Sidnell, Jack (2015) - Conversation Analysis

8/16/2019 Sidnell, Jack (2015) - Conversation Analysis

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c h a p t e r 9

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c o n v e r s a t i o na n a l y s i s

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jack sidnell

9.1 Introduction................................................................................................................................................

CONVERSATION Analysis (hereafter CA) is an approach to language and social

interaction that emerged in the mid-to-late 1960s through the collaboration of soci-ologists Harvey Sacks and Emmanuel Schegloff as well as a number of their students,

most importantly, Gail Jefferson (see Lerner2004). Although it originated in the United

States within sociology, today working conversation analysts can be found in Australia,

Canada, England, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and else-

where in departments of anthropology, communication studies, education, and lin-

guistics. In their earliest studies, Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson worked out a rigorous

method for the empirical study of talk-in-interaction and, as a result, their findings

have proven robust and cumulative. Indeed, these pioneering studies (e.g. Schegloff 1968; Schegloff and Sacks 1973; Sacks et al. 1974; Schegloff et al. 1977; inter alia) from

the 1960s and 1970s have provided a foundation for subsequent research such that we

now have a large body of strongly interlocking findings about fundamental domains of

human social interaction such as turn-taking, action sequencing, and repair.

Conversation Analysis is often identified, within linguistics at least, with pragmatics

or discourse analysis. However, CA differs in a basic way from these approaches in so

far as it takes action in interaction as the primary focus of study rather than language

per se. Because language figures so centrally in human social interaction, the vast

majority of work in CA is concerned with talk. But, importantly, the ultimate goal of

CA is to discover and to describe interactional rather than linguistic structure. A basic

finding of CA is that interaction is in fact finely structured and, as such, amenable to

formal analysis.

In the present context, it is important to note that most, if not all, work in CA

is premised on the idea that a language constitutes the kind of normative, symbolic


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structure that linguists have described since the founding work of Saussure, Jakobson,

Sapir, Bloomfield, and so on (see Dixon 2009 for an updated and detailed account of

linguistics from this perspective). In common with these pioneers of linguistics and in

contrast to much of the work done under the heading of generative linguistics today,

CAsts typically understand language to be fundamentally social, rather than biological

or mental, in nature. Linguistic rules from this perspective are first and foremost social

rules which are maintained in and through talk-in-interaction.

CAsts do not propose that this linguistic structure is reducible to, and an artifact of,

a more basic underlying structure of interaction (cf. Levinson 2005; on irreducibility,

see Hanks 1996). That said, some recent work in conversation analysis suggests that

language structure and interactional structure do exert some influence on one another.

So, for instance, the grammatical patterns of a particular language may bear on the

organization of turn-taking (See Fox et al. 1996; Tanaka 2000; Sidnell 2010). Runningin the other direction, certain near-universal features of language (or features that

exhibit highly constrained variation across languages) may reflect the basic properties

of interaction in the species (Levinson 2006).

In this brief overview of CA I begin by outlining the main goals and principles

of the field. I discuss how CA emerged out of a convergence of ethnomethodology,

Goffman’s work on social interaction and a number of other research frameworks of

the late 1960s suggesting that a pivotal and transformative moment came when Sacks,

Schegloff, and Jefferson realized that analysts could use the same methods in studyingconversation that conversationalists used in producing and understanding it. I then

turn to consider a single fragment of conversation in some detail, suggesting that

it, or any other such fragment, can be seen as the product of multiple, intersecting

“machineries” or “organizations of practice.” In the final section I consider some ways

research in CA bears on a few central issues in linguistics.

9.2 A Brief History and Some Key Ideas................................................................................................................................................

The history of CA begins with the sociologists Erving Goffman and Harold Garfinkel.

Goffman’s highly original and innovative move was to direct attention to the funda-

mentally social character of co-present interaction—the ordinary and extraordinary

ways in which people interact with one another (see especially Goffman 1964, 1981).

Goffman insisted that this, what he (1983) later described as the “interaction order,”constituted a social institution that both formed the foundation of society at large and

exhibited properties specific to it. Very early in his career (e.g. Goffman 1957), Goffman

showed that interaction constituted its own system with its own specific properties

quite irreducible to anything else be that language, individual psychology, culture, or

“external characteristics” such as race, class, and gender.

In a more or less independent but parallel movement, in the late 1950s and early

1960s, Harold Garfinkel was developing a critique of mainstream sociological thinking


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that was to become ethnomethodology (see Garfinkel 1967, 1974). Garfinkel challenged

the conventional wisdom of the time by arguing that, to the extent that social life

is regulated by norms, this rests upon a foundation of practical reasoning. People,

Garfinkel suggested, must determine what norms, precedents, traditions, and so on

apply to any given situation. As such, an explanation of human conduct that involves

citing the rules or norms being followed is obviously inadequate since the question

remains as to how it was decided that these were the relevant rules or norms to follow!

By the early to mid-1960s, Harvey Sacks was deeply immersed in themes that Garfinkel

and Goffman had developed and it is common and not entirely inaccurate to say that

conversation analysis emerged as a synthesis of these two currents—it was the study of

practical reasoning (à la Garfinkel) applied to the special and particular topic of social

interaction (à la Goffman).

One of the key insights of early CA was that conversationalists’ methods of practicalreasoning are founded upon the unique properties of conversation as a system. For

instance, conversationalists inspect next turns to see if and how their own talk has

been understood (see Sacks et al. 1974). That is, they exploit the systematic properties

of conversation in reasoning about it. As analysts we can exploit the same resource.

Consider the following fragment from one of Sacks’ recordings of the Group Therapy

Sessions.

