Language as social action. Grammar, prosody and interaction in Swedish conversation 91-506-1339-1

Table of contents :
Frontpage......Page 1
Abstract......Page 3
Contents......Page 4
Tables and figure......Page 7
Acknowledgements......Page 8
1.1 The phenomena......Page 10
1.2 Grammar, prosody, and interaction......Page 13
1.2.1 Interactional approaches to the study of grammar......Page 14
1.2.2 Interactional approaches to the study of prosody......Page 21
1.3 Methodological orientation......Page 23
1.3.1 A sociological context......Page 24
1.3.2 Conversation analysis......Page 27
1.3.3 Conversation analysis in Scandinavia......Page 30
1.4 Preference organization......Page 33
1.4.1 Preferred and dispreferred actions......Page 34
1.4.2 Pre-sequences......Page 36
1.5 Organization of study......Page 39
2 The data......Page 41
2.1 Description of data corpus......Page 40
2.1.1 Ethnographic information......Page 42
2.1.1.1 The families that recorded telephone conversations......Page 44
2.1.2.1 Audio recordings......Page 45
2.1.3 Ethics......Page 46
2.2 Transcription......Page 47
2.2.2 Transcribing pitch rise......Page 48
2.2.3 Timing silences......Page 49
2.3 Translation......Page 51
2.4 Sampling and quantification......Page 52
3 Marking problematicity: the or-inquiry......Page 55
3.1 Introduction......Page 54
3.2.1 Differentiating the or-inquiry from similar turn-constructions that have been analyzed in other language communities......Page 56
3.2.2.1 Syntax......Page 60
3.2.2.2 Determining possible completion points......Page 61
3.2.2.3 Syntactic completion points......Page 62
3.2.2.4 Pragmatic completion points......Page 63
3.2.3.1 Overlap onset at projectable completion of or-inquiry......Page 65
3.2.3.2 The intonation contour at the turn boundary......Page 67
3.2.4 Sequential appropriateness of activity done in next turn......Page 70
3.2.5 Sequential uptake in the turn after next turn......Page 73
3.3 Swedish research on or-inquiries......Page 76
3.4.1 Marking problematicity in talk-in-interacation......Page 77
3.4.2 Or-inquiries that run counter to the preference displayed in the prior talk......Page 78
3.4.2.1 Making an offer that is unwarranted by the prior talk......Page 79
3.4.2.2 Refusing to fulfill an expectation to speak on behalf of a spouse......Page 80
3.4.2.3 Declining a request......Page 82
3.4.2.4 Pursuing a topic that has been resisted......Page 83
3.4.3.1 A pre-complaint......Page 85
3.4.3.2 Checking whether the recipient knows about an embarrassing incident......Page 87
3.4.3.3 Mis-aligning with a troubles-telling......Page 89
3.4.3.4 Disaligning with the line pursued in the previous talk......Page 91
3.4.3.5 Formulating something that was conveyed in the prior talk......Page 99
3.5 Discussion......Page 103
4 Acceptances and granting of deferred action requests, invitations, and proposals......Page 105
4.1 Introduction......Page 104
4.2 Defered actions......Page 106
4.3.1 The affirmative response token is typically produced as a turn preface......Page 109
4.3.2 When the affirmative response token is produced as its own TCU, recipients still orient to the relevance of an extended turn......Page 112
4.3.3 Summary......Page 117
4.4.1 Claiming hearing and understanding......Page 118
4.4.2 Projecting acceptance or granting......Page 120
4.5.1.1 Displaying granting or acceptance by referring to the deferred action request, invitation, or proposal with an indexical expression......Page 125
4.5.1.2 Displaying granting or acceptance by resaying action verbs from the FPP of the base sequence......Page 129
4.5.2 Initiation a new action which demonstrates that the deferred action will be satisfied......Page 132
4.6 Compound responses in other sequential environments......Page 134
4.7 Discussion......Page 138
5 Projecting a non-aligning responsive action with the curled ja......Page 141
5.1 Introduction......Page 140
5.2.1 Dispreference markers and the avoidance of disagreement......Page 145
5.2.2 Interactional significance of marked prosodic forms......Page 146
5.2.2.2 The Finnish nii......Page 147
5.2.4 Summary......Page 149
5.3.1 Hedges......Page 150
5.3.2 Pre-rejections......Page 154
5.3.3 Rejections......Page 155
5.3.4 Summary......Page 158
5.4 Projecting non-alignment with the curled ja......Page 159
5.5 Adressing the inappropriateness of the prior action......Page 164
5.6 Discussion......Page 171
6. Concluding discussion......Page 174
6.1.1 The phenomena......Page 173
6.1.2 Convergences......Page 175
6.2 Contributions of study......Page 176
6.3 Challenges for future research......Page 177
Sammanfattning......Page 180
References......Page 187
Appendix: Transcription conventions......Page 197

Citation preview

;

SKRIFTER UTGIVNA AV INSTITUTIONEN FOR NORDISKA ~ID UPPSALA UNIVERSITET

46~

ANNA LINDSTROM

Language as social action Grammar, prosody, and interaction in Swedish conversation

INSTITUTIONEN FOR NORDISKA SPRÅK VID UPPSALA UNIVERSITET 1999

SPRÅK

SKRIFfER UTGIVNA AV INSTITUTIONEN FOR NORDISKA SPRAK VID UPPSALA UNIVERSITET 46

ANNA LINDSTROM

Language as social action Grammar, prosody, and interaction in Swedish conversation Med svensk sammanfattning: Spriik som social handling Grammatik, prosodi och interaktion i svenska samtal

INSTITUTIONEN F6R NORDISKA SPRAK YID UPPSALA UNIVERSITET 1999

----Dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Scandinavian Languages presented at Uppsala University in 1999

Abstract

Lindstrom, A., 1999: Language as social action. Grammar, prosody, and interaction in Swedish conversation. (Spri\k som social handling. Grammatik, prosodi och interaktion i svenska samtal.) Skrifter utgivna av Jnstitutionenfor nordiska sprak vid Uppsala universitet 46. 198 pp. Uppsala. ISBN 91-506-1339-1. This study contributes to a larger research programme that links grammar and prosody on the one hand with talk-in-interaction on the other. An underlying assumption of this study is that language is key to the organization of social action. Language is shaped by the fact that it is used by interactants to engage in a range of social activities whilst at the same time it also shapes these activities. Grammar and prosody are important resources for both the production and understanding of social action. The data consists of recordings of naturally occurring mundane Swedish conversation. Using conversation analysis (CA), the author describes and analyzes the interactants' orientations as displayed through their turns-at-talk. Three phenomena are introduced that can be identified by and are constituted through aspects of grammar or prosody. The fust of these is the or-inquiry. This is a yes/no-question that ends with the Swedish conjunction el/er 'or'. It is argued that this syntactic construction marks the action the turn otherwise engages in as problematic. Second, the sequential environment of deferred action requests, invitations, and proposals is examined. A deferred action is one that cannot be immediately satisfied. The study demonstrates that an affirmative response token is insufficient to agree with or accept a deferred action request, invitation, or proposal. An additional unit of talk is required where the recipient makes a commitment to satisfy the deferred action in the future. Third, the study focusses on a prosodic variant of the Swedish affirmative response tokenja. The analysis suggests thatja projects non-alignment when it is produced with a stretch and rising pitch contour in the tum-initial position of a responsive action. This provides a resource for the interactional negotiation of alignment or agreement. The three phenomena that the study introduces may be of relevance for languages other than Swedish.

Key words: Conversation analysis, grammar, prosody, interaction, preference organization, affiliation, disaffiliation, or-inquiry, deferred actions, response tokens, Swedish conversation. Anna Lindstrom, Department of Scandinavian Languages, Uppsala University, P.O. Box 527, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden

© Anna Lindstrom 1999 ISSN 0083-4661 ISBN 91-506-1339-1

Printed in Sweden 1999 Textgruppen i Uppsala AB

Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 The phenomena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Grammar, prosody, and interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 Interactional approaches to the study of grammar . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.2 Interactional approaches to the study of prosody . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Methodological orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.1 A sociological context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.2 Conversation analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.3 Conversation analysis in Scandinavia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Preference organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.1 Preferred and dispreferred actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.2 Pre-sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Organization of study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9 10 13 14 21 23 24 27 30 33 34 36 39

2 The data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Description of data corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 Ethnographic information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1.1 The families that recorded telephone conversations . . . . . 2.1.1.2 The family that recorded dinner conversations . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 Recording set-up.................................... 2.1.2.1 Audio recordings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2.2 Video recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.3 Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Transcription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Transcribing phonetic variants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Transcribing pitch rise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Timing silences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Sampling and quantification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

40 40 42 44 45 45 45 46 46 47 48 48 49 51 52

3 Marking problematicity: the or-inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Isolating the or-inquiry as a tum in its own right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Differentiating the or-inquiry from similar tum-constructions that have been analyzed in other language communities . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Tum design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2.1 Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2.2 Determining possible completion points . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

e

54 54 56 56 60 60 61

3.2.2.3 Syntactic completion points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2.4 Pragmatic completion points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3 Turn transition between or-inquiry and next turn . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3.1 Overlap onset at projectable completion of or-inquiry . . 3.2.3.2 The intonation contour at the tum boundary . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3.3 Delayed uptake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.4 Sequential appropriateness of activity done in next tum . . . . 3.2.5 Sequential uptake in the tum after next tum .. , . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Swedish research on or-inquiries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Marking problematicity with the or-inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4. l Marking problematicity in talk-in-interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.2 Or-inquiries that run counter to the preference displayed in the prior talk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.2.1 Making an offer that is unwarranted by the prior talk . . . 3.4.2.2 Refusing to fulfill an expectation to speak on behalf of a spouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.2.3 Declining a request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.2.4 Pursuing a topic that has been resisted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.3 Or-inquiries that in and of themselves are dispreferred . . . . . 3.4.3.1 A pre-complaint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.3.2 Checking whether the recipient knows about an embarrassing incident . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.3.3 Mis-aligning with a troubles-telling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.3.4 Disaligning with the line pursued in the previous talk . . 3.4.3.5 Formulating something that was conveyed in the prior talk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Acceptances and grantings of deferred action requests, invitations, and proposals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Deferred actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Evidence that the affirmative response token does not satisfactorily complete a claim of alignment with a deferred action request/proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 The affirmative response token is typically produced as a tum preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 When the affirmative response token is produced as its own TCU, recipients still orient to the relevance of an extended tum 4.3.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Using the affirmative response token to claim hearing and understanding and project granting or acceptance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.1 Claiming hearing and understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.2 Projecting acceptance or granting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.3 Summary.........................................

62 63 65 65 67 68 70 73 76 76 77 77 78 79 80 82 83 85 85 87 89 91 99 103 103 104 104 106 109 109 112 117 118 118 120 125

l

4.5 Accomplishing granting or acceptance with the next tum component .................................................. 4.5.1 Making an explicit commitment to fulfill the deferred action . 4.5.1.1 Displaying granting or acceptance by referring to the deferred action request, invitation, or proposal with an indexical expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.1.2 Displaying granting or acceptance by resaying action verbs from the PPP of the base sequence ................. 4.5.2 Initiating a new action which demonstrates that the deferred action will be satisfied .................................. 4.5.3 Summary .......................................... 4.6 Compound responses in other sequential environments . . . . . . . . . 4.7 Discussion ............................................

125 125 125 129 132 134 134 138

5 Projecting a non-aligning responsive action with the curledja ....... 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Literature review ....................................... 5.2.1 Dispreference markers and the avoidance of disagreement ... 5.2.2 Interactional significance of marked prosodic forms ........ 5.2.2.lThe English well ................................. 5.2.2.2 The Finnish nii .................................. 5.2.3 Swedish research .................................... 5.2.4 Summary .......................................... 5.3 Non-aligning responses that are prefaced with a curledja ....... 5.3.1 Hedges ........................................... 5.3.2 Pre-rejections ...................................... 5.3.3 Rejections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Projecting non-alignment with the curledja .................. 5.5 Addressing the inappropriateness of the prior action . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

140 140 145 145 146 147 147 149 149 150 150 154 155 158 159 164 171

6 Concluding discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.1 The phenomena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.2 Convergences ...................................... 6.2 Contributions of study ................................... 6.3 Challenges for future research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

173 173 173 175 176 177

Sammanfattning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Appendix: Transcription conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Tables and figure

Tables Table l. Type of action that the deferred action PPP engages in Table 2. Design of the responsive tum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Table 3. Syntactic form of the utterance that implements the deferred action PPP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Table 4. Action responded to by the SPP including the curledja . . . . . . Table 5. Syntactic form of the PPP of the curledja sequence . . . . . . . .

122 144 144

Figure Figure 1. The pitch contour of the curledja

141

106 111

I,.

Acknowledgments

The analysis that forms the basis for this study was originally implemented and first presented as a doctoral dissertation at the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. I am grateful to the Department of Scandinavian Languages at Uppsala University for offering me the opportunity to (re)present the study within their publication series. Professor Bengt Nordberg helped make the work more accessible and relevant to a Swedish audience. Bengt has not only given detailed comments on substantive issues but has also helped me master some of the stylistic requirements that are particular to the series. I have appreciated his diligence and patience. Ulla Borestam agreed to read the manuscript on short notice and also gave useful advice. Annika Persson assisted with proofreading. My colleagues at FUMS provided a supportive working environment. I would also like to thank my advisor Manny Schegloff and the members of my dissertation committee at UCLA, Steven Clayman, John Heritage, Alessandro Duranti, and Raimo Anttila whilst noting that they have not commented on this particular version of the manuscript. Last but not least I thank the persons who agreed to make the recordings that form the foundation of the study. Without their cooperation and trust this study would pot have been possible .. Heby, March 24, 1999 Anna Lindstrom

i, 1:

l

1 Introduction

This dissertation focusses on the intersections between grammar, prosody, and interaction. Using recordings of naturally occurring Swedish conversation, I describe how interactants use grammar and prosody to achieve social activities. Instead of treating language as a neutral conduit between speakers and hearers, I view it as a tool for engaging in social life. Linguistic resources such as grammar and prosody are thus put to work within interaction. A particular syntactic form or prosodic contour is not happenstance but designed for the construction of social action. This does not necessarily mean that the interactants have a discursive consciousness of this process. That aspects of grammar and prosody are key to the implementation of a social activity is evident in the interaction itself. Activities an~ built in and through talk. 1 This dissertation explicates how this is done by focussing on how grammar and prosody both organizes and is organized by interaction. This study builds on and contributes to research that links grammar and prosody on the one hand with interaction on the other (cf. Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 1996a; Ochs, Schegloff & Thompson, 1996). Focussing on grammar, Schegloff, Ochs & Thompson (1996) argued that the study of interaction ~s vital for understanding grammar. This is so because "grammar's integrity and efficacy are bound up with its place in larger schemes of organization of human conduct and with social interaction in particular" (p. 3). One might even argue that grammar emerges from and is shaped by interaction (cf. Schegloff, 1996c, pp. 54-55). This idea will be explored in chapters 3 and 4 where I will show that particular syntactic constructions are associated with and perhaps even designed for the accomplishment of social activities. Couper-Kuhlen & Selting made a case for the benefits of linking prosody and interaction. They argued that prosodic features can be reconstructed as members' devices, designed for the organization and management of talk in social interaction. They can be shown to function as part of a signalling system which-together with syntax, lexico-semantics, kinesics and other contextualization cues-is used to construct and interpret tum-constructional units and turns-at-talk (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 1996b, p. 25; cf. Selling, 1992, 1995). 1 The primary data base for the dissertation is telephone conversations. I will therefore focus on talk as a resource for building social action. However, for co-present interaction, non-vocal activities such as eye gaze and body orientation are perhaps equally important as words are (cf. Goodwin, 1981).

10

Assuming a more radical position, Gumperz proposed that "only through prosody do sentences become turns at speaking and come to be seen as actions performed by living actors" (1996, p. x). Chapter 5 exemplifies the interactional significance of prosody by demonstrating that a prosodic variant of the Swedish affirmative response tokenja can be used to project disalignment. The interactional meaning of this prosodic variant stands in stark contrast with the traditionally assigned lexico-semantic meaning of the word. Before introducing the phenomena that will be examined in chapters 3 through 5, I would like to make some remarks about the genesis of this study. The analysis that forms the basis for this dissertation was originally implemented and presented at the department of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I began my graduate studies at UCLA in 1989 and received my doctorate in 1997 (Lindstrom, 1997). My doctoral dissertation was entitled "Designing social actions: Grammar, prosody and interaction in Swedish conversation". As the similarity between the titles is meant to suggest, the present dissertation is based on the UCLA dissertation. The main difference between the two texts is that the first and second chapters have been revised and expanded to make the work more pertinent to readers who have native competence in Swedish. Furthermore, I have tried to make the work more relevant for students of language (in particular Scandinavian languages, communication studies, and linguistics). This spurred me to develop parts of the analysis in directions that did not seem relevant in the original sociological study. Although this text is largely targetted to Swedish readers I chose to present it in English so that it also would be available to readers who do not know Swedish. Because I also want to address the text to those who do not have access to Swedish, parts of the text may seem superfluous to the Swedish reader.

1.1 The phenomena The relationship between grammar, prosody, and interaction will be explored through detailed analysis of three distinct phenomena that can be identified by and are organizf?d through aspects of grammar or prosody. The first of these is the or-inquiry. This is a so-called yes/no-question that ends with the Swe4ish conjunction eller 'or'. I will argue that this syntactic construction is used to mark the action the turn otherwise engages in as problematic. Second, I fo~us on the sequential environment of deferred action requests and related proposals. A deferred action request or proposal is one that cannot be immediately satisfied. I will demonstrate that an affirmative response token is insufficient to agree with or accept a deferred action request or proposal. An additional unit of talk is required where the recipient makes a commitment to satisfy the deferred action. Here then, the syntactic construction of the turn is motivated by

11

interactional concerns. Third, I explore how recipients can project disalignment. I focus on a prosodic variant of the Swedish response tokenja. I argue that when ja is produced with a lengthened vowel and rising pitch contour in the turn-initial position of & responsive action it is understood to project disalignment. Example (1: 1) is a transcription of a recording of a telephone conversation between two friends.2 The arrowed turns show each of the phenomena that will be explored in the dissertation. (1:1) SABBATSBERG [MOL:l:A]. Anita and Vera attended medical school together. Both women interrupted their medical training to have children. Skola in 'Schooling', first mentioned in line 10, refers to the process of gradually getting the children accustomed to institutional day care (this typically requires that at least one parent be present). Sabbatsberg, mentioned in line 18, is a mental hospital. 01

A:

>Horru ja tankte h.s:ira ifall ni ville ha en Listenyou I thought hear in case you wanted have a Listen I was going to ask if you wanted to be liten 12ilhalsningi< little visit paid a visit

02

03

V: ->iJa: de vill vi glj_rna?i iYes that want we gladlyi Yes we would love to

04

A:

Utav mej a ba:rneni From me and the children By me and the children

05

V:

Ja::: jattega: rna? very gladly Yes Yes really

06

A:

I ~ckani In the week This week

07

V: -> 'hh Ja:_;_ (.) de e lite km::vt ( (smilevoice)) 'hh Ja:_;_ (.) 't's little difficult Ja:_;_ it's a little tricky

OB

->men de- vi ska se vicken da hade 'ru tankt da, but 't- we will see which day had 'you thought then but it- so which day had you thought of

2

See the appendix for an explanation of the transcription conventions and chapter 2 section 2.3 for a discussion of how the transcripts were translated into English."

j

12 09

A:

borjar ja ska: la in dam, begin I school in them schooling them next week

10

11

V:

12

A:

13

A:

14

15

16

Nej ja har inte tankt nan.ting for nasta vecka No I have not thought anything cause next week No I hadn't thought anything it's just that I begin

pt ·hh Ska' ru [borja ,iQbbai, pt'hh Will'you [begin working Are you gonna start working [(

Ja ja ska borja jabba i sep~mber tredje Yes I will begin working in september third Yes I'll start to work in september the third septfll!lber, sept ember of september

V:

A:

17

::Lr.f:.dje september aha? pt Third september aha pt The third of september al:J.g_

pt

Sa att ja ska borja ska:la in dam, So that I will begin school in them So that I will begin schooling them [(de gar ja nasta vecka) [(that do I next week) I' 11 do that next week

18

V: ->[Ska'ru jabba pa Sabbatsberg elleri, [Will'you work at Sabbatsberg or Are you going to work at Sabbatsberg or

19

A:

Ja:, Yes

20

V:

0

21

A:

Ja de vet ja inte nu, Yes that know I not now Well I don't know that at the moment

22

V:

'h 0 [ne 0 · h 0 [no 0

23

A:

Pa: vicken avdelning- 0 On which department At which department

[Ja har fortrangt de [hh, [I have repressed it [hh

13 24

[Du

V:

har

f6rtr- heh heh

[You have repr25

[heh [heh [ 0 heh

A:

heh 0

26 27

heh heh

V:

'hh Men Anita du

har

vari hemma lange ocksa

'hh But Anita you have been home long also But Anita you have been home for a long time as well 28

va.; right haven't you

This spate of talk will be analyzed later. For now I just want to point to the three phenomena. Vera accepts Anita's deferred action proposal to come visit in line 3. The accepting tum is composed of two units, an affirmative response token la: and an explicit acceptance de viii vi gjirna 'we would love to'. The use of this syntactic construction in this sequential context will be discussed further in chapter 4. Anita suggests a time for the prospective visit in line 6. Vera responds to this suggestion with a tum that is prefaced by the affirmative token ja produced with a slight stretch and gradual rise in pitch (line 7). This is an example of what I will call a curledja. I will argue that the curledja projects a non-aligning responsive action. It will be examined in chapter 5. Finally, Vera's or-inquiry in line 18 pursues talk about Anita's new job. This is a topic that Anita has resisted in the immediately preceding talk. 'fo pursue this topic in spite of Anita's resistance is problematic and this is marked with eller 'or'. The or-inquiry will be explored further in chapter 3.

