriateness” of their use in particular moments, for example of engaging in such criticism at all (remember that, according to Brown & Levinson, 1987, the most polite strategy is not performing the face-​threatening action at all). In what follows, I discuss three slightly different types of rules (and accounts found in their breach) associated with the use of action: those related to (1) sequence-​initiating actions; (2) sequence-​responding actions; and (3) vocabularies of motive. Relevance Rules Associated with the Use of Sequence-​initiating Actions: One

class of relevance rules associated with the use of action applies to sequence-​ initiating (vs. responding) actions that are dispreferred and thus accountable (re. preference, see Pomerantz & Heritage, 2013). For example, researchers have argued that the actions of telling news that is “bad” (vs. “good”) for

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recipients (Maynard, 1996, 2003; Schegloff, 1988b) and correcting others (vs. allowing them to correct themselves; Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977) are dispreferred. While these actions may have vernacularly transparent, negative consequences for social solidarity, this relationship may be less evident for (but nonetheless illuminated by) other sequence-​initiating actions that also appear to be dispreferred. For example, in the context of American telephone openings, there is evidence that self-​identifying (vs. being recognized or introduced by others) is dispreferred (Pillet-​Shore, 2011; Schegloff, 2007c). For another example, which is especially pertinent to the present chapter, there is evidence that actions that explicitly solicit accounts for others’ conduct (e.g., Why did you pay for his dinner?) (vs. allowing others to provide or offer accounts) are dispreferred because they “convey a challenging stance toward the accountable event (indexing a claim that the accountable event does not accord with common sense and is, thus, possibly inappropriate or unwarranted) and communicate a critical stance toward the agent(s) responsible for its production” (Robinson & Bolden, 2010, p. 504; Bolden & Robinson, 2011). For a final example, while discussed in the context of neither social solidarity nor preference/​dispreference, Sacks (1972) essentially argued that offering the assessment “I am suicidal” breached a relevance rule: “[O]‌n the assertion of ‘I am suicidal,’ the offering of an account, and explanation, is relevant. Either it is offered or its absence is noticeable, and on not being offered it may be requested” (p. 55). Even the use of particular words can be morally loaded and, thus, accountable as being “socially inappropriate,” such as using the “N-​word” to refer to an African American ( Jefferson, 1987). Speakers frequently produce overt accounts, prospectively and/​or retrospectively, for sequence-​initiating actions that possibly threaten social solidarity and/​or face. For example, see Extract 4 (taken from Clayman, 2013a, p. 296): Extract 4 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

Fred: Laurie: Fred: Laurie: Fred:   Laurie: Fred:

Oh by the way ((sniff )) I have a bi:g favor to ask ya. Sure, go’head. ‘Member the blouse you made a couple weeks ago? Ya. Well I want to wear it this weekend to Vegas but my mom’s buttonholer is broken. Fred I told ya when I made the blouse I’d do the buttonholes. Ya ((sniff )) but I hate ta impose.



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Fred prospectively accounts for her request regarding sewing button holes with “I want to wear it this weekend to Vegas but my mom’s buttonholer is broken.” (lines 5–​6), which effectively constitutes the request, which Fred herself orients to as being “imposing” (line 8), and thus accountable. For another example, prior to Extract 5 (below), Moses and his friend have been complaining about the lack of cleanliness of a particular city’s public light-​rail service (referred to by Moses as “the MAX,” which refers to the “Metropolitan Area Express”). At one point, here in Extract 5, Moses likens the MAX to a “shelter for homeless people.” (lines 1–​2), which is arguably a “politically incorrect” position in this progressive, public-​transportation-​minded city. Extract 5 [CA=Store:36] 01 MOS: Like I’m >sorry< th:uh Max i:s (th)-​=like shelter for 02   homeless people. so oh I’m sorry they’re gunna turn me in. Max accounts for his statement as being possibly offensive by apologizing for it (Robinson, 2004) both prospectively (“I’m >sorryyou know< enough was enough of the working thing.” In line 11 she adds: “uhm i:n uh a-​an employee (.) ba:sis.” This increment may be designed to remove the possible hearing that she takes it that caring for a child at home may not count as “work.” Extract 13 [Kitzinger BCC:23:H] 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

                    ➔                  

B: And u:h it has been very dishea:rtening. And-​  And   now I’m (.) one of those (0.2) recent big redundancie:s. C: mcht .hh Oh I’m sorry.=Are you thinking of moving else↑where   o:r B: Well: no I:: u:hm (0.5) being pregnant with number three   huh [huh] C: [AH ] HA::H!= B: =deci(h)ded that uhm >you know< enough was enough of the   working thing. C: hm B: uhm i:n uh a-​an employee (.) ba:sis= C: yeah B: so I’m going to just resi:gn C: [↑mm:] B: [‘n   ] retrai:n. C: A:s.   (.) B: We:ll ‘t the moment that’s a:ll still a bit iffy’n [I-​  ] C: [You]’re   exploring.

In lines 1–​2, B announces that she is unemployed, using a somewhat euphemistic formulation: “now I’m (.) one of those (0.2) recent big redundancie:s.”



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In lines 3–​4, C indicates that she takes this as bad news, offering sympathy or condolence: “Oh I’m sorry.” She then continues the turn with another TCU, producing an inquiry regarding alternative plans. In line 5–​6, B produces a postponing element, “Well:” that may project an upcoming disagreeing response (Sacks, 1987), then a “no” making it hearable that she is disconfirming C’s proffered possibility. B next produces a description of her current state, “being pregnant with number three,” plus laughter. This is hearable as an account for her “no,” that is, as the reason why she is not considering moving elsewhere. In line 7, C produces a quite overbuilt “AH HA::H!,” a strong change-​of-​state token (Heritage, 1984). In lines 8–​9, B reports a decision, having given the reason for the decision in line 5.  So here B is completing the account for “no” in line 5, regarding considering moving elsewhere. The formulation “enough was enough of the work thing” is somewhat euphemistic or idiomatic, leaving the interlocutor to figure out what is meant by it. In its idiomatic sense, “the working thing” could be heard to mean “having a career,” or working outside the home. Given the current discussion, it is amenable to this hearing. However, relinquishing work for childcare is hearable as her plan here. In its concrete sense, “the working thing” could be heard to mean “working at all,” and could thus yield the possible hearing that she does not take it that childcare counts as work. The call taker responds in line 10 with a minimal “hm,” which is hearable as an acknowledgment, perhaps indicating that she expects the speaker to continue, but does not appear to display any kind of “take” on lines 8–​9. The caller’s addition of “uhm i:n uh a-​an employee (.) ba:sis” in 11, built specifically as a continuation of the prior turn, clarifies the domain of work to which she is referring and removes the possibly available hearing that she could take it that childcare does not count as work. Thus, the increment retroactively adjusts, or “tweaks,” the impression of B that her turn makes available, without making that adjustment the overt business of talk, and without suspending or shifting the course of action under way. In this set of instances in the larger collection, interactants add an increment to a possibly complete turn. The increment does not appear to change the original action being implemented in the turn (e.g., reporting having just arisen in Extract 12, and reporting ceasing work in Extract 13), but adds a slight adjustment to the granularity (Schegloff, 2000b) of a description (see Lerner et al., 2012), thereby producing a potentially consequential shift in the version of the speaker that is available, possibly impacting how the speaker may be viewed by the interlocutor, without making that shift the overt business of talk, or delaying its progressivity, and without revealing the problematic version that was initially available.

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Removing a “lexical infelicity”  Neutralizing a possibly available inapposite hearing by adding something that disambiguates or clarifies the formulation may also be deployed when a speaker comes to hear that the particular lexical item they have used may yield an improbable or problematic hearing. This occurs in Extract 14. In prior talk, Emma and Lottie have been catching up over the phone. Emma has had some surgery on a toenail. In line 1, Lottie inquires about Emma’s foot. In responding in line 2, Emma refers to the foot using the locally subsequent reference form (Sacks & Schegloff, 1979) “it,” followed by a claim that the “other one may haftuh come off ” in line 4. Coming after “it” in line 2, this yields a possible (if improbable) hearing that the other foot may have to come off. It is to adjusting this inapposite available hearing that the increment in lines 4–​5, “on the other toe,” seems to be directed.

Extract 14 [NB:I:6:R:9] 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

      ➔ ➔ ➔        

Lottie: Emma: Lottie: Emma:       Lottie: Emma:  

How’r yuh How’s yer foo:t. .t.hh OH IT’S HEALING BEAUTIF’LLY Goo:[:d. [The other one ma:y haftuh come o:ff¿=on the other toe.=I’ve got it in tha:t.=but it’s not infected. (0.7) Wah’nchu use s’m stuff [on i:t. [.t I’ve got proxide I put onnit

Unspoken here, but known to the participants, is the previously discussed fact that the problem with the foot has been located in the toenail. In line 3, Lottie’s “Goo::d.” can be heard to possibly close the unproblematic sequence that began with the inquiry about the foot. Before “Goo:[:d.” is complete (line 3), Emma reopens the sequence by reporting another problem:  “The other one ma:y haftuh come o:ff¿” In the wake of “it’s” (line 2) having been used to respond regarding the other foot, using the pro-​term “one” (line 4) makes it hearable that she could be claiming that the other “foot” may have to come off, since that is the nearest prior possible referent. Adding “on the other toe” in lines 4–​5, right after “the other one may have to come off,” may remove the possible hearing that it is the other foot that has to come off. In thereby clarifying the referent of “the other one” in line 4, the addition in lines 4–​5 of “on the other toe” appears to be aimed not so much at removing or neutralizing a serious hearing as much as it is bringing into focus the hearing that the faulty formulation was aiming at.



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In Extract 15, during a phone call between the same two women in the UK that we met in Extract 10 (above), Vera reports to Jenny about the visit of her son and his family that afternoon. In lines 1–​14 Vera is explaining that they did not, after all, take her out for lunch, and recounting what they ate at her place. In line 12, in responding to Jenny’s surprise that the children did not want anything at midday, Vera uses the regional colloquial formulation “mucked into” (a rough translation for Americans would be “scarfed down” or “ate enthusiastically”) to characterize the children’s eager eating of “biscuits” (i.e., cookies in the United States). Vera may come to hear this as a problematic formulation, perhaps because this is being formulated as their midday meal, or perhaps because of the colloquial regional formulation, “mu:cked intuh.” She brings her turn to completion at the end of line 1, and immediately starts a new unit of talk, begun in the transition space, in line 14. Initially, this may appear to be simply a reformulation of “mucked into,” via “had (.) quite a lotta,” and by responding precisely at the completion of this, Jenny shows her orientation to it as possibly complete and response-​ready at this point. However Vera continues her turn with “ ‘n chee:::se,” thus building this as an addition to the prior turn (with the conjunction “ ‘n”), and in this way adjusting what she claimed in line 12 that they had eaten by adding “ ‘n chee:::se,” which is perhaps a more suitable midday food. Extract 15 [Rahman:B:2:JV(14)] 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

                          ➔        

Ver:   Jen:   Ver: Ver: Jen:     Ver: Jen: Ver: Jen: Ver: Jen: Jen: Ver: Jen: Ver:

So theh just hah:d ehm: crahckiz’n cheese’n biscuits you kno[w, to (put) them] o:n, [i Y e : s .] (0.7) Uhr Bill wouldn’have anything eh*ta::ll*= =*he [didn want anything*] [*Mm:-​.h I’m suhpri]zed the ↑children eh:m (.) deh-​ don’t want anything et mid da:y. (0.3) .hhh Well ah think they do et ho:me Jenny bu[t-​it’s not ] [Y e : s :  ]:= =s’ch a big meal [ah:nd eh .h they mu:cked intuh biscuits.= [iYes:, =They had (.) quite a lotta biscuit[s’n c h e e :: : s e, ] [Oh: well thaht’s it th]en Ye[s, [a:nd e-​she said that’s enough fo:hr them. M-​hm:: theh bonny ki:ds [I   must  say,] [They ahr: lovely ch]il:dren=

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Perhaps because the addition to her turn in line 14 is built with the same structure as the initial turn in line 12 (“They X biscuits”), it appears that Jenny understands the turn in line 14 as simply “translating” or providing an alternative version of line 12, as the placement of her response in line 15, at the end of that TCU, suggests. However, as Vera’s turn continues in line 14 in overlap with Jenny’s response to the first part of it, it becomes clear that she is also adding to the account of what her grandchildren ate: “ ‘n chee:::se,.” The adjustment of the lexical infelicity provides an opportunity to further adjust the turn to include cheese, something that is a more suitable lunch food, and may thus adjust the impression of Vera (perhaps as a “proper” grandmother via appropriate provision of food) that her story provides. This extract then appears to manage a lexical infelicity, and the management of that provides an opportunity to fine-​tune or adjust the impression of self that Vera conveys. While initially it appears that Vera is implementing a redoing of her prior turn, here again, then, a possibly problematic word usage (or lexical infelicity) is remediated immediately next by the addition of a unit that modifies how the prior unit may be heard, and also adjusts the impression of the speaker that is made available.

Conclusions This chapter began with the observation that there are occasions on which a design feature of a turn can yield a possible inapposite hearing. We saw that such possible hearings may be targeted for ridicule or accountability, resulting in a delay in the progress of ongoing action, whether they are addressed through self-​ initiated self-​repair, or left unaddressed. The practice described here provides a solution to adjusting possibly available inapposite hearings without exposing them. In the current data set, the practice was found to implement a range of interactional tasks, including finding a more precise reference that avoids a lexical infelicity or possibly “silly” term, thereby managing the impression of the speaker that the just-​completed turn could produce, as well as managing the action implemented with regard to the interlocutor. There are commonalities among the use of this practice in these three environments. First, in most of the cases presented here, an increment or additional unit is added to a turn that appears to have reached a point of possible completion. In some cases, it is added immediately. In others, it occurs in the transition space, or even in third turn. In each case, it occurs before uptake of any problem is indicated by the interlocutor. The increment provides for a revised understanding of some element in the unit it immediately follows, such that a possible inapposite hearing—​a hearing for which the turn is not designed—​is



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removed or adjusted. The rehearing is provided for embeddedly. That is, the term that is being revised is not overtly targeted. In contrast to the usual practices of conversational repair, here, removing the possible trouble source does not stop the course of the action in progress to make removing the trouble source the overt business of talk. The additions to the turn do not change the focal action that that turn is implementing. Rather, they seem designed to adjust, fine-​tune, or detoxify how some particular item in the turn-​so-​far is to be understood. They all seem designed to preempt inapposite hearings while avoiding making correction the overt business of talk. The practice described here raises interesting questions about how interactants manage the intersection of action formation, turn design, and repair organization. When a possible repairable becomes available, repair may be made relevant. But if the matter implicated by the repairable is delicate (even if produced incidentally by some feature(s) of word selection or the design of the turn)—​for instance, if it involves an untoward action toward another, a problematic portrayal of self, or a lexical infelicity—​engaging repair practices would expose the repair, and may thereby leave the speaker accountable, vulnerable to teasing or ridicule, etc., as Jefferson (1987) noted, and as we saw in Extracts 2 and 7. The practice of embedded self-​correction described here provides for a “tweak” or an adjustment of the turn-​in-​progress via an addition to it. The practice relies on turn-​design resources, such as increments, that furnish a particularly apt solution to the problem of avoiding exposure and accountability. Unlike the practices of self-​initiated self-​repair, increments provide for the additional element to be added to the turn in such a way as to come off (retroactively) as having been part of the utterance all along. In this way the action that is in the course of being produced is detoxified with minimal delay, and without officially exposing the possible trouble source. In this way, increments may provide a systematic resource for implementing self-​correction. This practice also further extends our understanding of repair. It seems that this is an environment in which we can separate the activity of correction from the practices of repair. For in these cases, correction is enacted without implementing the standard practices of conversational repair. Further, as Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks (1977) have shown, anything is in principle repairable, and here we see that correction can occur without there being any apparent error. The possible incipient trouble source is removed before it becomes an overt one. So this further develops our understanding of the relationships between error, repair, and correction. Both repair and correction can, it seems, occur without there being any overt error. Correction can also be implemented without using the standard practices of conversational

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repair. In each case discussed here, there is some personal or interactional delicacy associated with the item that is being embeddedly revised by the addition to the turn, usually an increment. This practice for tacitly removing an inapposite hearing provides for its removal without making its producer accountable for it. The practices described here thus seem to be designed in such a way as to manage delicate matters in a delicate way, without making them the overt business of talk.

Notes 1. Thanks to Gene Lerner for bringing this excerpt to my attention. 2. Schegloff (1996b, p. 439) noted that, with regard to person reference, a nonstandard usage in referring to someone may do more than just referring to a person. 3. See Stivers (2004) regarding multiple repeats addressing an in-​progress course of action, rather than a just-​prior utterance. 4. Sacks & Schegloff (1979) noted that person-​reference forms display a speaker’s assumption about the extent to which a person being referred to is known to the interlocutors. They distinguish between recognitional references, which presume that recipients will recognize the person being referred to, and non-​recognitional references, which display the expectation that recipients will not be able to recognize the person being referred to. Sacks and Schegloff noted that there is a preference in conversation to use the recognitional form if possible. Therefore, Vicki’s use of a non-​recognitional reference, “One guy,” can be taken to display the expectation that recipients would not be able to recognize the person to whom she is referring. 5. See Lerner & Kitzinger (2007, pp. 536–​537) for a discussion of this extract. 6. It is possible that the usage “piece of action” in line 1 could have primed the speaker for a sexual hearing. See Jefferson (1996) regarding the “poetics” of ordinary talk. 7. Note that Garfinkel (1967) emphasizes our tendency to “let it pass.” It is precisely the possibility that an interlocutor will not “let it pass” that appears to be oriented to in implementing the practice described in this chapter. 8. In contrast to earlier extracts, note that here the inapposite hearing is produced by a term that is ambiguous, but not embarrassing. It may be that this kind of ambiguity is also accountable, but in a somewhat different way than we saw in prior cases. 9. Schegloff (this volume) describes increments as having the following features: (1) they occur after a possible point of completion; (2) they are produced by the same speaker as that turn; and (3) they are built as a grammatical continuation of what has just been possibly complete, and fitted to its end. He further notes that increments that are produced in the normal transition space, or pushed up even further, tend to be response to some calculation about the action in progress, as opposed to being responses to silence, delay, or attention to the enlarging transition



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space. (Regarding increments, see also Bolden & Guimaraes, 2012; Ford, Fox & Thompson, 2012; and Schegloff, 1996c). 10. Note that the Imperial weight system was in use in the UK at the time of this recording. “Nine nine” indicates nine stone, nine ounces, with each stone comprised of fourteen pounds. 11. Note that the increment here comes after a delay, and may also be designed to deal with the lack of an immediate response. See Bolden & Guimaraes (2012) regarding the use of an increment to disambiguate indexicals.