(1) (Sacks 1995a vI:281).1

01 R: On Hollywood Boulevard the other night they were

02 giving tickets for dirty windshields ((door opens))

03 Jim: hh

04 Ther: Hi, Jim [c’mon in.

05 Jim: [H’warya

06 Ther: Jim, this is uh Al,

07 Jim: Hi

08 Ther: Ken,

09 Jim: Hi

10 Ken: Hi

11 Ther: Roger.

12 Roger: Hi

13 Jim: Hi

14 Ther: Jim Reed.

1 Examples are presented using the transcription conventions originally developed by Gail Jefferson.For present purposes, the most important symbols are the period (“.”) which indicates falling and finalintonation, the question mark (“?”) indicating rising intonation, and brackets (“[“ and “]”) marking the

onset and resolution of overlapping talk between two speakers.) Equal signs, which come in pairs—oneat the end of a line and another at the start of the next line or one shortly thereafter—are used to indicatethat the second line followed the first with no discernable silence between them, i.e. it was ‘latched’ to it.Numbers in parentheses (e.g. (0.5)) indicate silence, represented in tenths of a second. Finally, colons areused to indicate prolongation or stretching of the sound preceding them. The more colons, the longerthe stretching. For an explanation of other symbols, see Sacks et al. (1974); and Sidnell (2009a ).


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Sacks (1995a , 1995b ) draws attention to “the prima facie evidence afforded by a subse-

quent speaker’s talk” in his analysis of the therapist’s turns at 8 and 11 as recognizable

introductions (Schegloff 1992: xliii). Thus, when, at line 12, Roger responds to the:

utterance with his name [...] not with “What” [as in an answer to a summons],indeed not with an utterance to the therapist at all, but with a greeting to thenewly arrived Jim, he shows himself (to the others there assembled as well as tous, the analytic overhearers) to have attended and analyzed the earlier talk, to haveunderstood that an introduction sequence was being launched, and to be preparedto participate by initiating a greeting exchange in the slot in which it is he who isbeing introduced.

(Schegloff 1992: xliii)

Thus a response displays a hearing or analysis of the utterance to which it responds.

Such a hearing or analysis is “publicly available as the means by which previous

speakers can determine how they were understood” (Heritage 1984). The third position

in a sequence is then a place to accept the recipients’ displayed understanding or,

alternatively, to repair it. Consider the following case taken from a talk show in which

Ellen DeGeneres is interviewing Rashida Jones. Where this fragment begins DeGeneres

is raising a next topic: Jones’s new television show with comedian Amy Poehler, Parks

and Recreation . DeGeneres initiates the topic by inviting Jones to tell the audienceabout the show. She then gives the title before concluding the turn with “an’ you an’

Amy Poehler how—how great is that.” Notice then that this final part of the turn can be

heard as a real information question—a request for Jones to specify how great “that” is.

At the same time, this construction “How X is that?” is a familiar, idiomatic expression

that, by virtue of the presupposition it carries, conveys “it’s X” or, in this case, “it’s

great”. Notice what happens.

(2) Rashida Jones on Ellen 04, 2009

01 El: Al:right tell people about this hilarious

02 show. It’s Parks and Recreation an’ you

03 an’ Amy Poehler how- How great is that.=

04 Ra: =It’s pretty great=

05 El: =mm mh[m.

06 Ra: [It’s- uhm- it- I just mean it- ek-

07 experientially for me it’s pr(h)etty

08 [gr(h)ea(h)t(h) [heh heh ha ( )09 El: [yeah. [no. an’ but I mean it’s

10 a- I ah- know what you mea[nt. But I: say

11 Ra: [hih huh ha hah ha

12 [huh huh .hh hah

13 El: [it’s really great. The two of you.=

14 Ra: nyeah.

15 El: yeah. [an’ it’s about,

16 Ra: [(it is)


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The talk at line 03 (the A arrow) takes the form of a wh-question (“How great is that.”)

and Rashida Jones treats it as one by answering “It’s pretty great” (at the B arrow).

This response, by treating “How great is that.=” as an information-requesting question,

reveals a problematic understanding which Ellen subsequently goes on to repair at line

09–10 and 13 (the C arrows). There are a few details of the turn starting at line 10 and

continuing on line 13 of which we should take note. First, by emphasizing the first

person singular pronoun (“I”) Ellen implies a contrast with “you” (so Ellen not Jones).

Second, with “I: say it’s really great.” Ellen makes the illocutionary force of her utterance

explicit (i.e. she is “saying” not “asking”). Here then Ellen indicates that “How great is

that.=” was not in fact meant as a question but rather an assertion (or more specifically

an assessment).2

So it is the very sequential organization of turns-at-talk in conversation that provides

for the maintenance of intersubjectivity between persons. Heritage writes:

By means of this framework, speakers are released from what would otherwise bean endless task of confirming and reconfirming their understandings of each other’sactions . . . a context of publicly displayed and continuously up-dated intersubjec-tive understandings is systematically sustained. ...Mutual understanding is thusdisplayed ...‘incarnately’ in the sequentially organized details of conversationalinteraction.

(Heritage 1984

: 259

)

In his lectures Sacks made a series of penetrating arguments about the importance of

basing a study of conversation on recorded examples (see Sacks 1984; Heritage 1984;

Jefferson 1985 for discussion of this issue). This is not simply a matter of finding

examples that will illustrate the point one is trying to make, but rather of beginning

with the stubborn, recalcitrant, complex details of actual conversation and using them

to locate and define whatever argument that one ends up with. Recordings provided

Sacks with a terra firma on which to base a rigorously empirical discipline in whichany analysis was accountable to the details of actual occurrences in the world. He

writes:

I started to work with tape-recorded conversations. Such materials had a singlevirtue, that I could replay them. I could transcribe them somewhat and study themextendedly—however long it might take. The tape-recorded materials constituted a“good-enough” record of what happened. Other things, to be sure, happened, butat least what was on the tape had happened.

2 Notice that Rashida Jones also repairs her answer “it’s pretty great” by means of what Schegloff

(1997) describes as “third turn repair”. So when Rashida Jones says, “It’s- uhm- it-I just mean it- ek-experientially for me it’s pr(h)etty gr(h)ea(h)t(h)” she is speaking after Ellen has responded to her initialanswer (with “=mm mhm.” At line 5). However, Ellen’s response here, unlike Rashida’s at line 04, doesnot reveal a problematic understanding of the prior turn and thus does not prompt the repair thatRashida produces. In that respect instances of third turn repair are more akin to transition space repair(such as Ellen’s “The two of you.=” in line 13) than they are to instances of third position repair.