1.2 Grammar, prosody, and interaction This study draws on work in sociology, linguistics, and anthropology that has shown that language is not merely a referential object used to describe the world. Language is also a tool that allows us to engage in social action and shape our social environment (cf. Allwood, 1976; Austin, 1962; Duranti, 1997; Garfinkel, 1967; Goodwin, 1979, 1981; Halliday, 1985; Labov & Fanshel, 1977; Linell, 1996, 1998; Moerman, 1988; Sacks, 1963; Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, 1968; Searle, 1969). To appreciate the social import of grammar and prosody it is necessary to approach them as phenomena embedded within contexts. The definition of context is complicated and fraught with some controversy (cf. Drew & Heritage, 1992; Duranti & Goodwin, 1992; Linell, 1998, pp. 127-158; Schegloff, 1987b). When I speak of context I primarily mean sequential context, i.e. the preceding and ensuing turns at talk.

14 For co-present interaction, non-vocal activities such as eye gaze and body orientation are equally important components of the sequential context.3 However, this study is primarily based on audio recordings of telephone conversations. Like the participants, I only have access to the talk and for that reason the spoken context provides the central focus of this study. As this study will show, grammar and prosody are crucial components of the sequential context. By that I do not merely mean to make the rather obvious point that talk is realized through grammar and prosody. Rather, I want to establish that grammar and prosody are important interactional resources for the accomplishment of social action.

1.2.1 Interactional approaches to the study of grammar Schegloff, Ochs & Thompson ( 1996) outline three genres of inquiry that have been vital for the development of an interactionally oriented study of grammar: linguistic anthropology, functional grammar, and conversation analysis (hereafter abbreviated as CA). 4 These research traditions highlight different aspects of the relationship between grammar and interaction but there are convergences between the three. Although functional grammar have made important contributions toward our understanding of this relationship, my own thinking has mainly been shaped by study of sociology and linguistic anthropology. I will therefore limit my discussion to these two disciplines. Franz Boas is considered one of the fathers of linguistic anthropology (Boas, 1911 ). Boas and his student Edward Sapir (Sapir, 1927, 1933) saw the study of language and grammar as key to the study of ethnology.5 Boas argued that without examining language one could not truly understand culture stating that "if language is understood as the science dealing with the mental phenomena of the life of the peoples of the world, human language, one of the most important manifestations of mental life, would seem to belong naturally to the field of work of ethnology" (Boas, 1911, p. 52). Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf took this argument a step further by developing the linguistic relativity hypothesis which posits that the grammar of a language moids both the mind and behavior of its speakers. In this context Whorf advanced the "linguistic relativity principle" by which he meant "that users of markedly different gram-

\ 3

Linell ( 1998) invited us to think of context as a multiplicity of resources that can, but need not, be brought to bear in an encounter. My idea of context is similar to what Linell called "immediate contextual resources" (p. 128). . 4 This section recaptures some of the points made in Schegloff, Ochs & Thompson ( 1996, pp. 419). 5 See Duranti (1997, p. 52 ff.) for a longer discussion of Boas' and Sapir's influence on linguistic anthropology.

15 mars are pointed by the grammars toward different types of observations and different evaluations of extremely similar acts of observations, and hence are not equivalent as observers but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world" (Whorf, 1956, p. 221). On the whole, linguistic relativists tended to base their study of language on participant observation, interviews, and secondary sources. When it came to moving the focus of linguists and anthropologists toward the exploration of actual speech behavior and use, some of the most influential researchers were John Gumperz and Dell Hymes. In 1964 they co-edited a special issue of the American Anthropologist (Gumperz & Hymes, 1964) where Hymes attempted to constitute the field of ethnography of communication by promoting "extending linguistic inquiry to units of analysis such as the speech act, the speech event, the speech situation, and the speech community" (Schegloff, Ochs & Thompson, 1996, p. 5). A second volume was published eight years later with an interactional approach to language behavior as its unifying theme (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972). In the introductory chapter Gumperz once again underscored the importance of studying language as a situated social accomplishment by advancing Hymes' notion of a speech event. Gumperz proposed that the speech event is to the analysis of verbal interaction what the sentence is to grammar. When compared with the sentence it represents an extension in size of the basic analytical unit from single utterances to stretches of utterances, as well as a shift in focus from emphasis on text to emphasis on interaction (Gumperz, 1972, p. 17).

Among. the contributors to this seminal volume were some. of the major scholars of spoken language and interaction including Ethel Albert, Basil Bernstein, Ray Birdwhistell, Jan-Petter Blom, Susan Ervin-Tripp, Harold Garfinkel, William Labov, Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, Harvey Sacks, and Emanuel Schegloff. Schegloff et al. (1996) argued that in the years surrounding the publication of Gumperz and Hymes volumes, grammatical analysis became less central for cultural anthropology whilst the interest for social action gained more prominence. Schegloff et al. characterize this as a cross-disciplinary trend. Important publications include Bourdieu 1977, 1990; Garfinkel, 1967; Goffman, 1964, 1967, 1974; Leontyev, 1981; Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, 1972; Schegloff, Jefferson & Sacks, 1977; and Vygotsky, 1978. One common thread in these works is the centrality of human agency. Humans are viewed as active agents who can and do shape and alter their social environment. During the past fifteen years or so, grammar has received renewed attention linguistic anthropology. This can be partially attributed to the influence of phenomenology (Schegloff et al., 1996). A complete account of phenomenology is much beyond the scope of this study. Suffice it to say that phenomenological studies focus on how human experience is perspectivized, that is how

in

16 reality is grasped and understood from particular points of view (Linell, 1998, p. 41 ). Phenomenologists do not deny the existence of an objective world. However their attention centers on this world as experienced by situated social actors. The phenomenological influence is evident in interactional accounts of cross-cultural miscommunication (Gumperz, 1982), language socialization (e.g. Goodwin, 1990; Heath, 1983; Kulick, 1992; Ochs, 1988; Schieffelin, 1990), intentionality and authorship (Duranti & Brenneis, 1986; Hill & Irvine, 1992), professional discourse (Cicourel, 1992; Goodwin, 1994) and contexts more broadly (Duranti & Goodwin, 1992; Hanks, 1990). One of many research themes here is the idea that linguistic structures, including grammar, themselves are interactional (Schegloff et al., 1996, p. 7). This idea will be pursued in chapters 3 and 4 where I argue that certain syntactic structures can be attributed to and indeed may be motivated by the accomplishment of interactional tasks. However unlike some linguistic anthropologists I do not propose that these structures reflect and constitute cultural patterns that are unique to the linguistic and cultural communities that I study. Whether or not the phenomena described here are unique to Swedish language communities remains to be empirically specified. My intuition is that they are not. The or-inquiry is a case in point as I show similar constructions from such diverse languages as English, Finnish, and Korean and suggest that they also may function in the ways described for Swedish conversation. CA is the research method used in this study. The background and ways of working in CA will be discussed in section 1.3. Here I will point to two CA studies that have treated the interplay between interactional and grammatical structures. These two studies were selected because they demonstrate how grammar can figure as an important interactional resource for participants in talk-in-interaction. Other grammatically oriented CA studies will be discussed in chapters 3 through 5. One of the earlier and arguably the most significant publication in terms of launching CA as a method for the study of talk-in-interaction was the Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson paper, A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation, published in 1974. Based on close analysis of transcribed i~stances of recorded conversations, the authors showed that tum-taking is not fixed or predetermined but negotiated by the participants. Put differently, turn-taking is socially organized. Indeed it is ope of th~ most prominent forms of social organization both because of its ubiquity and because it regulates our opportunities to partake in social interaction. Grammar constitutes a key resource by which interactants determine whether a turn in progress has reached a point of possible completion and whether turn transfer is relevant. Such points of possible completion are referred to as transition relevance places (hereafter abbreviated as TRP). Each turn at talk is made up of turnconstructional units (hereafter abbreviated as

17 TCU). 6 Sacks et al. identified four different types of TCUs in conversation: sentential, clausal, phrasal, and lexical. Although not isomorphic with traditional syntactic categories, these TCU types suggest that syntax is one of the resources used as a basis for negotiating access to the conversational floor. 7 The arrowed turns in examples (1 :2)-(1 :5) below show sentential, clausal, phrasal, and lexical TCU tums. 8 (1:2) THE SPONGE [IIB6:1). Data from the Swedish home help service. The home help (VB) is helping the elderly woman (P) to take a shower. (10. 5)

01 02

VB: ->Vill du ha tvat tsvampenc [SENTENTIAL TCU] Want you have the sponge Do you want the washcloth (0. 8)

03 04

P:

Ja:eh, Yes

(1:3) LAUGHING [GRU:4:A). Rut has told her elderly mother Ulla about her concern that she cannot speak English with an American who is visiting Rut's family. Per is Rut's husband (Ulla's son-in-law). 20

U:

21

R:

22

23

Ni bara kan skra:tta lit at [varann, You only can laugh little at each other [Ja:: a dom' Yes and they Yes and the others andra pratar allihop dom, others talk everyone them they all talk

U: ->G6:r dom, [CLAUSAL TCU) Do they

6 In Swedish conversation research, turnconstructional unit is sometimes translated as 'meningsenhet' (cf. Norrby, 1996). This translation can be misleading as mening can mean grammatical sentence. Although some researchers (Linell & Gustavsson, 1987, pp. 13-14) underscore that meningsenheter should not be treated as sentences I prefer the clumsier literal translation 'turkonstruktionsenhet'. This translation preserves the idea promoted by Sacks et al. that turnconstructional units are not necessarily formed as grammatical sentences. What is at stake here is not a terminological quibble but a concern for the appropriate unit of analysis. See Schegloff, 1996c, p. 56 ff. for a discussion of some of the payoffs of shifting the analytical focus from sentences to TCUs. 1 Other resources include prosody" and pragmatics (cf. chapter 3, section 3.2.2.4 and 3.2.3.2). s Examples (1:2), (1:4), and (1:5) are from video and audio recordings of visits in the Swedish home help service. See Lindstrom ( 1999) for a description of this data.

18 ((glottal stop))

24

R:

Ja:. Yes

25

U:

da, Pe:r a Per too then

26

R:

Ja HAN e ju inte na BLY:G HAN= he Yes he's ju not any shy Yes he's not shy at all see

(1:'1) SORE FEET [IIB6:1]. Data from the Swedish home help service. VB is the home help. Pis the elderly woman. P has a heart problem and poor circulation in her legs and feet. 01

VB:

02

P:

03 04 05

06

[De g6r

t2nt nu Ja::,= It makes pain now yes It hurts now

=Ja:: ja har 6m- ja ar .i:lm jamt serru Yes I have pai- I am sore always seeyou Yes I have pain I am always in pain you see (0. 8)

VB:

Mm::,:.

P: -> 0 0m .f.Qtterna? 0 [PHRASAL TCU] Around the feet In the feet VB:

.hJa: :,

Yes 07

P:

08

VB:

09

Be:na, The legs Ifilskade .f.Qtter, Far

byta ut dom, Darn feet have to change out them Darn feet, Have to have them changed (1. 2)

(1:5) PERMISSION [IIB6:1). Data from the Swedish home help service. A is the researcher. The home help (VB) and the elderly w~man (P) have just entered the bathroom where VB is going to help P to take a shower. A is about to enter the room with a videocame\a. The transcript is based on the audio record. ( 1. 0)

01

02

03

A:

Kan ja f6lja me. in har ock'2i1 gar de bra? Can I follow with in here also goes that well Can I come along in here as well is that okay (0. 8)

19 04

P: ->Ja::, Yes

05

A:

Tack

[LEXICALTCU]

ska'ru

ha,

Thanks will you have Thanks 06

P:

Huh huh huh,

Sacks et al. 's argument is not that each turn is made up of a single TCU. However to build a multi-TCU turn can constitute an achievement as a recipient may claim the floor upon the completion of the first TCU. "Early" entries into another's turn space can be motivated by the sequential activities that are implemented in and through the talk. An analysis of the organization of turn-taking must therefore always take into account these activities. Consider the overlap between A and VB in example (1 :6) below. (1:6) PERMISSION II [IIB6:1]. Data from the Swedish home help service. The home help (VB) is helping the elderly woman to get undressed. A is the researcher. She is about to enter the room with a ~ideocamera. The transcript is based on the audio record. 16

A:

Kan ja fa

spela

in

hari

Can I get play in here Can I record here 17 18

(0. 7)

VB:

Far hon spela in digi May she play in you May she record you

19 20

(0. 8)

P:

Ja::,

Yes 21

22

23

A: ->De gar bra [okej, It goes fine okay That's fine okay VB: ->

A:

bra mm. Goes fine mm

[Gar

Tack,

Thanks 24

(3. 0)

VB enters A's turn space at the completion of A's first TCU de gar bra 'that's fine' in line 21 to grant A's request with gar bra mm 'goes fine mm' in line 22.

20 VB 's granting in line 22 constitutes a preferred response to A's request (line 16). As will be discussed in section 1.4 and in chapter 4, preferred actions are normatively organized to occur early rather than late. The onset of VB's turn in line 22 is thus neither premature nor disruptive. Rather, its placement contributes to, indeed is part and parcel of, the turn's constitution as a preferred responsive action.9 The interplay between the organization of turns and the organization of actions is one of the running themes of this dissertation. The discussion so far has centered on boundaries between TCUs. However interactants also orient to grammar within a single TCU. Lerner (1987) showed that recipients can use the grammatical composition of a TCU in progress to preemptively complete that TCU. The arrowed turn in example (1:7) below shows a preemptive completion. (1:7) 01 02 03 04

[CDHQ:II]

(Lerner, 1989, p. 173).

Now most machines don't record that slow. So I'd wanna- when I make a tape, Josh: ->be able tuh speed it up. Marty: Yeah. Marty:

The syntax of Marty's unfinished TCU in line 2 So I'd wanna- when I make a tape provides a resource by which Josh can construct a preemptive completion of that TCU. According to Lerner, such completion makes relevant an acceptance or rejection by the prior speaker. In the example above, Marty ratifies the preemptive completion in line 4. Example ( 1:8) by contrast shows a preemptive completion that is rejected by the prior speaker. (1:8) RED MAT [IFS:10.7]. Data from the Swedish home help service. VB has just assisted P to take a shower in P's bathtub. P has a wood seat in the tub. 04

VB:

Vanta ska

vi fa

hand.lJ.JJ.ken [(for

den]-)

Wait will we get the towel (cause it-) Wait let's get the towel (cause it) 05

[

P:

s n aPleas-

06

Q111

du

ville

dra: den

dar

roda [!illttan (0.2)

if you wanted pull that there red if you would put that red mat 07

J a sen and then

mat

(0.2)

[hit]. here

9

This sequence involves intricate shifts in participation frameworks (Goodwin, 1979). Note that A's question in line 16 'can I record in here' is not addressed to Pin particular. VB redirects the question to Pin line 18 'may she record you' thereby transferring the authority to grant or deny the request to P. See Lindstrom (in press) for an analysis of this sequence.

21 08

VB:

09

P:

[Ja,.;_J [ (ska J ja gar-) Ja,.;_ will I do[sa gar] {.) .l..dttare for me:j a= so goes (.) easier for me to so it gets (.) easier for me to

10

VB: ->=A kliva u:r, To climb out

11

P: ->A stiga o[pp, To step up

12

[>Jaa vanta ska'ru Yes wait Yes wait

fa

sepa fre:dan nai on the friday some on friday at all

05

06

Y:

Va,

What 07

L: ->Jobbar L.Qtta pa fre:dani Works Lotta on the friday Does Lotta work on friday

08

Y:

Nu: pc1 fre:dan, !low on the friday 'I'his friday

09

L:

Mm,

( 1. 6)

10 11

Y:

12 13

Inin Inin

(

(huinining))

(0.2) Y:

->Hon hade fatt en (da) men ja vet inte hur She had got one day but I know not how She had one day off but I don't know how ->hon jobbar she works

14

15

Min==

L:

pt Annarsvi ska ri:da klockan .fatt pa pt Otherwise- we will ride clock one on pt Otherwise- we'll ride at one on

16

fre:dan /.) nara stycken ja:g a 'hhh the friday (.) some pieces I and 'hhh friday (.) a few of us I and 'hhh

17

Li- Lisa lfilcklund a nara sa da kan hon fa Li- Lisa IJ£cklund and some so then can she may Li- Lisa IJ£cklund and some others so then she can

18

ri:da om hon vill, ride if she wants ride if she'd like to

I

I

I I

L

Liv's question in lines 4-5,Jobbar Lotta pafre:dan 'Does Lotta work on friday at all' is a preliminary to her invitation to Ylva's daughter to join a riding group in lines 15-18. The preliminary is initially met with an other-initiated repair (line 6). Having clarified the exact day that Liv is referring to Ylva shows herself to be "doing thinking" by humming in line 11. She then offers a hedging response Hon hadefatt en (da) menja vet inte hur honjobbar 'She has one day off but I don't know how she works'. The FPP of Liv's invitation sequence is

39 fitted to the hedging response to the pre-sequence. Specifically, the tum-initial Annars 'Otherwise' allows for the possibility that Lotta might not be able to accept the invitation. This study contributes to work on preference organization by focussing on how both the first and second pair part of an action sequence are shaped by and shape preference structure. The or-inquiry shows how preference considerations can be addressed within the FPP of a sequence. The analysis of acceptances and grantings of deferred actions shows that how alignment is accomplished may depend on whether the action that is being responded to can be immediately satisfied. In the chapter on the curledja, I show how speakers manipulate the prosody of a response token that typically is associated with alignment to project non-alignment in the second pair part of an action sequence.

1.5 Organization of study The dissertation is organized as follows. In chapter 2, I describe the collection and preparation of the data. Chapter 3 examines the structure of the or-inquiry and how it is used to mark problematicity. Chapter 4 focusses on acceptances and grantings of deferred action FPPs. I argue that an affirmative response token is insufficient to align with an FPP that initiated a deferred action. Chapter 5 demonstrates how recipients can use the tum-initial slot of a responsive action to project non-alignment and how this in tum can allow speakers to revise their positions so as to avert actual non-alignment. Chapter 6 summarizes and discusses the findings and points to areas for future research.

.._

2 The data

In this chapter I provide ethnographic information about the families who made the recordings that form the data base for the dissertation, describe the recording set-up, and how the data was prepared. Finally I briefly discuss how I went about the analysis. The latter remarks are not intended as guidelines for the novice analyst. In an effort to demystify the analytical process I merely offer some observations about how this project got off the ground.

2.1 Description of data corpus For the dissertation I had three different families make audio recordings of their telephone conversations and a fourth family make video recordings of their dinner conversations. My original intention was to use both data sets in the analysis but I ended up relying almost exclusively on the telephone calls.24 The telephone data were collected in 1991 and the video data in 1993. In chapter 1 and the present chapter I also use data from a more recent set of recordings of home visits in the Swedish home help service to illustrate some methodological points (see Lindstrom, 1999, for a description of the home help service data). All the Swedish data was recorded by me. The conversations were naturally occurring rather than experimental. Th~ interactants did not conduct them for my benefit. Rather they engaged in their own projects. These were diverse and ranged from persuading a spouse to go fishing over the weekend to gossiping about a co-worker. The interactants' in-. sistent pursuit of these projects seemed to make them less oriented to the fact that they were being recorded. That said, I would not describe these interactions as "authentic" or "natural" in the sense of being completely unimpeded by the recording process. That the interactants sometimes oriented to the recording was evident in the talk itself. They would refer to the recording apparatus, usually in a joking manner. Such remarks were prevalent in the video recrrdings and occurred seldom in the audio recordings. My own feeling is that such remarks do not invalidate the materials. While researchers should try to proceed 24 Two reasons why I did not focus on the video materials were: 1) the video tape was dark and grainy making it difficult to distinguish facial expressions, and 2) I did not have computer resources to prepare graphic representations of the tape such as stills or "frame grabs".

41 in as unobtrusive a manner as possible they should not strive to make themselves or the recording apparatus completely invisible.25 One of the aims of this dissertation is to capture and describe interactional moments in people's ordinary lives. This necessitates moving out of the carefully controlled environment of sound- and lightoptimized recording studios with two-way mirrors to the messy reality of everyday life. When we as researchers enter this setting with a recorder we should expect that people will pay some attention to us.26 My own experience from making numerous recordings in private as well as institutional settings is that once a trusting relationship has been established, those being recorded tend to shift their attention away from the researcher and her equipment toward their own indigenous activities. Most but not all of the recordings were of mundane, non-institutional interactions between family and peers. Family members coordinating the celebration of their father's fiftieth birthday, old friends catching up on news about mutual acquaintances, a daughter asking her mother for advice on a recipe are examples of types of calls in the telephone corpus. The family dinner conversations could be characterized as small talk about events of the day, future family outings, and the food itself. There was also a fair amount of teasing between the children and some disciplining and discussion about table manners. A few of the telephone calls were to government authorities and private businesses. As others have noted (cf. Drew & Heritage, 1992; Linell, 1990a; Zimmerman & Boden, 1991), institutionality is not a static feature of talk-in-interaction that is solely determined by the physical setting. The relationship between talk and social structure is more complex in that the talk both can enhance and undermine the institutional character of the setting. Drew & Heritage thus argued that "interaction is institutional insofar as participants' institutional or professional identities are somehow made relevant to the work activities in which they are engaged" (1992, pp. 3-4). Take for example the edqcational setting. If a student brings a grade complaint to the teacher this may enhance the institutional character of their interaction. If, on the other hand, teacher and student discuss a movie they both have seen their institutional roles as teacher and student may become less relevant. The institutional character of an interaction can also fluctuate during its course. A case in point in the data at hand was a call to the unemployment agency. The call started out as an institutional conversation with the unemployed caller attempting to find out who she needs to make an appointment with to pursue summer employment. However, after a while the caller and the official at the unemployment agency figured out that they knew each

25 Moments where the recording or the researcher are focussed upon need not be discarded or erased. Like any interactional moment they can be analytically examined (cf. Lindstrom, in press). 26 See Duranti, 1997, p. 116 ff. for a longer discussion of how the introduction of electronic recording devices can impact the setting.