References Bolden, G. B., & Guimaraes, E. (2012). Grammatical flexibility as a resource in explicating referents. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 45(2), 156–​174. Clayman, S.  E. (2002). Sequence and solidarity. In E. J.  Lawler & S. R.  Thye (eds.), Advances in group processes:  Group cohesion, trust, and solidarity (pp. 229–​253). New York: Elsevier Science. Ford, C. E., Fox, B. A., & Thompson, S. A. (2002). Constituency and the grammar of turn increments. In C. E. Ford, B. A. Fox, & S. A. Thompson (eds.), The language of turn and sequence (pp. 14–​38). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heritage, J. (1983). Accounts in action. In N. Gilbert & P. Abell (eds.), Accounts and action (pp. 117–​131). Farnborough: Gower House. Heritage, J. (1984). A change of state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In J. M.  Atkinson & J. Heritage (eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 299–​345). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, J. (1988). Explanations as accounts: A conversation analytic perspective. In C. Antaki (ed.), Analyzing lay explanation: A case book of methods (pp. 127–​144). London: Sage. Jefferson, G. (1987). On exposed and embedded correction in conversation. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (eds.), Talk and social organisation (pp. 86–​100). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Jefferson, Gail (1996). On the poetics of ordinary talk. Text and Performance Quarterly, 16, 1–​61. Jefferson, G. (2003). A note on resolving ambiguity. In P. J. Glenn, C. D. LeBaron, & J. Mandelbaum (eds.), Studies in language and social interaction (pp. 221–​240). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Lerner, G. H. (1994). Responsive list construction: A conversational resource for accomplishing multifaceted social action. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 13, 20–​33. Lerner, G. (2003). Selecting next speaker: The context sensitive operation of a context-​ free organization. Language in Society, 32, 177–​201.

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Lerner, G. (ND). Practice does not make perfect: When entitlement, obligation and solidarity come first in the selection of next speaker. MS, Dept. of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara. Lerner, G. H., Bolden, G., Mandelbaum, J., & Hepburn, A. (2012). Reference recalibration repairs: Adjusting the precision of formulations for the task at hand. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45, 191–​212. Lerner, G., & Kitzinger, C. (2007). Extraction and aggregation in the repair of individual and collective self-​reference. Discourse Studies, 9, 526–​557. Lerner, G., & Kitzinger, C. (2015). Or-​prefacing in the organization of self-​initiated repair. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 48, 1–​21. Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments:  Some features of preferred/​dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 57–​101). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Robinson, J. D. (2014). What “What?” tells us about how conversationalists manage intersubjectivity. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 47, 109–​129. Sacks, H. (1973). On some puns with some intimations. In R. W.  Shuy (ed.), Sociolinguistics:  Current trends and prospects (pp. 135–​ 144). 23rd Annual Round Table Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E.  A. (1979). Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons in conversation and their interaction. In G. Psathas (ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 15–​21). New York: Irvington Publishers, Inc. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-​taking for conversation. Language, 50, 696–​735. Schegloff, E. A. (1982). Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of “uh huh” and other things that come between sentences. In D. Tannen (ed.), Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics l98l; Analyzing discourse: Text and talk (pp. 7l–​93). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Schegloff, E. A. (1996a). Confirming allusions: Toward an empirical account of action. American Journal of Sociology, 102, 161–​216. Schegloff, E.  A. (1996b). Some practices for referring to persons in talk-​ in-​ interaction: A partial sketch of a systematics. In B. Fox (ed.), Studies in anaphora (pp. 437–​485). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schegloff, E. A. (1996c). Turn organization: one intersection of grammar and interaction. In E. Ochs, E. A. Schegloff, & S. A. Thompson (eds.), Interaction and grammar (pp. 52–​133). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E. A. (2000a). When “others” initiate repair. Applied Linguistics, 21, 205–​243. Schegloff, E. A. (2000b). On granularity. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 715–​720. Schegloff, E. A. (2016). Increments. In J. D. Robinson (ed.), Accountability in social interaction (pp. 239–263). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.



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Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-​correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language, 53, 361–​382. Stivers, T. (2004). “No no no” and other types of multiple sayings in social interaction. Human Communication Research, 30, 260–​293. Stivers, T. (2007). Alternative recognitionals in person reference. In N. J. Enfield & T. Stivers (eds.), Person reference in interaction: Linguistic, cultural, and social perspectives (pp. 73–​96). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Stivers, T. (2008). Stance, alignment and affiliation during story telling: When nodding is a token of preliminary affiliation. Research on Language in Social Interaction, 41, 29–​55. Stivers, T., & Robinson, J.  D. (2006). A preference for progressivity in interaction. Language in Society, 35, 367–​392. Wilkinson, S.  J., & Kitzinger, C. (2006). “Surprise” as an interactional achievement: Reaction tokens in conversation. Social Psychology Quarterly, 69, 150–​182.

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POLITICAL POSITIONING SEQUENCES:

The Nexus of Politicians, Issue Positions, and the Sociopolitical Landscape Steven E. Clayman

A central issue in the study of social life is the relationship between social interaction and social-​structural context. This has been a problem both for sociological theorists interested in the macro-​ micro interface, as well as for interaction analysts seeking to understand how conduct within interaction is organized. While it is clear that singular actions are often responsive to prior actions as well as larger activity frameworks or projects, the connection to aspects of context conventionally understood in supra-​discursive and sociological terms—​to social identities, relationships, and institutions—​ is less straightforward. The interaction-​ context linkage was problematized by Goffman’s (1964) early conception of the neglected social situation, which encompassed what he later termed the interaction order (1983). This he portrayed as an endogenously organized institutional domain that is partially autonomous and hence only loosely It’s not possible, in this small space, to do justice to a colleague and friend of some thirty years, John Heritage. Our collaborations, which include a long stream of teaching, research, and writing projects, have been very deeply rewarding. I’ve learned from his penetrating scholarship, enjoyed his energy and enthusiasm, and been inspired by his generosity and his commitment to advancing our field. And John’s impact has indeed been transformative in ways that go beyond the specifics of his many important research contributions. He would no doubt resist this characterization, but since his entry into the field of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, John has been a key visionary figure, persistently working to expand our collective sense of what the enterprise is all about and what it is capable of achieving.

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coupled to other societal institutions. Goffman’s cautionary challenge to the interaction-​context nexus was subsequently refined by Schegloff ’s (1987, 1991, 1992) argument about the multiplicity of social contexts for any interaction, which casts doubt on the relevance of any particular contextual dimension for the participants and its consequentiality for what they do. The cumulative thrust of these arguments has been to instigate a search for contextually oriented practices through which interactants demonstrably register and give life to specific social identities and the structural frameworks in which they are embedded. One approach to this puzzle, until recently the dominant approach within conversation analysis, has been to concentrate on environments where contextual matters are the primary and manifest focus of action. The prototype for this approach is research on institutional talk, which examines occupational tasks within medicine, law, journalism, education, and the like, and the realization of such focal tasks through specialized forms of action and inference (e.g., Boden & Zimmerman, 1991; Drew & Heritage, 1992; Heritage & Clayman, 2010). For instance, in calls for emergency service, the overarching task of rendering assistance is realized through a specialized activity structure in which many conversational actions geared to sociability (e.g., greetings, how are you queries, sympathetic responses) are systematically stripped away, while the remaining actions are manifestly task-​focused and interpretable as role-​driven and routine (rather than, for instance, “cold” or “aloof ”). These details of action and inference are key ingredients through which the participants enact the impersonal identities of service-​seeker and service-​supplier and their institutional surround. This approach, while productive, has intrinsic limitations. It cannot easily address more diffusely relevant sociocultural identities, such as those rooted in structures of differentiation rather than occupational roles (e.g., gender, race, class; see Hopper & LeBaron, 1998; Ochs, 1992; West & Zimmerman, 1987), which can infuse interactions, including the “open sea” of ordinary conversation (Raymond & Heritage, 2006). These limitations have prompted various other initiatives addressing the interaction/​context interface, recognizing that social context can figure as a secondary and more latent backdrop of action rather than its primary focus. For instance, when conversing about persons or other topical referents, interactants often display an orientation to distributions and territories of knowledge regarding those referents, thus indirectly evoking the social structural identities with which knowledge territories are associated. Thus, registering asymmetries of knowledge among participants can evoke identities differentiated along a scale of expertise (Bolden,



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2012; Kitzinger & Mandelbaum, 2013) or relational familiarity (Heritage & Raymond, 2005; Raymond & Heritage, 2006), while reliance upon shared knowledge can evoke a shared biography and ongoing relationship between speaker and recipient (Goodwin, 1987; Maynard & Zimmerman, 1984). In cases like these, interactants are not performing identity-​based tasks as a primary focus of talk, but their social identities and relationships can nonetheless be seen to infuse the background of talk addressed to other matters. Both modes of analysis converge in the present chapter. On the one hand, it concerns a form of institutional talk, the broadcast news interview, and a previously unexamined journalistic and political-​communicative task. This task involves specifying where the politician stands on salient issues of the day, and it is the primary objective of what shall be termed political positioning sequences. On the other hand, this chapter also examines how a more diffuse aspect of the sociopolitical context infuses this task. In the course of eliciting and expressing issue positions, the parties orient to, and reflexively constitute, a distinction between positions that are mainstream and legitimate versus those that are marginal or extreme and distinctively accountable, with implications for politicians’ identities as mainstream or deviant figures. This resonates with Goffman’s enduring interest in the interface between social behavior and assessments of moral character.1 At the same time, taking up a theme from Heritage’s work on accountability and the reproduction of institutional realities (Heritage, 1984, 1988; Heritage & Clayman, 2010), the present chapter also addresses macro-​level ramifications for the sociopolitical landscape structured by zones of mainstream legitimacy and deviance. This chapter begins with an initial illustrative example of political positioning sequences, and a theoretical discussion of the interface between interaction and sociopolitical landscape. The subsequent analysis then addresses this interface empirically, as it arises within: (1) political positioning questions; (2) responses by politicians; and (3) journalists’ third-​turn pursuits.

Political Positioning Sequences: An Initial Illustration Early in 2011, President Obama was criticized for launching military strikes against Libya without first obtaining the consent of Congress. One of his key critics was Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a fellow Democrat and competing presidential candidate in 2008. When Kucinich appeared on Meet the Press, he was asked by the interviewer (IR) about his view that the President’s actions “should(m) be an impeachable offense” (lines 1–​2).

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Excerpt 1 [NBC MTP Press Pass 24 March 2011: Kucinich on impeachability] 01 02 03 04 05 06 07

IR:   DK:        

.hh You even said this should(m) be an impeachable offense. That’s very strong language. Well-​eh-​ah-​ah I didn’t exactly put it that way. I-​what I said (.) was that .hh (0.5) the: (.) president (0.4) uhm (0.5) on its face this decision (1.4) uh-​(0.4) could be an impeachable offense. (0.5) ‘at’s different from a process of impeachment. I’m not interested in impeaching the president, but…

The IR’s question does not dispute or challenge Kucinich’s viewpoint in any explicit way; its primary aim is to clarify where Kucinich stands on the issue, and it does so by offering a version of his position for confirmation and elaboration. At the same time, however, various details of its construction register the viewpoint as one that is notably controversial. The initial paraphrase of Kucinich begins with the quotative, “You even said, …” (line 1), which, via the inclusion of “even,” implicitly treats the remark as more provocative than other unstated alternatives. This becomes more explicit after the paraphrase, which is briefly characterized as “very strong language” (line 2). Thus, as Kucinich’s viewpoint is initially put forward within the question, it is framed as controversial, perhaps more than routinely so and, by implication, Kucinich himself is positioned as a correspondingly controversial figure. Of course, for anyone with commonsense knowledge of the US political landscape, the viewpoint itself—​raising the specter of presidential impeachment—​may be regarded as something beyond politics as usual, but the design of the question registers and underscores this. Just as the question treats the viewpoint as highly controversial, so does Kucinich within his response, although again this is a largely implicit and secondary aspect of a response mainly concerned with clarifying his position. He works to distinguish his view from what was offered in the question, rejecting the terms of the paraphrase (lines 3) and disavowing any interest in impeaching the president (lines 6–​7). A closer look at the rejection, however, suggests that it is a rejection more in form than in substance. It is designed as an elaborate third-​position repair (Schegloff, 1992), with an initiating particle (“Well-​”), a negation of the interviewer’s paraphrase (“I didn’t exactly put it that way”), and what is projected to be a corrected version (“What I said (.) was …”). However, Kucinich has great difficulty formulating the correction itself and, after much hesitation—​numerous silences, filled pauses, and one restart—​he produces something exceedingly close to the original.



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Initial version: “…this should be an impeachable offense” Corrected version: “…this decision could be an impeachable offense” The only substantive difference is a modal verb shift from “should” to “could,” a slight downgrade that then becomes an occasion for disavowing any interest in actually pursuing impeachment (lines 6–​7). In short, Kucinich mobilizes the formal machinery of repair as a resource with which to present himself as less extreme and more moderate than the question implied. This case exemplifies the phenomenon of political positioning sequences, that is, question-​answer exchanges primarily geared to the task of locating where the politician stands on a salient political issue. It also illustrates a how a second order of positioning can be embedded within the first. As a largely tacit by-​product of elaborating on the politician’s viewpoint, the parties also locate that viewpoint and, by implication, whoever holds it within the sociopolitical landscape relative to an emergent boundary separating the legitimate mainstream from the more extreme outer reaches of American politics. And in this particular exchange, although journalist and politician clash over the precise specification of the latter’s viewpoint, they are tacitly aligned on the presumption that the view initially put forward is notably controversial and may push the boundaries of legitimacy.

Theoretical Background The Sociopolitical Landscape in Action Much social science scholarship converges on the idea that meaningful components of society—​beliefs and values, practices and institutions, and associated individuals—​do not have equal standing. They are endowed with varying degrees of legitimacy on the basis of recognized levels of popular support, official validation, and cultural normativity. Following Hallin (1984), this implicates a sociopolitical landscape structured by spheres of varying centrality, as in Figure 5.1 (below). At the center is (1) the zone of consensus, comprised of motherhood, apple pie, and other values and institutions regarded as having very broad support and as culturally normative. Beyond that is (2) the zone of legitimate controversy, encompassing “issues” about which it is believed that reasonable people may disagree and still remain within the societal mainstream. And at the outer edge is (3) the zone of deviance, comprised of the non-​legitimate, non-​normative, or extreme.

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Zone of Consensus

Zone of Legitimate Controversy

Zone of Deviance

Figure 5.1  The Sociopolitical Landscape

This model is, of course, an ideal type, with the inner and outer labels representing poles on a continuum, and the boundaries between spheres fuzzy and contested. Scholarly recognition of this landscape arises in theorizing about the nexus of politics and journalism. For instance, Parsons (1951, pp.  317–​318) noted that the political domain allows a level of “permissiveness” regarding the partisan expression of divergent viewpoints, implicating a social space for mainstream political debate bounded by non-​debatable zones of consensus and deviance. A similar framework is implicit in multidimensional models of political power (Bachrach & Baratz, 1962; Lukes, 2005) distinguishing the power to prevail in deliberative decision making from the capacity to set the debate agenda and, hence, exclude certain issues and viewpoints as unworthy of consideration. In public policy circles, the concept of a bounded range of policy acceptability has recently gained currency under the rubric of the “Overton Window” (Russell, 2009). And in studies of journalism, Hallin (1984) proposed that different journalistic norms apply within the three zones sketched above, with the intermediate zone of legitimate controversy being the home environment for politics as usual and the norm of objectivity. There journalists are obliged to be balanced and present “both sides” of an issue; elsewhere, they act as cheerleaders for consensus values. As these theoretical accounts demonstrate, the spheres are often treated as analytically independent of interactional process and as conceptual environments in which different norms are operative. It is recognized that the boundaries between zones can shift over time, and there are historical accounts of the erosion of consensus and expansion of what is regarded as legitimately



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controversial (e.g., Baum & Groeling, 2009; Entman, 2004; Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Hallin, 1984), as well as shifts in the opposite direction as areas of controversy become relatively settled (e.g., Bennett, 1990; Molotch & Lester, 1975; Rojecki, 1999). What is missing is an account of the agentic foundations of this sociopolitical structure, that is, how it interfaces with concrete acts of position-​taking during which issue and policy positions are taken up and publicly endorsed by real political actors. The need for such an account proceeds from the recognition that each act of position-​taking not only occurs within a framework of legitimacy, but also necessarily contributes to that framework and to its evolution over time. At one level, each act shows a specific politician to be joining the ranks of like-​minded actors, which may in itself affect the standing of the position being endorsed. Recent expressions of support for same-​sex marriage by Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama exemplify this effect. As the first endorsement by a presidential administration, it was widely seen as adding official validation to a controversial but increasingly popular cause. At another level, position-​taking is frequently performed in real time on the public stage through interactionally situated discursive practices, and these practices can themselves affect the sociopolitical landscape. As abstract viewpoints are solicited, articulated, and responded to, some are treated as routine and presumptively legitimate, requiring elaboration and supportive arguments (e.g., regarding practicality, costs and benefits, etc.), but not sociocultural legitimation. Other viewpoints, by contrast, are treated as out of the ordinary, more deeply problematic and accountable, and in need of more fundamental and culturally resonant grounding. The Kucinich impeachability example (Excerpt 1 above) exemplifies some of the practices that can render a viewpoint as extraordinary and possibly extreme. Moments of position-​ taking thus comprise a public opportunity space within which political and journalistic actors endow viewpoints with varying levels of accountability, with ramifications for the sociocultural centrality or marginality of such viewpoints and by implication those who support them. Taken together, these practices have a further constitutive import. Beyond locating viewpoints and supporters relative to the sociopolitical landscape (as in Figure 5.2, below, upper arrow), these sequences also operate on the landscape itself (Figure 5.2, below, lower arrow), constructing, reproducing and, at times, modifying the boundary between legitimately controversial and deviant opinion, and in the aggregate constituting the parameters of the sociopolitical mainstream.