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(Sacks 1984: 26)

As Sacks goes on to note, we do not have very good intuitions about conversation (as

we seem to for syntax which is apparently the contrast he was making) nor are we

capable of remembering or imagining the details of what happens in conversation. For

these reasons and others, conversation analysts insist on working from actual record-ings of conversation rather than imagined, remembered, or experimentally produced

examples.

9.3 Intersecting Organizations

of Practices................................................................................................................................................

So given these considerations we should now turn to some actual bit of recorded

conversation and attempt to analyze it even if, given the constraints imposed by an

overview chapter, we can only give it some cursory attention. The following is the

transcript of the first few seconds of a telephone conversation between Deb, a woman

in her fifties, and her boyfriend, Dick. The call comes the morning after Deb had hosted

a party with some guests attending from out of town.

(3) Deb and Dick (ring)

(r[

01 Deb: [Hello:?hh

02 Dick: Good morning.=

03 Deb: =Hi:, howareya.

04 Dick: Not too ba:d. Howareyou?

05 Deb: I’m fi::ne

06 Dick: Howdit g[o?

07 Deb: [.h Oh: just grea:t,


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In a way, our aim is . . . to get into a position to transform, in what I figure is almosta literal, physical sense, our view of what happened here as some interaction thatcould be treated as the thing we’re studying, to interactions being spewed out by machinery, the machinery being what we’re trying to find; where, in order to find itwe’ve got to get a whole bunch of its products.

(Sacks 1995a : 169)

If we think about this little fragment in these terms—that is, as the product of multi-

ple, simultaneously operative and relevant organizations of practice or “machineries”

for short—we can get some good analytic leverage on what may at first seem quite

opaque.

9.3.1 Overall Structural Organization

Let us start by noting that there is an organization relating to occasions or encounters

taken as wholes—this is what we refer to as “overall structural organization” or,

simply, “overall organization.” For a given occasion there are specific places within it

that particular actions are relevantly done. An obvious example is that greetings are

properly done at the beginning of an encounter rather than at its conclusion. Similarly,

introductions between participants who do not know one another are relevant at the

outset of an exchange. Sometime after an event—a job interview, an exam, a dinner

party etc.—a discussion or report of “how it went” may become relevant. And, of

course, this is precisely what Deb understands Dick to be inviting at line 06 with

“Howditgo.”

There is another sense in which the overall organization of talk bears on what

happens here. Think then about where this question “Howditgo” comes not in relation

to these people’s lives (i.e. after Dick supposes the party is over) but rather in relationto this call. Specifically, the talk that immediately precedes this question is devoted to

a series of tasks—getting the attention of the recipient via the ringing of the telephone

and subsequently displaying that attention via “hello” (i.e. summons–answer, see

Schegloff 1968), identifying, recognizing, and aligning the participants (Schegloff 1979),

so-called “personal state inquiries” (Sacks 1975; Schegloff 1986). Taken together, we can

see that the talk up to and including line 05 constitutes an “opening.” So what does

that mean for the utterance we are now concerned with? Where can this “howditgo” be

said to occur? Briefly, this is what Schegloff calls “anchor position”—precisely becausewhatever is said here is vulnerable to being heard as “why I’m calling”, as “the reason

for the call” and thus as something its speaker accords some importance (see Schegloff

1986; Couper-Kuhlen 2001). We cannot go into a detailed analysis of this here but let

us note that where participants reach this position (and there are many calls in which

they never do for one reason or another) and the caller does not indicate what they

are calling about, that may be oriented to as an absence. Consider then the following

opening from a conversation between two close friends:


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(4) Hyla & Nancy

01 ((ring))

02 Nancy: H’llo:?

03 Hyla: Hi:,

04 Nancy: ↑HI::.

05 Hyla: Hwaryuhh=06 Nancy: =↓Fi:ne how’r you,

07 Hyla: Oka:[y,

08 Nancy: [Goo:d,

09 (0.4)

10 Hyla: · mkhhh[hhh

11 Nancy: [What’s doin,

12 (·)

13 Hyla: - > aAh:, n oth[i : n :, ]

14 Nancy: -> [Y’didn’t g]o meet Grahame?=

In this fragment, Hyla has called Nancy. A reciprocal exchange of personal state

inquiries ends with Nancy’s assessment “good” at line 08. Here then the participants

have reached “anchor position” but instead of the caller raising a first topic there is

silence and some audible breathing from Hyla at lines 09–10. This occasions Nancy’s

“What’s doin,” at line 11. With, “What’s doin,” Nancy invites Hyla (the caller) to raise

a first topic and thereby displays an orientation to this as a place to do just that. Andnotice when Hyla responds with “Ah nothin” Nancy pursues a specific topic by asking

“Y’didn’t go meet Grahame?”

9.3.2 Turn Organization

So those are two ways in which this little fragment of conversation or some part of it

(e.g. the utterance “Howditgo”) is organized by reference to its place in a larger overall

structure. Now let us consider the same bit of talk in terms of turn-taking and turn con-

struction. Although Dick’s question is made up of four words, in a basic respect, this is

produced as a single unit. Of course it is a single sentence but, more relevant for current

purposes, it is a single turn. In their classic paper on turn-taking, Sacks et al. (1974)

argued that turns at talk are made up of turn constructional units (TCUs) and that, in

English at least, there is a sharply delimited set of possible unit-types. In English, TCUs

are single words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. Consider the following example.

(5) Debbie and Shelley 5:35–40

36 Shelley: you were at the Halloween thing. Sentential

37 Debbie: huh? Lexical

38 Shelley: the Halloween p[arty Phrasal

39 Debbie: [ri:ght. Lexical


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Shelley’s talk at line 36 exemplifies the use of a sentential turn constructional unit.