42 other and from then on the call took on a non-institutional character.27 For these kinds of reasons it would be misleading to count the number of calls that involved businesses or government authorities and to characterize these as strictly institutional. That this dissertation mainly focusses on non-institutional interaction should not make it irrelevant for students of institutional interaction. On the contrary, studies such as this one are essential for research on institutional interactions as ordinary interaction in non-institutional settings provide a benchmark against which institutionally specific interactional patterns are recognized and realized (Drew & Heritage, 1992, p. 19).

2.1.1 Ethnographic information Before providing some ethnographic information about the individuals who made the recordings, I should note that I have primarily relied on the identities that have been made relevant through the action sequences that I have analyzed. 28 I thus frequently refer to the interactant as an inviter/invitee, requester/ requestee rather than as a mother/physician/social democrat/neighbor. Put differently, I emphasize the identities co-constructed through the immediate contextual resources available in the encounter at the possible expense of the identities that may have been created through contextual resources in the broader socio-historical cultural environment of the interactants (cf. Linell, 1998, pp. 127-158). This reluctance to invoke the broader context analytically has been criticized (cf. Bourdieu, 1990; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Cicourel, 1992). Bourdieu and his colleague argue that CAists who proceed in this way fall into the "occasionalist fallacy" of believing that each encounter is created on the spot rather than determined by broader relations involving such macro identities as race, gender, and social class (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 144 ff.). 29 • 30 Here I would like to emphasize that I neither consider these macro identities unimportant nor irrelevant. However, the link between specific interactional patterns on the one hand and macro identities such as race, gender, and class, is difficult to establish. As Schegloff (1991, 1992a) has convincingly ar27

How such shifts are negotiated and sustained is an interesting issue that unfortunately falls beyond the scope of this dissertation. \ 28 I am not using the sociolinguistic term"informants" because it conveys the idea that the persons who made the recordings possess information that is vital for the analysis of the materials. Neither do I use the term "subjects." The subjects of this study are not the persons who figure in the recordings but the interactions that they jointly produce. 29 See Duranti, 1997, pp. 8-12 for a longer discussion ofBourdieu's critique. 30 Moerman, whose work otherwise is amenable to the CA perspective, offers a similar critique arguing that sequential perspective produces the nodes from which we hang our chimes of talk. But without the scale and resonance of categorical ascriptions and the situationally occasioned normative cultural knowledge they invoke, the clacking of turns is mere noise (Moerman, 1988, p. 29).

43 gued relevance rather than correctness should be the criterion when ethnographic identities are used analytically (see also Sacks, 1972). It would be perfectly correct to characterize me as a woman, a native-born Swede, a 37-year-old, a wife, a mother, a coffee-drinker, a swimmer etc. The job for the analyst is not to choose the correct characterization but rather to choose the one(s) that is (are) made relevant in the talk, i.e. the one(s) that the participants show themselves to be oriented to (cf. Sacks, 1972; Schegloff, 1991, 1992a). It is therefore not sufficient to point to a statistical relationship between a particular interactional pattern and a "macro" identity such as gender and argue "directly and simply from chi squaredom" (Goffman, 1964, p. 134) for a causal relationship between the two. The analyst must also show how these identities are "procedurally consequential" that is whether they have any consequence for "the shape, form, trajectory, content, or character of the interaction that the parties conduct" (Schegloff, 1992a, p. 111). It is not enough to say that in asking me for permission to play at a friend's house, my daughter is making relevant her own identity as a child with restricted rights and my identity as a parent who has the authority to give permission. Furthermore it needs to be specified whether the identities of daughter and mother impact the structure of the request and its reply. Here I am not making the social constructionist argument that identities only exist in interaction. Rather I am suggesting that given the multiplicity of identities that may be potentially relevant in any interaction, it is a complicated process to make an empirically grounded argument that any particular identity shaped the production or understanding of an individual utterance. 31 • 32 This study does not strictly adhere to the rigorous use of identity that Schegloff (1992a) recommended. I sometimes refer to the interactants in relational terms, i.e. as mother/daughter, husband/wife? old friends etc., because I feel that this animates the data and brings the reader into the scene of the everyday lives of the interactants. At the same time I realize that this might invite the reader to understand the talk in terms of the ethnographic identities of the interactants rather than the actions that are being instantiated. Furthermore, I might suggest that a particular course of action can be heard as a move toward advice giving because the speaker is a medical doctor rather than a lay person (cf. chapter 3, example 3:43). Overall however, I have relied on such characterizations sparingly. In introducing the individuals in the households where the recordings were made then I am not seeking to use the ethnographic information to explain their conduct. Rather I want to invite the reader to see that they are what in Swedish 31

See Drew & Heritage, 1992, pp. 6-16 for a discussion of different perspectives on context in talk. 32 See Clayman & Maynard, 1995; Lindstrom, in press, and Perakyla, 1997 for a discussion of how the analysis can be empirically grounded in the data.

44 are called vanligt folk 'regular folks'. Although they do not form a statistically representative sample of the Swedish population, they range in age from preschool to senior citizen, have varied educational, occupational, and socio-economic backgrounds, and were raised in different geographic areas. Their interactions thus offer some insight into everyday life in Swedish society.

2. I . I .1 The families that recorded telephone conversations The families that agreed to record their telephone conversations were not close personal acquaintances of mine. They are better described as "friends of fricnds". 33 Names of persons and places have been changed at random in the transcripts to protect the anonymity of the interactants. Each example is iden7 tified through source, tape number, and tape side. Example [VAT:3:A] was thus drawn from side A of the third tape recorded at the VAT household. The Persson family (identified as VAT in the transcripts) is working class. The father (Torkel); 30 years old at the time of the study, worked at a sawmill. The mother (Liv), 29 years old, provided childcare for her own and other children. She is trained and has worked extensively as a life guard. The Perssons' have three young children Henrik, six, Sara, five, and Pontus, one and a half years old. Six-year old Henrik participates in several of the examples that I will analyze in the dissertation. Like most of us, he is still being socialized into using language (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1986). Having analyzed several examples where he figures I feel he is as competent as most of the adult participants in the study at using language as a tool for accomplishing social action (cf. his skillful negotiation in chapter 4, example 4:26). The Lindgren family (identified as GRU in the transcript) consists of two parents in their early fifties with three grown children. The father (Per) was a fireman while the mother (Rut) worked as a cook for the municipal school dis~ trict. The oldest son (Tore) was 30 years old. He was building a house and made many calls from his parents' home to orchestrate the construction process. The younger brother (Hannes) was 25 years old and worked as a registered nurse in· a different town. He did not take part in many of the recorded conversations. The daughter (Malena) was 23 years old. She had just undergone a major surgery and was living at home during the time the data was collected. The Lundberg family (identified as MOL in the transcript) differed f1iom the

\ 33

It was an advantage that I was neither closely acquainted with nor related to the interactants who figure in the study. You never know what you will come up with when you sit down to analyze a stretch of talk (cf. Sacks, 1984 [1967]). As you start to mine the materials you can come to discover unpleasant things about the way a person conducts herself in her social world that you never would have anticipated. Before placing the interactions of one's own family and friends under such scrutiny one must make sure that one is prepared to make such discoveries. The flip side of this coin of course is that you also learn wonderful things about people from closely examining their interactional conduct.

45 other two families in terms of education and social class. The father (Allan) who was in his early thirties was an agrarian economist and headed a farming development program in the local community. His wife (Vera), who was on maternal leave is a native of one of the Swedish-speaking areas of Finland but has lived in Sweden for several years. To my hearing her dialect is closer to Sweden Swedish than Finland Swedish. She is a medical doctor by training. She was in her early thirties. The young couple's son (Eskil) was less than a year old during the time of the study and did not participate in any of the recorded calls. 34

2.1.1.2 The family that recorded dinner conversations Six consecutive dinner conversations were recorded in the Eriksson family (identified as ERi in the transcript). The father (Hasse) was 46 years old and worked as a lumberjack. The mother (Ann-Katrin) was 34 years old and worked part time as a teacher's aide. The two sons, (Gabriel and Niklas), were twelve and eight years old.

2.1.2 Recording set-up I was not physically present during the recordings. I helped set up the recording equipment in advance and instructed family members how to start and stop the recording.

2.1.2.1 Audio recordings The recording device was attached to one of the telephones in the home. If possible, the device was attached to the telephone that was least frequently used. The recording device activated the recorder when the receiver of any of the telephones in the house was picked up. The recording was stopped when the receiver was put back in the cradle. I provided the families with audiotapes but left it to them to handle the recording. To avoid a constant need to monitor the recording, they were encouraged to only check the tape once daily and to switch sides or change tapes if necessary at that time. They were also instructed not to tend to the recording during the course of a telephone conversation. Altogether about 37 hours of conversations were recorded in the Persson, Lindgren, and Lundberg families.

34 Although he complicated the recording process at the Lundberg home by repeatedly lifting the receiver off the hook.

46

2.1.2.2 Video recording As with the collection of the telephone data as much as possible of the recording process was handled by the family without intervention by me. A Panasonic camera with a wide angle lens and an audio recorder was used. 35 I taught the mother how to operate the camera and the audio recorder thinking that she would be the one in charge. However the video- and audiotapes showed that the recording apparatus mainly was handled by the children. The older son in particular was conscientious about making sure that both the audio recorder and video camera were running when the family sat down at the table. The camera was placed on a tripod in a corner of the kitchen and the audio recorder was placed on the dinner table. The family was encouraged to start the recording before the dinner began and let it run until after everybody had left the table. In actuality however, the father usually prompted the others to turn off the recording when everybody had finished eating. As a result the recording of each dinner was fairly short (ranging from 20 to 30 minutes each yielding a total of two hours and fifteen minutes of recordings).

2.1.3 Ethics All the family members who were old enough to read and write, signed consent forms. The families who recorded telephone conversations were encouraged to inform the individuals with whom they frequently conversed over the telephone about the recording. It was agreed that the families could keep any tapes that contained calls where either the caller or the called party did not want the recording to be used in the study.36 This option was exercised by one of the families who kept three tapes. Another family gave me a tape even though it contained a conversation where the caller jokingly objected to the recording. In this case I chose to neither transcribe nor analyze that conversation on the tape. Although the recording apparatus certainly represented an intrusion in the everyday lives of these families, they seemed comfortable with the situation, especially after the first few days of recording. As a matter of fact I got the sense that they felt honored that their everyday lives were worthy of scholarly ~~ \ The participants in the video recording were also given the option to keep any of the tapes but did not exercise it. The mother asked for and was given a copy of a videotape that contained all the recorded dinners at the end of the study. Although all members of the family agreed to participate in the study and 35

I am grateful to Maria Egbert for lending me her wide angle lens for this data collection. Alternatively I could have asked them to tum off the recording. However I felt that this would make them focus too much on the recording apparatus. 36

47 signed consent forms I got the impression that they were not all equally enthusiastic about being recorded. The mother and the children were excited but the father seemed resistant.

2.2 Transcription The data was transcribed according to the transcription system initially developed by Gail Jefferson (cf. Ochs, Schegloff & Thompson, 1996, pp. 461-465). A description of the transcription symbols is provided in the appendix. The transcripts do not substitute for the recordings but are used as supplements to them. It has been suggested that CAists only pay lipservice to this praxis (Linell, 1990a, p. 2) but this has not been my own experience. Although it can be cumbersome to find the individual transcribed excerpts on the tapes I try to do so whenever I sit down to analyze a segment. In the early stages of the analysis I enclosed an audiotape with recordings of the analyzed excerpts when I submitted analytical drafts to my advisors at UCLA. Repeated listenings forced me to continuously revise the transcripts. For the curledja especially I found that I had to rewind the tape and re-listen to the talk over and over to capture what I heard on the printed page. So, the transcripts are based on what I heard on the tape. Whenever possible I tried to check my hearings with other native speakers of Swedish during joint data sessions. 37 If there are biases they will be consistent throughout the study since I transcribed the entire corpus. It should be emphasized that these transcripts were not produced with linguisticallY. oriented studies of Swedish prosody and intonation in mind (cf. Bruce, 1998). Indeed my transcripts may at times contradict such studies. For example, I sometimes mark the stress in compound words on the second syllable even though linguistically oriented research posits that the stress in such words is placed on the first syllable (cf. Bruce, 1998, pp. 53-54). As was pointed out in chapter 1, much of the work'on prosody has not been based on conversational data but on recordings of isolated words or on intuition. It is unclear how the findings of such work bears on studies such as this one which is based on recordings of naturally occurring interaction. This is an issue worth exploring in future research. Since one of the focal areas of this study concerns the interactional significance of prosody, a discussion of the conventions for transcribing prosody is in order. While the CA transcription system is more sophisticated than most when it comes to representing prosody (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 1996b, p. 13), it

37 My thanks to Ann-Christin Cederborg, Ake Hedman, Vesa Leppanen, Cecilia Wadensjo, and colleagues at the Unit for advanced studies of modern Swedish at Uppsala university.

48 is by no means flawless. An inherent problem in most CA transcripts is to provide a prosodically accurate transcript that is accessible to "linguistically unsophisticated readers" (Sacks et al., 1974, p. 40).38 Three issues pertinent to this study concern the transcription of phonetic variants, pitch rise, and the timing of silences.

2.2.1 Transcribing phonetic variants Instead of using a phonetic alphabet, CAists try to convey phonetic variants through adaptations in spelling. This is illustrated in example (2: 1) where I transcribe the second personal pronoun as do rather than du. (2:1)

03 F:

SLEEPING BAG [VAT:4:A].

Ja hej d8, Yes hi you Yeah hi there

As Couper-Kuhlen & Selting point out, transcriptions of this kind rely on the reader's familiarity with the speech variety at hand (cf. Gumperz & Berenz, 1993). For Swedish readers, the intelligibility of the example above is dependent on their ability to "hear" do as the second person pronoun even though the literal translation of the letters do is the verb 'die'. As Jefferson has shown, phonetically distinct articulations of the same word can matter interactionally (Jefferson, 1974 ). If the analysis centers on articulatory variants that cannot be adequately represented with CA conventions, selective use of phonetic symbols is in place. For the purposes of the analysis presented in this study, the phonetic alphabet did not seem warranted.

2.2.2 Transcribing pitch rise One of the prosodic characteristics that will be focussed on in this study is pitch rise. Chapter 5 examines a prosodically distinct variant of the Swedish response tokenja 'yes' which is characterized by a slight stretch on the vowel and11 a gradual rise in pitch. When first introducing the curledja in chapter 5, I pro-\ vide a graphic representation of an acoustic analysis of the pitch contour of one 1 of the curled ja instances in the corpus (see chapter 5 figure 1). The purpose of this graph is to make the curled ja phenomenon more readily available to 38

This may seem odd to the linguist who may be perfectly able to read a linguistically sophisticated transcript. However, although CA has attracted interest from a variety of disciplines it was developed and is still practiced within the field of sociology. A complex transcription notation may alienate the sociological audience.

I

49 readers interested in phonetics and prosody. Through the remainder of the chapter I use the CA convention for depicting pitch rise, one or several underlined colons, to represent the curledja. The CA convention is clearly less precise and more subjective than the machine-made acoustic analysis. Although I did not have the resources at my disposal to do such analysis for all examples I consider this something that could be pursued in future research. 39

2.2.3 Timing silences Numbers in parentheses indicate silences, approximately represented in tenths of a second. A dot in parentheses indicates a "micropause", that is a bearable but not readily measurable silence, ordinarily less than two tenths of a second. Silences may be marked within or between utterances depending on whether they occur at places where tum transition is relevant.40 This is illustrated in examples (2:2) and (2:3). 41 (2.2) [IE2:17.5]. Data from the Swedish home help service. The elderly woman, P, is eating lunch. In line 1 the home help, VB, is referring to one of P's flowers. 01

VB:

02 03

!AJ va

s.t;Qr din san h£!r e, Oh what big yours such here 's Oh how !Jig this one of yours is

->(1.0)

VB:

HHH Den ha:r,= HHH This here HHH This one here

VB gives a positive assessment of P's flower in line 1. As Pomerantz (1984) and Goodwin & Goodwin (1992) have shown and as will be discussed for Swedish conversation in chapter 3, assessments are typically responded to with a second upgraded assessment. 42 The silence after VB' s assessment in line 1 is 39 Here one must keep in mind that CA attempts to capture and describe the interactants' own understandings. It may thus be problematic to make analytic use of technology that registers acoustic qualities that are unintelligible to the human ear. 40 See Sacks et al., 1974, p. 715, footnote 26 for a distinction between intra- and intertum silences. 41 The line numbers are not continuous but restarted with Ol on each transcribed page. The ensuing example is thus not from the beginning of the interaction and transcript even though the first line is numbered Ol. 42 The assessment in this example raises delicate interactional intricacies as VB is praising an object in P's home. On the one hand, one could argue that P's reluctance to produce a second assessment may be tied to an effort to avoid sounding self-congratulatory. On the other hand, VB and her colleagues are the ones responsible for caring for P's flowers. A second upgraded assessment by P might thus just as well be heard as praise of the home help service. See Lindstrom ( 1999) for a discussion of a similar assessment sequence.

50 transcribed on a separate line (line 2) to mark that turn transfer is potentially relevant here. In this example (2:2), turn transfer does not actually occur. By further specifying the assessed object in line 3 VB shows that she takes the lack 'of uptake from P as evidence of problems in understanding.43 In so doing, VB shows an orientation that turn transfer had been relevant. The silence in example (2:3), by contrast, is transcribed within an utterance because it occurs at a point where turn transfer is not relevant. ( 2: 3)

tit!

[ IE2: 18] . Data from the Swedish home help service. The elderly woman, P, is eating lunch while the home help, VB, waters P's flowers.

VB:

Mm:, Oke:j ka

ta

lit[e

ti]:11

Okay ca- take little more Hm: Okay ca- give it some more

Hm:

45

P:

[Me-

Bu46

47

P: ->Men serru ja- ja tro:r (0.8) eh hon But seeyou I- I think (O.~) eh she But you see I- I think (0.8) eh she e 11.d.;,.t,

's lazy

Here, the silence in P's turn in line 46 occurs before the turn has been brought to possible completion. How aspects of pragmatics, syntax, and intonation are used to determine points of possible completion will be discussed in chapter 3. Silences were not timed with a stop watch. Instead I used the CA praxis of slow, regular counting ("nought one thousand, one one thousand, two one thousand"). This method does not yield clock time accuracy but since I transcribed the materials, tendencies toward exaggeration or reduction of exact time should be constant throughout the data. As Linell ( 1990a) has argued, every transcript is abstract and partial and it is impossible in theory as well as in practice to produce a complete transcript (pp. 2-3). For this reason, transcription should not be treated as an unimportant mechanical task that can be easily delegated to someone else. With the exception of transcripts from published papers and non-Swedish examples provided fo me by others, I transcribed all the conversations used in the dissertation. Although the transcripts could be improved I feel they are adequate for the purposes of the analysis. 1

43

Unfortunately this segment is not available on video.

51

2.3 Translation The data was translated into English. The second line provides a word-by-word translation of the Swedish original. I have tried to make this translation as literal as possible. This means that it sometimes reads funny in English. In example (2:4), kvar is literally translated as 'left' even though this makes no sense when the utterance is read in English. (2:4) GOTLAND [MOL:2:A].

28

V: ->(Dom

e) e dom kva:r pa Gotland ellerc (They are) are they left on Gotland or (They are) are they still on Gotland or

In cases such as this I added a second translated line with a translation that sounds idiomatic in English. Although the literal English translation can be cumbersome to follow I feel it serves a purpose in that it provides more resources for readers who do not know Swedish but are interested in the indigenous organization of the Swedish language. Furthermore the fact that I had a literal translation gave me more freedom to construct an idiomatic translation since I knew the reader also would be able to consult the literal translation. If possible, I adjusted the word spacing so that the literal English translation lined up with the Swedish. As example (2:5) shows, this means that I was able to fit less on each line than I would if the translation had not been included. (2:5) OUT OF BREATH [MOL:2:A].

03

F:

Ja: de klart ju de (vi ska ju Yes 'ts obvious ju it (we will ju Yes it's obvious it (we will. )

04

stugorna a haller pa a tvatta lite f6nster cottages and hold on to wash few windows cottages and are in the midst of washing a few windows

05

aja ja kanner nog att man ar- far ta and- yes I feel probably that one is- must take and- yes I sort of feel that one is- must take

06

de 1.JJ.gnare, it easier

Note here that I had to insert several spaces after klart in line 3 and nog in line 5 to accommodate the literal English translations. One consequence of this is that the tum requires more lines than it would if there was no translation. That the transcribed turns appear long on the page is thus an artefact of the translation (cf. Ochs, 1979). I have left Swedish response tokens and pragmatic particles such asjo, ju,

52 jasa, andjaha untranslated. Research on similar objects in other language communities have shown that for the purposes of analysis, our vernacular understanding of them is inadequate (cf. Mori, 1996; Sorjonen, 1997). When necessary I have glossed what I understand them to be doing in the analysis of the segment. Prosodic characteristica such as word stress, incipient laughter, and changes in pitch have not been included in the translation. Like transcription, the process of translating a transcript from one language to another involves analysis. This is true even for the word-by-word translations. For example, in spoken Swedish the infinitive markeratt 'to'and the conjunction och 'and' are sometimes both pronounced a. In such cases I have relied on my competence as a native speaker to decide whether to translate individual instances of d as 'to' or 'and'. Although the translation was tedious and the translations make the transcript cluttered, this type of translation is minimally required if one is to analyze a conversation in a different language (in this case Swedish) than the language used in the analytic text (in this case English). One of the reasons for including transcripts in CA studies is to allow the reader to assess the validity of the claims by consulting the data for herself.44 I would have deprived the reader of this possibility if I had merely made available an English gloss of the spates of talk that I am analyzing. Interactionally crucial phenomena such as word order, language specific response tokens, and pragmatic particles are difficult to translate idiomatically and are therefore typically removed when non-English transcripts are reduced to English-only versions. I will return to this issue in chapter 6.