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Q/A

Zone of Consensus

Zone of Legitimate Controversy

Zone of Extremism

Figure 5.2  Dynamics of Positioning Sequences

The interactional process generating these constitutive outcomes may be understood as predominantly conflictual in character, given previous research into the divergent norms and incentive structures operating on politicians and journalists. Politicians face the perennial dilemma of balancing appeals to centrist and more partisan base voters (Brady, Han, & Pope, 2007; Downs, 1957). Although their relative salience is situationally variable, the underlying dilemma is broadly relevant not only during election campaigns, but also for governance and, more generally, for many leadership circumstances requiring the mobilization of support from diverse audience segments (Bavelas et al., 1988; Bull, 1998; Eisenberg, 1984). This leadership dilemma may be reconciled by the overt persuasion of explicit accounts (Heritage 1988), or by what has been termed strategic ambiguity (Downs, 1957; Eisenberg, 1984)  or equivocation (Bavelas et  al., 1988; Bull, 1998), which can have socially unifying payoffs (Eisenberg, 1984; Jarzabkowski, Sillince, & Shaw, 2010; Tomz & Van Houweling, 2009). Journalists, for their part, have very different interests and orientations. Principles of independence and the watchdog role remain broadly supported professional ideals (Weaver et al., 2007, pp. 139–​145). These ideals often converge with mundane commercial pressures (Schudson, 2008) to favor news content with a skeptical, critical, or investigative edge (Clayman et al., 2006; Patterson, 1993). With regard to political positioning, this translates into a preference for questions that probe for controversy and extremism, and that seek clarity on such views when they do get expressed (Clayman & Romaniuk, 2011).



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These divergent orientations set in motion a struggle in which journalists’ questions tend to portray politicians as more marginal than politicians portray themselves in response. This conflict is manifest in two analytically distinct, but empirically intertwined, ways:  (1)  a primary and manifest clash over where the politician stands on the issue in question; and (2) a secondary, and often more latent, clash over the legitimacy of the contested position and its supporter, and hence the location of both within the sociopolitical landscape. The realization of these conflicts has broader implications for the structuring of the landscape with an emergent boundary separating the legitimate mainstream from the extremes. These various constitutive outcomes are the primary focus of the remainder of this chapter, which addresses political positioning questions, responses, and third-​ turn pursuits.

Database The primary database includes several environments of journalistic questioning:  (1)  the main broadcast news interview programs in the United States (Meet the Press [NBC], Face the Nation [CBS], This Week [ABC], Nightline [ABC], and The NewsHour [PBS]); (2)  nightly news broadcasts in which news interviews play a more secondary role (e.g., All Things Considered [NPR], CBS Evening News); and (3) presidential news conferences. Supplementary materials were drawn from other sources, including interview programs on cable (e.g., Hardball on MSNBC), and news interviews broadcast within England. Some segments of the database were assembled through systematic sampling procedures (e.g., the presidential news conference data as detailed in Clayman et al., 2006). The rest, although not systematically assembled, encompass most of the major interview-​based news programs on both commercial and public broadcasting in the United States.

Political Positioning Questions The questions that initiate political positioning sequences differ from other journalistic questions in their primary thematic focus on identifying and clarifying where the politician stands on some salient issue, as opposed to critically scrutinizing that position, or exploring its motivational underpinnings or downstream consequences. Positioning questions can take a variety of forms, but they tend to share certain basic features.

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First, and most obviously, positioning questions set a topical agenda that tends to be narrow and focused rather than broad or open-​ended, and issue-​ and viewpoint-​specific rather than philosophical or ideological. To be sure, journalists occasionally ask about politicians’ general philosophical outlook, as in this question to Michael Dukakis on liberalism (line 1). Excerpt 2 [ABC Nightline, Best of Nightline, 1990: Michael Dukakis] 01 02 03 04 05 06

IR: MD: IR:   MD:  

➔          

What is a liberal. .hhhh In nineteen eighty eight. (1.4) That’s maybe a question that (0.2) we ought to ask George Bush if he had been here.

They may also ask politicians to comment on areas of current interest without targeting any specific viewpoint, as when Sarah Palin was asked about “the role of the United States in the world” (Extract 3, below, lines 2–​3). Excerpt 3 [CBS Evening News 24 Sep. 2008: Sarah Palin] ((Context: Couric and Palin are standing outside the UN building.)) 01 IR: 02   03  

As we sta:nd before this (.) august uh:(h): buildi:ng an-​ and institution, what do you see as (0.2) the role of the United States in the world.

By contrast to these relatively general and open-​ended questions, the vast majority of political positioning questions target a specific viewpoint or policy position for recipients to address. Thus, the question about presidential impeachability (Excerpt 1, above) and the following questions about mortgage foreclosures (Excerpt 4) and genetic engineering (Excerpt 5) are typical of political positioning questions in broadcast journalism. Excerpt 4 [CBS Evening News 25 Sep. 2008: Sarah Palin on mortgage foreclosures] 01 02 03 04 05

IR:   SP:    

Would you support (.) a moratorium on foreclosures to help average Americans keep their homes, That’s somethin that John McCain and I have both been discussing, whether that uhm .hh that is part of thuh solu:tion or not. …



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Excerpt 5 [CBS Face the Nation 8 Dec. 1985: genetic engineering] 01 02 03 04 05 06 07

IR:       JR: JR:  

Mister Rifkin you are an opponent = h of genetic >engineering, = = .hhh< D’you oppo:se h thuh kind of work that Doctor Rosenberg is doing with interluken twoI was able to speak with him the other day: .h and giving him my commitment as John McCain’s running mate .h that we: will be committed (.) to Georgia. .hh And we’ve gotta keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such: pressure, .h in terms of inva:ding a smaller democratic (.) country, .h unprovoked, (.) >is unacceptable. = and we have to [keep [You believe unprovoked. I-​I do believe unprovoked. = and we have got to keep our eyes .hh on Russia, …

Although partial repeats can serve as repair initiations (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977), interviewers frequently use them with falling intonation, and without any apparent confusion regarding the sense or import of what was just said. Such partial repeats thus appear to be produced for the benefit of the audience (Clayman, 2010) and, in the present context, they are designed to select and highlight the most extreme component of what was just said. In a related trajectory, an initial resistant response by the politician—​often sympathetic resistance—​prompts the journalist to pursue a clearer affirmation of the viewpoint. Reagan’s resistant response to the Nicaragua question (Excerpt 14, above, reproduced as Excerpt 20, below) led to two pursuits of this sort. Recall that Reagan reformulated the policy (“Well remove it in the sens:e of (0.5) its present (0.5) structure”; lines 6–​7) to suggest bureaucratic



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reform rather than regime change by force. This attempt to detoxify the policy prompts the journalist to follow up (lines 12–​15) with a question specifically geared to re-​toxifying that policy, replacing “remove” (line 12) with “overthrow” (line 14)  and suggesting that Reagan’s careful language is a euphemism for the latter. Furthermore, this is delivered in the form of a negative interrogative (“aren’t you then saying …”; line 13), which dials up the anticipation of an affirmative answer (Heritage, 2002) and very nearly asserts that Reagan is, indeed, seeking to overthrow the regime. Excerpt 20 [Reagan News Conf 21 Feb 1985: Nicaragua] 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

IR:         RR:           IR:       RR:           IR:     IR:   RR: IR:  

                      ➔ ➔ ➔ ➔             ➔     ➔        

Mr. President on Capitol Hill: (.) on Capitol Hill the other day, Secretary Schultz suggested that a goal of your policy now (0.4) is to remo:ve the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Is that your goal. (1.4) Well remove it in the sens:e of (0.5) its present (0.5) structure. = in which it is a communist (0.2) totalitarian state. .hhh And it is not a government chosen by its people… ((Response continues, denying legitimacy of the Nicaraguan govt., affirming commitment to help ‘freedom-​fighters”.)) Well (0.2) sir when you say remove it in the sense of its present structure, (.) aren’t you then saying that you advocate the overthrow: of the present government of Nicaragua? Well what I’m saying is that .h this present government was one element(h) (.) of the revolution against Somoza. .hhh The freedom fighters are other elements: (.) of that revolution. … ((Response continues, accusing Sandinistas of breaking promises of democratic reform.)) Is the answer yes sir? (0.9) ((Reagan points to another journalist, but gazes back to SD when SD pursues the question.)) Is the answer ye:s then? (0.4) To what. To the question aren’t you advocating the overthrow of the present government.

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  RR: IR:   RR:  

           

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(0.3) [Not if [If you want to substitute another for:m of what you say was the revolution. Not if the present government would turn around and say, alright, if they’d say “Uncle.” Alright, …

Reagan’s response to this pursuit (lines 16–​19) is, again, sympathetically resistant. He eschews yes in favor of a repetitional response attacking the legitimacy of the Sandinista government. This suggests sympathy toward a policy of governmental overthrow, while not actually proclaiming that policy in so many words. This prompts yet another clarifying pursuit (initiated at line 22 and twice repaired and re-​issued at 25, 28–​33) aiming to pin Reagan down to a simple yes answer to the overthrow-​of-​Nicaragua question. Pushing Further toward the Margins An alternative trajectory involves a response that essentially embraces the marginal viewpoint, followed by the journalist’s pursuit of an even more marginal viewpoint. This trajectory does involve topical movement, but along a track geared to probing the extremity of the politician’s views in this area. Consider this extended exchange in Excerpt 21 with Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann during the 2008 presidential election, on the subject of anti-​Americanism.8 Previously, the discussion centered on Barack Obama’s association with a former leftist activist (data not shown). Here, the journalist summarizes the thrust of Bachmann’s previous remarks as amounting a concern that “Barack Obama may have anti-​American views” (lines 1–​4). By inviting her to reaffirm this viewpoint, the journalist both underscores her commitment to that view while simultaneously treating it as noteworthy and perhaps controversial. Excerpt 21 [MSNBC Hardball 17 October 2008: Obama as Anti-​American] 01 02 03 04 05 06 07

IR:     MB:      

So you believe that Barack Obama may have may have anti-​American views. (1.1) Ye-​absolutely. I-​I-​I’m very concerned that he may have anti-​American views, = That’s what the American people .hh are concerned about, .h That’s why they want to know what his answers are.



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Bachmann obligingly embraces this view strongly and without qualification (“Absolutely,” line 4), and then deploys a practice we’ve already observed (lines 5–​7), invoking “the American people” (line 5) in a way that normalizes this view and defends her expression of it. Following this exchange, the journalist asks a series of questions designed to expose the scope of Bachmann’s concerns regarding anti-​Americanism. He asks if she regards certain regions of the United States, self-​described liberals, and registered Democrats as anti-​American (in data not shown). He then turns to the subject of anti-​Americanism among her own congressional colleagues. His first pursuit along these lines (“How many congresspeople:. . .”; lines 1–​4) presupposes that Bachmann views numerous legislators as implicated in “that anti-​American crowd.” Excerpt 22 [MSNBC Hardball 17 October 2008: Anti-​Americanism in Congress] 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

IR:       MB:   IR: MB: IR:   MB:     IR: MB: IR:      

How many congresspeople: members of Congress d’you think are in that anti-​American crowd you describe. .hh (0.5) How many congresspeople you serve w[ith = I mean, there`s 435 members o’Congress [Well I’m ( ) right-​right now-​.hh (0.8) How many are anti-​American in theht [Congress right now that = [Are th-​ = you serve with_​ (2.0) You’d eh-​you’d hafta ask them eh = Chris. I’m-​I’m focusing on Barack Obama and the people that he’s been asso[ciating with, and I’m very worried about their anti-​American = [But do you suspect there’re a lotta people you serve with, = nature. Well he’s ‘ee United States Senator from Illinois, he`s .hh he’s one o’the people you suspect as being anti-​American. = How many people in the Congress of the United States do you think are anti-​American. .hh You`ve already suspected Barack Obama =

At this point, Bachmann, apparently realizing the danger of this more extreme position, begins to resist (lines 5, 11–​12) by working to shift the discussion back to Obama. The journalist, however, presses her again on her perceptions of Congressional anti-​Americanism (line 14), and the stronger wording in

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this pursuit (“a lotta people you serve with”) insinuates that she sees it as rampant. His subsequent elaboration (lines 16–​20) both justifies his pursuit of the matter and further portrays her as a McCartheyesque figure who suspects political subversives are plentiful in the halls of Congress.

Discussion Journalistic questioning has been a fruitful case for investigating how various dimensions of societal context can bear on interactional conduct. These include journalistic tasks and norms (Clayman & Heritage, 2002; Clayman & Romaniuk, 2011; Eriksson & Östman, 2013), departures from the norm of neutrality in the form of partisan bias (Ekstrom et al., 2013; Huls & Varwijk, 2011), the evolving tenor of press-​state relations (Clayman et al., 2006, 2010), and environing political and economic conditions (Clayman et  al., 2007). Investigating those more diffuse aspects of context beyond occupational tasks and norms has required statistical measures of association, which demonstrates the predictive significance of context without showing whether or how it is oriented to, and enacted, in specific cases (Schegloff, 1991, 1992). This chapter has explored yet another diffuse aspect of context while documenting its case-​by-​case relevance as a background feature of singular interactional episodes addressed to the task of ascertaining politicians’ views and policies. The contextual dimension differs from those previously examined in being broadly cultural in character, involving the legitimacy of a specific position on some issue, and what that implicates for politicians’ public identities as mainstream or marginal figures. While the issue of legitimacy is occasionally registered in the initial positioning question (first position), it is more prominent in second-​position responses and third-​position pursuits. Politicians’ responses exhibit a distinction between straightforward endorsement versus a more cautious, or defensive, mode of response. Journalists’ subsequent questions exhibit a distinction between forward topical movement versus dwelling on the prior response in pursuit of its reaffirmation or intensification. Both sets of practices share a common thread, that is, a divergence between treating the viewpoint in question as routine and unremarkable, as opposed to noteworthy, problematic, and distinctively accountable in ways that have less bearing on intrinsic merits and more on other qualities (i.e., public support, official validation, alignment with consensual values) that are culturally resonant and legitimizing. To be sure, none of the language practices examined here is uniquely associated with registering degrees of legitimacy. Like everything that happens within interaction, the import of each practice is indexically conditioned by



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environing practices and the relevant contexts in which they are embedded. But such practices are nonetheless integral to the process by which journalistic and political elites discriminate among opinions and policies, discriminations that can, in context, be seen as indicative of sociocultural centrality or marginality. Consider the practices underlying sympathetic resistance, such as nonconforming responses (Raymond, 2003). As we have seen, a nonconforming response may enable the avoidance of a marginal and politically risky position (e.g., Excerpts 14–​15 above), but it may also enable the upgraded endorsement of a consensual position (e.g., Excerpt 7 above), as well as the pursuit of “factual correctness” on technical points where political gain is simply not salient (Montgomery, 2007). The analysis of a nonconforming response as “sympathetically resistant” thus requires attention to the full composition and context of its implementation. In this connection, resistance that seems “overbuilt” relative to whatever moderating distinction the politician is making (e.g., Excerpts 1  & 20 above) is particularly vulnerable to being heard as motivated by considerations of detoxification and reputational damage control. Similar care must be taken with respect to the analysis of accounting practices underlying legitimation. Analysis here is complicated by the fact that the set-​piece broadcast news interview is organized by a specialized turn-​taking system wherein interviewees are obliged to provide elaborate responses as a matter of course (Clayman & Heritage, 2002). Since these often include supportive arguments for the views being expressed, the provision of explicit accounts is, to some extent, normalized in this context. Nonetheless, politicians appear to distinguish between accounts that defend the viewpoint on its substantive or intrinsic merits (e.g., practical viability, advantages and payoffs, etc.) versus accounts directly bearing on sociocultural legitimation (e.g., public support, official validation, alignment with consensual symbols). In the data examined here, directly legitimating accounts are given sequential priority over other accounts, either immediately following, or intertwined with, the endorsement itself, and are thus treated as having heightened urgency in acts of position-​taking at the boundary of the mainstream. The practices examined in this chapter are eminently public, enacted by journalistic and political elites before a large media audience. This suggests broader ramifications extending beyond the circle of interacting elites. The news media are known to be an important source for public perceptions of the general “climate of opinion” in society (Mutz, 1998). These perceptions often diverge from scientific measures of opinion, but nonetheless have

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real self-​reinforcing consequences (Noelle-​Neumann, 1993; Kuran, 1995). Beyond the journalistic presentation of explicit story frames and opinion polls, this chapter suggests that the tacit premises of quotidian social interaction geared to political positioning may also play a role in this process. Over time, the accumulation and convergence of such practices may foster a sense that the boundaries of the mainstream are hardening and rigidifying. Conversely, accumulating variations may be implicated in the perceived loosening of boundaries, of cultural ferment and ideological diversification. And systematic shifts in such practices over time may expand or contract the boundaries of the mainstream, contributing to the sense that positions once thought to be “beyond the pale” are becoming permissible or vice versa, and that the overall political culture is undergoing a sea change.

Notes 1. A typical example of Goffman’s interest in this duality, from his early essay “On face-​work” [1955](1967), is his exploration of the complex relations between (1) an actor’s “line” of conduct; and (2) the positive social value or “face” claimed thereby and subject to validation by others. 2. For broader discussions of how yes/​no interrogatives can be designed so as to invite or prefer a particular response, see Clayman & Heritage (2002, pp. 208–​217) on journalistic questioning, Heritage (2010) on medical questioning, and Koshik (2005) on pedagogical questioning. 3. The exemplary positioning questions in Excerpts 1 and 4–​6 all directly address positioning. Positioning can also be addressed indirectly, through presupposition (what a question logically presumes to be so; Clayman & Heritage, 2002, pp. 203–​208), and association (by referencing a politician’s colleagues and friends). These indirect forms, although conceptually of interest, are beyond the scope of this paper. 4. As may be apparent in this passage, distinguishing mainstreaming from marginalizing questions requires attention to both (1) the environing sociopolitical culture; and (2)  practices internal to interaction that treat positions as either routine or non-​routine. The analytic necessity of tracking both language practices and relevant context has a long history in conversation analysis (Schegloff, 1984; Wilson, 1991), and the import of extra-​linguistic social-​structural context has been reinforced by recent studies of action formation and ascription (Heritage, 2012; Stevanovic & Peräkylä, 2014). 5. Eight years later, when vice-​presidential candidate and Christian conservative Sarah Palin was asked about this issue in 2008, she declined to support creationism teaching, asserting that “evolution should be taught as accepted principle” and “science should be taught in science class.”