Debbie’s turns at lines 37 and 39 are both composed of single lexical items. Shel-

ley’s turn at 38 illustrates the use of a single phrase to construct a turn. And going

back to our example: “Howdit go?” is similarly a sentential turn constructional

unit.

Sacks et al. (1974: 702) suggested that these TCUs have a feature of “projectabil-

ity.” They write that lexical, phrasal, clausal, and sentential TCUs “allow a projection

of the unit-type under way, and what, roughly, it will take for an instance of that

unit-type to be completed.” This means, of course, that a recipient (and potential

next speakers) need not wait for a current speaker to come to the actual completion

of her talk before starting their own turn. Rather, because TCUs have a feature of

projectability, next speaker/recipients can anticipate—or project—possible points of

completion within the emerging course of talk and target those points as places tostart their own contribution. We can see this very clearly in an example such as the

following:

(6) Parky (Cited in Sacks et al. 1974)01 Tourist: Has the park cha:nged much,

02 Parky: Oh:: ye:s,

03 (1.0)

04 Old man: Th’Funfair changed it’n [ahful lot [didn’it.

05 Parky: [Th- [That-

06 Parky: That changed it,

In this example, at lines 05–06, Parky begins an incipient next turn at the first point

of possible completion in Old Man’s talk. Parky starts up here and again at the next

point of possible completion not by virtue of any silence (by the time he starts there

is no hearable silence) but by virtue of the projected possible completion of the turn

constructional unit which constitutes a potential transition relevance place. Evidencesuch as this leads to the conclusion that “transfer of speakership is coordinated by

reference to such transition-relevance places” (Sacks et al. 1974: 703).

Returning to the fragment from the conversation between Deb and Dick, notice that

the transitions between speakers are managed in such a way as to minimize both gap

and overlap. We now have a partial account of how participants are able to achieve

this. Co-participants monitor the syntactic, prosodic, and broadly speaking pragmatic

features of the current turn to find that it is about to begin, now beginning, continuing,

now coming to completion—they anticipate, that is, points at which it is possibly complete (see also Ford et al. 1996). There is of course much more that could relevantly

be said about this fragment along these lines but since this is merely meant to introduce

different “organizations of practice” that go into a single fragment, we now move on to

consider the organization of talk into sequences. Before we are done we will return to

consider issues of turn-taking briefly.


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9.3.3 Action and Sequence Organization

It is obvious enough that in conversation actions often come in pairs and that a first

action such as a complaint, a request, an invitation makes relevant a next, responsive

action (or a delimited range of actions). If that action is not produced it can be found,by the participants, to be missing where any number of things did not happen but are

nevertheless not missing in the same sense. Schegloff (1968) described this relationship

between a first and second action as one of “conditional relevance” and the unit itself

as an “adjacency pair” (see Schegloff and Sacks 1973).

What kind of organization is the adjacency pair? It is not a statistical probability

nor a categorical imperative. Rather, the organization described is a norm to which

conversationalists hold one another accountable. The normative character of the adja-

cency pair is displayed in participants’ own conduct in interaction. For example, as theprinciple of conditional relevance implies, when a question does not receive an answer,

questioners treat the answer as “noticeably” absent. A questioner’s orientation to a

missing answer can be seen in three commonly produced types of subsequent conduct:

pursuit, inference, and report. In the following example (from Drew 1981) mother asks

the child, Roger, what time it is.

(7) Drew 1981: 249

01 Mom: What’s the time- by the clock?

02 Roger: Uh

03 Mom: What’s the time?

04 (3.0)

05 Mom: (Now) what number’s that?

06 Roger: Number two

07 Mom: No it’s not

08 What is it?

09 R oger: It’s a one a nd a nought

After Roger produces something other than an answer at line 2, mother repeats the

question at line 3. Here then a failure to answer prompts the pursuit of a response.

When this second question is met with three seconds of silence, Mother transforms the

question, now asking, “what number’s that?” Notice that the first question, “What’s

the time?” poses a complex, multi-faceted task for the child: He must first identify

the numbers to which the hands are pointing and subsequently use those numbers to

calculate the time. In response to a failure to answer this question, mother takes thiscomplex task and breaks it down into components. Thus, in her subsequent conduct

mother displays an inference that the child did not answer because he was not able to

do so. Although it does not happen here, questioners may also report an absent answer

saying such things as “you are not answering my question,” or “he didn’t answer the

question”, or “she didn’t reply,” etc. In public inquiries, for instance, lawyers commonly

suggest that the witness is not answering the question that has been asked of them (see

Sidnell 2010).


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Would-be answerers also orient to missing answers. Thus, the non-occurrence of an

answer may occasion an account for not answering. One particularly common account

for not answering is not knowing, as illustrated in Extracts 8 and 9 (see Heritage 1984).

(8) YYZ – Deb and Dick 01 Dick: Are the:y leaving today,

02 Dee: I=don’t=know.

(9) TC_II_(b):_#2816 Bus: He’s down in Mexico or some’in?,

17 Pya: I don’t know,

Here, the recipient of a question accounts for not answering by saying s/he does

not know. That is, in (8) Dee does not simply not answer the question—she treatsnot answering as something worthy of explanation and provides that explanation in

the form of a claim not to know, as is also the case in (9). Further evidence of the

participants’ own orientations to the norm-violation inherent in a failure to provide an

answer is found in cases such as (10). Here the operator not only provides an account

(explaining, in effect, that it is not her job to know the information requested) but

furthermore apologizing for the failure to answer with “I’m sorry”.

(10) NB 1.3 (Revised transcript)01 Guy: Now from, Balboa I jest- I don’ haftuh dial

02 one or anything aheada that do I?

03 Oper: Oh I’m sorry you’d haftuh ask yer "O" Operator.

Here then we have evidence, internal to these cases, for the claim that a question

imposes on its recipient an obligation to provide an answer. Orientation to the norm is

displayed in the participants’ own conduct of pursuing an answer, drawing inferencesfrom an answer’s absence and accounting for the absence by claiming not to know.