2.4 Sampling and quantification Once I had located and begun to describe candidate phenomena, I started to build collections by perusing other materials, transcribed as well as untranscribed, for other examples of the same kind.45 If the example came from untranscribed materials, I transcribed it. I then wrote analytical notes for each example. The analytical notes included observations that I knew from examination of other examples might be relevant for this instance as well as ob~erva-

\ 44

Or rather representations of the recordings that constitute the actual data. Technological advancement now makes it possible to provide the readers with copies of the recordings themselves. It certainly makes analytical sense to make the data widely available'. However, this deprives the researcher of the possibility of controlling how the data is played and used. For that reason I chose not to submit actual copies of the recordings with this dissertation. 45 It would have been better to solely have worked with conversations that were fully transcribed. Unfortunately this was not possible for me.

53 tions that seemed unique to this particular example. I held off translating the materials until I prepared final manuscripts. Since the interactants encountered each utterance in Swedish rather than English it seemed appropriate for me to proceed in the same way. Translating the materials to English and preparing an analytical text that would be accessible to an English reader sometimes aided my analytical eye by prompting me to notice things about my native language that I otherwise took for granted. The collections that form the basis for this dissertation are small. I analyze 60 or-inquiries, 25 aligning responses to deferred actions, and 23 responses that are prefaced by a curledja. However, as Schegloff (1993) argued, numbers alone do not determine the significance of a research finding: One is also a number, the single case is also a quantity, and statistical significance is but one form of significance. Indeed, it is significance in only the technical sense that a "finding" in a sample may be taken as indicating the presence of an element of order in the larger universe being studied (Schegloff, 1993, p. 101).

As Schegloff goes on to explain, for students of talk-in-interaction, the parties' demonstrable orientation toward the phenomena being studied is of central importance. Although my collections are comparatively small they all include cases that show the interactants' orientation toward the phenomena I study. Each collection includes analysis of deviant cases, i.e. cases that deviate from the phenomenon as I have described it. In these cases I show that the deviation is oriented to by the parties and thereby furnish further evidence for my argument of how the phenomenon is organized. That said, I still recommend that the findings of the dissertation be checked against a larger data base. However at this stage my priority has been to gain analytical control of the instances at hand.

3 Marking problematicity: the or-inquiry

3.1 Introduction In this chapter I examine the Swedish or-inquiry. This is a yes/no interrogative that ends with eller 'or'. Eller in this turn is a non-connecting connective and grammatically the utterance could be considered incomplete. I will argue that the departure from the standard grammatical form is meaningful. The or-construction is used to mark the action the tum otherwise engages in as problematic. The arrowed tum in example (3: 1) shows an or-inquiry. (3:1) CITY HALL [GRU:7:B]. Per is calling his team mate Erik to arrange car pooling to an upcoming intramural soccer game. 01

P:

Ar'u fit for .fight illl.Qrron? Are'you fit for fight tomorrow Are you fit for fight for tomorrow

02

E:

Jo::ra na sa n.dr, Jo::then some so near Jo:: sort of

03

P: ->Ska

04

E:

ja komma J eh- vclgen f6rbi: ell er, Shall I come and eh- the road by or Should I come and eh- drop by your place or

kvall f6r fa:n, night for devil night damn it

05

06

Nej ja a i E.IJ.k- nej fan ja cl i Ska:ra imorron No I 'min Esk- no devil I 'min Skara tomorrow No I'll be in Esk- no by god I am in Skara tomorrow

P:

Ar'u de:? Are'you that You are

\ This or-inquiry will be analyzed later in this chapter. For now I just want to point to a few features of this sequence that are characteristic of the other or-inquiries in the collection: • The or-inquiry is produced and understood as a turn in its own right. • The turn final el/er is designed to be heard as a constitutive component of its host turn constructional unit (TCU) rather than as an add-on post possible

55 completion. There is no pause or hesitation at the syntactic completion point between the penultimate wordforbi: 'by' and el/er. • The recipient treats the or-inquiry as complete. In this case this is done by Erik responding with no gap in lines 4-5. • The speaker of the or-inquiry treats it as complete by promoting the sequence in progress in his next tum. This is evidenced by Per topicalizing Erik's response with a newsmark in line 6. • The or-inquiry marks the action that the tum otherwise engages in as problematic. The grounds for problematicity are diverse in the collection. In this example Per is basing the or-inquiry on an assumption that runs contrary to what has been conveyed in the prior talk. In the sequence that precedes the or-inquiry Erik has given a downgraded response to Per's question whether he is 'fit for fight' (lines 1-2). This response raises the possibility that Erik is not keen on participating in the game. Per's offer to give Erik a ride to the game runs counter to the stance conveyed by Erik in the prior tum. By ending the yes/no interrogative with el/er 'or', the speaker relaxes the preference structure of the tum so as to facilitate a 'no' -type response. The or-construction thus reveals a speaker anticipation of possible recipient resistance to the action engaged in with the or-inquiry. I am not arguing that this stance is reflective of the speaker's privately held psychological state. The sincerity of the publically displayed stance is neither accessible to the interactants in my data nor to me. 46 The data for this chapter consist of 60 or-inquiries drawn from the data base described in chapter 2. The chapter is organized as follows. First, I isolate the or-inquiry as a tum in its own right. This entails a discussion of the design of the or-inquiry, the transition between the or-inquiry and the next tum, and the sequential trajectories generated by the or-inquiry. Second, I briefly review Swedish research on or-inquiries. Third, I discuss how the or-inquiry is used to mark problematicity. I begin with a brief discussion ofproblematicity as an oriented to feature in talk-in-interaction. The analysis of how or-inquiries mark problematicity is divided into two parts. First, I show or-inquiries that initiate an action that runs counter to the preference displayed in the prior talk. Second, I examine or-inquiries where there are other grounds for problematicity such as making a pre-complaint, checking whether the recipient knows about an embarrassing incident, mis-aligning with a troubles-telling, disaligning with a line pursued by the recipient, and articulating something that was alluded to in the prior talk. I conclude by pointing to some of the limitations of the study and making suggestions for future research. 46

Cf. Schegloff (1988b) pp. 445-446 for a discussion, and Pomerantz (1989) and Jefferson (1989a) for a debate on stances toward claims of intentionality in CA.

56

3.2 Isolating the or-inquiry as a tum in its own right The or-inquiry is produced and understood as a tum in its own right. In the following I will differentiate the or-inquiry focussed on in this study from similar turn-constructions that have been analyzed in other language communities. The or-inquiry is distinct in that it is oriented to as a complete turn with the turn final eller as a constitutive component of its host TCU. I will present evidence of tum design, turn transition, and of sequential uptake that show both speaker and recipient orienting to the integrity of the or-inquiry as a complete turn.

3.2.1 Differentiating the or-inquiry from similar tum-constructions that have been analyzed in other language communities While this is not the first study to examine turns ending with eller 'or', it is the first one that focusses the analysis on this turn construction. The or-constructed interrogatives examined in other studies appear to be different from the types of or-inquiries I analyze. Davidson's 1984, 1990 studies of modifications of invitations, offers, and rejections included examples of turns ending with or. A case in point is shown in lines 1-2 of example (3:2).47 (3:2) 1 2 3 4 5

(Davidson, 1984, p. 116).

A:-> Uh: would it be: alright if we came in a little -> ~arly or ( 0. 2) A:-> Would !_hat upsetchu[r B: [I: don't think so.

Davidson argued that there is a possible sentential completion point after early in line 2. The or is thus added post possible completion.48 With no response forthcoming from B, A continues her previous tum by providing a possible reason why B might not want to accept the offer. Unlike tµe or-inquiry in lines 12, the or-inquiries in my collection are not continued in the same speaker's next turn with an utterance that links up directly with the tum-final or in the way that the turn in line 4 is syntactically fitted to the tum in lines 1-2 in the example above. 49 47

The tum-final ( ch)ur in line 4 may be a contraction of your rather than or. Since I neither have access to the tape nor to the ensuing parts of the transcript to resolve this issue, I will not treat this tum as an or-inquiry. 48 Since there is no indication of possible prosodic completion after early in her transcript, it is difficult to assess the validity of this claim. 49 One or-inquiry is continued in the same speaker's next tum but in this case el/er is repeated in

57 Lazaraton's 1991 study of language assessment interviews also included questions ending with or. However, her examples were different from the or-inquiries studied in this chapter in that the or in her data was either done as a post-positioned recompletion of the tum or was produced as a part of its prior tum but with a trail-off prosodic contour. Or (transcribed as er) is post-positioned in example (3:3). This is captured with the intonation marker after "class" in the arrowed tum. (3:3) Marcia (7:7-42) JC=interviewer, MC=student (Lazaraton, 1991, p. 197) . JC:

that's good .hhh do you have any questions for me?

JC:

about

( 0. 5) ( 0. 2)

MC: u:m JC:-> MC:

(.)

about thi:s cla[:ss?, [about this class, [er. [I'm not sure

In the next example or is produced with trail-off intonation (partially captured with a colon). (3:4) Chan (2:52-3:1) JC=interviewer, CN=student (Lazaraton, 1991, p. 199) . tch! alright .hhh wu- u- IS: what is: your native Language,=is i[t [CHinese.

JC: CN:

tum-initial position. This repetition breaks the continuity between the two turns. BRING FOOD [VAT:12:A]. 12

L:

Na de kanske 'rom inte g6r,

No that perhaps they don't do No perhaps they don't 13

me nJn ma:t imorron eller, 'hhh Jo: should we bring with some food tomorrow or 'hhh Jo: were we supposed to bring food tomorrow or

L:-> 'hhh Jo:: skulle vi ta

14 15 16

/0.2)

M:

/ /coughs twice) J Ja

inte vet

ifilc I (upbeat) J

Yes not know I Jal don't know 17

L: -> Eller va 're nJ

kt/.ttfars ell er, Or was't some ground meat or Or were there some ground meat or

18

M:

[no finns de /vi'll nJ :n) Nja: probably is there val some Nja there probably is some

Nja:

/pkhh khh)

(

58 JC:-> is it Mandarin o[r: CN: [Mandarin. =yeah.= [Mandarin. I come JC: =[Mandarin.

Both Davidson and Lazaraton treat the tum-final or as a component that is added on to its host TCU. In Lazaraton's study this is motivated by the empirical fact that some of her tum-final or's are produced as post-positioned objects (cf. example (3:3)). In my collection of or-inquiries by contrast, or is done as a constitutive component of its host TCU. That is, there is no hitch or perturbation between the penultimate possible completion point and eller. By contrasting Davidson and Lazaraton's analysis of or-inquiries with my collection I am not implying that the type of or-inquiry I am examining is unique to Swedish language communities. After I came upon this phenomenon in Swedish I started to notice parallell constructions in other languages. Below are American, Finnish, and Japanese or-inquiries that appear similar to the Swedish or-inquiries examined within this chapter. Like the or-inquiries in this chapter, these or-inquiries are produced and responded to as complete turns. Furthermore, these or-inquiries raise activities that can be understood as problematic. Example (3:5) is taken from an American doctor-patient consultation. ( 3 : 5) [Madison 3 . 4] . so 01 02 03

DOC: PAT:

Are you m2 rried? (.) No.

DOC: PAT:

You're divQrced ( 0 cur[rently, 0 ??) [Mm hm,

DOC: PAT: DOC:

Tl You smQke?, h Hm mm. (5.0) Alcohol use?

PAT:

Hm·· mQderate I'd say.

DOC: PAT:

(0.2) Can you define that, hhhehh ((laughing outbreath)) Uh huh hah .hh I don't get off my - (0.2) outa thuh restaurant very much but [(awh:)

04

05 06

(.)

07

08 09 10 11

(2. 2)

12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

(1. 0)

DOC: -> ->alcohol or:=h PAT: Pardon? DOC: Diaily? or[: PAT: [Oh: huh uh . . hh No: uhm (3.0) probably:: I usually go out like Qnce uh week.

24 25

26 50

(1.0)

DOC :

°Kay . 0 (3.0)

I thank John Heritage for bringing this example to my attention.

59 27 28 29

PAT:

30

DOC:

31

PAT:

Now I would prQbably drink more if I didn't (.) live right there where I worked an- I work with uh lotta teenage kids 'n so [. h h] there's always [Mm hm]' somebody 't wants tuh come 'n talk tuh me.

Here, the doctor uses an or-inquiry to quantify the patient's alcohol consumption. Specifically, he asks whether the patient uses alcohol daily. This question could be heard to suggest that the patient is an alcoholic. Example (3:6) is from a Finnish telephone conversation. (3:6) Finnish or-inquiry:Tuula:Honey:4-7 (simplified transcript from Sorjonen, 1997). Meeri has just reminded Tuula that it is the time of year for getting honey from the local honey dealer. Tuula is now asking about the more exact timing of the process. 1

T:

=e Millo-s se on. -e When is it.

2

M:

No< se o-is itse asiassa nyt aika Jkii:rek-ki jo.hh Well< actually it's just about the time already .hh Jos,

3

If,

[vai,J So you mean we should already have signed up or,

4

T: ->Nii et [ta o-is pita-ny jo ilmotta-a

5

M:

6

M:

[(

)

-

[iNii:h) kylla v- periaatteessa niinku juhannuk-seen >yes in principle you know by Midsummer

7

Tuula and Meeri are talking about ordering honey from a local dealer. Tuula asks Meeri in line 1 when she ·should make her order. Meeri responds by implying that the orders already are due. Tuula then uses an or-inquiry to make explicit what Meeri implied in her prior tum, e.g. that Tuula is late. The next example (3:7) is from a Japanese conversation. (3:7) Japanese or-inquiry (Mori, 1996, p, 128). Line numbers added and syntactic glossing line omitted. 1

N: ->(ja) mae no ruumumeeto nanka wa doo datta?i- ita jan? ano:: supeingo o hanasu hito ya::,= You had that uhm the one who speaks Spanish or M:

=ha:: ha:: ha:: [ha:: 'yeah yeah yeah yeah'

60 4

[nanka itumo mondai okoshite, like she was causing trouble all

N:

5

[nanka [ko hisuterikku [datta janai?= the time and being hysteric right

N uses an or-inquiry to introduce a person who she later will characterize as a hysteric trouble maker. The problematicity inheres in the fact that the person who will figure negatively in N's telling is known to M. The preceding discussion suggests that the analysis presented in this study may have relevance for the study of or-inquiries in other language communities. This issue could be explored by scholars with native or near-native competence in the languages at hand.

3.2.2 Turn design In the following I discuss how the or-inquiry is designed as a tum. This will include a consideration of syntax and possible completion points.

3.2.2.1 Syntax The or-inquiry consists of either a yes/no-question or a B-event statement that ends with the Swedish conjunction el/er (Engl. 'or'). Labov & Fanshel (1977) define a B-event as knowledge that is primarily known to recipient B but not to speaker A. Previous work has shown that although they are syntactically formed as declaratives, B-event statements can be heard as questions or requests for confirmation (Labov & Fanshel, 1977; see also Heritage, 1985; Pomerantz, 1980; Schegloff, 1995, p. 180). The arrowed turns in the next two examples show or-inquiries. 51 Example (3:8) shows a yes/no-question and example (3:9) shows a B-event statement. (3:8) KENNEL [MOL:2:A]. Vera is calling the kennel to arrange to leave her two dogs there. The kennel owner and Vera have just agreed that it would be okay to leave Vera's bitch at the kennel even though she has just been in heat. 02

K:

Ja vi go:r sa horrudu: men nar kQmmer ni Yes we do so listenyouyou but when come you Yes we'll do that but when will you bring

51 In both these examples, the or-inquiry has been transcribed with "comma" or "level" intonation. In English, this intonation contour is typically associated with continuation. However, in the environment of questioning, comma intonation can be treated as possibly complete. Further work clearly needs to be done on question intonation in Swedish conversation. My intuition is that questions can take either comma or question intonation in Swedish. This intuition has been confirmed by recipient uptake after comma-intoned questions in this collection. I thus do not treat comma intonation as continuative.

0

61 03

me'rom with'them then them then

04

V: ->Eh- bar ni oppet pa lordamo:rron ell er, Eh- have you open on saturdaymorning or Eh- are you open saturdaymorning or

05

K:

(3:9)

Ja::? Yes CALLING RICKARD [GRU:7:A]. Per is calling Bosse to arrange carpooling to an upcoming soccer match. In line 8 Per is talking about Rickard who apparently will carpool with Bosse. Ekbom, first mentioned in line 13 is another member of the soccerteam.

Ska me dej ve[ttu, Will with you knowyou Is going with you you know

08

P:

09

B:

10

P:

Mm_;_,

11

P:->

'hh Eh: e- illl ringer till dom ell er, 'hh Eh: e- you will call to them or 'hh Eh: e- you will call them or

12

B:

Rickard kan val gor- ja bar inte tatt Ja: ja prata me Yes I talk with Rickard can val do- I have not got Yes I ( '11) talk with Rickard can do- I haven't got

13

[Ja? Yes

ta:g pa Ekbom annu, hold on Ekbom yet hold of Ekbom yet

In example (3:8), the predicate (har) is placed before the subject (ni). As in English, this is a common syntactic form for questions in Swedish (cf. Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik, 1985). The or-inquiry in example (3:9) is grammatically formed as a declarative but is heard as a question by the recipient who responds in the next turn. I use the term or-inquiry rather than or-interrogative to capture the fact that or-inquiries are not necessarily formed as syntactic interrogatives. I now turn to the internal composition of these inquiries to examine whether the turn is possibly complete before eller.

3.2.2.2 Determining possible completion points In determining points of possible completion, I primarily draw on work by Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson (1974) and Ford & Thompson (1996). Sacks et

62 al. 's 1974 study of the organization of tum-taking was discussed in chapter 1 (section 1.2.1). The authors emphasized that access to the floor is not predetermined but locally managed and negotiated by the parties to a conversation. Of particular importance to the study at hand, the authors showed that although intonation also figures, a prospective speaker is heavily oriented to the syntactic properties of a turn-in-progress to determine when it would be relevant to start talking. As reviewed in chapter 1, Sacks et al. identified four unit types for English conversation: sentential, clausal, phrasal, and lexical constructions and argued that the speaker is initially entitled, in having a turn, to one such unit. The first possible completion of a first such unit constitutes an initial transition-relevance place. Transfer of speakership is coordinated [sic] by reference to such transition relevance places, which any unit-type instance will reach (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974, p. 703).

Using Sacks et al. 's study as their point of departure, Ford & Thompson (1996) sought to further specify how syntactic, intonation, and pragmatic resources are used to manage turns. The authors analyzed excerpts from face-to-face multiparty conversations in American English to determine points of syntactic, intonational, and pragmatic possible completion. Pragmatic or action completion is "based on the potential that any utterance has for constituting an action in an interactional sequence" (p. 148). Ford & Thompson found more possible syntactic completion points than any other kind (p. 154). Furthermore, their data showed that intonation and pragmatic completion points select from syntactic completion points to form "complex transition relevance places" (p. 154). Seventyone percent of the speaker changes in Ford & Thompson's data occurred at complex transition relevance places (TRPs). 52 The analysis of or-inquiries contrasts with Ford & Thompson's findings in that the or-inquiry yields turns transfer when the turn is intonationally and pragmatically complete but, in terms of traditional conceptions of syntax, syntactically incomplete.

3.2.2.3 Syntactic completion points Following Ford & Thompson, I consider an utterance to be syntactically possibly complete "if, in its discourse context, it could be interpreted as a complete clause, i.e., with an overt or directly recoverable predicate, without considering intonation or interactional import" (1996, p. 143). Syntactic possible completion points can be incremental. The or-inquiry in example (3: 10) has three 17ossible syntactic completion points (marked with the symbol *). ·

52 On the face of it, this leaves a large residual category where turn transfer does not take place at a complex TRP. However, Ford & Thompson (1996) showed that the turn transfers within this category were adaptations to rather than violations of the tum-taking system.

63 (3:10) KENNEL [MOL:2:A],

04

* * * V: ->Eh- har ni 6ppet pa l6rdamo:rron ell er, Eh- have you open on saturdaymorning or Eh- are you open saturdaymorning or

Here, "on saturday" and "on saturdaymorning" are syntactic increments to the first TCU ("Eh- are you open"). Note that from the point of view of traditional linguistics, the or-inquiry is syntactically incomplete at the end of the turn. This may motivate us to treat the or-inquiry as an anomaly, perhaps a speech error (cf. Chomsky, 1957). However, as alluded to in chapter 1, recent work in anthropology, linguistics and sociology has started to specify an interactionally grounded syntax (cf. Ford, 1993; Ochs, Schegloff & Thompson, 1996; Schegloff, 1979b). Emphasizing the importance of such a specification, Schegloff ( 1996c) suggested that "if the basic natural environment for sentences is in turns-at-talk in conversation, we should take seriously the possibility that aspects of their structure-for example their grammatical structure-are to be understood as adaptions to that environment" (p. 3). This point is supported by Duran ti & Ochs' 1979 study of left dislocation in Italian conversation. Left dislocation "is a construction in which a constituent (e.g. a noun, a full pronoun, etc.) that appears before/to the left of its predicate has, within the same sentence a (nonreflexive) coreferential pronoun" (p. 378).53 Like the or-inquiry, left dislocation has an exotic status as a linguistic object (Duranti & Ochs, 1979, p. 379). Duranti & Ochs argued that while these constructions typically are not found in formal Italian discourse they are abundant in interactions of familiars and intimates. They showed that interactionally, left dislocation is far from anomalous or deficient. Rather it is used as an interactional device to seek access to the floor. Similarly, I will argue that the or-inquiry is not erroneous but functional as an interactional device for marking problematicity.