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6. Another instance of legitimation by reference to public approval may be seen in Excerpt 21, below. 7. A Gallup poll 5 months earlier showed an even split on same-​sex marriage (48% approving, 48% disapproving); The same poll conducted around the time of the interview showed a slight majority in support (50% approving, 48% disapproving). 8. Bachmann is participating via remote satellite link, resulting in an audible, production-​reception time lag that accounts for many turn-​transitional dysfluencies (overlaps, silences) here.

References Bachrach, P., & Baratz, M. (1962). Two faces of power. The American Political Science Review, 56, 947–​952. Baum, M., & Groeling, T. (2009). War stories:  The causes and consequences of public views of war. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bavelas, et  al. (1988). Political equivocation:  A  situational explanation. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 7, 137–​145. Bennett, W. L. (1990). Toward a theory of press-​state relations in the United States. Journal of Communication, 40, 103–​125. Boden, D., & Zimmerman, D.  H. (1991). Talk and social structure. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Bolden, G. (2012). Across languages and cultures: Brokering problems of understanding in conversational repair. Language in Society, 41, 97–​121. Brady, D. W., Han, H., & Pope, J. C. (2007). Primary elections and candidate ideology:  Out of step with the primary electorate? Legislative Studies Quarterly, 32, 79–​105. Bull, P. (1998). Equivocation theory and news interviews. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 17, 36–​51. Clayman, S. E. (1993). Reformulating the question: A device for answering/​not answering questions in news interviews and press conferences. Text, 13, 159–​188. Clayman, S. E. (2001). Answers and evasions. Language in Society, 30, 403–​4 42. Clayman, S. E., Elliott, M. N., Heritage, J., & Beckett, M. (2010). A watershed in white house journalism:  Explaining the post-​1968 rise of aggressive presidential news. Political Communication, 27, 229–​247. Clayman, S. E., Elliott, M. N., Heritage, J., & McDonald, L. (2006). Historical trends in questioning presidents 1953–​2000. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 36, 561–​583. Clayman, S. E., & Heritage, J. (2002). The news interview: Journalists and public figures on the air. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Clayman, S. E., Heritage, J., Elliott, M. N., & McDonald, L. (2007). When does the watchdog bark?: Conditions of aggressive questioning in presidential news conferences. American Sociological Review, 72, 23–​41.

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Clayman, S. E., & Loeb, L. (Forthcoming). Political positioning questions: Mobilizing response preference for journalistic tasks. Unpublished manuscript. Clayman, S.  E., & Romaniuk, T. (2011). Questioning candidates. In M. Ekström & M. Patrona (eds.), Talking politics in the broadcast media: Cross-​cultural perspectives (pp. 15–​32). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Downs, A. (1957). An economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper. Drew, P., & Heritage, J. (1992). Talk at work. Cambridge, England:  Cambridge University Press. Eisenberg, E.  M. (1984). Ambiguity as strategy in organizational communication. Communication Monographs, 51, 227–​242. Ekstrom, M., Eriksson, G, Johansson, B., & Wikstrom, P. (2013). Biased interrogations?:  A  multi-​ methodological approach on bias in campaign interviews. Journalism Studies, 14, 423–​439. Entman, R. (2004). Projections of power: Framing news, public opinion, and U.S. foreign policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Eriksson, G., & Östman, J. (2013). Cooperative or adversarial?: Journalists’ enactment of the watchdog function in political news production. The International Journal of Press/​Politics, 18, 304–​324. Gamson, W.  A., & Modigliani, A. (1989). Media discourse and public opinion on nuclear power: A constructionist approach. American Journal of Sociology, 95, 1–​37. Goffman, E. (1955/​1967). On face-​work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. In E. Goffman, Interaction ritual (pp. 5–​45). Garden City: Doubleday. Goffman, E. (1964). The neglected situation. American Anthropologist, 66, 133–​136. Goffman, E. (1983). The interaction order. American Sociological Review, 48, 1–​17. Goodwin, C. (1987). Forgetfulness as an interactive resource. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50, 115–​131. Greatbatch, D.  L. (1986). Some standard uses of supplementary questions in news interviews. Belfast Working Papers in Language and Linguistics, 8, 86–​123. Hallin, D. C. (1984). The media, the war in Vietnam, and political support: A critique of the thesis of an oppositional media. The Journal of Politics, 46, 1–​24. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Heritage, J. (1985). Analyzing news interviews: Aspects of the production of talk for an “overhearing” audience. In T. van Dijk (ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis (Vol.3, Discourse and dialogue) (pp. 95–​117). London: Academic Press. Heritage, J. (1988). Explanations as accounts: A conversation analytic perspective. In C. Antaki (ed.), Analyzing lay explanation: A case book of methods (pp. 127–​144). London: Sage. Heritage, J. (2010). Questioning in medicine. In A. Freed & S. Ehrlich (eds.), Why do you ask?:  The function of questions in institutional discourse (pp. 42–​ 86). New York: Oxford University Press. Heritage, J. (2012). The epistemic engine:  Sequence organization and territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45, 30–​52.



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Heritage, J., & Clayman, S. (2010). Talk in action: Interactions, identities, and institutions. Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell. Heritage, J., & Raymond, G. (2005). The terms of agreement: Indexing epistemic authority and subordination in talk-​in-​interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68, 15–​38. Heritage, J., Robinson, J. D., Elliott, M., Beckett, M., & Wilkes, M. (2007). Reducing patients’ unmet concerns in primary care:  The difference one word can make. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 22, 1429–​1433. Hopper, R., & LeBaron, C. (1998). How gender creeps into talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31, 59–​74. Huls, E., & Varwijk, J. (2011). Political bias in TV interviews. Discourse & Society, 22, 48–​65. Jarzabkowski, P., Sillince, J., & Shaw, D. (2010). Strategic ambiguity as a rhetorical resource for enabling multiple interests. Human Relations, 63, 219–​248. Jefferson, G. (1986). Colligation as a device for minimizing repair or disagreement. Paper presented at the international conference on talk and social structure, University of California, Santa Barbara. Kitzinger, C., & Mandelbaum, J. (2013). Word selection and social identities in talk-​in-​ interaction, Communication Monographs, 80, 176–​198. Koshik, I. (2005). Beyond rhetorical questions in everyday interaction. Amsterdam: Johns Benjamins. Kuran, T. (1995). Private truths, public lies: The social consequences of preference falsification. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Labov, W., & Fanshel, D. (1977). Therepeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York: Academic Press. Lukes, S. (2005). Power: A radical view (2nd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Maynard, D. W., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1984). Topical talk, ritual and the social organization of relationships. Social Psychology Quarterly, 47, 301–​316. Molotch, H., & Lester, M. (1975). Accidental news: The great oil spill as local occurrence and national event. American Journal of Sociology, 81, 235–​260. Montgomery, M. (2007). The discourse of broadcast news. London: Routledge. Mutz, D. (1998). Impersonal influence: How perceptions of mass collectives affect political attitudes. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Noelle-​Neumann, E. (1993). The spiral of silence:  Public opinion—​Our social skin. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ochs, E. (1992). Indexing gender. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking context (pp. 335–​358). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Parsons, T. (1951). The social system. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Patterson, T. E. (1993). Out of order. New York: Vintage. Raymond, G. (2003). Grammar and social organization: Yes/​no interrogatives and the structure of responding. American Sociological Review, 68, 939–​967. Raymond, G., & Heritage, J. (2006). The epistemics of social relationships: Owning grandchildren. Language in Society, 35, 677–​705.

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6

EPISTEMIC ASYMMETRY A N D A C C O U N TA B I L I T Y IN SERVICE INTERACTION

Seung-​Hee Lee

Introduction Institutional interaction is frequently characterized by a variety of asymmetrical relationships between service providers and seekers (Drew & Heritage, 1992; Heritage, 1997). One of these relationships involves epistemics, or the distribution of knowledge, and rights to knowledge, between the parties (Drew & Heritage, 1992; Heritage, 1997; Linell & Luckmann, 1991). Relative to service seekers, service providers tend to have (much) more institutional expertise and knowledge (Heritage, 2013), as well as more direct, immediate, and current access to institutional information. As such, service providers tend to have epistemic privilege and authority relative to service seekers. This chapter examines issues of accountability associated with such epistemic asymmetries, in particular during contexts in which there is an incongruence of knowledge between parties that is initially apparently only “known about” by service seekers, who then expose it for service providers. Epistemic relationships (asymmetric or otherwise) and their accountability are publicly claimed, displayed, constructed, and negotiated in and through talk in interaction (Heritage, 2013). This fact has been well documented in medical contexts. For instance, when patients talk about medical terminology in ways that connote their uncertainty about it, they may orient to providers’ relative I am deeply indebted to John Heritage for his invaluable, unceasing teaching and mentoring. John has provided an unending source of intellectual inspiration, caring support, and insightful advice for every step I take. My entire project on service interaction would not have been possible without him from the very beginning.

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epistemic authority over it (Heritage, 1997, p. 178; see Drew, 1991; Maynard, 1991; Silverman, 1987). When patients withhold immediate responses to providers’ diagnoses, patients can subordinate their personal diagnostic opinions to providers’ medical expertise and epistemic authority (Heath, 1992; Peräkylä, 2006). When patients downplay their personal etiological knowledge and restrict their etiological claims to first-​hand, physical experience, they may treat providers as relative authorities on causes of illnesses (Gill, 1998). Importantly, patients orient to epistemic asymmetries even when they have relevant medical experience and knowledge. For example, when parents, who also happen to be providers, accompany their own children to pediatric visits, these parents—​who are now in the role of “patient“—​tend to mitigate or suspend their medical expertise (Strong, 1979). These parents distinguish between their actual medical experience and knowledge and their entitlement to it during pediatric visits (Drew, 1991; Gill, 1998; Heritage, 1997), interactionally orienting to epistemic asymmetry and its accountability. Such epistemic asymmetries and their management are evident in a range of other types of service interaction (Lee, 2015a), including the focal context of this chapter. In reservation-​related calls to an airline service (e.g., to reserve and purchase a ticket), relative to customers, service agents tend to have (vastly) more knowledge concerning reservation services—​involving requirements, procedures, contingencies, etc. This is so especially given agents’ privileged access to the institution’s private computer system, which has the most up-​to-​date and credible information. Customers can be knowledgeable on reservation-​related matters, for example, from prior reservation-​making experience (Lee, 2011). However, in many cases customers’ capacities are limited to naming their desired end outcomes, such as where they want to go, at what date, etc. Even when customers are knowledgeable, they are frequently less knowledgeable than agents, given the quickly and ever-​changing landscape of airline-​reservation information and agents’ privileged computer-​system access. The present chapter examines how agents and customers manage epistemic asymmetry during a particular circumstance, that being when: (1) Customers have highly credible grounds for believing that “X” is the case regarding a reservation-​related matter; for example, customers have been informed, in a previous call with a different agent from the same company, that a particular plane departs at 10:30 am; and (2)  There is no data-​internal evidence that agents know that customers have such knowledge, let alone their grounds for knowing it. In such contexts, it is frequently the case that customers nonetheless inquire into, or seek to confirm, the “accuracy” of their preexisting,



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reservation-​related knowledge (as opposed to, for example, simply acting on this knowledge). This chapter examines a set of sequences initiated by such questions that customers produce regarding the “known” matter. It will focus on the following: • In initially inquiring into the accuracy of their preexisting knowledge—​for example, that a plane departs at 10:30 am—​customers do so in ways that do not expose their knowledge or grounds for knowing about the matter at hand. Customers rather index, and defer to, agents’ epistemic authority on the matter. For instance, customers construct an interrogative form of polar question, such as “Does the plane depart at 10:30 am?” • When agents’ responses confirm—​ at least for customers—​the existence of a knowledge incongruity, for example, that the plane departs at 2 pm (and not 10:30 am), customers then attempt to resolve the incongruity. Customers systematically construct counter-​informings in third position by citing their grounds for believing that “X” is the case—​for example, that they were told by a different agent that the plane departs at 10:30 am. Through the detailed analysis of customers’ conduct in first and third position, this chapter shows that customers’ questions and counter-​informings respectively evidence their orientation to, and stand as a practice for their management of, an accountable, institutionalized epistemic asymmetry.

Data and Method Data were drawn from a larger corpus of audio recordings of 169 telephone calls by customers to an airline service in South Korea. Calls were collected in 2002–​2003 for quality-​assurance purposes and primarily involved reservation services. Data generated 30 instances where customers produced questions regarding reservation-​related matters that they had apparently known about, and where such prior knowledge of customers was not apparently previously known about by agents (i.e., as evidenced by parties’ prior conduct during the call). Note that claims of “who knew what” are based on intra-​call evidence. In 18 of the 30 instances, agents’ responses confirmed—​for customers, but not necessarily for agents—​an incongruity between customers’ and agents’ knowledge regarding the matter. In the other 12 instances, agents’ responses somehow confirmed a congruity of knowledge between parties, for example that customers’ knowledge was “correct.”1

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In 2 of the 18 cases in which agents’ responses confirmed a knowledge incongruity, customers oriented to their own knowledge as being “incorrect.”2 The present chapter focuses on the remaining 16 of the 18 cases (53% of the total sample) in which customers pursued resolution of the knowledge incongruity by publicly exposing it (i.e., to agents), thereby exposing the relevance of one party being in “error” and holding agents accountable for some type of resolution of the incongruity. Despite this relatively small collection of cases, data strongly suggest systematic ways in which customers attempt to resolve knowledge incongruities by orienting to asymmetrical epistemic relationships between parties. All data were transcribed according to the methods of conversation analysis (see Hepburn & Bolden, 2013). Transcripts have three lines. The first, italicized line provides romanized Korean according to the Yale system, representing actual sounds produced by the speakers rather than standard orthography. The second line provides a literal English translation of each word, with a morpheme-​by-​morpheme gloss (see Appendix for the classification and abbreviation of grammatical morphemes). The third, boldfaced line pre­ sents an idiomatic English translation. Square brackets [] at the beginning of the idiomatic English translation indicate the occurrence of overlapping talk. See brackets in the first, italicized line for the positioning of overlap onset.

Customers’ Questions about Known Matters and the Exposition of Incongruent Knowledge in Third Position In the sequences under analysis, customers have relatively certain knowledge about some reservation-​related matter. For example, a customer “knows” that a particular plane departs at a particular time because this information was reported to them in a previous call by a different agent. Prior to the sequences under analysis, such preexisting knowledge of customers is not apparently known about by agents. In such contexts, customers nonetheless inquire into the matter at hand, as opposed to, for example, simply acting upon their knowledge. Customers typically design their questions in ways that do not expose their preexisting knowledge and, in doing so, index agents’ epistemic authority (Heritage, 2013). They tend to use interrogative forms of polar questions that indicate an unknowing stance (Lee, 2015b; see also Heritage, 2010). When agents’ answers confirm that parties have incongruent knowledge, customers then expose the incongruity for agents. Customers



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thus raise the relevance that one party is “wrong” and hold agents accountable for resolving the incongruity. However, in doing so, customers continue to orient to agents as having epistemic authority. Consider Extract 1.  The customer is making a reservation on behalf of other flyers for a flight to Qingdao, China, departing on the fourth of February. Earlier in the call, because the customer was not able to provide the English spellings of the flyers’ names, the agent used common spellings but warned that misspellings may result in the cancellation of the reservation. At line 1, the customer requests confirmation that, if such a cancellation took place, the flight would still be available for reservation. The agent indirectly confirms by constructing a reason why the reservation would go through, that is, there are “many seats” still available (line 3). This asserted fact turns out to be incongruent with the customer’s knowledge acquired from some third party (see line 6). Thus, from the customer’s perspective—​but not yet from the agent’s, who does not yet know what the customer knows—​either he or the agent is “wrong.” In this context, the customer requests confirmation of the matter just asserted by the agent (line 4). Extract 1 [Airline 59] 01          

C:          

koke ch-​ palo chwisoha-​ko palo: cipeneh-​umyen it immediately cancel-​CONN immediately put.in-​COND tuleka-​ l   swu-​ ka   iss-​ keyss-​ cyo? enter-​ATTR  way-​NOM  exist-​DR-​COMM:DEF If we ca-​immediately cancel and immediately: put that in the reservation could go through, right?

02

(0.2)

03 A:        

ung =yey yey:.       yes yes       =Yes yes:.

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06 C: => e:: cali-​ka manhi iss-​ney:: [eps-​ta       DM seat-​NOM a.lot exist-​FR not.exist-​DECL kulay-​kaciwku do.so-​PRECED       [] Oh: there are many seats:: (I’m saying because) they said there aren’t [ney yes

07 A:    

  [] Yes

08 A:        

sa.il nal-​yo? four.day day-​DEF On the fourth?