The point here is that the first pair part of an adjacency pair has the capacity to make

some particular types of conduct noticeably or relevantly absent such that their non-

occurrence is just as much an event as their occurrence.

9.3.4 Repair Organization

Whenever persons talk together they encounter problems of speaking, hearing, and/or

understanding. Speakers are fallible and even the most eloquent among us sometimes

make mistakes. The environments in which we interact are sometimes characterized by

the presence of ambient noise. Recipients may be distracted or may suffer from hearing

loss. A word may not be known by a recipient or it may fail to uniquely identify a

referent. A lexical expression or grammatical construction may be ambiguous. These

factors and others result in essentially ubiquitous troubles.


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What we term “repair” refers to an organized set of practices through which par-

ticipants are able to address and potentially resolve such troubles in the course of

interaction—repair is a self-righting mechanism usable wherever troubles of speaking,

hearing, and understanding are encountered but also usable elsewhere too and for

other purposes than simply fixing problems.

Repair is organized in three basic ways. First, it is organized by a distinction between

repair initiation and repair execution (or simply initiation and repair proper). Sec-

ond, it is organized by position, where position is calibrated relative to the source

of trouble: same turn, transition space between turns, next turn, third position.

Third it is organized by a distinction between self (i.e. the one who produced the

trouble source) and other. With these distinctions we can describe the basic orga-

nization of repair. By virtue of the turn-taking system—which allocates to the cur-

rent speaker the right to produce a single TCU through to its first point of pos-sible completion—the speaker of the trouble source has the first chance to ini-

tiate and to execute repair. Consider the quite subtle case in the example from

Deb and Dick. In the second unit here, Deb produces a minor hitch over the

word after “everybody” (possibly going for “stayed”) and self-repairs with “still

here.”

(11

) Deb and Dick 07 Deb: [.h Oh: just grea:t,Are=you gonna be at my house at what

24 time on ah Fri:- on Sund[ay?

We can make several observations based on this case. First, the repair is “pre-

monitored” by a hesitation with “ah” before the word that eventually becomes the

trouble source. Second, the repair is initiated by cut-off (phonetically close to a glottal

stop) indicated by the dash in “Fri:-.” Third, the repair itself is “framed” by a repetition

of the preposition “on.” By framing the repair in this way the speaker locates where inthe prior talk the replacement belongs. In this case then the repair replaces a word in

the prior talk. In other cases, the repair operates not to replace but rather to insert a

word. For instance in the following, Bee inserts “Fat ol”’ into the prior talk resulting in

the referential expression “Fat ol’ Vivian.”


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(13) TG 10:01–10

02 Bee: Hey do you see V- (0.3) fat ol’ Vivian anymouh?

If the speaker reaches the possible completion of a TCU, she may initiate repair in the

transition space before the next speaker begins. Consider for instance the followingcase from a radio interview:

(14) As it happens. Feb 11.05.mov QT: 7.56

02 MFL: ◦hh but- uh wha- [so what has the

03 A: [crazy

04 MFL: rest of the press gallery:

05 (.)

06 → thought about this.uh done about this.

Here the interview asks “So what has the rest of the press gallery: (.) thought about

this”. But before the interviewee can answer she goes on to replace “thought” by “done.”

Notice again the way the repair is framed by a repeat (“about this”). The repair here is

done in the transition space between turns.

In the next turn, the other is presented with her first opportunity to initiate repair

and by and large that is all the other does—that is, although the other is likely often

capable of repairing the trouble, typically and normatively she only initiates repair andleaves it up to the speaker of the trouble source to actually fix the problem (Schegloff

et al. 1977). Other has available to them a range of formats by which repair may be

initiated in the next turn. These can be arranged on a scale according to their relative

strength to locate the repairable. So there are repair initiation formats which do little

more than indicate the presence of a trouble in the prior turn (see Drew 1997). This is

illustrated by the following:

(15) NB:III:2:R:501 Jim: Ho:w u-how big er t hose waves down t heh.

02 (0.4)

03 Frank: Oh:: about (.) thirty foot I guess

04 (1.7)

05 Jim: -> Chris[t thirty fee]:t.

06 Frank: [Big enough::]

07 (.)

08 Jim: Thet’s[hh

09 Frank:-> [He::h?10 Jim: -> Thirty fee(h)eet,[·hh Is]

11 Frank: [∧Ye:h.]

Here, after Jim assesses the height of the waves by saying “Christ thirty fee:t.” at line

05, Frank initiates repair with “He::h?” (line 09). Jim then redoes the assessment in a

modifed form saying “Thirty fee(h)eet”. We can notice then that the repair initiation—


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180 j ack sidnel l

“He::h?”—indicates only that there is a problem with the prior talk and not what the

nature of the problem is or where, specifically, it is located.

In contrast, there are repair initiation formats that precisely locate the trouble source

and, at the same time, propose a candidate understanding. Consider line 05 of the

following example from a conversation between brother Stan and sister Joyce. When

Joyce suggests a particular Bullocks location where Stan might be able to find a hat, Stan

initiates repair of the referential expression with “Bullocks? ya mean that one right u:m

(1.1) tch! (.) right by thee: u:m (.) whazit the plaza? theatre::=”. Here then he offers an

understanding of what Joyce means prefaced by “ya mean”.