3.2.2.4 Pragmatic completion points I use the term "pragmatic' completion" differently than Ford & Thompson_ ( 1996) in that I do not differentiate between global and local pragmatic completion and, more importantly for this study, do not take into account intonation to determine places of pragmatic completion. A turn in progress can therefore be pragmatically possibly complete even though it is intonationally incomplete. This is shown in example (3: 11) (The symbol • marks pragmatic completion while the symbol - marks intonational completion). si Below is an example of a left dislocation: UN AMICO III:1 (simplified transcript, from Duranti a Roberto l'ho fatto aspetta'un'ora to Roberto him (I) made wait an hour Roberto I made him wait for an hour

&

Ochs, 1979, p. 377).

64 (3:11) CALLING RICKARD [GRU:7:A].

11

P: -> 'hh Eh: e- Qll ringer till dom eller, 'hh Eh: e- you will call to them or 'hh Eh: e- you will call them or

Because of the continuing intonation and lack of stress on dom this tum is not intonationally complete until after eller. Example (3: 11) appeared to be the only case in my data base where pragmatic and intonational completion did not coincide before the transition place where tum-transfer actually occurred. As Ford & Thompson underscored, the sequential context must be examined before possible pragmatic completion points can be specified. In example (3: 12), the or-inquiry is an insert-expansion to a question sequence in which the kennel owner inquires when Vera will bring her two dogs to the kennel (lines 2-3). The or-inquiry in line 4 initiates a pre-second insert expansion to this question (Schegloff, 1990, 1995). Since the kennel owner's question implicates the specification of a time, the or-inquiry cannot be pragmatically complete at the end of oppet 'open' even though this is a syntactically complete phrase.54 (3:12) KENNEL [MOL:2:A]. Vera is calling the kennel to arrange to leave her two dogs there. The kennel owner and Vera have just agreed that it would be okay to leave Vera's bitch at the kennel even though she has just been in heat. The symbol* marks syntactic completion, the symbol , marks pragmatic completion, and the symbol - marks intonational completion. 02

03

K:

Ja vi g6:r sa h6rrudu: men nar };:Qmmer ni Yes we do so listenyouyou but when come you Yes we'll do that but when will you bring me'rom da:c with'them then them then

* 04

*

*

V:-> Eh- har ni 6ppet pa 16rdamo:rron Eh- have you open on saturdaymorning Eh- are you open saturdaymorning or

eller, or

In examples (3: 11) and (3: 12) I have indicated a pragmatic completion point at the end of the or-inquiry. To establish this analytically we have to examine the sequential uptake of or-inquiries. This examination also allows us to expl6re the recipient's orientation toward points of intonational completion. · 54

In Swedish Wrdamo:rron ('saturdaymoming'), takes a stress on the third syllable whereas the word lo:rdag ('saturday') is stressed on the first syllable. Due to the differential prosody of these two words, lordamo:rron cannot be intonationally complete after lorda.

65

3.2.3 Turn transition between or-inquiry and next turn Recipients of or-inquiries do not claim the floor before the or-inquiry is projectably complete as an or-inquiry nor do they wait for the speaker of the or-inquiry to continue the tum after the production of eller. In 47 of the 60 cases there is a normal transition space between the or-inquiry and its subsequent tum. By normal transition space, I mean that the next tum does not overlap the or-inquiry, nor is it latched or delayed. Instead there is "a beat of silence" (Jefferson, 1989b) between the or-inquiry and the ensuing tum (cf. examples (3:8) and (3:9)).

3.2.3.1 Overlap onset at projectable completion of or-inquiry Overlap only occurs in five cases and in all these cases the overlap onset is positioned at the point where the or-inquiry is projectably complete (Jefferson, 1983) as an or-inquiry. This is shown in example (3:13) where the overlapping response to the or-inquiry begins after the first syllable of eller has been produced. (3:13) KAFFEREP [GRU:7:A]. Per is calling his elderly mother (Frida). When the transcript begins Frida is in the midst of recounting a telephone call she made to an old acquaintance. Quotation marks indicate phrases that are produced as quoted speech. The symbol * marks syntactic completion, the symbol marks pragmatic completion, and the symbol - marks intonational completion. 09

F:

(Eh-)

*

*

10

P:-> Ska

hon komma hem

pa kaffe

* da

ell[eri

Will she come home on coffee then or Will she come over for coffee then or 11

[Nej da

F:

sa

No then said No then I said 12

ja ·hh har

du

l.lli!.t a

satta pa kaffemnnan

I ·hh have you lust to put on the coffeepot ·hh if you are in the mood to make coffee 13

nan

gang (pa't 6ver)

sa kommer ja till dej "Ah

some time (on it over) so come some time I'll come over "Oh 14

va

ro:lit"

what fun" how nice"

I

to

you "Oh

66 Here I am suggesting that Frida is beginning her tum at the projectable completion of eller. Alternatively one might argue that Frida is oriented to da 'then' as a possible completion and is allowing a beat of silence to pass before starting her turn and that this beat happens to be occupied by the first syllable of eller. This example is thus not optimal for showing that recipients orient to turn-transfer after rather than before eller. The next example offers more conclusive evidence that recipients orient to eller as an organic rather than an added component of its host TCU. (3:11) SK/\R/\ (GRU:2:B]. Malena and Sara are acquaintances. Malena has just described a local town festival. She assesses the festival in line 11. The symbol* marks syntactic completion, the symbol marks pragmatic completion, and the symbol marks intonational completion. 14

M:

!i:J.ktist

Deva

0 ]

1f t

t e/IJY.S [i t ,

'twas actually supercozy

'twas actually really nice 15

S:->

[

* 16

->

17

M:->

18

*

* 'hh 0 du ]2Qr inte hilr i • 'hh• you live not here in you don't live here in 0

*

S}gj_ra ann[ars da eller, Skara otherwise then or [ 'hhhh 'hhhh

Nilej ja luir gjort illa knil:t No I have made hurt the knee No I have hurt my knee

(.) Sa ja har ja har korsbandssk.as;la. I have cruciate ligament injury So I have been

Malena takes a preturn inbreath when the word annars 'otherwise' of Sara's turn in progress is projectably complete (line 17). Instead of claiming the floor upon the completion of this word however, Malena withholds talk through another complex TRP (at da 'then') and does not begin her talk until after the or-inquiry is complete as an or-inquiry. As shown in the examples above, recipients orient to the integrity of the or-inquiry as a turn in its own right even when there are complex TRPs b~fore eller. That recipients do not claim the floor prematurely suggests that there is something about this turn that cues the recipient that an or-inquiry is underway. In terms of turn design there does not appear to be anything about the part of the turn that leads up to e/ler that differentiates it from interrogatives that do not end with eller. Intonationally however, the or-inquiry appears to be distinguishable from other queries.

67

3.2.3.2 The intonation contour at the tum boundary Upon re-listening to the previous example (3: 14), I noticed that there was a flat or level intonation starting from the first complex TRP until just before the end of eller and that there was no break or hesitation between the last three complex TRPs. This intonation pattern is characteristic for the other cases in my collection where there is at least one complex TRP before eller. (3:15) SKARA [GRU:2:B]. The symbol * marks syntactic completion, the symbol • marks pragmatic completion, the symbol - marks intonational completion, the symbol - marks level intonation, and the symbol, marks a slight rise in intonation. * 0 0 [ 'hh du ]2Qr inte har i 15 S: 0 'hh 0 you live not here in you don't live here in ->

*

*

Sks;J,ra ann[ars da eller, Skara otherwise then or

16

17

*

M:

[. hhhh 'hhhh

Naej ja lli'J.r gjort ill a kna: t No I have made hurt the knee No I have hurt my knee

In Swedish, interrogatives can end with level (or comma) intonation (cf. footnote 51). Sara's tum in lines 15-16 above is intonationally possibly complete at the end of annars and da and Malena shows her orientation to the first of these possible completion points by taking a pretum inbreath just before the projectable completion of annars. However, the· continuous tone bridges between the complex TRPs and cues the recipient that the tum is not yet com.plete. In music this type of.transition is called harmonic modulation.55 Skilled . musicians use it to mask the move from one musical theme to the next. Similarly, speakers of or-inquiries rely on harmonic modulation to mask the transition between complex TRPs. The intonation does not rise until the end of the word eller and tum transfer then occurs without hesitation. This does not necessarily mean that the final rise in intonation causes tum transfer. The overlap onset in example (3: 16) suggests that this is not the case as the overlap begins before the final rise in intonation (i.e. before the beginning of the second syllable of eller). (3:16) KAFFEREP [GRU:7:A]. The symbol* marks syntactic completion, the

symbol • marks pragmatic completion, the symbol - marks intonational completion, the symbol - marks level intonation, and the symbol , marks a slight rise in intonation. 56 55 56

I thank Ruth Kaskow for suggesting this term. In this example the final rise in intonation is almost indistinguishable.

68 09

F:

(Eh-)

* 10

P:-> Ska

hon komma hem

* pa ls.£lffe

*

da

ell[erc

Will she come home on coffee then or Will she come over for coffee then or 11

F: ->

[Nej da

sa

No then said No then I said

It may be the word eller that signals the relevance of turn transition. In addition to marking an action as problematic, eller in tum-final position may function as a tum-exit device (Sacks et al., 1974, p. 718).

3.2.3.3 Delayed uptake The recipient of the or-inquiry could treat the inquiry as incomplete by waiting for further talk. Eight of the or-inquiries in the data base are followed by a silence. If the or-inquiry is syntactically and pragmatically incomplete after eller, one might expect the recipient of the or-inquiry to treat this silence as the or-inquiry speaker's intraturn pause. Instead, the or-inquiry recipients claim the floor after the silence to continue the sequence in progress. This furnishes further evidence that the or-inquiry is oriented to as a complete rather than an incomplete turn. There is a 0.6 second silence after the or-inquiry in example (3: 17). The recipient of the or-inquiry then continues the sequence in progress by responding with a dispreferred second pair part (SPP). (3:17)

04

COME HOME [GRU:7:B]. Cajsa and Tore are building a house together. At the moment they are living separately. Tore is living close to the construction site while Cajsa is living in another town. Tore is calling Cajsa at work. Cajsa helps paint and wallpaper the house in the evenings. Nej nfhh

T:

No 05

C:

nfhh

Mm~ men du hur ska ja tror'u att ja beh6ver Mm: but you how will I think'you that I need Mm: but listen how should I- do you think I need to

06

}:.Qmma nan

kvall

i

veckan

eller,

come some evening in the week or come some evening this week or 07 08

->

(0. 6)

T: -> Mm: vi kan J:.Qlla de sen da ( Mm: we can check that later then

Mm: we can decide that later then

[

69 09

[Kan vi val in.te Can we val not

C:

But we can't do

gora for den .fillda kvallen ja kan komma isafall

10

ar

do for the only evening I can come inthatcase is that for the only evening I can come in that case is

ju tisda eller onsda? ju tuesday or wednesday

11

tuesday or wednesday as you know

12

T:

Ja men da f- .iliJ.jer jade imorron isafall, Yes but then w- say I that tomorrow inthatcase Yes but then w- I'll let you know tomorrow in that case

In the tum beginning in line 5, Cajsa asks with an or-inquiry whether Tore thinks that she needs to come over some evening during the week. After the silence Tore first answers with the response particle Mm. This can be an affirmation in Swedish but is not oriented to as such in this example.57 Tore continues by suggesting that they defer this decision until later vi kan kolla de sen da 'we can decide that later then'. This is heard as an undesirable response by Cajsa who rejects this suggestion in her next tum (lines 9-10). She offers as an account the fact that she would only be able to come home Tuesday or Wednesday. Tore replies with a deferral in line 12. Unlike the indefinite deferral that he proposed in line 8, this deferral is offered within a specific time frame, imorron 'tomorrow'. Neither of the interactants treat the silence after the orinquiry as Cajsa's intratum pause. The analysis of example (3:17) underscores that to determine whether the or-inquiry is a complete tum, we cannot merely measure the time that elapses between the or-inquiry and .the next tum. Additionally we need to inspect the . stance the next tum displays toward that silence. Gaps are silences at possible completion points where tum transfer may be relevant. Pauses by contrast occur within a turn and are not to be talked in by others (Sacks et. al, 1974, p. 715, footnote 26). However as the authors also suggested, whether a silence is best understood as a gap or a pause is a negotiated matter that is contingent on who speaks next and the kind of action engaged in within the next tum. In example (3: 17) it is the recipient of the or-inquiry (Tore) rather than the person who produced the or-inquiry (Cajsa) who starts talking after the silence. In choosing to claim the floor at this point Tore treats the silence as a gap where it is appropriate for him to speak. This interpretation is further supported by the fact that he promotes the sequence in progress by answering Cajsa's or-inquiry. That Tore claimed the floor after the silence to advance the sequence in progress thus pro57

As chapter 4 will demonstrate, whether an affirmative response token accomplishes alignment is contingent on the type of action sequence that is being addressed.

70 motes my analysis that the or-inquiry is understood as a complete turn. This pattern was characteristic of the other seven examples where a silence ensued after the or-inquiry.

3.2.4 Sequential appropriateness of activity done in next tum The particulars of the stance displayed in the turn after the or-inquiry will be explored in section 3.4. For now I just want to establish that the next turn responds to the action initiated with the or-inquiry. This was true for all the cases in my data base. As noted earlier, this supports my point that the or-inquiry is treated as a complete turn. In example (3: 18) the kennel owner responds to Vera's insertion sequence (line 5). (3:18) KEHNEL [MOL:2:A). 04

V:

Eh- har ni 6ppet pa 16rdamo:rron eller, Eh- have you open on saturdaymorning or Eh- are you open saturday morning or

05

K:->Ja::? Yes

06

V:

Attatiden pa 1.Qrda hur [gar de:, Eighttime on saturday how goes that Around eight on saturday how is that

In the first TCU of line 12 in example (3:19), Bosse promises to comply with Per's request 'Yes 1('11) talk with Rickard can do-'. (3:19) CALLING RICKARD [GRU:7:A]. 'hh Eh: e- £ill ringer till dom eller, 'hh Eh: e- you will call to them or 'hh Eh: e- you will call them or

11

P:

12

B: -> Ja: ja prata me

Rickard kan val g6r- ja har inte fatt Yes I talk with Rickard can val do- I have not got Yes I('ll) talk with Rickard can do- I haven't

ta:g pa filbom annu, hold on Ekbom yet got hold of Ekbom yet

13

14

P:

Nehs,.j du [han ar- ar upptagen han ar kan$ke u:te aNehej you he is- is busy he is maybe out and I see he is- is busy he might be out and-

And in examples (3:20) and (3:21) the recipient answers the or-inquiry (lines 11-14 and 17-22 respectively).

71 (3:20) KAFFEREP [GRU:7:A].

ell [erc', Ska hon komma hem pa kiJ.fte da Will she come home on coffee then or Will she come over for coffee then or

10

P:

11

F:->

12

->

13

-> nan

14

-> va

ja 'hh har du lMt a satta pa kiJ.ffewnnan I 'hh have you lust to put on the coffeepot 'hh if you are in the mood to make coffee gang (pa' t 6ver J sa kQmmer ja till dej • Ah some time (on it over) so come I to you "Oh some time I'll come over "Oh

ro:lit" what fun" how nice"

[GRU:2:B].

(3: 21) 15

[Nej da sa No then said No then I said

S:

[

0

• 0

SkiJ_ra ann[ars ell er, da Skara otherwise then or

16

17

18

[ 'hhhh 'hhhh

M:->

-> ja har

I 19

20

hh 0 du 12Qr inte har i 0 • hh you 1 i ve not here in you don't live here in

Naej ja lw.r gjort illa kna:t No I have made hurt the knee No I have hurt my knee

korsbandsskii.Qa. have cruciate ligament injury

(. )

Sa ja har So I have been

i sommar har, 'hh Sa att ja har varit operated me now in summer here 'hh So that I have been operated on now this summer 'hh So I have been

-> ope.D:i_ra t mej nu

->

hemma nu i t.D:i_ manader men annars sa har ja varit home now in three months but otherwise so have I been home for three months but otherwise I have been dar f.lilngt a: vari skidlarare lite har a out and dashed and been ski teacher little here and there out running around and been ski teacher here and there

21

-> ute a

22

-> i

a[:r tre in three years for three years

72

Three of the or-inquiries in the data base were followed by other-initiated repair (Schegloff, Jefferson & Sacks, 1977). In one of these cases the repair initiation was a candidate understanding that was confirmed in the next tum. In the two other cases, (3:22) and (3:23), Va 'What' was used to initiate repair. (3:22) AIRPORT [MOL:3:B]. 07

J:

=He: J°,

Hi OB

09

10

V:

J:->

V:

E JJu pa .Ilf!_tlanda ellerz Are you at Vetlanda or Va? What >Var ~ du nansti111S?< Where are you someplace Whereabouts are you

(3:23) PURE COPY [MOL:l:A]. 13

V:

14

R:->

Ja: 'h va hLi....:_rlit e do(m) pa besf2k nu ellerYes 'h what wonderful are they on visit now or Yes 'h how wonderful are they visiting now or

va:z What

15

V:

E dam pa be~? Are they on visit Are they visiting

As other research has shown this type of repair initiator formulates a general problem in hearing or understanding (Drew, 1997; Schegloff, 1997). In not specifying a particular part of the troublesource tum va 'what' does not single out the tum final el/er as the specific cause of trouble. Nonetheless it is noticeable that the speaker of the troublesource tum drops eller in the repair itself (example (3:22) line 10 and example (3:23) line 15). In example (3:22) this can be explained by the fact that Vera reformulates her question as ~ so called "wh"-question >Var g_ du nanstans< 'Whereabouts are you' and these types of questions cannot take eller. The omission of el/er is more apparent in example (3:23), as the speaker in this example repeats part of the troublesource tum in the repair (cf. lines 13 and 15). The inclusion of el/er in line 13 and its omission in line 15 is more likely to be grounded in the disjunctive character of the tum in line 13 than in the intelligibility of the tum final el/er (cf. Drew, 1997).

73

3.2.5 Sequential uptake in the tum after next tum Schegloff (1992b) demonstrated the strategic importance of the tum following a "responsive" tum (i.e. a tum in third position) for the practical accomplishment of intersubjectivity in conversation. He showed a range of examples where a speaker uses a tum in third position to repair the recipient's understanding of the speaker's prior tum. None of the or-inquiry sequences in my data base involved the type of corrections Schegloff described. Instead the speaker of the or-inquiry promoted the sequence that was already in progress. In example (3:24), Vera responds to the base sequence initiated by the kennel owner in lines 2-3 by proposing that she leave the dog around eightAttatiden pa lorda hur gar de:, 'Around eight on saturday how is that'. (3:24) KENNEL [MOL:2:A). 02

K:

Ja

vi g6:r sa h6rrudu:

men nar

k.Qmmer ni

Yes we do so listenyouyou but when come Yes we'll do that but when will you bring me'rom

03

you

da:c

with'them then them then 04

V:

Eh- har

ni

6ppet pa 16rdamo:rron

eller,

Eh- have you open on saturdaymorning or Eh- are you open saturday morning or 05

K:

Ja::?