09 C:        

yey  yey yes  yes Yes yes

10 A:        

kunikka iwel sa.il nal-​yo.=  sonnim.=   hwayoil nal so February four.day day-​DEF  customer  Tuesday day So on February fourth.=sir.=on Tuesday

11

(0.5)

12 C:        

kuleh-​cyo. iwel sa.il nal hwayoil nal-​icyo be.so-​COMM: February four.day day Tuesday day-​COMM:DEF Right. on February fourth on Tuesday

13

(1.0) ((keyboard sounds))

14 A:        

um:: cali-​ka:: ( ) cali iss-​ (.) iss-​usi-​ntey-​yo DM seat-​NOM   seat exist   exist-​HON-​CIRCUM-​DEF Um:: seats:: ( ) there are seats-​(.) there are seats

At line 4, the customer designs his request for confirmation as a polar interrogative with the use of the overt, interrogative morphological ending, kka (Yoon, 2010). While essentially reconfirming what the agent just said, the customer thus indexes an unknowing stance (Lee, 2015b) and claims to be in an epistemically disadvantaged position relative to the agent (Heritage, 2010;



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Heritage & Raymond, 2012). The customer manages the question in ways that do not expose his preexisting knowledge and the knowledge incongruity. At line 5, the agent treats the customer as seeking confirmation by responding with two affirmation tokens (cf. Lee, 2015b). This (re)confirms—​for the customer—​that the parties have incongruent knowledge regarding seat availability, and thus that someone is in error. At line 6, the customer initially claims to be informed by the agent’s confirmation with e:: “Oh::” (cf. Heritage, 1984), and then proceeds to register the agent’s news by repeating it, cali-​ka manhi iss-​ney:: “there are many seats::” (cf. Schegloff, 1996). In constructing the repeat, the customer uses a factual realization ending ney::, marking the matter at hand as one that he realizes or finds new at this moment. The customer thereby orients to the agent’s knowledge as being correct, despite his preexisting knowledge to the contrary. The agent acknowledges and confirms the customer’s receipt with ney “yes” (line 7). In overlap with the agent’s “yes” token (line 7), the customer continues the turn by exposing the parties’ knowledge incongruity (line 6). He produces an account for his immediately prior talk in the turn with the suffix kacikwu “(I’m saying because),” which also ties back to his earlier polar question at line 4. The customer’s account suggests that he had produced his polar question (line 4), and his acknowledgement of the agent’s answer (line 6), due to the knowledge incongruity, even though this was not fully apparent to the agent. The customer’s account exposes—​to the agent—​the knowledge incongruity and thus someone’s error, holding the agent accountable for its resolution (Robinson, 2009). Note that the customer attributes his counter-​information to a third party, who is left unspecified.3 The customer designs the counter-​informing as a report of what he had been told, citing its grounds. The customer thus mitigates his epistemic claim and commitment to the knowledge in question (Pomerantz, 1984). While making the knowledge incongruity and someone’s error relevant to the agent, the customer does so as a party in an epistemically disadvantaged position. Prompted by the customer’s counter-​informing (line 6), the agent strives to resolve the incongruity. The agent initially seeks to confirm that they are talking about the same day (line 8), thus addressing one possible source of error. The customer confirms with two tokens of yey “yes” (line 9). The agent then seeks to more specifically confirm the date of departure, now specifying the month iwel sail “February fourth” followed by hwayoil “Tuesday” (line 10). When the customer confirms with kulehcyo “right” and repeats the date (line 12), the agent appears to consult the computer (note that the agent can be heard to be typing for one second at line 13). At line 14, the agent asserts the availability of seats in an epistemically authoritative manner.

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For a similar case, see Extract 2. As context, the customer wants to use her husband’s mileage card to purchase a ticket in her name remotely, i.e., over the phone rather than in person. It turns out that the customer has used this remote reservation procedure in the past (see lines 14 and 21), and thus has first-​hand knowledge of its possibility. The customer’s preexisting knowledge is not apparently known about by the agent at the onset of this extract. At line 1, despite her direct experience, the customer launches a pre-​pre sequence (Schegloff, 1980) to project a question about the possibility of using the remote reservation procedure. After establishing background information (lines 3–​6), the customer produces the projected question, “for that do I have to go to Jeju city in person” (line 6).4 Similar to Extract 1 above, the customer designs this question about the “known” matter as a polar interrogative with the overt, interrogative morphological ending, kka (Yoon, 2010). In doing so, the customer indexes an unknowing stance, claiming to be in an epistemically disadvantaged position relative to the agent (Lee, 2015b; see also Heritage, 2010). Despite her own, direct knowledge, the customer thus designs her question (line 6) with an orientation to the accountable, institutionalized epistemic asymmetry, deferring to the agent’s epistemic authority on the matter. At line 9, the agent responds by affirming that the customer has to “make a visit to the branch in person.” Through the response, the agent unknowingly confirms—​ for the customer—​that the parties have incongruent knowledge regarding the procedure, and thus that someone is in error (see lines 14 and 21). Extract 2 [Airline 5] 01        

C:        

ce ike kkunh-​ki cen-​ey hankaci-​man DM this purchase-​NOML before-​LOC one-​only yeccwepo-​keyss-​nun[tey-​yo ask-​DR-​CIRCUM-​DEF [] Uh before I purchase this I’ll ask just one thing and [yey: yey yey    yes    yes yes

02 A:        

        [] Yes: yes yes

03 C:        

ce ayki appa:: maillici DM baby dad mileage Uh with my husba::nd’s mileage card:

khatu-​lo: card-​with



Epistemic Asymmetry and Accountability in Service Interaction      •      1 8 3

04

(0.4)

05    

A:    

[yey  yes [] Yes

06 C: -> [.hh ilehkey ha-​llyeko ha-​nuntey [kuke-​nun ceycwu       like.this do-​PURP do-​CIRCUM it-​TOP (place) si-​ey cikcep  ka-​ ya    toy-​p-​ni-​kka  city-​LOC in.person  go-​NECESS  become-​POL-​DET-​INTERR       [] .hh I’d like do this and for that do I have to go to Jeju city in person [yey yes

07 A:        

[] Yes

08

(0.2)

09 A: -> yey cicem-​ulo cikcep naypanghay.[cwu-​sye.ya   yes branch-​LOC in.person visit.give-​HON:NECESS toy-​yo become-​DEF [] Yes you have to make a visit to the branch in person 10 C:        

[ung:: yes [] Yes::

11 C: => .hh encey-​pwuthe kulehkey     when-​from like.it pakkwi-​ess-​sup-​ni-​kka change:PASS-​ANT-​POL-​DET-​INTERR .hh Since when did it change like that (0.2)

12 13    

A:

[e:-​ DM [] Uh:-​

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14 C:  => [yeysnal-​ey-​nun cey-​ka han pen ssess-​     the.past-​LOC-​TOP I-​NOM one time   ssess-​ess-​ketun-​yo? use:ANT-​ANT-​CORREL-​DEF     [] In the past I once used-​used that? (.)

15 16 C: =>          

yeki sekwipho-​eyse? here (place)-​LOC Here at Sekuipo? ((Sekuipo is another city on Jeju Island.))

17

(1.2)

18 A:    

 

 

um: ettehkey ssu-​sye.ss-​ta-​n DM how use-​HON:ANT-​DECL-​ATTR malssum-​[i-​sey.yo word-​CP-​HON:DEF [] Um: how you’re saying you used it

19        

C:        

[.hh-​ maillici mileage khatu: [kuke:: (0.2) ceki:-​ (0.4)= card it       [] .hh-​Mileage card: that one:: (0.2) uh:-​(0.4)=

20 A:         21 C:    

   

   

[yey yes [] Yes =yeki-​se-​to ku ttay (0.2) cenhwa-​lo here-​LOC-​ADD the time phone-​with yeyyakhay-​kaciko reserve-​PRECED kyelc-​  mwe tway.ss-​nuntey: ceycwu si-​kkaci an what become:ANT-​CIRCUM (place) city-​LOC NEG ka-​ss-​eto: go-​ANT-​ADD =From here as well at that time (0.2) I made a reservation on the phone and purchas-​worked it out: without going all the way to Jeju city:



Epistemic Asymmetry and Accountability in Service Interaction      •      1 8 5

22

(0.4)

23 A:    

a kulesey.yo yey =​ [cikum-​unDM do.so:DEF yes now-​TOP [] Oh you did yes=Now-​

24 C:         25 A:    

 

 

[yey (  )    yes []  Yes (  ) yey: cikum-​un .hh cicem-​ina konghang-​eyse-​man yes now-​TOP branch-​FRC airport-​LOC-​only kanungha-​sey.yo possible-​HON:DEF Yes: now .hh it’s possible only at a branch or airport

26 C:        

yey :: yes Yes ::

27 A:        

yey yey cikum pakkwi-​ess-​kwu-​yo¿ yes yes now change:PASS-​ANT-​CONN-​DEF Yes yes now it’s changed and¿

28 C:        

yey = yes Yes=

29        

=kulemyen  ike:: maillici ssu-​si-​nun ke-​llo then      this mileage use-​HON-​ATTR thing-​to pyenkyengha-​si-​nun ke i-​sey.yo change-​HON-​ATTR thing CP-​HON:DEF =Then this one:: you’re changing it to one using mileage

A:        

The customer initially acknowledges the information (line 10) in overlap with the agent’s response (line 9), deferring to the agent’s knowledge as being correct. She then proceeds to ask a Wh-​question that embodies a presupposition that the procedure has changed (line 11). This question not only acknowledges the current correctness of the agent, but also indicates that the customer had been operating, and had grounds for operating, with information

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incongruent to that of the agent (i.e., with information that remote reservation was previously possible). This solicits some type of resolution to the parties’ knowledge incongruity. Simultaneously with the agent beginning to respond (line 13), the customer pursues her question by accounting for it. She asserts that she previously used the remote procedure (line 14). In the absence of immediate response, at line 16 the customer adds an increment (Schegloff, ­chapter 8) specifying the location at which she used the procedure. While pursuing an answer to her Wh-​question (at line 11), the customer thus mitigates her epistemic claim and authority by limiting the (incongruent) information to her own personal, direct knowledge (Pomerantz, 1980, 1984). Similarly to Extract 1 above, prior to answering, the agent first seeks to clarify the customer’s prior experience, which is resolved across lines 18–​21. Ultimately, the agent receipts the customer’s talk (line 23), and then at line 25 answers the customer’s unresolved question from line 11. This answer resolves the parties’ knowledge incongruity by confirming a change in policy (lines 23 and 25). In confirming the change in her answer, the agent constructs cikum “now” with a topic marker un (lines 23 and 25), which serves to mark the current, changed state of affairs (“now”) as in contrast with the past described by the customer. The customer receipts this with an acknowledgement token yey:: “yes::” (line 26). At line 27, the agent reaffirms that the procedure has changed. In so doing, the agent uses the same word pakkwi-​ess “change(d)” in past tense as did the customer in her Wh-​question (line 11). In this way, the agent ties her talk to the customer’s original question (at line 11) to which she is responding. Note that the agent ends her talk with a connective particle kwu “and,” projecting another unit of talk. The agent thereby takes an initiative to launch the task that was halted by the customer’s pre-​pre (line 29; see line 1), treating the parties’ knowledge incongruity as having been successfully resolved. The agent thus resolves the incongruity, maintaining her position as the party with epistemic authority. In sum, in Extracts 1–​2 customers appear to have credible, preexisting knowledge about some reservation-​related matter (e.g., that there are not many available seats on a particular flight, or that it is possible to remotely purchase a ticket), and this knowledge is not apparently known about by agents. Customers nonetheless inquire about the matter, using the form of a polar interrogative. They thus take up an unknowing stance on the matter and cede epistemic authority to agents, while not exposing to agents their own prior knowledge about, or experience with, the matter. This is so even when, as in Extract 2, there is no call-​internal evidence for customers to conclude that



Epistemic Asymmetry and Accountability in Service Interaction      •      1 8 7

their knowledge is possibly incorrect. Even when there is such evidence—​as in Extract 1 at line 3, in which the agent asserts that “there are many seats”—​it should be noted that the customer initially opts to cede epistemic authority to the agent despite having credible, institutionally derived knowledge on the matter. When agents’ responses confirm—​for customers—​an incongruity of knowledge between parties, customers initially acknowledge these responses in ways that claim to accept them and defer to the correctness of agents’ knowledge, for example by claiming to be informed (with “Oh” in Extract 1, line 6)  or by producing an acknowledgement token (“Yes” in Extract 2, line 10). Only then do customers expose their preexisting knowledge on the matter, and thus the parties’ knowledge incongruity. Even then, customers’ methods of exposition mitigate their epistemic authority on the matter, for example by accounting for “how they know.” Extracts 1–​2 thus provide evidence that customers hold themselves accountable to an institutionalized epistemic asymmetry throughout the sequence. Unlike Extracts 1–​2 above, there are cases in which customers construct their initial questions in ways that index a knowing stance or display a level of operating knowledge regarding a reservation-​related matter. However, these questions are still designed so as to defer to agents’ epistemic authority. Consider Extract 3. Just prior to making this call, the customer attempted to board a flight with her three puppy dogs, but was not allowed to do so (see lines 31–​37) because of the airline policy limiting passengers to one puppy each (line 41). The customer is calling to inquire about the matter. Despite her immediate, first-​hand experience, at lines 1 and 3 the customer constructs a polar question in an “unmarked” form that has no overt morphological marking on the type of sentence, which is translated into English as a declarative polar question (Lee, 2015b). Although the unmarked form of a polar question tends to be used to seek confirmation and index a knowing stance (ibid.), the customer’s question does not expose her first-​hand knowledge regarding the matter, which the agent does not apparently know about at this point. Furthermore, the customer downgrades her epistemic stance by beginning the question with hoksi “by any chance” (line 1). Note that, unlike English, Korean does not always indicate singularity or plurality of count nouns. The noun kangaci “puppy” in the customer’s question (lines 1 and 3), as well as in the agent’s question (line 11), does not mark whether it is singular or plural and can be understood either way. Unless otherwise marked (e.g., as in lines 31 and 41), the noun kangaci is translated into

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English as “puppy,” without the use of the article “a” or “the,” or of a plural form “puppies,” which may be understood as the singular or plural of “puppy.” Extract 3 [Airline 38] 01 C: -> ˙hhhh hoksi       by.any.chance       ˙hhhh By any chance 02 A:        

kang:aci-​yo: puppy-​DEF pu:ppy:

yey: yes Yes:

03 C: -> ˙hh kangaci:-​ teyli-​ko tha-​l swu iss-​eyo?       puppy bring-​CONN board-​ATT way exist-​DEF     ˙hh I can bring puppy:-​on board? 04

(0.8)

05 A:        

yey eti:: ka-​si-​l kke-​ntey-​yo? yes where go-​HON-​ATTR thing-​CIRCUM-​DEF Yes  where:: are you going?

06

(0.5)

07 C:    

a: mokpho-​eyse ai ai  mokpo-​eyse  ceycwu DM (place)-​LOC (place)-​LOC   (place) naylyeo-​ l     kke-​ ntey. come.down-​ATTR  thing-​DEF Uh: from Mokpo uh uh from Mokpo coming down to Jeju.

 

 

08 A: -> yey:: ˙hh kanungha-​kwu-​yo:¿       yes possible-​CONN-​DEF     Yes:: ˙hh it’s possible and:¿ 09

(0.4)

10 C:        

yey: yes Yes:



Epistemic Asymmetry and Accountability in Service Interaction      •      1 8 9

11 A:        

yey: kangaci-​k a: el:manha-​ntey-​yo. yes puppy-​NOM how.big-​CIRCUM-​DEF Yes:  how big is/​are puppy:.

 

((17 lines of transcript are omitted. The parties talk about the size and age of the puppies.))

 

29 A:        

han: pwun-​i    ka-​si-​nun    ke-​yey.yo¿ one person-​NOM  go-​HON-​ATTR  thing-​CP:DEF One: person is going¿

30

(1.0)

31 C:        

yey han: pwun-​ise: kangaci sey mali-​lul:: yes one person-​NOM puppy three CL-​ACC Yes  one: person:  three puppies::

32 A:        

yey:   h yes Yes:  h

33

(0.2)

34 C:        

teyli-​ko  tha-​llako  ha-​nuntey: bring-​CONN  board-​PURP  do-​CIRCUM (One person) is trying to bring (three puppies) on board but:

35 A:        

yey:  h yes Yes: h

36

(0.5)

37 C: => [mos teli-​ko tha-​ntako ha-​ney-​yo:     NEG bring-​CONN board-​DECL:COMP do-​FR-​DEF     [] They say I can’t bring them on board:. 38 A:        

[˙hh cikum:: now []  ˙hh Now::

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39 A:    

yey: cikum mwuncey-​ka mwe-​nya yes now problem-​NOM what-​INTERR ha-​myen-​un-​yo:: ˙hh-​ do-​COND-​TOP-​DEF Yes: now what the problem is is:: ˙hh-​

40 C:        

yey: yes Yes

41        

kangaci:: kinay panip-​i han mali-​pakkey an puppy cabin carry-​NOM one CL-​only NEG tway-​yo:. han pwun-​tang. become-​DEF one person-​per Carrying puppy:: inside the cabin is allowed for only one puppy:. Per one person.

A:        

There are a variety of places where the agent’s responses expose—​at least to the customer, but probably not to the agent—​that the two parties have incongruous knowledge regarding the puppy protocol; and the “certainty” of this incongruity for the customer increases as the extract unfolds. For example, when the customer seeks to confirm the allowance of “puppy” at line 3, the agent initially acknowledges with yey “yes” at line 5, which may be understood as confirming the allowance of “puppy” or as simply acknowledging the question. Then the agent moves to seek information about the specific flight at line 5 (note that aircrafts vary in terms of the amount and type of accommodation for pets). Given the customer’s response (line 7), the agent (re)confirms the allowance of “puppy” by asserting that “it’s possible” (line 8). When the agent further seeks information about the size and age of “puppy” at line 11 and omitted talk, she can be understood as addressing the viability of the customer’s request according to flight regulations, procedures, and other institutional contingencies. None of the customer’s or agent’s talk so far has yet raised the relevance of a “problem” with bringing puppies on board. Finally in response to the agent’s request for confirmation regarding the number of passengers (line 29), the customer confirms in an expanded fashion. The customer’s response is through-​produced at lines 31 and 34, and further continues at line 37. Note that Korean has the basic word order of subject-​object-​ predicate (Sohn, 1999). At line 31, the customer first produces the subject, han pwun “one person,” and object, kangaci sey mali “three puppies.” Then the



Epistemic Asymmetry and Accountability in Service Interaction      •      1 9 1

customer continues with the predicate of the utterance at line 34, teli-​ko tha-​ llako ha-​nuntey “is trying to bring on board.” The customer’s utterance at lines 31 and 34 together can be translated into English as “One person is trying to bring three puppies on board.” The customer thus provides not only the number of passengers as elicited by the question, but also the number of her puppies, unlike in her prior utterances. In addition, the customer uses a suffix nuntey at the end of the predicate (line 34), translated as “but” in English, which can project a further unit of talk to follow. The customer projects an extension of her turn, potentially indicating the current utterance as some sort of background for, or as in contrast with, the projected talk to follow. The agent’s yey: “yes:” (line 35) acknowledges the customer’s response, at the same time inviting the customer to continue. In sum, at this point, it is arguably clear—​to the customer—​that the two parties have incongruous knowledge regarding the puppy protocol. After the 0.5-​second pause (line 36), the customer produces the projected unit of talk (line 37). The customer describes what she was previously told about the puppy protocol by other agents (i.e., that it is not possible to bring puppies on board), and this information directly contradicts the agent’s prior assertion that “it’s possible” (at line 8). By providing such counter-​information (line 37), the customer makes public—​to the agent—​that the parties have incongruent knowledge and that someone is “wrong.”5 The customer thus holds the agent accountable for resolving the incongruity (Robinson, 2009), although the agent appears, with her simultaneous start at line 38, to now independently recognize the incongruity (i.e., the “problem” at line 39) and begin to resolve it. While raising the relevance of error, the customer mitigates her epistemic authority by attributing the counter-​information to a third party, that is, a different service agent (Pomerantz, 1984). Through the use of cikum “now” (first at line 38, and then re-​produced at line 39), the agent projects an upcoming account for the “problem.” Across lines 38–​41, the agent works to resolve the incongruity by providing an account in terms of a restriction on the number of puppies per passenger allowed inside the cabin (line 41), which essentially preserves the “correctness” of both parties by tacitly framing the incongruity as a “miscommunication.” The agent asserts her account in a manner that claims superior epistemic access and authority. Finally, consider Extract 4.  Just prior to this extract, the customer inquired about flights from Jeju to Sooncheon. The agent informed the customer that the closest airport to Sooncheon is in Yosoo and that the airport is called Yosoo Sooncheon airport. At line 1, the customer acknowledges, and seeks confirmation of, this fact and the agent confirms that at

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line 2.  In context, the customer’s question at line 4 is understandable as referring to a flight from Jeju to Yosoo. It appears that, during a previous call “a moment ago” with a different agent, the customer was told that the flight departs at four o’clock (which is not apparently known about by prior to line 8). Extract 4 [Airline 41] 01 C:        

a yeswu swunchen-​iyo= DM (place) (place)-​DEF Oh Yosoo Sooncheon=

02 A:        

=ney:::. yes =Yes:::.