(16) Stan and Joyce

01 Joyce: [Why don’tchoo: go into Westwoo:d,02 (0.4)

03 and go to Bullocks

04 (1.2)

05 Stan: Bullocks? ya mean that one right u:m (1.1) tch! (.)

06 right by thee: u:m (.) whazit the plaza? theatre::=

07 Joyce: =Uh huh,

08 (0.4)

09 Stan: ◦(memf::)

10 Joyce: ◦Yeah,

11 Stan: Why that Bullocks. Is there something about it?

12 Joyce: They have some pretty nice things. an’ you could

13 probly f[ind one you like(d) there,

14 Stan: [(’hh ’hh)

15 (1.5)

16 Stan: Well I mean uh: do they have a good selection of hats?

17 Joyce: I ont know I n(h)ever l(h)ooked f(h)er hhats.

And we can go on to note that the turn here is itself marked by a self-repair operation

which we describe as searching for a word: “that one right u:m (1.1) tch! (.) right by thee:

u:m (.) whazit the plaza? theatre::=”. Stan eventually finds the word—“plaza theatre”—

and Joyce confirms the candidate understanding with “=Uh huh,” in line 07. Notice

further that when Stan pursues the issue in line 11 asking “Why that Bullocks. Is there

something about it?” Joyce attempts to answer the question saying they have some

pretty nice things. Stan then treats his own question as a trouble source and repairs it

in third position replacing what he said in line 11 with, “Well I mean uh: do they have agood selection of hats?”

At each position within the unfolding structure of interaction participants are

presented with an opportunity to address potential problems of speaking, hearing,

and/or understanding. This set of practices is clearly crucial to the maintenance

of understanding in conversation and other forms of interaction. We can also see

that human language would be very different than it is if its users did not have

recourse to the practices of repair—for instance the presence of homonyms and


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ambiguous grammatical constructions would threaten to derail even the most simple

exchanges.

9.3.5 Intersecting Organizations in A Single CaseWe can see that “Howdit go” is a sequence initiating first action—the first part of

an adjacency pair which makes relevant a second, here an answer. Before turning to

consider the response that is produced, we need to first consider in some more detail

the design of this question. Note specifically that Dick employs the past tense thus

locating the party at a time prior to the point at which this conversation is taking place.

In this context, past tense conveys that the thing being talked about (the “it”/the party)

is over and complete.So there is a problem with the way in which Dick has formulated his question since,

as it turns out, it is not quite right to say that the party is over (the guests have stayed

and thereby continued the event). At the same time, the question is answerable as

it stands—Dick has asked how it went, the party sensu stricto is over. In asking this

question Dick creates a position for Deb to produce an answer. Thus there are two

different actions relevant next:

(a) Answer the question.

(b) Address the problem with how the question has been formulated.

By virtue of the conditional relevance established by the question, anything that occurs

in this slot may be inspected for how it answers the question (e.g. “They’re still here”

meaning it went so well, they didn’t want to leave). If whatever is in the sequentially

next position after a question cannot be heard as answering, it may be inspected by

the recipient for how it accounts for not answering the question (e.g. “They’re stillhere” meaning I can’t talk about it right now). In short, anything that occurs here

can be inspected for its relevance to the question asked and can thus serve as the

basis for further inference. Imagine this pair of utterances without the “just great”—

such that “everybody’s still here” comes as a response to “Howdit go?” Simplifying

things somewhat, the problem with this is that “everybody’s still here” could easily

be heard by a recipient as implying “it didn’t go well” or “it went too long” or “I’m

trying to get them out.” There is then a built-in reason for answering this question

in a straightforward way simply because any other way of responding might suggest anegative assessment and invite further inquiries.

At the same time, if she chooses simply to answer Dick’s question and respond

with “just great” alone, Deb has let a mistaken assumption go unchallenged and

uncorrected. This too is something to be avoided. As we’ve already noted there

are certain things that become relevant at the completion of an event—a report to

interested parties, an assessment, the reporting of news, and so on. Dick’s question,

by locating the event in the past, proposes the relevance of those activities, indeed, it


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invites them. But to the extent that the event is not, in fact, over, these activities are

not the relevant ones to do. There are then a number of intersecting reasons why Deb

would like to do this assessment, “just great,” first as a response to Dick’s question but,

at the same time, not allow the misunderstanding contained in Dick’s question to pass

without being corrected.

So what in fact happens? Deb produces the assessment, “Oh: just grea:t,” without

releasing the obstruent at the end of “just great.” Sounds (i.e. phonetic units) such as

the last consonant in “great” can be produced either with or without a release of air.

Here rather than produce this last sound (aspiration) of the last segment (“t”) of the

last word (“great”) of this turn unit, Deb moves immediately into the first sound of

“everybody.”3 So one practice for talking through a possible completion is to withhold

the production of the actual completion of the turn constructional unit and instead

move directly into the next component of the turn. A speaker can thus talk in such away that a projectable point of completion never actually occurs.

In the example with Deb and Dick, we can see that Deb uses this practice to get two

relevant tasks done in a single turn-at-talk without risking the possibility of Dick self-

selecting at the first possible completion. We thus have some interactional motivation

for this compressed transition space. Moreover we can see that the organization of

action into sequences, the organization of talk into turns (and into TCUs) and the

organization of talk into an overall structure do not operate independently of one

another. Although we can think of these heuristically as semi-autonomous organiza-tions, in practice they are thoroughly interdigitated. This is what I mean when I say

the utterance (or the turn-at-talk) is a product of multiple, intersecting, concurrently

operative organizations of practice or machineries.

9.4 Interaction and Language Structure................................................................................................................................................

In the remainder of this chapter I will attempt to describe some areas of overlapping

interest between CA and linguistics. I will concentrate on intersections of turn organi-

zation and grammar or sentential syntax. A more thorough review would also discuss

work on prosody in conversation as well as that on semantics and reference (see Enfield

2012; Fox et al. 2012; Walker 2012).

We have already seen that, according to Sacks et al. (1974), sentence grammar plays

a crucial role in the projection of a turn’s possible completion. Along the same lines we

can note a number of other ways in which conversationalists draw on their knowledge

of grammar in order to accomplish a range of turn-construction tasks (Ono and

Thompson 1996).

3 Deb also prefaces the answer to the question with “Oh” which can mark the preceding question asinapposite (see Heritage 1998).


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For instance, Gene Lerner (1991, 1996a ) has described the syntactic resources that

the recipient of some bit of talk can use to project, and to produce, its completion.