Yes 06

V:-> Attatiden pa 1.Qrda hur [gar de:, Eighttime on saturday how goes that Around eight on saturday how is that

In example (3:25), Per responds to Bosse's assertion in lines 12-13 that Bosse· has not been able to reach Ekbom, Ne!Jgj du [han ar- ar upptagen han ar kanske u:te a- 'I see he is- is busy he might be out-'). (3:25) CALLING RICKARD [GRU:7:A). 12

B:

Ja: ja prata me

Rickard kan val g6r- ja har

inte fatt

Yes I talk with Rickard can val do- I have not Yes I('ll) talk with Rickard can do- I haven't 13

got

ta: g pa Ekbom annu,

hold on Ekbom yet got hold of Ekbom yet 14

P:-> Neh,;.j du [han ar- ar upptagen han ar kanske u:te aNehej you he is- is busy he is maybe out and-

I see he is- is busy he might be out-

-

__J

74 15

[Han arHe is

B:

In example (3:26) Per supports Frida's telling with a continuer (line 15).Ja can be heard as an affirmation in Swedish. However, because it does not appear after a yes/no interrogative is more likely to function as a continuer in this sequence. This analysis is supported by Frida's ensuing turn where she declines the opportunity to continue her telling by making a generalization of its upshot. (3:26) KAFFEREP [GRU:7:A]. 10

P:

11

F:

Ska hon komma hem pa k.dffe da ell[eri Will she come home on coffee then or Will she come over for coffee then or [Nej da sa No then said No then I said

12

ja ·1111 har du lJJ..S.t a siltta pa k.dffeI:hlnnan I 'hh have you lust to put on the coffeepot 'hh if you are in the mood to make coffee

13

nan gang (pa't 6verJ sa kQmmer ja till dej nA11 some time (on it over) so come I to you noh some time I'll come over "Oh

14

va ro:lit" what fun" how nice"

15

P:-> Ja:,

Yes 16

F:

·1111 iJo (t) sa de e min da det (dilr), 'hh Jo (t) so 't's my day that (there) 'hh So that was my day

Sara makes a generalization based on Malena's telling in example (3:27). (3:27) SKARA [GRU:2:B]. 15

S:

[

0

0

16

17

Sl5ilra ann[ars Skara otherwise M:

[ 'hhhh 'hhhh

'hh 0 du bQr inte har i 'hh 0 you live not here in you don't live here in

ell er, da then or Nilej ja hIJ.r gjort illa knil:t No I have made hurt the knee No I have hurt my knee

75 (.) Sa ja bar ja bar korsbandssk,aga. have cruciate ligament injury So I have have cruciate ligament injury So I have been I

18

I

19

ope;a;.rat mej nu i sommar bar, "hh Sa att ja bar varit operated me now in summer here "hh So that I have been operated on now this summer 'hh So I have been

20

~mma nu i t~ J11.dnader men annars sa bar ja varit home now in three months but otherwise so have I been home for three months but otherwise I have been

21

ute a flslngt a: vari skidlarare lite bar a dar out and dashed and been ski teacher little here and there out running around and been ski teacher here and there

22

i tre a[:r in three years for three years

23

S:->

24

->

[Ja: ja du bar haft lite sana bar Yes yes you have had little such here Yeah yeah you have had some sasQ11gsjobb a [sant. seasonaljobs and such seasonal jobs and things like that

And, in example (3:28) Cajsa rejects Tore's suggestion (lines 9-11). (3:28) COME HOME [GRU:7:B). 04

T:

Nej nfhh No nfhh

05

C:

Mm~ men du nur ska ja tror'u att ja beh6ver Mm: but you how will I think'you that I need Mm: but listen how should I- do you think I need to kQmma nan kvall i veckan eller, come some evening in the week or come some evening this week or

06

07

(0.6)

Mm: vi kan kQlla de sen da ( Mm: we can check that later then Mm: we can decide that later then

08

T:

09

C:->

[Kan vi val inte Can we val not But we can't do

76 10

-> g6ra for den sillda kvallen ja kan komma isafall ar do for the only evening I can come inthatcase is that for the only evening I can come in that case is

11

-> ju tisda

eller onsda?

ju tuesday or wednesday tuesday or wednesday as you know 12

'I':

Ja

men dc1

f- f.iJJjer ja de

imorron

isafall,

Yes but then w- say I that tomorrow inthatcase Yes but then w- I'll let you know tomorrow in that case

The third position of the or-inquiry sequence furnishes a slot where the speaker of the or-inquiry could address the appropriateness of the recipient's displayed understanding of the or-inquiry. That the or-inquiry speaker uses this sequential slot to promote the sequence in progress rather than, for example addressing the prior turn as interruptive, furnishes further evidence that the or-inquiry is designed to be complete after el/er.

3.2.6 Summary I have isolated the or-inquiry as a turn in its own right. Although it is not a phenomenon that is distinctive to the Swedish language communities, it differs from similar turn-constructions that have been analyzed in American English conversation in that el/er is produced as a constitutive component of its host TCU. The or-inquiries in my collection are syntactically formed as either B-event statements or as syntactic interrogatives. Drawing on work by Sacks et al. (1974) and Ford & Thompson (1996), I analyzed points of possible completion within the or-inquiry. From the point of view of traditional linguistics, the or-inquiry is syntactically incomplete after el/er 'or'. I suggest that this should not be attributed to speech error. Rather it should be treated as evidence for the idea that grammar emerges from and is adaptive to interaction. Through analysis of both the' onset and sequential appropriateness of the activity engaged in the turns that follow the or-inquiry I demonstrated that both the speaker and the recipient orient to the integrity of the or-inquiry in its own right.

3.3 Swedish research on or-inquiries Although the or-inquiry is commonplace in Swedish conversation (Linell & Bredmar, 1995) it has not been systematically studied. Ahrenberg ( 1987) considered or-inquiries in passing in his dissertation on interrogative structures of Swedish. He suggested that the turn final elfer is the most common tag in spoken Swedish (p. 99). Ahrenberg's classification of el/er as a tag probably stems

77 from the fact, supported by the analysis in this chapter, that the tum final el/er follows a syntactically complete utterance. However, my analysis shows that it is misleading to treat el/er as a tag. Unlike other tags such as inte sant 'right', el/er is never prosodically separated from the preceding TCUs in my collection.58 Furthermore, as I have shown, recipients typically treat the or-inquiry as a single unit of action by not claiming the floor prematurely, that is before eller. This is a significant difference from some other tags where the tag is a post-positioned attempt to pre-empt a dispreferred response. Ahrenberg speculated that the main function of the tum-final el/er is to underscore the interrogative nature of an utterance or "at least make sure that a response will follow" (p. 99) but he did not demonstrate how this is accomplished. He also proposed that or-inquiries may function as evidentiary markers that register "sudden doubt" (p. 104). Finally he compared interrogatives that end with el/er with interrogatives that end with el/er inte 'or not' arguing that while the latter forces a choice upon exactly two alternatives, the former allows for a greater range of responses. Unlike the present study, Ahrenberg primarily bases his analysis of the or-inquiry on intuition. As a linguist, Ahrenberg concentrated on specifying possible grammatical constructions that can end with el/er. The present study by contrast is based on real life instances of or-inquiries that are presented and analyzed within their sequential context. The analysis focusses on how interactants orient to el/er as an instrument of social action.

3.4 Marking problematicity with the or-inquiry As noted in the introduction, the or-construction relaxes the preference structure of the tum to facilitate a non-aligning response. The or-construction thus reveals a speaker anticipation of recipient resistance to the project the or-inquiry otherwise engages in. I will now explore this issue in more detail. First, I will briefly review CA work that has demonstrated that problematicity is an oriented-to-feature in talk-in-interaction. I will then analyze a range of or-inquiries that mark problematicity.

3.4.1 Marking problematicity in talk-in-interaction Other CA work has shown that participants in talk-in-interaction can orient to the potentially problematic character of either the actions they engage in or the 58

This observation is based on the collection at hand. I am not arguing that el/er cannot be separated from its host tum.

78 topics they raise (cf. Jefferson, 1984b; Jefferson & Lee, 1981; Schegloff, 1980). A case in point is question projections. Schegloff (1980) showed that question projections can be used to show that "the projected question is, or is marked as, a delicate one" (p. 131). Example (3:29) shows a question projection (lines 14-15) where the delicate character of the projected question (lines 20-22) is made explicit (lines 17-18). (3:29) Erhardt:8:1 (cited and analyzed in Schegloff, 1980, pp. 131-132). 12 13 1'l 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Vicky: Pam: -> ->

Pam:

-> ->

Pam:

You ra~ng? Oh hello there ,'.les I .di:..:...d. .hh um .l nee:d tuh ask you a questio..:.n? (0.4) en you mustn't (0.7) uh take it personally or kill me. (0.7) I wan to kno~w, (0.7) whether you: will{b) would be free~, (.) to work o:n um tomorrow night.

Pre-delicate question projections are forward pointing. They can mark the delicacy of a future action or topic. Or-inquiries by contrast are backwardlooking in that they' mark the project already engaged in within the same turn as problematic. Although el/er in and of itself is not separated from its host .TCU this lends it an "after the fact" character. If we approach this turn construction in terms of considerations of face and politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1978; Goffman, 1955) it seems a poor conversational move. In blunt terms, the speaker first puts her foot in her mouth and then draws attention to this with the tum-final el/er. However, in terms of sequential considerations the fact that el/er is done in tum-final p9sition is crucial. Other work (Schegloff, 1995) has shown that an unmarked yes/no interrogative generally prefers a 'yes'-type response. By unmarked I mean a question where other aspects of its design on the one hand, such as a negative formulation, or its positioning on the other, does not alter its preference organization. By adding el/er in tum-final position the speaker relaxes the preference organization of the turn. Contrary to other yes/no-questions, or-inquir,ies may be more likely to be heard to allow for the potentiality of a 'no' -type ref ponse.

3.4.2 Or-inquiries that run counter to the preference displayed in the prior talk That or-inquiries are used to mark problematicity is most readily apparent in environments where elements of the preceding sequence already have indicated that the project the or-inquiry engages in is dispreferred.

79 3.4.2.1 Making an offer that is unwarranted by the prior talk Example (3:30) was introduced in the beginning of this chapter. (3:30)

01

P:

CITY HALL [GRU:7:B]. Per and Erik are members of intramural soccer team.

Ar'u

the

same

fit for .tJ..ght i1I1Qrron?

Are'you fit for fight tomorrow Are you fit for fight for tomorrow

Jo::ra na

sa 11.ar, Jothen some so near Jo sort of

02

E:

03

P: ->Ska ja komma J eh- vagen forbi: eller, Shall I come and eh- the road by or Should I come and eh- drop by your place or

04

E:

Nej ja a

i

lfillk- nej fan

ja a

i

Ska: ra imorron

No I 'min Esk- no devil I 'min Skara tomorrow No I'll be in Esk- no by god I am in Skara tomorrow 05

kvall for fa:n, night for devil night damn it

Per' s question in line 1 occurs in the "reason for call" slot (cf. Schegloff, 1986; and, for Swedish, Lindstrom, 1994). Although it does not formulate the reason for call it is likely to be heard in terms of the reason for the call due to its positioning in this sequential slot. The question itself, Ar' u fit for fight imorron 'Are you fit for fight for tomorrow', places the onus on Erik to figure out what Per means. An alternative and more accessible formulation would have been for Per to ask whether Erik is ready for the upcoming soccer game. In asking the question in just the way he asks it, Per shows that he orients to the upcoming game as a big event that need not be named and, more importantly, that he expects Erik to share his orientation and enthusiasm. Erik's response in the next turn is considerably downgraded. I hear the tum-initial response token Jo: coupled with the spoken version of the inference marker da (i.e. Jo::ra) as roughly equivalent to the English 'well' in this sequential position. The next TCU, na sd niir 'sort of', downgrades the response even further. Thus, Erik's response raises the possibility that he is not ready for and prepared to participate in the upcoming game. Instead of pursuing this possibility, Per asks in the next turn whether Erik would like to carpool to the game. This is done with an or-inquiry, Skaja komma 4 eh- viigenforbi: eller 'Should I come and eh- drop by your place or'. The first self-interrupted unit Ska ja komma 4 eh- 'Should I come and eh-' could be heard to be going toward ska ja komma a hiimta dej 'should I come and pick you up'. Per drops this formulation in favor of viigen

80 forbi: e/ler 'the road by or'. The second formulation underscores that Per will not have to go out of his way to fulfill the offer. This self-repair shows that Per orients to the action as problematic even before the articulation of el/er 'or'. By making the offer, Per is assuming that Erik will participate in the game. This assumption runs counter to the preceding talk. In doing the offer as an or-inquiry, Per displays an awareness of the problematic character of his course of action.

3.4.2.2 Refusing to fulfill an expectation to speak on behalf of a

spouse In the next example (3:31), the speaker of the or-inquiry refuses to fulfill an expectation to respond on her husband's behalf. Kicki is calling Allan and Vera's home to ask if Allan can act as the adult guardian during a riding camp sleep over. (3:31)

01

K:

SLEEPING OVER [MOL:2:A]. Kicki is a riding instructor at a childrens' riding camp. The children spend the night at the camp. She is calling for Allan who is not home. Allan's wife Vera has just told Kicki when she expects Allan to return.

Nej f6r ja skulle h6:ra f6r han hade tydligen No for I should hear for he had apparently No cause I was going to ask cause he had apparently

02

.fu;i:gt i va:ras ,att han kunde ligga kva:r pa na said in the spring that he could lay over on some said last spring that he could sleep over at some

03

la:ger na- nat tag hh camp so- some time hh

04

V:

Jal.li'i;_;_ pt

05

K:

Och eh ja har l.,ager nu' ra och de imorron And eh I have a camp now then and it tomorrow

06

imorron natt ( 0 skulle're va jattebra om han tomorrow night (would't be reallygood if he

07

kunde could

08

V:

Ja

ja

0)

)

i.JLf.st de,

Yes yes right it Yes yes right

09

K:

[ (

(

e:rbjudi sej, offered himself he offered to

81 10

V: ->Jaj_a .hh eh ja har svart a sY,ara pa de [men= Yesyes .hh eh I have difficulty to answer on that but Yes .hh eh it is difficult for me to answer that but

11

K:

[Ja:.

Yes 12

V: ->=om han ksa.n sa gar han sakert de men kan ja be if he can so does he surely that but may I ask if he can he'll surely do it but may I ask ->honom ringa dej ikva:11 eller?

13

him call you tonight or him to call you tonight or 14

15

K:

Mm: ja e val kvar har till sex nanting pa Mm: I 'm val still here until six something at Mm I'm probably here until around six or so at

ri:dhuse the riding house the riding center

, Although her intended recipient is not available, Kicki begins to formulate the reason for call in line l,for ja skulle ho:ra 'cause I was going to ask'. She interrupts this turn in progress to state that Allan had previously promised to perform the activity that Kicki is about to ask that he perform/or han hade tydligen sa:gt i vc'i:ras att han kunde ligga kva:r pa na lii:ger na- nat tag hh 'cause he had apparently said last spring that he could sleep over at some camp so- some time hh'. In stating this Kicki does not only show why it is relevant for her to make the request. Additionally she implies (by qualifying the authority of her statement with tydligen 'apparently') that Allan would be breaking his word if he did not comply. I hear Vera's uptake in line 4 as an acknowledgment (akin to "I see"). This response neither affirms nor denies the veracity of Kicki' s previous statement. Kicki continues by stating that she currently is in charge of a riding camp and intimates that she would need Allan to sleep over with the children the next night, imorron natt ( 0skulle' re va Jiittebra om han kunde 0 ) 'tomorrow night (would't be reallygood if he could),'. Vera's next turn (line 8) recognizes the need that Kicki has articulated but does not respond to the request. Kicki thus renews the relevance of the request by once again noting Allan's promise e:rbjudi sej 'he offered to'. That Kicki is renewing the request and the relevance of an acceptance or granting is supported by Vera's uptake where she formulates herself as unable to respond on her husband's behalf,ja har svart a svara pa de 'it is difficult for me to answer that'. Vera then mitigates her refusal to either grant or deny the request by stating that she is sure that her husband will comply if able to do so and goes on to ask whether Allan can return Kicki's call with an or-inquiry. In this case the or-inquiry marks that Vera recognizes that her refusal to respond on her husband's behalf is dispreferred.

82

3.4.2.3 Declining a request Example (3:32) is taken from a different conversation where someone is trying to reach Vera's husband Allan. (3:32) BUSY [MOL:2:A). Jens is seeking Allan but is told that Allan is busy and cannot come to the phone. Vera checks if Allan can call Jens back and asks if 10 pm would be too late. The sequence continues as transcribed. 01

J:

Na: 'ra de

gar

bra,

llothen that goes fine !lo that's fine 02

V:

Ja:? Yes

03

J:

Ni :e tva tre sjutton, Nine two three seventeen

04

V:-> Eh vi ska

se

nu· har

ja ingen pe:nna har

tror'u

Eh we shall see now have I no pen here think'you Eh let's see I don't have a pen here now do you think -> han har lll!mret

05

he 06

J:

elleri

has the number or

Ja: han kan sla

upp de annars,

Yes he can look up it otherwise .Yes otherwise he can look it up

In terms of both its sequential placement-after Vera has clarified how late Allan can return the call-and form, line 3 is bearable as a recitation of Jens' phone number. Vera responds to it as a request to write down the number by asserting that she is unable to do so, Eh vi ska se nu har ja ingen pe:nna hiir 'Eh let's see I don't have a pen here now'. In framing this account with nu 'now' and hiir 'here' (see the word by word translation for the Swedish word order) she shows that it was not unreasonable for Jens to assume that she could have been prepared to write down the number. She then uses an or-inquiry to ask whether her husband already has the number, tror' u han har numret el/er 'do you think he has the number or'. This question declines the request. The or-inquiry shows Vera's awareness that she is not engaging in the preferred course of action. Jens accepts the declination in his next turn by suggesting that Allan look up the number in the phone book. This suggestion preserves the appropriateness of Jens' having made the request in the first place and highlights that it indeed would have been relevant for Vera to. write down the number.

83

3.4.2.4 Pursuing a topic that has been resisted The or-inquiry is used to pursue a topic that has been resisted in the immediately preceding talk in the next example (3:33). The example was introduced in chapter 1. Anita is calling Vera to see if they can arrange a get together. Anita has stated that she would like to come over to Vera's place some time during the week. Vera has just asked Anita which day she had in mind. The sequence continues as follows: (3:33) SABBATSBERG [MOL:l:A]. Anita and Vera attended medical school together. Both women interrupted their medical training to have children. "Schooling•, first mentioned in line 10 refers to the process of gradually getting the children accustomed to institutional day care (this typically requires that at least one parent be present). Sabbatsberg, mentioned in line 18 is a mental hospital. 09

A:

borjar ja sko:la in dam, begin I school in them schooling them next week

10

11

V:

12

A:

13

A:

16

17

'

/

/'

/

18

pt'hh Ska' ru [borja jQbbai pt'hh Will'you [begin working Are you gonna start working [(

Ja ja ska borja jabba i sep.t;&,mber tredje Yes I will begin working in september third Yes I ' l l start to work in september the third septsWJ.ber, sept ember of september

14

15

Nej ja har inte tankt nan.ting for nasta vecka No I have not thought anything cause next week No I hadn't thought anything it's just that I begin

V:

A:

Xl::s!.dje september ah.i:J.? pt Third september ah.i:J. pt The third of september ah.i:J.

pt

Sa att ja ska borja ska:la in dam, So that I will begin school in them So that I will begin schooling them gar ja nasta vecka) [(de [ (that do I next week) I'll do that next week

V: ->[Ska'ru jabba pa Sabbatsberg elleri [Will'you work at Sabbatsberg or Are you going to work at Sabbatsberg or

84 19

A:

Ja:,

Yes 20

V:

0

Pa: vicken avdelning- 0

On which department At which department 21

A:

Ja

de

vet

ja inte nu,

Yes that know I not now Well I don't know that at the moment 22

V:

23

A:

'h 0 [ne 0 · h 0 [no 0 [Ja har

[I 24

f6rtrc1ngt de [hh,

have repressed it [hh [Du

V:

har

f6rtr- heh heh

[You have repr25

A:

[heh [

0

heh

heh 0

26 27

[heh

heh heh

V:

'hh Men Anita du

har

vari hemma lange ocksa

'hh But Anita you have been home long also But Anita you have been home for a long time as well 28

vac right haven't you

Anita first mentions that she will be schooling in the children in line 10 to explain why she may not be able to get together with Vera during the upcoming week. Vera latches onto this ancillary component (Jefferson, 1984b) of Anita's talk by asking whether Anita is going to start to work (line 11).59 Anita's response focusses not on the prospective job itself but on its time frame, Ja ja ska borja jobba i september tredje september 'Yes I'll start to work in september the third of september'. The time frame is relevant for the sequential activity that still is in progress, i.e. figuring out a time when Vera and Anita can get to- 1 gether. Vera receipts this information with a word repeat, Tredje september 'The third of september', and an acknowledgment, aha, in her next tum. The acknowledgment potentiates but does not require uptake from Anita. Instead of expanding on the news that she is returning to work, Anita returns to the fact that she will be schooling in the children and its relevance for the arrangement of the get together in her next tum which begins with the resumption marker Sa 59

Institutional day care is primarily offered to working parents in Sweden. That Anita is about to school in her children at daycare thus raises the possibility that she will start to work.

85 'So' (lines 16-17). In spite of Anita's resumption to the children's school schedule, Vera pursues the news that Anita is going back to work with an or-inquiry, Ska' ru jobba pa Sabbatsberg eller 'Are you going to work at Sabbatsberg or'. Here, the or-design shows that Vera is aware that she is pursuing a topic that Anita is resisting. Anita's reluctance to engage in the topic Vera is proposing is evident not only in her curtailed uptake to the questions in line 18 and 20 but also in her admission in line 23 that she 'has repressed it'. The most proximate reference for "it" is Vera's question in line 20 'at which department'. The Swedish word fortriingt is psychologically loaded. In using this term, Anita conveys her anxiety about the assigned department. There is a faint laugh token at the end of this tum (line 23). Although Vera first treats Anita's confession as laughable she quickly changes her tack and offers a reason (that she herself shares) as to why Anita might feel anxious ·hh Men Anita du har vari hemma liinge ocksa va 'but Anita you have been home for a long time as well haven't you'. Examples (3:30-3:33) showed or-inquiries where aspects of the prior talk indicate that the action engaged in with the or-inquiry is dispreferred. For example (3:30), Erik's downgraded response to Per's question whether he is "fit for fight" suggests the possibility that he is not prepared to participate in the upcoming soccer game. Instead of pursuing this possibility, Per asks whether Erik would like to carpool to the game. In formulating and pursuing a request that Vera's husband perform night duty at a riding camp in a conversation with Vera, Kicki shows that she expects Vera to speak on her husband's behalf (example 3:31). Instead of doing so, Vera defers this decision to her husband. In example (3:32), Jens recites his telephone number to Vera so that her husband will be able to return his phone call. Instead of writing down the number, Vera asks whether Allan already has the number. In example (3:33), Vera pursues a topic that Anita has resisted in the preceding talk.

3.4.3 Or-inquiries that in and of themselves are dispreferred The next set of examples show or-inquiries that in themselves are dispreferred. They include making a pre-complaint, checking whether a recipient knows about an embarrassing incident, mis-aligning with a troubles-telling, disaligning with a line pursued by the recipient in the previous talk, and articulating something untoward that only was alluded to in the prior talk.