03

(0.3)

04        

C:        

->        

ney si:-​ey iss-​ sey si pan-​i ani-​ko four hour-​LOC exist three hour half-​NOM be.not-​CONN ney si-​p-​ni-​kka: four hour-​POL-​DET-​INTERR Is it at four o’clo:ck-​not half past three but four o’clock: (1.0)

05

06 A: -> sey si pan mac-​ayo       three hour half correct-​DEF       Half past three is correct sir (0.3)

07 08         09

sonnim customer

C:        

=>        

e akka hwakinha-​l ttay-​nun ney si-​la DM a.moment.ago check-​ATTR time-​TOP four hour-​DECL kule-​te-​ntey¿ do.so-​RETROS-​CIRCUM Oh but when I checked a moment ago they said it’s four o’clock¿ (1.6)



Epistemic Asymmetry and Accountability in Service Interaction      •      1 9 3

10 C:        

ku halwu-​ey hana-​ ha(hhh)-​ hana [iss-​nun-​ DM one.day-​LOC one   one exist-​ATTR [] Per day one-​one(hhh) there’s one-​

11          

A:          

   

   

[yey yey  .hh  yeswu yes yes   (place) ceycwu-​ka ney si sasip.o pwun-​i-​ko:: (place)-​NOM four hour forty.five minute-​CP-​CONN ceycwu-​eyse yeswu-​nun sey si (place)-​LOC (place)-​TOP three hour pan-​i-​p-​ni-​ta::. half-​CP-​POL-​DET-​DECL [] Yes yes .hh from Yosoo to Jeju is four forty five and:: from Jeju to Yosoo is half past three::.

12

(0.4)

13 C:        

ai-​ (0.5) camkkan-​man-​yo:.     a.moment-​only-​DEF Well-  (0.5) hold on a moment:.

The customer’s question at line 4 exposes his knowledge about possible flight times. He cuts off a question proposing a particular time for confirmation, ney si:ey iss-​“at four o’clo:ck-​,” and re-​begins with sey si pan-​i ani-​ko ney si “not half past three but four o’clock,” which indexes his knowledge of a second departure time (i.e., half past three) and its “incorrectness” relative to four o’clock. While exposing his prior knowledge of the two possibilities in terms of flight times, the customer cedes epistemic authority to the agent. Specifically, the customer formats his question as a polar interrogative with the overt, interrogative ending kka, as in Extracts 1–​2 above, indexing an unknowing stance and thus his lack of epistemic claim or commitment (Lee, 2015b; see also Heritage, 2010). At line 6, the agent disconfirms by explicitly asserting the correctness of the time (i.e., half past three) that the customer had rejected in his question. With this direct assertion, the agent claims epistemic authority regarding the departure time. Note that, unlike in Extracts 1–​3 above, the agent’s response exposes not only for the customer, but also very likely for the agent as well, that the parties have incongruent knowledge, and thus that someone is in “error.” This is so given that the customer’s question at line 4 displayed knowledge regarding flight times and their “(in)correctness.”

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At line 8, the customer initially claims to be informed with e “Oh” (Heritage, 1984), as in Extract 1 above. When the customer continues and constructs a counter-​informing at line 8, he provides grounds for his knowledge by reporting what he had been told in a separate conversation “a moment ago.” This knowledge contrasts with the agent’s prior assertion and perpetuates the parties’ public knowledge incongruity. By reporting the grounds of his knowledge (i.e., attributing it to a knowledgeable third party), the customer mitigates his epistemic claim and commitment to the knowledge (Pomerantz, 1984).6 Note that the customer’s report at line 8 is constructed with a suffix ntey, which is translated into English as “but,” indicating a contrast with the agent’s prior talk. In addition, the customer’s use of ney si “four o’clock” (line 8) ties back to that in his initial question (line 4) and indicates that the customer produced the question (line 4) with an orientation toward resolving a possible error or knowledge incongruity. The customer’s counter-​informing at line 8 may thus operate as a type of repair initiator, holding the agent accountable for resolving the incongruity (Robinson, 2009). Note that the customer nonetheless manages his counter-​informing as a party with limited epistemic authority. In the absence of a response by the agent (line 9), the customer begins to seek confirmation that they are talking about the same flight (line 10). At line 11, the agent interrupts the customer, orienting to the relevance of resolving the incongruity raised by the customer’s counter-​informing (line 8). The agent confirms the flight with two affirmative tokens, yey yey “yes yes,” and works to resolve the incongruity (line 11). She initially provides the departure time for the flight from Yosoo to Jeju, which is four forty-​five. This can potentially address a possible misunderstanding on the part of the customer, that is, that the customer was referring to the wrong, or reverse-​direction, flight in asking about four-​o’clock flights. The agent then reasserts the departure time for the “correct” flight from Jeju to Yosoo, which is half past three. In directly asserting information for departure times for both flight directions, the agent also claims her epistemic authority and entitlement. The agent thus orients to resolving, and in effect resolves, the incongruity as the party with epistemic authority.7 In sum, Extracts 1–​4 show that, during contexts in which there is an incongruity of knowledge between the parties, service agents and customers manage their conduct by orienting to an accountable epistemic asymmetry. Throughout the sequences examined above, customers remain as a party in an epistemically disadvantaged position relative to agents. First, customers construct a polar question in first position, despite their relatively certain knowledge about a reservation-​related matter. Customers have highly credible grounds for their knowledge, e.g., from having had a prior conversation with a different agent, or a first-​hand, direct experience. Customers



Epistemic Asymmetry and Accountability in Service Interaction      •      1 9 5

nonetheless inquire into the matter, typically by using an interrogative form of polar question that indexes an unknowing stance (Extracts 1–​2, 4). Even when customers’ questions imply some knowledgeability, customers defer to agents’ epistemic authority (Extract 4) or downgrade their epistemic stance (Extract 3). In none of these cases do customers expose or claim their preexisting knowledge. Customers design their questions in ways that defer to agents’ epistemic authority on the matter at hand. In addition, when customers ultimately expose the parties’ incongruous knowledge in third position, which raises the relevance of someone being in error, customers nonetheless evidence its grounds. They may attribute the counter-​information to a third party (Extracts 1, 3, and 4), or limit the counter-​ information to the domain of their first-​hand, prior experience (Extract 2). Customers thus mitigate their epistemic claim and commitment to the counter-​ information (Pomerantz, 1980, 1984). As a party with limited epistemic access and authority in the institutional domain, customers display caution and avoid being held accountable for correctness of their knowledge (ibid.). By contrast, service agents directly assert their knowledge throughout the sequences. Agents orient to resolving, and in effect resolve, the incongruity of knowledge, especially given their immediate and privileged access to the computer system. In the face of counter-​informings, agents assert and provide up-​to-​date information about particulars of institutional requirements, procedures, and contingencies. Agents maintain their position as the party with epistemic authority relative to customers. The sequences examined above thus show that the parties manage both possible and actual knowledge incongruity and its resolution by reference to an asymmetrical epistemic positioning.

Conclusion Asymmetries are ubiquitous in, and intrinsic to, social interaction (Linell & Luckmann, 1991, p. 7). Asymmetries are especially significant when made relevant to the participants themselves, and have a variety of consequences for the design and organization of talk (Drew, 1991, p. 44; see also Linell & Luckmann, 1991). In the context of airline-​service calls, this chapter provided several types of evidence that both customers and agents orient to, and thus hold themselves accountable in terms of, asymmetries of knowledge. For instance, even when customers enter calls with credible, and often detailed, reservation-​related knowledge, they nonetheless tend to initiate courses of action related to such knowledge by seeking confirmation of its accuracy. They do so in ways that orient, and thus defer, to agents’ epistemic authority, for example by designing their turns as interrogative polar questions. Furthermore, when agents’ answers (unknowingly) confirm that the

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parties have incongruous knowledge, customers tend to initially acknowledge or accept agents’ information, and only then go on to construct counter-​informings that pursue resolution to the knowledge incongruity. Additionally, customers design these counter-​informings in ways that mitigate their epistemic authority. Agents, on the other hand, routinely assert their knowledge and resolve knowledge incongruities in ways that claim their epistemic authority. Epistemic asymmetries examined in this chapter are tied to, or rooted in, parties’ institutional roles and identities. Relative to customers, agents normally have more reservation-​related expertise, more rights to reservation-​ related knowledge, and thus more authority over such knowledge. In the sequences examined above, although customers have relatively certain, objective knowledge from trusted sources (e.g., other service agents), they orient to not being entitled to “know best.” Customers alternatively orient to service agents as having the institutional right and authority to “know best.” That customers hold themselves accountable to these roles and identities is evident not only in how they design their turns—​both their initial questions and their pursuits—​in terms of the degree to which they claim epistemic authority. It is also evident in the fact that many customers provide accounts for “how they know,” thereby orienting to a distinction between having knowledge on the one hand, and having epistemic entitlement to it on the other (see Drew, 1991; Gill, 1998; Heritage, 1997). These findings are in line with service seekers’ orientations to epistemic asymmetries in other institutional contexts. For instance, as mentioned in the Introduction, parents—​who happen to be medical providers—​mitigate their expertise relative to pediatricians when accompanying their own children to pediatric visits (Strong, 1979). Finally, the practice of customers initiating reservation-​related courses of action with polar questions may serve as a practice for managing accountability in another respect. It can avoid having to effectively initiate correction of, or disagree with, service agents, which tends to be a dispreferred action (Schegloff, 2007; Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977). For example, in some cases as in Extract 1, customers’ initial polar questions are produced after the agent has unknowingly asserted information incongruent with that of customers’ knowledge. Customers’ counter-​informings are also constructed (cf. Robinson, 2009)  only after agents’ responses to initial questions inadvertently assert or confirm knowledge that is incongruent with customers’. Thus, by initiating the course of action with a polar question, customers can not only address whether there is a (need to resolve) knowledge incongruity, without inherently raising the relevance of “error.” They can also allow for the possibility that agents will correct themselves in their response, especially



Epistemic Asymmetry and Accountability in Service Interaction      •      1 9 7

in cases such as Extract 1. This may be similar to a repair initiation following possible trouble (Drew, 1997; Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977), although the customer’s question does not inherently raise the relevance of possible trouble. Thus, through the practice of initiating the sequence with polar questions, customers can avoid, or delay, having to raise the relevance of agents being possibly wrong or of initiating a correction. These observations suggest the need for further research on how participants manage possible disalignment or disaffiliation in contexts of accountable epistemic asymmetry. This chapter examined a relatively small collection of cases in which epistemic asymmetry is exposed in the details of parties’ talk. The systematic ways in which customers launch and accomplish their interactional projects show their orientations to an accountable asymmetric epistemic relationship between parties. Customers’ conduct suggests that epistemic asymmetries and their accountability grounded in institutional contexts can have consequences that extend over the initiation and unfolding of sequences of action.

Appendix ACC ANT CIRCUM COMM COND CORREL DECL DET DR FR HON JUSS NECESS NOM PASS PRECED RETROS

Accusative Anterior Circumstantial Committal Conditional Correlative Declarative Determinative Deductive Reasoning Factual Realization Honorific Jussive Necessitative Nominative Passive Precedence Retrospective

ADD ATTR CL COMP CONN CP DEF DM DUB FRC INTERR LOC NEG NOML POL PURP TOP

Additive Attributive Classifier Complementizer Connective Copula Deferential Discourse Marker Dubitative Free Choice Interrogative Locative Negative Nominalizer Polite Purposive Topic

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Notes 1. Consider Extract A below. The customer is requesting a reservation for a round trip. It turns out that the customer had previously made a reservation for the same trip on different dates, and is replacing that previous reservation with the current one. Thus, the customer has some preexisting knowledge about departure times of flights from the prior reservation experience. That the customer already has a reservation is not apparently known about by the agent during, or prior to, the extract below. Extract A [Airline 1] 01 A:        

wenha-​si-​nun sikan-​tay iss-​usi-​p-​ni-​kka    want-​HON-​ATTR time-​frame exist-​HON-​POL-​DET-​INTERR  Do you have a time frame you want

02 C:    

um  ku  ohwu han tases DM DM afternoon approximately five Um uh about five: in the afternoon

si: ccum hour around

03

(0.2)

 

 

 

04 A:        

tases si five hour Around five

   

   

   

 

  cengto-​yo around-​DEF

 

05 C: -> yey  tases  si   sip   pwun   kke   iss-​cyo     yes five hour   ten minute  thing exist-​COMM:DEF     Yes there’s a flight at five ten right (0.3)

06 07          

A:          

   

   

.hhh  yey  kule-​ si-​ ntey     ku   tases  si    sip pwun  yes  be.so-​HON-CIRCUM  the  five   hour   ten minute phyo-​nun   mansek-​i-​si-​ko:    .hh  cikum  kacang  nucun ticket-​TOP  full-​CP-​HON-​CONN   now  most  late sikan-​i : ohwu sey si isip time-NOM afternoon three hour twenty pwun-​i-​sey-​yo minute-​CP-​HON-​DEF .hhh Yes there is but the tickets for five ten are full and .hh now the latest time is three twenty in the afternoon



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Requests for reservations in the airline-​service context normally require specification of their components, such as the date, itinerary, time, etc. Those components are specified and constructed over a set of sequences in which agents ask questions to specify particular components and customers respond by specifying what they want (Lee, 2009). Agents initiate such sequences in the order of specifying the date, itinerary, time frame, and time (ibid.). In Extract A above, the customer and the agent are dealing with the return trip. After the date of the return trip is specified (data not shown), at line 1 the agent moves to specify the time frame that the customer wants; and the customer specifies that as tases si: ccum “about five:” (line 2). After the agent displays receipt of the customers’ answer (line 4), the customer produces a confirmation (“Yes”) and then a question about a particular flight (line 5). Rather than waiting for the agent to offer, or inquire about, particular departure times within the time frame specified, which is normally the case in reservation-​request sequences (Lee, 2009), here the customer initiates the sequence himself by requesting confirmation of a particular departure time (line 5). Although the customer’s request for confirmation displays his knowledge of possible flight times, the customer nonetheless completes it with a tag question, thereby indexing, and deferring to, the agent’s epistemic authority on the matter. At line 7 the agent confirms that the customer’s knowledge of the departure time is correct (yey kule-​si-​ntey “yes there is”), yet continues to announce the flight’s current unavailability. In sum, upon completion of the question answer sequence (lines 5–​7), the customer and agent presumably have congruent knowledge about the current state of affairs regarding the flight’s departure time and availability. 2. Consider Extract B below. The customer originally had a reservation for a flight departing from Seoul to Pusan at nine o’clock. Prior to making the call below, the customer had previously called and was told, apparently by a separate agent, that the nine-​o’clock flight was not operating; and, as a result, the customer changed the reservation to a flight departing at ten thirty. This prior service exchange is not apparently known about by the agent at the beginning of this call. Extract B [Airline 76] 01           02

C:          

yey:  ceki=onul ceki:: pwusan-​eyse sewul-​=ai sewul-​eyse pwusan yes   DM today DM (place)-​LOC (place) (place)-​LOC (place) cham  (0.4) ahop si pihayngki-​ka ttu-​ko iss-​na-​yo? nine hour flight-​NOM fly-​CONN exist-​DUB-​DEF Yes: uh=today uh:: from Pusan to Seoul-​=oh from Seoul to to Pusan gosh (0.4) is the nine o’clock flight flying? (0.4)

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03 A:        

>sewul-​eyse< pwusan: (place)-​LOC (place) >From Seoul< to Pusan:

04

(0.4)

05 C:        

yey:. yes Yes:.

06

(1.0)

07 A:        

yey  cam:si-​man    kitalye.cwu-​si-​p-​syo:        Yes     a.moment-​only  wait.give-​HON-​POL-​JUSS:DEF        Yes please hold on just a mo:ment:

08

(0.4)

09 A:        

ney  cengsang  unhang   yeyceng-​i-​p-​ni-​ta:¿       yes  normal      operation   schedule-​CP-​POL-​DET-​DECL       Yes normal operation is scheduled

10

(0.4)

11 C:        

yey? yes Huh?

           

     

     

     

     

12

(.)

   

 

 

 

 

13 A:        

  unhang   yeyceng-​i-​p-​ni-​ta:.          normal   operation  plan-​CP-​POL-​DET-​DECL        operation is scheduled:.