Lerner shows that there are particular grammatical structures which provide resources

to a recipient and which they routinely exploit in producing such completions. For

instance there are single TCU turns which consist of two components, for example an

if -clause (protasis) and a then -clause (apodosis).

(17) Schegloff, Handout01 Boy: ’cause if we get to go (0.7) to Toys R Us,

02 (0.5)

03 Girl: Den get tuh buy something hhhuhhh.

04 Boy: Uh h uh,

(18) Geri-Shirley pp. 18–1912 Shirl: .hhh Have you guys made plans t’see each other ag[ain?

...

36 Shirl: Ri[ght.

37 Geri: -> [En it doesn’t matter et this point I’ve waited

38 this long I[c’n (wait).

39 Shirl: -> [c’n wait another three wee:ks.

40 Geri: Ye:ah,

41 Shirl: .hh W’l that’s good.

Similarly with when-then structures as in:

(19) Lerner (1996b : 311)01 Dan: Now when the group reconvenes when the (.) group

02 reconvenes in two weeks=

03 Roger: =they’re gunna issue straitjackets

And there are also cases in which the initial component is a matrix clause projecting afinite complement:

(20) Hyla and Nancy—Simplified05 Hyla: Becuz I figure,hhhhhh[hhh

06 Nancy: [If ’e hasn’ written ye:t,

07 (0.4)

08 then ’e doesn’ want to.

In quite complex ways then conversationalists treat the normative structures of grammar as a resource to build and to recognize turns-at-talk. Moreover, the evidence

suggests that turn building—which encapsulates the use of sentence grammar in the

ways just described—is a product of interaction between speaker and recipient. This

can be seen in a variety of ways (see Sidnell 2010 for additional evidence) but it goes

to a fundamental point about the nature of language. Specifically, research in CA

suggests that turns and the sentences which they house, are not constructed in the

speaker’s mind and simply “delivered” by the mouth. Rather, as a speaker is producing


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184 j ack sidnel l

a sentence (or a turn) she is monitoring its recipient. If that recipient is not gazing at

the speaker (Goodwin 1979) or gasps as the turn is being produced or, alternatively,

does nothing where she might or should have, the speaker may alter the course of the

turn or repair it, or extend it, and so on. As such, actual sentences are not the product

of isolated individual speakers but of an interaction between speaker and recipient. As

an illustrative example consider the following case from a telephone call in which Dee

is telling cousin Mark how much her daughter and son-in-law have had to pay for a

house:

(21) Holt p. 224, lines 39–42, QT 13.00

39 Dee: [↑Oo it’s about[five hundred pounds a month the

40 um: (.)

41 Mar: ↑Uhh:::::,h[hhh

42 Dee: [repayments. But uh-he get[s’

43 Mar: [↑↑’OW TH’ ELL

44 D’ YOU ↑DO ↓ it ehh[heh huh (.) .hk .hh[hhhh

45 Dee: [( ) [Well there you

↑a:re.

At lines 39–42 in extract 21, Dee tells Mark that her daughter and son-in-law are paying

500 pounds a month in mortgage installments. There are several places in the course

of this turn at which Mark might have produced an assessment that conveyed his

understanding that five hundred pounds is “a lot of money” (see Goodwin 1986). By

the time Dee has produced the first syllable of “hundred” the content of the turn is

projectable. At the completion of “pounds,” Dee has come to a point of possible turn

completion and again at the completion of “month.” However, in both cases, when

Dee reaches these places within the unfolding course of her turn she has no evidenceto suggest that Mark has recognized something assessable in her talk. When Mark fails

to produce the assessment, Dee delays the progress of the turn by the production of

first “um:” and then a micropause (lines 39–40). Such features of the talk may alert

the recipient to the fact that a display of recognition is missing while at the same time

extending the turn-at-talk so as to allow the recipient further opportunities to produce

such a response before the current speaker’s turn reaches completion. Notice that

immediately after Mark produces a gasp (which is subsequently elaborated with “’OW

TH’ ELL D’ YO’U ↑DO ↓it”) Dee immediately completes the turn constructional unitwith “repayments.” We can see then that Dee’s turn is carefully engineered to elicit

a specific response at a particular place and that it is adjusted to ensure that such a

response is indeed produced. The more general point here is thus that a single turn-at-

talk is the product of an interaction between speaker and recipient.

Participants in conversation clearly rely on their tacit knowledge of grammar both

to construct turns and to analyze them in the course of their production—to find that

they are now beginning, now continuing, now nearing completion. But participants


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also adapt the normative structures of grammar to interactional ends in various ways.

Consider for instance the following question asked in the midst of a telephone call:

(22) Boo and Ali

22 Boo: Okay wul listen ((smile voice))23 .hh (.) >Are=you gonna be at my house at what time on

24 ah Fri:- on Sund[ay?

25 Ali: [What time am I (.) to be there at.

26 Boo: I think a little before se:ven.=

27 Ali: =Ya cause it’s t he (.) w [a l k]

28 Boo: [I waana] watch th-the [runway:]

29 Ali: [◦hhhhhh]

30 hhugh. yeah I’ll come aroun six thirty.

Here what apparently begins a Yes–No question is altered in the course of its produc-

tion such that the utterance ultimately produced is an in-situ wh-question. Whereas

the Yes–No question “Are you going to be at my house on Sunday” asks whether A

will be present, the wh-question “What time are you going to be at my house on

Sunday” presupposes it. So this appears to be a repair operation in which the speaker

adjusts the turn in progress to make it more accurately reflect what she assumes is

taken-for-granted or already in common ground—that is that A will come to her

house. The point for present purposes is that B ends up producing a sentence which

violates a grammatical norm/rule in English which links morphosyntactic inversion

with wh-movement (so in-situ wh-questions do not feature inversion) (see Lakoff

1974). However, this is not oriented to as a problem or error by either participant.

Indeed, the response that A provides “what time am I to be there at” orients to the very

difference in presupposition that we noted between the Yes–No question and the wh-

Question—that is, by employing the BE + [infinitive] construction in “what time am

I to be there at” A confers on B an entitlement to not only presuppose her attendancebut, moreover, to specify the details of her arrival.