3.4.3.1 A pre-complaint )

In example (3 :34), Mia is calling the social insurance office to ask whether her husband's sick leave benefit has been paid out. She formulates this request as an or-inquiry.

86 (3:34) SICK LEAVE [VAT:13:B]. 01

F:

F6rsakringskassan

Lindell,

Social insurance office Lindell M: ->Ja

02

lltn'san

de va

Mia E.Qvardsson ja skulle hara

'hhh

Yes hi there it was Mia Edwardsson I should hear 'hhh Yeah hi this is Mia Edwardsson I was going to see 'hhh 03

->angJende

Torkel E.Qvardssons

sju: kpenning

om den e

regarding Torkel Edvardsson's sickness benefit if it's -;,pJ va:g eller (m), 'hh[h hhh on way or (m) , 'hhh hhh

Ori

on its way or (m), 'hhh hhh 05

F:

[Uu:~

Uu:~

06

ar

born

M:

[Mm~

~ r t i 11Qll sex .s:l..t.ta

08

(0.2) nitti

~etton,

ninety thirteen

forty zero six eight

Mm

09

nar

ha[n .f.Qdd?

he 07

~

Vi ska

We will see when is Let's see when was

(0. 8)

F:

}'.gnta litegrann

da,

Wait little bit then Hold on for a moment then 10

M:

11

....

Mm

.?

(32.00)

( (children's voices in background) )

side conversation between Mia and daughter omitted 15

F:

Ar'e for ett sjJJ.kfall nu

har

i: [: augustii

Is't for a sickness now here in Is't for a sickday in august 16

M:

august

[Ja:?

Yes 17

M:

A·?

\ \

Yes 18

F:

'hh Pengar ska

'hh Money 19

M:

Dom

\

komma ida:,

will come

kommer

iQQ,

They will come today

today

87 In raising the expectation that money may not have been paid out even though it is due, this or-inquiry is hearable as a pre-complaint. Furthermore, from the point of view of the dominant culture, the inquiry could be considered delicate as it intimates that Mia and her family are low on cash. Mia displays an orientation to the problematic character of her course of action with the or-construction.

~.4.3.2 Checking whether the recipient knows about an embarrassing incident The or-inquiry in example (3:35) is dispreferred in that it checks whether the recipient knows about an embarrassing incident. Ylva and Liv are talking. Liv is Ylva's daughter's (Maria's) riding instructor. Maria has recently participated in a riding camp that Liv taught. (3:35) CUMBERSOME [VAT:13:A]. Henrik, mentioned in line 21 is Liv's son. 01 Y:

(Gudrun Ahl) va ute a red ut i skQgen med Mari:a (Gudrun Ahl) was out and rode out in the woods with Maria (Gudrun Ahl was out and rode in the woods with Maria one

02

de- de gick j,!j.ttebra:, en da a one day and it- it went superwell day and she did really well

03 L:

Ja: Yes

04

(.)

05 L:

Jo: [d- "hhh Jo: d- "hhh Jo: th- "hhh

96 Y:

/

[Sa de gjorde mycke (a)

de dar ridlagre i So it did much (also) that there riding camp in So it made a big difference as well that riding camp

07

.§.Qmras the summer this summer

08 L:

Ja:, Yes

09 Y:

Liksom lite m.era, Sort of little more

10 L:

Jo: de bi :r liksom dom- man fastnar Jo: it becomes sort of they- one gets attached Jo: it becomes sort of they- one picks up

88 11

lite

olikah

olika

gre(h)jer,

little different different things a few different different things 12 Y:

Ja:visst,

Yes of course 13 L: ->Tyckte hon de va jQbbit da eller, Thought she it was cumbersome then or Did she think it was tough then or 11 y:

Nej jc1ttero[:lit,

!lo ouperfun !lo lots of fun 15 L:

[Nej nej ta:rarna

den

pn;i.ta

hon inge

om

No no the tears that talked she nothing about No no she did not talk of the tears at all 16 17 Y:

'hh Va

sa'ru,

What said'you What did you say 18 L:

Tararna

prata hon inge

om,

The tears said she nothing about She did not talk of the tears 19 Y:

Nej va ['re

sana dac

No were there such then No were there such things then 20 L:

[Ja: :ra

de va

de

ocksa

Yesthen it was that too Oh yes there was as well 21

22 Y:

phh [hh hh, [$Va

va: 're da

da$c

What was't then then What was that then 23 L:

Ne:j de va

den

dar

da:n nar

Henrik skulle tidac

No it was that there day when Henrik should ride No it was the day when Henrik was supposed to ride

Ylva is talking about Maria's progress in horsebackriding. She cites the riding camp that Liv organized as one of the factors that has improved her daughter's horsemanship (line 6-7). Her tum can be heard as a compliment to Liv. Liv aligns with Ylva's statement without overtly accepting the self-praise by stating diffidently manfastnar lite olikah olika gre(h)jer 'one picks up a few different different things' (lines 8, 10-11).

\ \ I

89 As the ensuing talk reveals, Liv knows that Maria did not have an altogether positive experience at the riding camp. Apparently, there was an incident during the camp between Liv's son, Henrik, and Maria that brought Maria to tears (cf. lines 17-23). From Liv's perspective this is an embarrassing incident because it implicates her both as the instructor of the camp and as the mother of the instigator. However Liv does not know whether Ylva knows of this incident . and, more importantly for the sequence at hand, whether Ylva's praise of Liv in lines 6-7, reflects a reversal of a previously held critical view. She pursues this delicate issue with an or-inquiry in line 13 Tyckte hon de va jQbbit da el/er 'Did she think it was tough then or'. Ylva flatly disagrees in the next turn (line 14) whereupon Liv asks whether Maria mentioned the tears to her mother Tararna prata hon inge om 'She did not talk of the tears'. Ylva receipts this with a repair initiation. Upon hearing the repaired question Ylva answers "no". She then asks Nej va're sana da 'Were there such things then' (line 19) thus aligning herself as a previously uninformed recipient of Liv's incipient telling. Liv thus begins to tell the story about the incident that upset Maria in her next turn (line 23 ff.).

3.4.3.3 Mis-aligning with a troubles-telling The next or-inquiry initiates a step-wise topic shift (Jefferson, 1984b). A step-wise topic shift is a shift that gradually moves away from the earlier topic. It does so by focussing on an ancillary matter, i.e. something that was not at the heart of the matter of the previous talk. Jefferson showed that step-wise topic shifts can be used to move out of a troubles-telling. This can be a dispreferred · activity. The or-inquiry in example (3:36) is used in just this way. (3:36) SALINE DROPS [VAT:13:A). Vendela and Liv are mothers. Vendela is calling to tell Liv that a common friend just gave birth to a baby girl. She reports that she learned this news when she was buying saline drops at the pharmacy. Min in line 1 refers to Vendela' s infant son who has a severe cold. The symbol + indicates a complex TRP. 01

V:

fHa mi:n har inte .:,Qvit sen klockan .t;Qlv ida~= I see mine has not slept since clock twelve today Well mine has not slept since noon today

02

L:

Ne[~. No Really

03

V:

/

/

[Nast.d.Qpt sa in: i helsicke de badar gott Noseblocked so in in hell that bodes well Congested like hell it bodes for a

~I

!

90 +

+

inf6r natten vettu, infor the night knowyou nice night you know

04

(0. 8)

05

( ,(KIDS IN BACKGROUND))

06

L:

Va k6pte'ru nu ra, What bought'you now then What did you buy then

07

V:

Va, What

08

L:~ Va

09

V:

k6pte'ru s1J::s:2ppar eller, What bought'you drops or What did you buy drops or

Ja: Jw.n far ju inte ta nils:spray heller, Yes he can ju not take nosespray either Yes he can't use nose spray

Vendela complains that her baby has not napped properly in line 1. This is receipted with a minimal acknowledgment from Liv in line 2. Vendela continues with, Nastgppt sa in: i helsicke 'Congested like hell'. The syntactic construction, that is the omission of the subject, makes this tum parasitic of Vendela's prior tum. It can therefore be heard to attribute the lack of sleep to the congestion. Vendela then states ironically de badar gott in/or natten vettu 'it bodes for a nice night you know'. There are at least three ways that Vendela's turns in lines 1, 3-4 can be heard as a troubles-telling. First, the complaint which is done through a negative observation in line 1. Second, the negative characterization "congested like hell" in line 3. Third, the intimation in the continuation of the tum in lines 3-4 that this condition will prevail through the night, de badar gott in/or natten vettu 'it bodes for a nice night you know'. Jefferson & Lee (1981) examined the sequential organization of a troublestelling. They argued that the proper alignment to a troubles-telling is for the troubles recipient to affiliate with the troubled party. Instead of affiliating with Vendela, Liv does a step-wise topic shift by focussing on an ancillary component of the prior talk, the medication that Vendela has purchased Va kopte' ru nu rd' 'What did you buy then'. Rather than aligning herself with the troubled, Liv thus addresses herself to the trouble and its remedy. Vendela's repair initiation in line 7 may be attributed to the disjointed and dispreferred character of Liv's inquiry (cf. Drew, 1997). When Liv performs the repair, she constructs the tum as an or-inquiry thereby marking it as problematic.

91

3.4.3.4 Disaligning with the line pursued in the previous talk The next five examples show or-inquiries that disalign with the line pursued by the recipient of the or-inquiry in the prior talk. By "line" I mean to include both topic in general and particular perspectives on a given topic. In the talk preceding the segment transcribed in example (3:37), Malena and Sara have talked about a mutual friend who recently took up horse racing. Malena begins a new topic by asking if Sara has been out on the town on "the old days" (line 2). Malena's tum is both a question of fact and a topic proffer. (3:37) SKARA [GRU:2:B]. Skara, mentioned in line 15 is the name of the small town where the Sara and Malena grew up. "The old days" in line 2 refers to a historic town festival in Skara. 01

s:

Ja:c. Yes

02

M:

hhh 1Ha: t (. ) har 'u vari pa st.fill da pa aldre Qdr? Ha: have'you been on town then on old days Ha: have you been out on the town then on the old days

03

S:

Naej, No

04

M:

05

S:

Du [har inte ~' You have not that You haven't [ (

0

Na:ej 0 • No

06

M:

.hh De va faktist .i.dt;;.temysit igd.;..r, Igarkv,,;i.11 .hh 'twas actually supercozy yesterday yesterdaynight 'twas actually really nice yesterday last night the

07

de va tsa ygrmt vader a sa mycke folkt (uppe it was so warm weather and so much people up the weather was so warm and so many people up

08

var riktit lfil'.Sit faktist ['hhhh was really cozy actually 'hhhh was actually really nice

09

S:

10

M:

11

)

[Ja: de kan ja J;11nka mej, Yes 't can I think me Yes I can imagine that Deva sa QQtt gick a at gliJ.ss a sa hej 'twas so sweet walked and ate icecream and said hi [till alla gamla ko:mpisar a sa dar. ((creaky voice)) to all old friends and such there

92 12

S:

13

S:

[

0

Jaha O •

Ja:hh? Yes

14

M:

De va .lilktist j.

[

0

•

0

->Skilra ann[ars dJ eller, Skara otherwise then or

16

17

hh 0 du ]2Qr inte har i 'hh 0 you live not here in you don't live here in

M:

[ 'hhhh 'hhhh

Naej ja lmr gjort illa kna:t No I have made hurt the knee No I have hurt my knee

18

(.) SJ ja har ja har korsbandsskilila. So I have I have cruciate ligament injury So I have been I have cruciate ligament injury

19

ope;cgrat mej nu . i sommar har, 'hh SJ att ja har varit operated me now in summer here 'hh So that I have been operated on now this summer 'hh So I have been

20

hs:.mma nu i t..al m1l,nader men annars sa har ja varit home now in three months but otherwise so have I been home for three months but otherwise I have been

21

ute a fl..(Dom

e)

e

dam

kva:r pa Gotland elleri

(They are) are they left on Gotland or (They are) are they still on Gotland or 29

A:

Ja: dom

har

ju k6pt

en

anflsils- nat

andtlshus

Yes they have ju bought a condo- some condominium Yes they have bought a condo- some condominium 30

ell er va de e:, or what it is or whatever it is

In stressing Li:sa (line 20) Anita highlights the link between the new topic that she is introducing and the previous topic. Specifically this is a story about another friend who has had a baby. Faced with no uptake from Vera, Anita continues her turn with the post-positioned de vet du 'you know that' (line 21). This post-positioned object gives a possible reason why Vera did not immediately respond to the announcement. I hear the turn initial.[m:sd in Vera's next turn as roughly equivalent to 'I see'. It is a weak alignment with the news announcement. Vera continues her turn by stating that she did not know about Lisa's new baby. Anita self-selects to supply the child's name in the next turn (line 23). This is receipted with a minimal acknowledgment from Vera (line 24) and a delayed assessment (line 26). After a soft acknowledgment from Anita, Vera initiates an or-inquiry that focusses on an ancillary component of the prior talk, the whereabouts of Lisa's family. In addition to moving away from the talk about the new baby, the or-inquiry portrays Vera as a fairly distant friend I of Lisa and her family in that she shows herself to not even be sure as to where· they live. As such it undermines the relevance of Anita sharing the new baby announcement with Vera. In the next example (3:39), Runar is telling Vera about the resemblance between his grandchild and Vera's husband, Allan. Runar is Allan's paternal uncle. Runar has to do three assessments of this resemblance (lines 1, 8, and 12) to secure a delayed second assessment from Vera. Vera then moves away from Runar's telling with an or-inquiry (line 13).

95 (3:39) PURE COPY [MOL:l:A). 01

R:

Tank ja har en kop.i.;J. av Allan har, Think I have a copy of Allan here Just think I have a copy of Allan here

02

V:

Jast}.?

03

R:

Hos m.ej. With me At my house

04

V:

Jaha.;_;_?

05

R:

heter'en (den) dotter§.Qnen Den har eller nth va This here or nfh what call't (it) the daughterson This here or nfh what do you call (it) my grandson till m.ej' me to

06

07

V:

Ja,;__? Yes

08

R:

Ja de e en .nm kop.i.;J. den 'ru, ((excited)) Yes 't 's a pure copy that 'you Yes 't's a carboncopy that one you see

09

V:

Kristi@?

10

R:

Ja:? Yes

11

V:

Ja::? Yes

12

R:

Ja dee f6r JJ.I1derlit, Yes 't 's too strange Yes 't's eerie

13

V: ->

'h va hll.Lrlit do(m) pa besM nu ellerJa: e Yes 'h what wonderful are they on visit now or Yes 'h how wonderful are they visiting now or

14

R:

Va:i, What

15

V:

dam pa be.fil.lJ...k? E Are they on visit Are they visiting

16

R:

h,lr: ja har f5"m stycken har nu. Dom e They are here I have five pieces here now They are here I have five of them here now

((smile voice))

96 17

V:

O::j oj oj. Oj oj oj Oh my

(.) Huse fullt. The house full A full house

Runar's initial assessment of his grandson's likeness to Allan in line 1 makes relevant a second assessment from Vera. Instead, Vera merely does an acknowledgment (line 2) whereupon Runar explicates through a post-positioned phrasal increment that "the copy" is at his house (line 3). Vera'sJaha;_;_ in the next turn sounds slightly puzzled and this may lead Runar to provide a more accessible person reference, Den hiir el/er nfh va heter' en (den) dottersonen 'this here or nfh what do you call (it) my grandson'. Vera's acknowledgment in the next turn (line 7) could be heard to be doing recognition of the new person reference. If the person reference problem has been solved a second assessment would be due at this point. Runar's next turn shows that this is what he expects. He does a second upgraded assessment of the resemblance which renews the relevance of a second assessment from Vera (line 8). Instead of doing the second assessment, Vera supplies the grandson's name. Her turn is try-marked and makes relevant a confirmation. Having received confirmation from Runar Vera still does not provide the second assessment. Runar thus does a third assessment in his next turn, Jade efor under/it 'Yes't's eerie' (line 12). Vera finally produces the long awaited second assessment in line 13 but it is delayed by a turn-initial affirmative response token and an inbreath. Furthermore she immediately initiates an exit to the sequence by doing an or-inquiry on an ancillary matter, whether Kristian and his family are visiting Runar. The dispreferred and disjointed character of this querie is underscored by Runar's repair initiation in the next turn (line 14) (cf. Drew, 1997). Per's elderly mother Frida is in the midst of recounting the events of her day in example (3:40). (3:40) KAFFEREP [GRU:7:B]. Per is calling his elderly mother (Frida). The second word in line 7 is not the personal masculine pronoun but the beginning of an abandoned word (possibly the-Swedish hej -English 'hi'). Quotation marks indicate phrases that are produced as quoted speech. 01

F:

A sen har ja ringt till Elin Sve::nsson And then have I called to Elin Sve::nsson And then I've called Elin Svensson

02

P:

Ja::, Yes

03

F:

Du ,Bet gamla somm:erska[n, You know the old seamstress

04

P:

[Jajaja:, Yesyesyes

97 05

F:

"hhh A .t.,;ink hon blev sa gla sa hon nastan "hhh And think she became so happy so she almost And imagine she became so happy that she almost

06

ja hon blev £2DJ.ten i r6sten "hh nNe men yes she became broken in the voice "hh No but yes she got all choked up "hh Oh but

07

EJ;;:ida he far jag hora din J;jj_st [sa hFrida he may I hear your voice" said shFrida he I get to hear your voice" she said

08

0

[Ja:c:

P:

Yes 09

F:

10

P: ->Ska hon komma hem pa knffe da'ra ell[erc: Will she come home on coffee then'then or Will she come over for coffee then or

11

F:

(Eh-)

[Nej da sa No then said No then I

12

ja "hh har du l.!J..!2.t a satta pa knffe12£nnan I "hh have you lust to put on the coffeepot said 'hh if you are in the mood to make coffee

13

nan gang (pa't over) sa kQmmer ja till dej nAh some time (on it over) so come I to you "Oh some time I'll come over to you "Oh

14

va ro:lit" what fun" how nice"

15

P:

Ja:, Yes

Frida introduces Elin Sve::nsson by first and last name in line 1. In light of Per's timely recognition in the next turn (line 2), Frida's second description of Elin Svensson in line 3 seems unnecessary. This analysis is supported by Per's uptake jajaja: 'yesyesyes' which in its repetition emphasizes that recognition already had been achieved. It seems possible that Frida's turn in line 3 is less oriented to securing recognition than to do a character description as to how Elin will figure in her prospective telling. That is, Elin is not going to figure as a friend in Frida's story but as an elderly person of potentially lower status (relative to Frida). This interpretation is supported by the next turn where Frida focusses on how emotional Elin became upon hearing from her. Frida even quotes Elin as saying "Ne men Frida he far jag hora din rost" 'Oh but Frida he

98 I get to hear your voice'. Per does an acknowledgment in overlap with Frida's

line 7. He then interrupts her telling in progress with an or-inquiry in line 10, Ska hon komma hem pa !mffe dcl' ra eller 'Will she come over for coffee then or'. The or-inquiry is problematic in that it curtails Frida's telling by formulating its upshot. Furthermore, it presumes an egalitarian relationship between the two women as Per suggests that it would be apt for Frida to invite Elin to her house for coffee. Frida's response (lines 11-14) rejects the or-inquiry on both these fronts. Frida first flatly asserts in dispreferred position that she had told the seamstress that she would be willing to visit her house for a coffee, har du lll.S.t a siitta JJCl !illffeJ2[1.nnan nan gang (pa' t over) sa kommer ja till dej 'if you are in the mood to make coffee some time I'll come over'. She then resumes her telling by quoting Elin's overjoyed response. The next example introduces a competing dimension on the topic at hand when a second assessment is due. (3:41) BLAZER [GRU:8:A]. Malena has just declined Lisa's invitation to go swimming. 36

M:

[Ja haller pa a

ipr(h)ova kl11.Lderi ja har

I hold on and try clothes I have I am in the midst of trying on clothes I have 37

k6pt

en kava:j,

bought a 38

L:

blazer

Na:ej? No

39

M:

En gr6:n kavaj

0

skit 0 snygg allsa,

A green blazer shit nice see A green blazer damn nice see 40

L:->Palian da ellerc,, At the sale then or

41

M:

Ja~ den kosta .f.f?.mh.!.lndra?

Yes it cost fivehundred Yes it cost five hundred crowns 42

L:

Jaha dee ju brai Ja@ 't 's ju good

that's good 43

M:

Deva

halva pri:setG

It was half

price

Malena self-selects to announce that she has bought a blazer in lines 36-37. Lisa receipts this information as news in the next tum (Heritage, 1984a). Malena continues by describing and assessing the blazer (En gro:n kavaj 0skit 0snygg

99

allsa 'A green blazer damn nice see'). This tum is parasitic of her prior tum. "A green blazer" can be heard as a specification of the tum final "a blazer" in line 37. Malena's assessment in the end of line 39 makes relevant a second assessment (Pomerantz, 1984). Like most contributions to talk-in-interaction, assessments involve more than mere description. Goodwin & Goodwin (1992) argued that assessments provide a resource for the interactive organization of experience. According to them assessments reveal not just neutral objects in the world, but an alignment taken up toward phenomena by a particular actor. Furthermore this alignment can be of some moment in revealing such significant attributes of the actor as his or her taste and the way in which he or she evaluates the phenomena he or she perceives. It is therefore not surprising that displaying congruent understanding can be an issue of some importance to the participants (p. 166).