14

(0.6)

15      

ahop si nine hour nine o’clock

pihayngki-​yo¿ flight-​DEF flight¿

C: -> ah:  kulay-​youn un un ITJ ITJ ITJ =Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

tte iu uta o [utatte[ru n da kedo sore = QT say song O singing p CP but that … Black and White but that one, he) sings=

09    

[A [utatteru utatteru ITJ singing singing A! (He) does, (he) does

10    

Mari:  

11    

Ami:    

12    

Mari: → u::n burakku↑andohowaito suki da yo   ITJ  Black and White   like  CP  FP   Yeah (I) like Black and White. ano a[rubamu wa.] that album TP That album.

13

14    

hi↑↑toride utatteru n da yo↑ne alone singing P CP FP =by himself. 

Ami:    

[e-​ii    yone]:, a[re ne ]:, good  FP that IP   (It)’s good, that one,

]]=

]un un< ITJ ITJ

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15    

Mari:    

16  

Mari:

17

Ami:

18    

Ami:    

19    

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[un,    ] ITJ Yeah, a[no] arubamu wa katta. that album TP bought (I) bought that album. [he-​] ya:ppari s(g)a:, are machigae yasui yone: expectedly IP that mistake easily FP Expectedly,   it’s easy to confuse (them), y↓ebonii ando aiborii ne:, Ebony and Ivory IP Ebony and Ivory,

We can observe that Mari starts to claim epistemic independence in line 10; by repeating part of Ami’s turn (utatteru, which translates as “sings”), Mari claims recognition of the song being sung by Jackson. Then, in lines 12–13, She says that she likes the album that includes the song. This utterance closes the ongoing exchange on who sang which song and ties back to the question that Ami asked earlier, whether she liked Jackson (data not shown). However, in this environment, this utterance achieves more than that:  it works to claim and establish epistemic independence. Here, having previously confused the artists of different songs, and thus having had her knowledge about Jackson’s songs discredited, Mari is in the position of having to make an interactional effort if she is to claim to independently know about the song “Black or White.” The use of a subjective assessment in this environment contributes to this interactional project: by stating her personal attitude toward the song in the form of a subjective assessment, Mari implies that this is a settled position that she formed independently and prior to the ongoing interaction. Her adding that she even bought the album (line 16) also supports this claim. On the other hand, Ami, who has already exhibited her knowledge of the song, proffers an objective assessment, the unmarked form of assessment (line 14). As has been discussed in the literature, participants are concerned with establishing their epistemic independence, or independent access, to referents



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(Heritage, 2002), and that is what warrants the production of an assessment in the first place. As Heritage (2002, p.  200) wrote, when participants are experiencing an object or event together, then claiming and establishing epistemic independence may rarely become an issue. However, when that is not the case, participants may need to work to establish epistemic independence, and they mobilize various interactional resources to make their claims accountable, invoking experiences that provide bases for their claims. Subjective assessments are one such resource: they work to index or invoke direct personal experience that warrants the claim of epistemic independence. This also explains why, as noted earlier, subjective assessments are not commonly used when participants are assessing an object that they are experiencing here and now. Differentiating One’s Experience from Others’ Heritage (2002) showed that a resource to claim and index epistemic independence (i.e., oh-​prefaced second assessments) can be utilized as a resource to make a claim of epistemic authority under certain circumstances. This extension of function can also be found with subjective assessments. As we saw in the previous section, subjective assessments suggest that the speaker has independent access to the referent. They may be suited for this work because they present the view as independently, or previously, formed and settled. Arguably because of this feature, subjective assessments can also be used to differentiate their experiences from those of their interlocutors, which often amounts to a claim of epistemic primacy. This section turns to cases where subjective assessments are deployed to achieve such an outcome. Extract 7 is part of a telephone call between Miki and Rumi, who are discussing a kind of savory pancake, okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki is a specialty in the Kansai area, where Miki is from. Prior to this extract, Miki reported that she had earlier made okonomiyaki. This report makes it rather clear that she likes okonomiyaki and cooks it routinely. Rumi then disclosed that she had not known how to cook it until recently, when she made it for the first time and was surprised to enjoy its taste. Even then, however, Rumi used a ready-​made mix whereas Miki makes okonomiyaki from scratch. After Miki receipts Rumi’s disclosure as news with a news receipt (line 1), Rumi objectively assesses okonomiyaki: kekko’ oishii yone, okonomiyaki “(It’s) fairly good, okonomiyaki” (line 2). Miki’s response to this turn (line 4) is formatted as a subjective assessment.

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Extract 7 [CallFriend 6666: okonomiyaki] 01 Miki:        

soo na n da, that CP N CP Is that so,    

02 Rumi:        

nn:, ↑↑ke↓kko’ oishii yo↑ne,=okonomiyaki. ITJ fairly delicious FP okonomiyaki Yeah:, (it’s) fairly good yone,=okonomiyaki.

03

(0.2)

04 Miki:        

→

n↓n:. [↑watashi wa suki da ↓↓yo, ITJ I TP like CP FP Yeah:. I like (it) yo, [nn, ITJ Yeah,

05 Rumi:         06

(0.2)

07 Rumi:        

atashi mo suki. I also like I like (it), too.

08

(1.0)

09 Rumi:        

da: tsu↑kuri↓kata wakan nakutte ↓sa:, so how.to.cook know not IP So not knowing how to cook (it),

10    

jibun de: sa:, moto bakkari kattara su↑↑ggoi self by IP mix only buy.only very if (I) buy ready-​made mix all the time,

     

     

takaagari jan.   costly TAG   that would be very costly, right.

   

   



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As discussed in Hayano (2011, 2013), Rumi’s assessment in line 2 is problematic from Miki’s perspective in two respects. First, Rumi qualifies her assessment with the adverb kekko, suggesting that it is only “fairly good” or “better than expected.” Second, even though Rumi knows, from prior context, that Miki has more experience and expertise with okonomiyaki, Rumi marks her assessment with yone, with which she claims that she and Miki have equivalent epistemic access to okonomiyaki. Thus, this initial assessment is inviting Miki to accept that she holds the same “epistemic status” (Heritage, 2012a) with Rumi with regard to the matter they are discussing, and that okonomiyaki is only fairly good despite the apparent gap between their experiences with and levels of liking for it. Although Miki first acknowledges Rumi’s turn with nn (“Yeah”; line 4), the rest of her response is designed to resist these terms while agreeing that okonomiyaki is good. After nn, she produces an unqualified subjective assessment: watashi wa suki da yo (“I like (it),”; line 4). The stative verb “like” characterizes Miki’s attitude toward okonomiyaki as being settled and having been formed prior to the present interaction. Miki’s articulation of the subject watashi (“I”), marked with the contrastive topic marker wa, implies that she likes okonomiyaki regardless of Rumi’s liking. This stance is particularly highlighted here because the first-​person subject is routinely not articulated in Japanese spoken discourse. By responding to Rumi’s objective assessment in this manner, Miki manages to agree with Rumi while simultaneously differentiating her epistemic and evaluative positions from those of Rumi. In the next turn, Rumi reciprocates a subjective assessment, this time without using a qualifier (line 7). With this turn, Rumi is aligning with Miki in that she echoes Miki’s preceding turn by adopting the same evaluative stance. However, it does not lead into an affiliative, upbeat interaction. Emi does not receipt Rumi’s third-​position assessment, after which a full second of silence occurs (line 8). Eventually, Rumi starts to explain why it is that she does not cook okonomiyaki often (i.e., she does not know the recipe and, in order to cook it, she has to buy costly ready-​made mix) (line 9), which turns the focus more toward the gap in experience with okonomiyaki between the participants. Thus, in this environment, the subjective assessment is employed as a means for the speaker (Miki) to differentiate the kind of experience she has with the referent (okonomiyaki) from the one that Rumi has. Such an outcome can be achieved because a subjective assessment invokes the speaker’s independent, previous experience that gives basis to the speaker’s settled

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attitude toward the referent, which in this case is contrastive with the newly acquired, limited experience of Rumi’s. While Miki’s assessment differentiates Miki’s position from Rumi’s in a responsive turn, a subjective assessment can differentiate the speaker’s position from an interlocutor’s in first position as well. Extract 8 is a case in point. Yuka and Mami are graduate students working in closely related areas. The topic of the conversation has been a presentation Yuka is preparing for a class. As she shows Mami a handout for the presentation, Yuka mentions Nancy, saying that she copied Nancy’s formatting style (line 1). Nancy recently gave a lecture at Yuka’s and Mami’s school, as a guest speaker, which both Yuka and Mami attended, though not together. Yuka uses this mention as an opportunity to produce a subjective assessment of Nancy (line 5). Extract 8 [TD2: Nancy] 01 Yuka:        

ko:re nanshii no manekko shita n da kedo, this Nancy L copy did P CP but This, (I) copied Nancy’s (style),

02    

˚kono nan[ka˚ this like This kind of [h h h .hh [un,         ITJ h h h .hh Yeah,

03 Mami:        

[hh

04 Yuka:

05 Yuka: →     →    

[((Yuka looks away from Mami.)) moo [nan-​ [.hh nanshii sugo:i.=sugoi suki:. EMP Nan-​ Nancy ITS ITS like (I) like Nan-​Nancy very. very much. [hh

06 Mami: 07

(0.2)

08 Mami:

.hh hhhh



Managing Territories of Experience      •     

09

(0.2)

10 Yuka:

HH .hh

11

(0.2)

223

12 Yuka: → kandooshita:_​     moved     (I) was moved_​ 13

(0.2)

14 Mami:        

nanka Yuka chan no tsubo ni hamaru yoona-​ (0.2) like Yuka END L taste to fit AUX Like (she) is precisely your type (0.2)

15    

kanji ga suru. feeling SP do it feels like.

16

(0.8)

17 Yuka:        

nanshii ga[:? Nancy SP  Nancy is?

18 Mami:        

[nn:. ITJ Yeah.

Pomerantz (1984) observed that, when one produces an assessment about a referent that is accessible to a recipient, that invites the recipient to produce a second assessment, and when that is the case, initial assessments tend to be marked as such. In the above case, given that Mami, as well as Yuka, attended Nancy’s lecture, it is clear that the referent (i.e., Nancy) is accessible to Mami. Nonetheless, Yuka’s utterance in line 5 is not designed to invite Mami’s second assessment. For one thing, Yuka gazes away from Mami while producing line 5, which lowers the relevance of a response (Stivers & Rossano, 2010). Nor does the turn include a grammatical element that invites a second assessment. That the assessment is highly intensified (sugo:i.= sugoi: “very:.=very”) may

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also work to discourage the production of a second assessment, for expressing such a strong attitude about someone may require and implicate strong commitment based on certain relationship with that person, which Mami may not have. The subjective construction is in line with these features of the turn. It presents Yuka’s attitude toward the referent as personal and already settled. As a result, Yuka’s subjective assessment is proffered as one that is not for Mami to agree or disagree with. Indeed, Mami merely laughs and does not produce a second assessment (line 8). Yuka then reports her experience with the particular talk that Nancy gave at their school (kandooshita: “(I) was moved”) (line 12), which is also presented as a subjective assessment. Again, this subjective assessment does not exhibit any verbal or nonverbal sign of a second assessment’s relevance. The design of these subjective assessments is in service of obscuring the shared-​ness of the experience (i.e., Nancy’s talk), differentiating Yuka’s experience from Mami’s. Support for this analysis can be found in Mami’s response, which is in alignment with Yuka’s in treating Yuka’s experience with Nancy as not shared. She does not proffer a second assessment, and instead she says she feels that Nancy is precisely Yuka’s type (of researcher) (lines 14–​15). Here, Mami does not convey how she personally evaluates Nancy, but instead she states her view of what kind of person Nancy is to Yuka. By responding this way, Mami accepts that Yuka has primary right to assess Nancy. Through this exchange, therefore, the participants come to agree that, even though both participants have access to the referent, their experiences should be differentiated. In fact, such a claim may be considered reasonable given that Nancy was an academic supervisor of Yuka’s supervisor. Participants design their utterances in interaction in accordance with the kinds of relationships they have to the referent, and that way, they reconstruct their social reality in everyday interaction. The subjective assessment produced in the next example also works to differentiate the speaker’s experience from the interlocutor’s. Unlike Extract 8 (above), however, the primary project here is not to undermine the interlocutor’s epistemic access but to conform to the preference of avoiding self-​praise (Pomerantz, 1978). Extract 9 is an exchange between a beautician (BT) and his customer (CT) revolving around volunteer work that CT used to do for the local board of education, where she accompanied children on a camping trip. Just prior to the lapse of silence in line 1, CT informed BT that the local board of education no longer organizes the camping trip for budgetary reasons. In lines 2–​3, BT asserts that the operation of such camping trips relies on “people who would cooperate” (line 3), which can be heard as appreciating or praising CT’s volunteer work. CT may now be pressured to display an



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orientation to avoiding self-​praise and divert BT’s appreciative comment, and indeed, that appears to be what CT is doing in her response. In line 4, although CT begins to agree with BT—​by producing soo de …, which is likely on its way to the agreement, soo desu ne (“That’s true”)—​she restarts her turn with an assessment of the experience, stating that it is fun (lines 4–​5). She prefaces it with demo (“but”), projecting that the turn in progress is going to disalign with BT’s prior turn in some way. As discussed below, this assessment involves an ambiguity in terms of being objective or subjective, which CT clarifies after some exchange. Extract 9 [BSA: summer camp] 01

(10.0)

02 BT:        

aaiu no mo kyooryoku:: suru ka↑ta ↓ga ite hajimete that N also cooperation do person SP be first.time That kind of thing (=camp trip for children) can be held

03    

dekiru n desu mon ne [:_​] can.do N CP FP FP only because there are people who would cooperate.

04 CT: →           05    

[↑so]o de=↓ (n)demo ne:, ano::, (0.5) that CP but IP uhm That’s-​but, uhm, (0.5)

→ n: ↑shii n desu yone. [yappari:   mm fun P CP FP after.all mm fun. Really.

06 BT: →            

[tanoshii desu yo]ne [ : . ] = fun   CP FP Fun. [n:n] ITJ Yeah

07 CT:         08 BT:        

]  

=↓yorokonde moraeru (daroo) shi get.happy BNF INF as.well =(It) would make ((children)) happy as well

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09 CT:        

n::n ITJ Yeah

10

(3.2)

11 BT:        

ii omoide ni na [ru-​ (           )ne:?,] good memory to become FP (It) would be a good memory?, [soo desu (ne) kekkoo jibun g-​ ↑jishin]= that CP FP quite self SP self (That’s true), it’s like, I-​myself =

12 CT:        

→          

13    

→ =ga tanoshindeta na:: tte iu [n::n ]   SP was.enjoying FP QT say ITJ     =was enjoying (it), yeah [haa ] haa hai hai ITJ   ITJ ITJ ITJ Hm hm I see I see

14 BT:     15

(12.0)

Because CT’s assessment does not include an articulation of the referent and consists only of the descriptive adjective tanoshii (“fun”) followed by a copula and stance-​marking particles, it is possibly ambiguous in terms of being either objective (i.e., kyanpu wa tanoshii; “The camping trip is (generally) fun”) or subjective (i.e., watashi wa kyanpu ga tanoshii; “I find the camping trip fun”). If it is understood as objective, then the implication would be that CT volunteered because the camping trip in general was fun for the participants, i.e., the children. If subjective, CT is likely to be heard as suggesting that she volunteered less for the sake of the children than for her own sake. Therefore, the assessment needs to be heard as subjective in order for CT to be understood as conforming to the norm of avoiding self-​praise (Pomerantz, 1978). However, BT treats CT’s assessment as objective. In line 6, BT agrees that it is fun (tanoshii desu yone:). By producing a second assessment, BT claims independent access to camping (Pomerantz, 1984; Hayano, 2007), which is only plausible if he hears CT’s assessment as referring to camping in general



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(vs. CT’s personal, specific experience of camping). BT goes on to assert that camping would make the children happy (line 8), which puts forward his seeing CT’s volunteer work as an altruistic act. In lines 7 and 9, CT minimally acknowledges BT’s assessments. At this point, CT does not problematize BT’s receipting her assessment as objective and treating her act as altruistic. However, CT does so when BT adds that the camping trip would be a good memory, again presumably for the children (line 11). In lines 12–​13, although CT initially responds by agreeing, “soo desu (ne)” (i.e., “That’s true”), she reassesses camping: “kekkoo jibun g—​↑jishin ga tanoshindeta na:: tte iu” (“I—​myself was enjoying it”; lines 12–​13). By using an unambiguously subjective format, CT makes it explicit that the camping trip was not (only) for the children but for her own enjoyment as well. The use of past tense presents the assessment as referring to a specific, personal experience to which BT does not have access. This implication is accentuated by the self-​repair operation on the subject (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977). That is, CT first starts to formulate the subject as jibun, a word commonly used as a first-​person pronoun, marked with the subject marker ga.3 However, before the subject marker ga is fully articulated, CT cuts it off and inserts the word jishin, which means “(one)self,” in a heightened pitch. With this insertion, CT makes it explicit that she was not doing the volunteer work for the sake of the children, making the turn a humble, diverting response to BT’s earlier appreciation (lines 2–​3). BT receipts this with an information receipt (line 14), thereby conveying that CT’s prior turn has brought about a new perspective that he did not recognize earlier. In this case, subjective assessments are produced when CT’s primary project is to decline BT’s appreciative comment regarding her act and avoid self-​praise rather than establishing agreement and affiliation with BT. The subjective assessments serve to isolate CT’s camping experience from camping experience in general and suggest that her act was motivated by self-​interest, and thus is not subject to praise. While the initial formulation of her assessment (lines 4–​5) is ambiguous in terms of being subjective or objective, CT employs various means—​including the insertion of the word jishin (“(one)self ”), prosodical emphasis on the word, and the use of past tense—​to make it explicit that she is adopting a subjective perspective when she reformulates it in lines 12–​13.