Instead of responding to Malena's assessment with a.second assessment, Lisa initiates an or-inquiry, Pa rean da eller 'At the sale then or'. There is topical continuity between the or-inquiry and the prior talk in that both focus on the blazer. However, while Malena emphasized the aesthetic quality of the blazer, Lisa emphasizes its value. Indeed, it could be argued that the or-inquiry sequentially deletes Malena's tum in line 39 (Lerner, 1989). This is because the or-inquiry is syntactically fitted to the last TCU of the turn that begins in line 36, ja har kopt en kava.j 'I have bought a blazer'. So even though the or-inquiry is topically continuous with the previous talk it introduces a slight shift from the immediately preceding tum. Malena shows her orientation to the salience of the shift from aesthetics to value by not only confirming that she bought the blazer on sale but also giving its price. And, although Lisa does a positive assessment in line 42, Malena defensively explains that this was a half-price value in line 43.

3.4.3.5 Formulating something that was conveyed in the prior talk In the vernacular, understanding usually connotes a "mental" meeting of minds. Interactionally however, understanding is a situated accomplishment. Confirming allusions provide one method for its achievement (Schegloff, 1996a). Confirming allusions refers to a practice by which a speaker confirms that a recipient's candidate understanding of what the speaker conveyed in the prior talk is on target. Example (3:42) shows an instance of this phenomenon. (3:42)

1

Mar:

=He's 1lying.

Mar:

En Ilene is going to meet im:, Becuz the .t.Q.;J2 wz ripped off'v iz .QQI: which is tih asay aQmeb'ddy helped th'mselfs.

2

3 4

[MDE:MTRAC:60-1:2] (Schegloff, 1996a). A separated couple are discussing the return of their teenage son to his father after having visited his mother in another city. The father expected the son to arrive home by car. ( 0. 2)

100 5 6

Ton:->fil;.Qlen. Mar:->~tolen. Right out in front of IDY....house.

In her turn in lines 3-4, Marsha conveys that her son's car has been burglarized. Tony offers a candidate understanding of what has been alluded to but not explicitly stated in his next turn (line 5). Marsha confirms the allusion by repeating the word "stolen" in the beginning of her next tum. 61 Schegloff argued that by repeating the explication "the confirming party" not only confirms the sense that the utterance proposes is to be made of what preceded. In addition, the confirmer confirms that that sense had been "alluded to," had been conveyed without being said. The repeat confirms the allusion, and confirms it as an allusion (p. 181).

Schegloff suggested that there can be special grounds for speaking allusively such as the delivery of bad news (as in the example above). In the next two examples the speaker of the or-inquiry articulates something that was alluded to without being explicitly stated by the other interactant. For both examples the articulated understanding constitutes a negative assessment of either the other party or the child of the other party. The or-construction marks the delicate character of the articulated understanding. For both examples the candidate understanding is rejected. That the allusions end up being disconfirmed further substantiate their dispreferred status. Example (3:43) is from a conversation between Vera and her elderly father. Vera is calling her father to congratulate him on his birthday. (3:43)

OUT OF BREATH [MOL:2:AJ. breakfast (cf. line 4).

Vera's

parents manage a

01

F:

Meneh-manb6rjarno bli: Udre, But eh- one begins probably becoming older But eh- one is probably getting old

02

V:

Kanner'u de:, Feel'you that You feel that way

03

F:

Ja: de klart ju de (vi ska ju Yes 'ts obvious ju it (we will ju Yes it's obvious it (we will )

bed and

04

stugorna a haller pa a tvatta lite f6nster the cottages and hold on to wash few windows the cottages and are in the midst of washing a few windows

05

aja ja kanner nog att man ar- far ta and- yes I feel probably that one is- must take and- yes I sort of feel that one is- must take

61

See Schegloff, 1996a, p. 185 for an analysis of this segment.

101 de .l.JJ.gnare, it easier

06

07

V:

Mm_;_,

08

F:

Ja, Yes

09

V: ->(Men) du kanner att du blir fla:sigare (But) you feel that you get more breathless (But) you feel that you get more out of breath

10

->ell er, or

11

F:

12

V:

13

F:

14

Na:ej inte direkt [inte, No not exactly no [Na:e .hh men deNo but 't (Annars) vet du sa dar nu kommer Beata a Otherwise know you so there now comes Beata and Otherwise you know there now Beata and Torgny are here Torgny,

The father volunteers in line 1 that man borjar no bli: iildre, 'one is probably getting old'. Vera promotes talk on this topic with a newsmark in her next turn (line 2). The father then provides an instance of an experience that led him to 'sort of feel that one is- must take it easier' (kiinner nog att man iir- far ta de ll!.gnare). Vera acknowledges this in line 7. When the father does not extend his telling she goes on to articulate what she understands him to have conveyed in his prior talk with an or-inquiry (Men) du kiinner att du blir fla:sigare el/er '(But) you feel that you get more out of breath or' .62 The or-inquiry implies that the father's health is compromised. The father rejects this understanding of his prior talk and proceeds with a disjunctive topic shift by calling attention to the arrival of other members of his family in his next turn (lines 13-14). Two mothers are discussing their respective infants' developmental achievements in example (3:44). (3:44) GOING BACKWARDS [MOL:1:B]. Viktor is Karin's infant son. 29

62

K:

Viktor har funde:rat pa den har javla konsten att Viktor has contemplated on this here damn art to Viktor has contemplated this damn art of

Vera is a medical doctor. By articulating a physical condition, "breathlessness", she could be heard to be moving toward advice giving and this may be resisted by the father who cuts her off in the next tum (cf. Heritage & Sefi, 1992 for a discussion of resistance to advice giving).

l 102 30

kry:pa nu, crawl now crawling now

31. V:

hh Ja(h)s(h)a hh .hh

32

K:

Heh,

33

V: ->Gar'e ba:kat ellerz Goes't backward or Is he going in reverse or

31

K:

35

V:

NJej de gar bara platt ne:r [hah hah ha= !lo it goes just flat down hah hah ha= !lo it goes altogether flat hah hah ha [Heh heh heh

Karin states that her son Viktor 'has contemplated this damn art of crawling now' (har funde:rat pd den hiir jiivla konsten att kry:pa nu). The anticipatory delivery of Vera's acknowledgment in the next turn invites Karin to expand. Instead of doing s.o Karin laughs in line 32. Vera then articulates with an or-inquiry what she understands Karin to have conveyed with her turn in lines 2930, Gdr' e ba:kdt el/er 'Is he going in reverse or'. Her question suggests that Karin's son is crawling incorrectly. The serious delivery of Vera's turn contrasts with Karin's preceding laugh. Although Vera's turn emerges out of a light-hearted environment Vera is not delivering it as a joke. Karin flatly disconfirms the allusion in her next turn Niiej de gdr bara platt ne:r 'No it goes altogether flat'. The construction of her turn repeats the formulation de gdr 'it goes' (in reverse order) from Vera's turn. This formulation does not fit in Karin's turn as she goes on to imply that Viktor indeed is not going anywhere, de gdr bara platt ne:r 'it goes altogether flat'. However, in terms of its sequential environment the repetition seems appropriate as it underscores that Karin is rejecting Vera's understanding of her prior talk. The sequence ends in joint laughter. However, this does not undermine my point that the or-inquiry was delivered and understood as dispreferred. \ Section 3.4.3 has shown a broad range of or-inquiries that in the~selves are dispreferred. The dispreferred actions included making a pre-complaint (example (3:34)), checking whether a co-participant knows about an embarrassing incident (example (3:35)), mis-aligning with a troubles-telling (example (3:36)) or disaligning with the line pursued by the co-participant in the previous talk (examples (3:37-3:41)). Finally, in examples (3:43) and (3:44), the or-inquiry was used by a recipient of some prior talk to articulate something that was alluded to but not explicitly stated in that talk. The allusion was potentially delicate in that it involved a negative assessment of the recipient or, for example (3:44), the recipient's child. The allusion was disconfirmed in both examples.

103

3.4.4 Summary The analysis showed how or-inquiries are used to mark the action the turn otherwise engages in as problematic. Reviewing previous CA studies, I established that interactants orient to the problematic character of the actions they engage in or the topics they raise. That or-inquiries mark problematicity is perhaps most evident in environments where elements of the preceding sequence have shown that the project the or-inquiry engages in is dispreferred. However, the problematicity can also inhere in that the or-inquiry in itself is doing a dispreferred action.

3.5 Discussion This chapter has described a turn-construction that is used to mark problematicity in talk-in-interaction. Syntactically, the or-inquiry seems anomalous as it ends with the non-connecting connective eller 'or'. However, I have shown that this turn is produced and understood as a coherent unit of action. Analysis of or-inquiries in a range of sequential contexts demonstrated that the or-construction is associated with the initiation of activities that can be understood as problematic. The point is not that every problematic action is done as an or-inquiry. Rather, the or-construction marks the action as problematic. It is a way of "doing problematicity". I proposed that the positioning of eller within the turn relaxes the preference organization of the turn to allow for a 'no' -type response. This study has only provided a sketch of the or-inquiry and its interactional use. Future work could explore the prosodic production of the or-inquiry in more detail and, in particular, contrast the prosodic contour of or-inquiries with the prosodic contour of yes/no-questions that do not end with eller 'or'. There were no instances where eller 'or' was separated by a silence, hitch, or perturbation from its host TCU within my data corpus which was collected in 1991. However my impression is that today, or-inquiries where eller is separated from its host TCU are rather common. This does not mean that my findings are incorrect. Rather it underscores the dynamic character of talk-in-interaction. It also makes it relevant to check my findings against a more current data base. I have suggested that the tum-final eller 'or' neutralizes the preference structure of the turn so as to allow for or indeed promote a 'no' -type response. Future studies should explore this point in more detail. One might examine whether 'no' -type responses to or-inquiries are structured differently than 'no' -type responses to yes/no-questions that do not take eller 'or'. Finally it would be fruitful to contrast the or-inquiry with other interactional devices for marking problematicity in talk-in-interaction.

4 Acceptances and grantings of deferred action requests, invitations, and proposals

4.1 Introduction As discussed in chapters 1 and 3, Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson (1974) demonstrated that tum-taking is a socially organized system that is locally managed by the parties in talk-in-interaction. Sacks et al. argued that the tum-taking system "allocates single turns to single speakers; any speaker gets, with the turn, exclusive rights to talk to the first possible completion of an initial instance of a unit type [italics added]" (p. 706). Speakers are thus ordinarily entitled to a single turnconstructional unit (TCU) with the turn reaching possible completion after that TCU. In chapter 1 some research was also reviewed that has established that certain actions make relevant. an expanded turn. For example, dispreferred responses to adjacency pair first pair parts (FPPs) ordinarily get expanded and take more than one TCU before being taken as possibly complete (cf. Pomerantz, 1975, 1984). Preferred responses on the other hand, have been described as being formatted in minimal turns, i.e. one TCU. 63 Dispreferred responses are thus generally associated with turn expansion while preferred responses are associated with turn minimization (cf. Heritage, 1984b; Pomerantz, 1984; Sacks, 1987 [1973]; Schegloff, 1995, pp. 61-72). In this chapter I describe a sequential environment where an expanded rather than a minimal turn is required to accomplish acceptance or granting. I focus on the preferred sequence trajectory of action requests, invitations, and related proposals that cannot be immediately satisfied (hereafter sometimes referred to as deferred action FPPs). Action requests are those where a speaker requests that a recipient perform a course of action other than supplying information. I will argue that an affirmative response token such asja, aa, mm, or jq is insufficient to accept or grant a deferred action FPP request/proposal. An additional unit of talk is required where a commitment to fulfill the deferred action request/proposal is made. Example (4: 1) shows an invitation sequence where the acceptance of the invitation is accomplished with a two unit turn, the affirmative response token la and de kan ja gjj_;_ra 'I can do that'. 63

One noteable exception are responses to topic proffers which are expanded (cf. Pomerantz, 1984; Sacks, 1987 [1973]; Schegloff, 1988b).

105 (4:1) TEA [GRU:8:A]. The assessment in line 21 refers to Malena's recent purchase of a blazer (cf. (3:41)). The deferred action invitation is marked a-> and the acceptance is marked b->. =Peri.Qkt (horrudu:), Perfect (listenyou) Perfect (my friend)

21

L:

22

M:a->/ 0 Ja 0 >ska'ru inte komma hit a fika senc',Ja de kan ja ilii..;_ra? Yes that can I do Yes I can do that

24

M:

Ja: nar'u bar simma? Yes when'you have swum

The proposed action, that Lisa come over for coffee, cannot be immediately satisfied since the invitation is done over the telephone. Schegloff ( 1995) noted that "some types of first pair part can function doubly, both as actions in their own right and as vehicles or formats for other actions" (p. 72). Malena's turn in line 22 both asks and invites, the question, ska' ru inte komma hit aflka sen 'will you not come here forfika later', being the vehicle for the invitation. The turn-initial affirmative response token functions as a compliance marker that promises but does not accomplish acceptance. Acceptance is done with the next turn component where Lisa indicates her availability to come over, de kan }a gij_;_ra 'I can do that'. Malena proposes a specific time for the impending get-together in her next turn niir'u har slmma 'when you have swum'. This shows that she heard Lisa's prior turn as an acceptance. The design of accepting or granting responses to deferred action requests and related proposals should not be dismissed as a mere matter of a person's individual speaking style (Tannen, 1990). Rather, it should be understood as a jointly produced practice. It represents a normative preference that is visibly oriented to by parties in talk-in-interaction (Heritage, 1984b). Departures from the norm are accountable (Garfinkel, 1967). This chapter is based on 23 deferred action request/invitation/proposal sequences with accepting or granting second pair parts (SPPs) drawn from a larger corpus of invitations, offers, and requests. The larger data base includes requests and invitations that are immediately satisfiable as well as invitations and requests that are rejected. Table 1 shows the types of deferred action FPPs engaged in within the collection of deferred action sequences. As noted earlier, action requests involve something other than a request for information. "Proposal" is used broadly and includes directives and offers. All the instances in the collection are from telephone conversations. The chapter is organized as follows. First, I illustrate what I mean by de-

106

Table 1. Type of action that the deferred action FPP engages in. Deferred Action FPP

Total (N)

Action request Invitation Proposal

10 2 II

Total (N)

23

fcrred actions. Second, I present evidence in terms of turn design and turn uptake that show that an affirmative response token by itself does not accept or grant a deferred action request or related proposal. Third, I suggest that while the affirmative response token cannot satisfactorily complete a claim of alignment with a deferred action FPP it can claim hearing and understanding of the action produced in the prior turn and project acceptance or granting. Fourth, I show how acceptance or granting is done with the next turn component. Fifth, I discuss compound responses in other sequential environments. In conclusion, I briefly discus~ the relevance of my findings and suggest avenues that could be pursued in future work.

4.2 Deferred actions Deferred actions are contrastive with actions that can be immediately satisfied. Example (4:2) shows an information request that is immediately satisfied with a single TCU answer in the next turn. (4:2) VEBERUD [MOL:1:B].

01

A:

Va he:ter'u i .ru;.ternamnl What named you in lastname What's your last name

02

V:

Veberu:d

\

Whether or not any FPP involves a deferred action must be individually drtermined. It is not necessarily the case that all requests for information are im'mediately satisfiable. 64 Nor do all action requests, invitations, and related proposals always involve deferred actions. Example (4:3) shows an action request that is immediately fulfilled.

64

See chapter 3 example (3:34) for an information request that is not immediately satisfiable.

107 (4:3) THE SAUCE [ERI:2]. From a video recording of a family dinner conversation.

01

H looks at A and lifts his right hand H: ->Far ja sa:sen horru, Get I the sauce listenyou Can I have the sauce H sustains gaze at A and makes beckoning motion with his right hand. A grasps sauce pan and begins to pass it to H. H reaches out his hand and grasps sauce pan from A.

Here the granting is done without any spoken words with Ann-Katrin physically transferring the sauce pan to Hasse. 65 Many of the actions in my data base wer~ deferred by virtue of the fact that the parties were speaking on the telephone. While deferred actions are not limited to telephone conversations they may be particularly prevalent in interactions where the parties are not copresent. It should also be noted that whether or not any FPP involves a deferred action can be a reflexive matter. By that I mean to call attention to the fact that a request or related proposal might not be understood as involving a deferred action for its speaker. Rather, that the action is deferred can be conveyed by the responsive stance taken by the recipient. The next three examples show some of the types of deferred action FPPs in my collection. In example (4:4), Ulla asks Rut to tell Malena that she called. This requested conveyance cannot be immediately satisfied since Malena is not home. (4:4) BIRTHDAY WISHES [GRU:4:A]. Ulla is calling her daughter Rut's home to congratulate her grand-daughter (Rut's daughter) Malena on her birthday. Malena is not home. 65 A parallel case can be found in Wootton's 1981 paper on the management of grantings and rejections by parents in adult-child interaction. Drawing on earlier CA work, Wootton noticed that the tum organization of grantings and rejections are radically non-equivalent (Wootton, 1981, p. 61) He argued that grantings either can be accomplished with a free-standing granting token such as aye or yep or through an extended tum but made no functional distinction between these two granting forms. However, it may be that the argument put forth in this study applies to his data as well. Consider the following example of a request sequence.

Ma/M/P205 (from 01 Ch: 02 03 Younger Ch:

Wootton, 1981, p. 62, line numbers added). Could'you .hh could'you put on the light for my .hh room

[sic]

04

(.)

05

F: ->Yep

Wootton argued that the father's response token in the arrowed tum grants the child's request. However, this example is from co-present interaction. Thus, it appears plausible that the affirmative response token is accompanied by a non-vocal activity, the father flipping the light switch. That yep is sufficient as a granting may thus be attributed to the fact that this is a request that is immediately satisfied. · -

108 Rut:

25

Ja:_;_'ra, Yes then

Ulla: ->Mm: du kan val balsa till Mal&_na att ja bar ringt Mm: you can val tell to Malena that I have called Mm: tell Malena that I have called

26

->d!J.,

27

then 28

Ja: de ska ja g:Qra, Yes that will I do Yes I'll do that

Rut:

((creaky voice))

In example (4:5), Allan is asking his mother to call back later. This directive also involves a deferred action that cannot be immediately satisfied. (4:5) CALL LATER [MOL:4:AJ. Allan's mother is calling Allan's home to wish Allan's wife a happy birthday. She is not home.

09

Ja fti.r-

M:

I

10

A:

[ja-

will- [I-

[RING se:nare h6rrudu

->

ring klockan eh (.)

Call later listenyouyou call clock Call later listen call at nine

eh

->ni:e?

11

nine o'clock 12

Ja: ja kan ri:nga lite

M:

se: [nare

Yes I can call little later Yes I can call a little later 13

[Ja_;_ g6r-

A:

Yes do-

In example (4:6) Lisa is inviting Malena to go out dancing. Like the previous two examples this invitation cannot be satisfied here and now. Rather, it makes relevant a commitment to a future action. (4:6) OUT DANCING [GRU:8:A].

30

M:

Nae:j? ((upbeat)) No

31

L: ->Kan vi inte gti. ut ti. da:nsai ((pleading)) Can we not go out and dance Why don't we go out dancing

32

M:

Ska

vi g6:r de?

Shall we do

that

109 33

L:

lite bra musi,.k, a little good music to some good music

34

35

Jae sa .i..1.11.1.1!vla .fil.Igen pa a ga u:t a hara I 'm so fucking thirsty on to go out and hear "Fuckin'ay" I really feel like going out and listening

M:

Ja de [kan vi g{/_ra, Yes that can we do Yes let's do that

Having explicated how I use the notion of deferred action, I will now tum to a range of examples that show the interactants' demonstrative orientation to the insufficiency of the affirmative response token as an acceptance or granting of a deferred action request/proposal.

4.3 Evidence that the affirmative response token does not satisfactorily complete a claim of alignment with a deferred action request/proposal I will present three sorts of evidence that suggest that the affirmative response token does not satisfactorily complete a claim of alignment with a deferred action FPP. First I will show cases where the affirmative response token is produced as a tum preface rather than as its own TCU. This is the most common response design in my collection. It suggests that speakers tend to design their talk to have the affirmative response token understood within a larger tum. Second, I tum to cases where the affirmative response token is produced as a separate TCU within a larger tum. Recipients withhold talk at the possible transition point after the affirmative response token thus treating the tum so far as pragmatically incomplete even though it is intonationally and syntactically possibly complete (cf. Ford & Thompson, 1996; Sacks et al., 1974). Third, I tum to sequences where recipient uptake after a free-standing affirmative response token suggests that they are not hearing it as satisfactorily granting or accepting the deferred action request, invitation, or proposal.

4.3.1 The affirmative response token is typically produced as a tum preface The affirmative response token is typically produced as a tum preface rather than as its own TCU in my data base. This is evident in the pacing of the talk as in the arrowed tum of example (4:7) where the speaker moves from the af-

110

firmative response token Ja: to the next increment of the tum, de vill vi gjj_rna 'we would love to' without any intonational break, hitch, or perturbation. (4:7) VISIT [MOL:l:A].

01

liten J2i1halsningr', < little visit paid a visit
Horru ja tankte Mra ifall ni ville ha en >Listen I thought hear in case you wanted have a Listen I was thinking about asking if you wanted to be

A:

V:

-> tJa: de

vill vi f111rna?t iYes that want we gladlyi Yes we would love to

Syntactically, the second component of line 3, de vill vi gjj_rna literally translated as 'that want we gladly', is designed as a unit that could be treated as a free-standing TCU. By that I mean to call attention to the fact that it includes a subject, predicate, and object. The affirmative response token's status as a preface is thus entirely realized through the prosodic production of the tum in this example. In other cases the syntactic construction of the talk after the affirmative response token indicates that it is meant to be understood as an increment rather than as its own TCU. This is shown in the arrowed tum of example (4:8). (4:,8) AFTERNOON VISIT [VAT:4:B],

28

N:

29

L:

30

N:

[>Ja, kommer'ru va he:mma pa eftermiddan