Referring to Others’ Territories of Experience In the previous section, we examined cases in which speakers produce subjective assessments referring to, or invoking, their own experiences in assessing

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a referent that does not inherently belong to either the speaker’s or an interlocutor’s territory. It was shown that subjective assessments are a resource for the speaker to claim epistemic independence, or independent access to the referent, and that they can be a means to differentiate their experience from an interlocutor’s under certain circumstances. This section turns to a case that is distinct from those we have examined so far: a case in which a speaker displays orientations to the referent as belonging to the interlocutor’s territory. Generally speaking, interactants are accountable for displaying respect to others’ territories of information and experience through the design of their utterances (Heritage, 2002; Heritage & Raymond, 2005; Kamio, 1990, 1995). However, participants’ orientations to others’ territories in spontaneous interaction involves more than simply using appropriate linguistic forms. Instead, they negotiate boundaries of territories of experience through turn-​ by-​turn talk. As is demonstrated below, subjective assessments (contrasted with objective assessments) are one of the resources utilized in such an interactional process. Extract 10 transpires during a massage service after a haircut at a beauty salon. A beautician (BT) has already massaged his customer’s (CT) head and is now massaging her shoulders. The exchange is initiated by BT’s turn (line 2): “↑’nnani ↓kotte wa nai desu ↑↑ka” (“Are (your shoulders) rather not so stiff ?”). The ensuing exchange involves a negotiation regarding different kinds of epistemic access. On the one hand, CT “owns” her shoulders, having “internal” access to their state of being (i.e., whether they feel heavy, painful, tight, etc.), which are generally expressed in the subjective construction. On the other hand, BT has tactile access to CT’s shoulders and has “professional” experience that can be the basis for assessing their state of being, an assessment that may not be shared by CT. Over the sequence of turns, we can witness which type of epistemic access is indexed and prioritized, and how the descriptive expressions used in BT’s turns, and perspectives embodied by them—​kotte (“stiff ”) and ya(w)arakai (“soft”)—​ serve to manage the matter. Extract 10 [BSB: massage]4 01 02    

((BT massaging CT’s shoulders)) BT: →        

↑’nnani ↓kotte wa nai desu ↑↑ka= very stiff TP not CP Q Are (ø) rather not so stiff ?=



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03    

CT: →        

=ne:↓:=   ITJ =Ne ((roughly, “They aren’t, are they?”).=

04    

BT: →        

=↑ne, ko [tte nai desu ne,=ya’arakai desu (ne) ] ITJ stiff not CP FP soft CP FP   =ne, (ø) are not stiff ne,=(ø) are soft (ne)

05    

CT:    

06    

CT:    

= CP FP =… recently. .ss

07    

BT:    

     

08    

CT:          

no:-​ .hh ya(h)n na ccha(h)[u n da(h)(ko)   disappointed become AUX N CP .hh (I) can’t help but feel disappointed.

09    

BT:          

10    

BT:    

11 12     13  

[ = not  

.ss  

[ee, ITJ Yeah,

[e ko-​ kori= ITJ stiff What, did …= =yasuka tta n desu ka? easily PST N CP Q =… (ø) use to get stiff easily? (0.2)

CT:    

n mae (wa) u:::n na(h)-​ na(h)nka danda(h)n um before TP uhm   like gradually Um before uh:::m like (I’m) gradually… noote(h)nk(h)i ni n[atte lightweight to become … getting lightweight

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BT’s turn in line 2 is formulated with the question particle ka. By doing so, BT presents what he has noticed about CT’s shoulders’ state after massaging them for a while as a hypothesis that BT has the right to confirm or disconfirm. However, in his very next turn, BT upgrades his epistemic stance and proffers the same observation (that CT’s shoulders are not stiff ) in the form of an assessment claiming shared, equivalent access with the particle ne (Hayano, 2011, 2013). The shift in BT’s epistemic stance (from lines 2 to 4) may be understood as a reaction to CT’s response in line 3. First, CT accepts BT’s hypothesis that her shoulders are not so stiff. Second, although BT’s turn in line 2 is formatted to request confirmation with the question particle, CT’s response is not formatted as a confirmation. Instead, it consists of the interjection ne, which serves as an agreement token when produced as a free-​standing response token (Hayano, 2013; Tanaka, 2000). Thus, this response by CT retroactively treats BT’s preceding utterance (line 2)  as an independent assessment that can be agreed (or disagreed) with, granting BT epistemic access to her shoulders and the right to assess them jointly with her. BT’s adopting a K + position in line 4 can thus be considered a reasonable reaction to the stance that is congruent with the one CT has adopted: BT is exercising the right to assess, which has just been granted by CT. With this observation at hand, let us examine BT’s turns in line 2 and line 4 more closely. In line 2, BT employs various means to lower his epistemic certainty in addition to formatting the turn with the question particle. He uses the relatively low-​intensity evaluation “not so stiff,” which can be contrasted with the use of a relatively high-​intensity evaluation (e.g., very stiff or very soft), a practice that commonly accompanies a strong epistemic claim (Hayano, 2011, 2013).5 Another factor that may contribute to indexing low epistemic certainty is the use of the use of litotes “not stiff ” (rather than, for instance, “relaxed”), which is a practice to avoid an assertion and thereby display caution regarding the matter in question (Bergmann, 1992). These resources serve to display BT’s understanding that the state of CT’s shoulders falls primarily into her private territory of experience and is something that he cannot have direct access to. The use of the descriptive word kotte itself can also be considered to contribute to displaying BT’s respect for CT’s territory. Because kotte refers not only to the physical state of muscles, but also to the pain and discomfort that only the “owner” of the shoulders can feel subjectively, it suits the epistemic uncertainty that BT displays in line 2.  By using such a word (instead of a word that refers to the physical state that can be experienced by another person, such



Managing Territories of Experience      •     

231

as ya(w)arakai (“soft”)), BT is presenting his observation as something that only CT can validate. In contrast, BT’s turn in line 4 is formatted to claim independent access to CT’s shoulders. Here, BT re-​presents his view in two consecutive assessments, rather than a question, which itself is a claim of independent access (Pomerantz, 1984). In the first of the assessments, BT repeats the proposition he presented in line 2, i.e., that CT’s shoulders are not stiff, though this time dropping the qualifier “nnani ((not) very).” In the second of the assessments, he replaces the descriptor “kotte nai” (“not stiff ”) with another, “ya(w)arakai” (“soft”), which refers to the physical tightness of the muscle that can be assessed externally via tactile access. Thus, whereas “kotte nai” (“not stiff ”) addresses a subjective experience that is not accessible to BT, this second assessment is formatted objectively based on the access that is available to BT. What transpires in this exchange may be summarized as follows. BT initially respects CT’s possible epistemic authority regarding her shoulders (line 2) but then, after having his epistemic access legitimated by CT (in line 3), BT claims independent epistemic access to her shoulders. The switch from the descriptor that entails a subjective personal experience (kotte) to the one that refers to the physical state of the muscles (ya(w)arakai) is no accident. A subjective descriptor and an objective descriptor can be alternatives that participants use depending on which side of the state of affairs—​subjective or objective—​should be invoked at a particular moment in interaction. When referring to an object that falls into an interlocutor’s territory of experience, by using the subjective construction and indicating epistemic dependence, the speaker can display respect to the interlocutor’s territory of experience. In this case, the subjective descriptor used in BT’s initial formulation serves as a means to discern CT’s territory of experience while keeping the kind of access he has as a professional in the background.

Discussion and Conclusion The argument of this chapter has been that objective assessments and subjective assessments are not interchangeable alternatives. Instead, they are used by participants in conversation to achieve different interactional outcomes. While objective assessments are broadly used as the basic form of assessment, subjective assessments are employed to deal with specific interactional contingencies, one of which is the management of territories of experience. It was demonstrated that subjective assessments are employed to claim epistemic

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independence, or independent access to the referents, which can then be used as a resource to differentiate the speaker’s position from an interlocutor’s. When a subjective assessment refers to an object that belongs to an interlocutor, then it can be a method for displaying respect for his or her territory of experience. The “fit between the practice and action” (Schegloff, 1996, p.  173) may be transparent here. With subjective assessments, speakers articulate or invoke “I” as the experiencer, possibly contrasting their experiences with those of interlocutors. A  static verb (“like,” “love,” etc.) may invoke a stretch of time that extends beyond the ongoing interaction, allowing speakers to invoke an experience that provides a basis for their claim of epistemic independence, or their claim that their experience is not entirely shared by an interlocutor. The objective construction, on the other hand, focuses on the referent. By asserting a general attribute of the referent that is accessible to interlocutors, speakers get themselves involved in the activity where they jointly work to determine a characterization to describe the referent. As Pomerantz (1984) pointed out over 30 years ago, the act of assessing cannot be separated from the experience of participating in a social activity. When interactants are experiencing and assessing something together, that can constitute an “empathic moment” (Heritage, 2011) that brings them close or closer together. However, as Heritage (ibid.) pointed out, whether participants are sharing, or have shared, an experience can be subject to interactional negotiation. A participant may be able to affiliate with an interlocutor even without a shared experience (see Extract 1). An interactional contingency may put one into a position where the experience with the referent is discredited and thus require her to make interactional efforts to claim epistemic independence (Extracts 1 and 6). In other cases, even if participants virtually share an experience, their respective experiences may be treated as being distinct (Extracts 7, 8, and 9). Highlighting the private aspect of an experience with the subjective construction may, in many cases, compromise the sense of affiliation that can otherwise emerge in an agreement sequence. Nonetheless, social encounters, where participants are constantly faced with a dilemma of solidarity and detachment (Heritage & Raymond, 2005) or a dilemma of the orientations to achieving empathy and to establishing uniqueness of an experience (Heritage, 2011), may prepare contingencies that motivate the use of subjective assessments.



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Abbreviations: BNF: beneficiary marker CP: copula EMP: emphasis marker END : endearment marker FP: final particle INF: inference marker IP: interjectory (phrase-​final) particle ITJ: interjection particle ITS: intensifier L : nominal linking particle N: nominalizer O : object particle P: particle PST: past tense marker Q : question maker QT: quotation marker SFX : suffix SP: subject particle TP: topic particle

Notes 1. It was pointed out by Shuya Kushida (personal communication) that there may be a cross-​linguistic difference in how commonly subjective assessments are produced in assessing an object that participants are experiencing here and now, which is an interesting hypothesis to be examined in a future study. Subjective assessments may be used more frequently in assessing a co-​present object in English than in Japanese. 2. The title of the song by Michael Jackson that Ami and Mari are talking about is “Black or White,” not “Black and White,” but the mistake is not exposed by either party. 3. The word jibun is usually considered a reflexive pronoun, but in everyday usage, it is commonly used as a first-​person pronoun in the context where the speaker/​writer is objectifying and introspecting him/​herself (Tomoda, 2006). 4. This excerpt, and part of the analysis presented in this chapter, was introduced in Sidnell (2012: 55). 5. Although it cannot analytically be demonstrated here, the presence of the contrastive topic marker wa also works to downgrade the intensity of the proposition, and

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thus BT’s epistemic certainty. It seems to suggest that the speaker does not intend to imply any more than what the utterance literally states (e.g., that they are soft).

References Bergmann, J. R. (1992). Veiled morality: Notes on discretion in psychiatry. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (eds.), Talk at work (pp. 137–​162). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, Charles. (1981). Conversational organization:  Interaction between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic Press. Goodwin, C., & Goodwin, M. H. (1987). Concurrent operations on talk: Notes on the interactive organization of assessments. IPrA Papers in Pragmatics, 1(1), 1–​52. Hayano, K. (2007). Repetitional agreement and anaphorical agreement:  Negotiation of affiliation and disaffiliation in Japanese conversation. Unpublished M.A. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles. Hayano, K. (2011). Claiming epistemic primacy in Japanese: Yo-​marked assessments in Japanese. In T. Stivers, L. Mondada, & J. Steensig (eds.), The morality of knowledge in conversation (pp. 58–​81). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hayano, K. (2013). Territories of knowledge in Japanese conversation. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Heritage, J. (2002). Oh-​prefaced responses to assessments:  A  method of modifying agreement/​disagreement. In C. Ford, B. Fox, & S. Thompson (eds.), The language of turn and sequence (pp. 196–​224). New York: Oxford University Press. Heritage, J. (2011). Territories of knowledge, territories of experience:  Empathic moments in interaction. In T. Stivers, L. Mondada, & J. Steensig (eds.), The morality of knowledge in conversation (pp. 159–​183). Cambridge, England:  Cambridge University Press. Heritage, J. (2012a). Epistemics in action: Action formation and territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction 45, 1–​29. Heritage, J. (2012b). The epistemic engine:  Sequence organization and territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction 45, 30–​52. Heritage, J. (2013). Epistemics in conversation. In J. S.  Sidnell & T. Stivers (eds.), Handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 370–​394). Boston: Wiley-​Blackwell. Heritage, J., & Raymond, G. (2005). The terms of agreement:  Indexing epistemic authority and subordination in assessment sequences. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68, 15–​38. Kamio, A. (1990). Joohoo no nawabari riron [The theory of territory of information]. Tokyo: Taishuukan. Kamio, A. (1995). Territory of information in English and Japanese psychological utterances. Journal of Pragmatics, 24, 235–​364.



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Kushida, K. (2015). Using names for referring without claiming shared knowledge:  Name-​quoting descriptors in Japanese. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 48, 231–​251. Labov, W., & Fanshel, D. (1977). Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York: Academic Press. Pomerantz, A. (1978). Compliment responses: Notes on the co-​operation of multiple constraints. In J. Schenkein (ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction (pp. 79–​112). New York: Academic Press. Pomerantz, A. (1980). Telling my side: “Limited access” as a “fishing” device. Sociological Inquiry, 50, 186–​198. Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments:  Some features of preferred/​dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M.  Atkinson & J. Heritage (eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 57–​101). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Raymond, G., & Heritage, J. (2006). The epistemics of social relations: Owning grandchildren. Language in Society, 35, 677–​705. Sacks, H. (1984). On doing “being ordinary.” In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 413–​ 429). Cambridge, England:  Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. A. (1979). Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons and their interaction. In G. Psathas (ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 15–​21). New York: Irvington Publishers. Schegloff, E. A. (1996). Confirming allusions: Toward an empirical account of action. American Journal of Sociology, 104(1), 161–​216. Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-​correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language, 53, 361–​382. Sidnell, J. (2012). Declaratives, questioning, defeasibility. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(1), 53–​60. Sorjonen, M.-​L. (2001). Responding in conversation:  A  study of response particles in Finnish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Stivers, T. (2005). Modified repeats:  One method for asserting primary rights from second position. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 38(2), 131–​158. Stivers, T, Mondada, L., & Steensig, J. (eds.). (2011a). The morality of knowledge in conversation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Stivers, T., Mondada, L., & Steensig, J. (2011b). Introduction. In T. Stivers, L. Mondada, & J. Steensig (eds.), The morality of knowledge in conversation (pp. 3–​26). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Stivers, T., & Rossano, F. (2010). Mobilizing response. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 42, 3–​31. Tanaka, H. (2000). The particle ne as a turn-​management device in Japanese conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 1135–​1176.

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Tomoda, E. (2006). Nihongo saikidaimeeshi “jibun” no yoohoo ni tsuite [On the usage of the reflexive pronoun “jibun”]. Cross-​Cultural Business and Cultural Studies, 11(1), 101–​107. Wiggins, S. (2004). Talking about taste: Using a discursive psychological approach to examine challenges to food evaluations. Appetite, 43, 29–​38. Wiggins, S., & Potter, J. (2003). Attitudes and evaluative practices: Category vs. item and subjective vs. objective constructions in everyday food assessments. British Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 513–​531. Wu, R. J. R. (2004). Stance in talk: A conversation analysis of Mandarin final particles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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INCREMENTS

Emanuel A. Schegloff

Editor’s Prologue The following chapter by Emanuel A. Schegloff is a lightly edited version of a forum lecture he presented in July 2001, to the Linguistic Society of America’s Summer Linguistic Institute held at the University of California at Santa Barbara, titled: Conversation Analysis: A Project in Process—​“Increments.” A much shorter version of this forum lecture was presented a year earlier in November 2000, to the Annual Conference of the National Communication Association, titled:  Increments and Incrementing. This previously unpublished material has fundamentally informed and shaped—​and has been widely cited in—​the ensuing fifteen years of conversation-​analytic research on “increments.”

One key element of the organization of turns-​at-​talk and of turn taking in conversation and many other forms of talk-​in-​interaction is “possible completion” of a turn-​constructional unit (what I  will abbreviate as a “TCU”) (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). TCUs are elements of talk that can, in context, constitute by themselves a recognizably complete turn at talk, or that can be used as the elements out of which larger, multi-​unit turns can be constructed (Schegloff, 1996; see also Ford & Thompson, 1996). Possible completion of a TCU is generally understood by parties to talk-​in-​interaction to involve grammatical, prosodic, and pragmatic facets:  the turn-​so-​ far—​the turn to that point in its production in real time—​comes to grammatically possible completion for the type of TCU it is

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(sentential, clausal, phrasal, or lexical); it has been given a recognizable “possibly final” intonation contour; and it constitutes an analyzably possible action-​ in-​context. With these conditions fulfilled, the turn is “possibly complete.” However, sometimes speakers have no sooner brought a turn to possible completion (in all these relevant respects) then they add an additional increment to it, thereby in effect re-​completing it (Schegloff, 1996). This happens twice in Extract 1 in Bee’s account of her grandmother’s medical condition at lines 9–​10: (1) “ffi:rst.”; and (2) “Before they c’n do the cataracts.” Extract 1 [TG, 3:1-​16 (I58,59)] 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15

Bee: Ava: Bee:   Ava: Bee:   Ava: Bee:   Ava: Bee:   Ava: Bee:

                  ➔          

=[(Mnuh,)] =[Oh   my] mother wannduh know how’s yer grandmother. ˙hhh Uh::, (0.3) I don’know I guess she’s aw-​she’s awright she went to thee uh:: hhospital again tihda:y, Mm-​hm?, ˙hh t! ˙hh A:n:: I guess t’day wz d’day she’s supposetuh find out if she goes in ner not.= =Oh. Oh::. Becuz they’re gonna do the operation on the teeuh duct. f[fi:   rs]t. Before they c’n do t[he cata]ract ]s. [Mm-​ hm]         [Right. ]Yeah,] ˙hhh So I don’know I haven:’t yihknow, she wasn’ home by the t-​yihknow when I lef ’fer school tihday.= =Mm hm, Tch!.hh So uh I don’t kno:w,

The same thing happens in Extract 2, in Mark’s addition of “(fer)/​(fr’m) (.) econ.” to his announcement at lines 5–​6. Extract 2 [SN-​4, 02:24-​32 (I1)] 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

Shr: (?): Mar: (?): Mar:     Rut: Shr:

          ➔      

[Look once a quarter et school is enough.=That’s uh:: (·)finals. (huh-​) I know whutcha mean. Me t[oo.