Another example of the way in which normative grammatical rules are adapted to

interactional purposes has been described in work by Sun-Young Oh on zero-anaphora

in English (Oh 2005, 2006). Native intuitions and, most, linguistic descriptions are

alike in suggesting that an overt subject is required for finite declarative (as opposed

to imperative) sentences in English. Generative accounts of grammar propose that

the “pro-drop parameter” for English disallows “null-subjects” in contrast to lan-

guages such as Italian, Japanese, Korean, and so on. Where the subject of a declarativesentence is nevertheless not produced, this is explained according to a “situational

ellipsis” in which weakly stressed, initial words of a sentence are elided via a process of

phonological reduction where their referents are recoverable from the “extralinguistic

context” (Quirk et al. 1985;seeOh 2006). Through a detailed distributional analysis, Oh

shows that zero-anaphora (in subject position) is a stable practice of speaking deployed

to achieve a delimited range of tasks in conversation and not simply the product of

phonological reduction. Specifically, Oh (2005, 2006) shows that the practice is used in:


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186 j ack sidnel l

(a) Second sayings: A zero anaphora may be used where a pair of linked turn

constructional units are produced in which the second is a resaying of the first.

(b) Pursuing recognition display: Where a speaker is pursing a display of recogni-

tion of a referent from a recipient a subsequent description of that referent may

be produced in a clause with zero-anaphora.

(c) Resumption of prior TCU following parenthetical: Where a TCU is resumed

following a parenthetical insert, the resumption may be produced as a clause

with zero-anaphora.

(d) Highlighting the maximum continuity of the actions/events being described:

Where the speaker is concerned to highlight the continuity of the events being

described a zero anaphora may be used.

(e) Where a speaker is faced with a choice between alternative reference forms,

s/he may employ zero-anaphora and thereby avoid having to select one or theother.

This last practice occurs across a wide range of interactional circumstances. Consider,

as an example, the following case in which wife Linda has called husband Jerry to

release him from a request she had made earlier and also, perhaps, to remind him

of a social obligation to which they, as a couple are committed, for the evening. At line

01 Jerry complains that he had a chance to work overtime that evening. The utterance

is clearly a complaint as evidenced by the stance-marking “boy” which begins the turn,the formulation of the time as four or five hours which suggests a lot,4 as well as the use

of the construction “had a chance to” as opposed to “was going to,” “might have,” etc.

A complaint necessarily involves someone who suffered an unhappy consequence (e.g.

“There’s no more cake left!”) and, often at least, someone who caused the situation

(“You ate all the cake!”). Here both aspects of the complainable matter are somewhat

unclear. Although Linda is reminding Jerry of the obligation that will prevent him

from working overtime it is not entirely obvious whether she is responsible for making

the plan or whether these are primarily his friends or hers (or equally friends of

both). More importantly, there is some ambiguity as to who stands to lose by Jerry’s

not working. Given that Linda and Jerry are a married couple it is likely that the

financial well-being of one cannot be disentangled from that of the other. So consider

in this respect the talk at line 20. Here, after Linda has first sympathized (line 10) and

subsequently proposed a remedy to the complaint (12), Jerry reinvokes its relevance by

articulating the unhappy consequence at line 20.

(23) TC_I(b): #13

01 Jer: .t Bo::y ◦uh◦ I hadda(t) (.) chance tuh work fer

02 about four’r five hours overtime n’night,

03 (0.3)

4 To see this, consider that Jerry need not have indicated the length of time at all.


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04 Jer: (◦ [ ◦◦ ◦)

05 Lin: [We::ll,

06 (O.2)

07 Jer: Bu[t that’s t he wy it goe:s,=

08 Lin:◦ [◦(Keh)◦

09 Lin: =Yea:h,10 Lin: That’s too ba:d.

11 Jer: Yeah.

12 Lin: Kinyuh work t’morrow night?

13 Jer: hhunh

14 (.)

15 Jer: .hhhhhh Ah: yeh ah’ll prolih be workin un::::

16 little bit tomorrow night

17 (0.3)

18 Jer: anyway, bu[t uh,19 Lin: [◦Yeh◦

20 Jer: c’da used the money..hh[h

21 Lin: ◦ [Y[e:ah?]=

22 Jer: [Okay,]=

23 Lin: =Well=

24 Jer: =Ye[r: Well this: thing’s more importn anyway,

25 Lin: ◦◦ [.hhhhhh

26 (0.3)

27 L in: Uhhhhh W ell it’s all s et u p is t he t hi*:[ng.]=

28 Jer: [Oh:]=

29 Jer: =[Y : e a : : h . ◦◦ ]Right.]

30 L in: =[u m ean we c an’t t]urn b a]: [ ck.

31 Jer: [nNo:::, heav’ns no.

Jerry’s “c’da used the money” at line 20 is a finite declarative clause and thus, according

to most descriptions of English, should have an overt subject. Notice though that if he

were to have produced an overt subject, Jerry would have been forced to select betweensaying, “we c’da used the money” or “I c’da used the money.” The latter would make

little sense in this context given that Jerry is talking to his own wife. Alternatively, it

might have led Linda to wonder whether Jerry was squirreling money away. If, on the

other hand, Jerry were to have said “we c’da used the money” he would have undercut

the grounds for the complaint he is trying to bring off by implying that Linda has also

suffered by his not being able to work overtime. The solution for Jerry is simply to

produce the turn without an overtly expressed subject.

Participants in interaction clearly orient to the grammar of the language they arespeaking as a system of norms that in some sense constrains what they may do.

We see this not only in the fact that speakers, typically, construct turns at talk that

accord with these norms but also in the response that norm-violating talk elicits—for

instance repair initiation and correction. At the same time, speakers routinely “work

around” the normative constraints imposed by a given grammatical system to suit their

interactional and commuicative purposes. This raises fundamental questions about the


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nature of the linguistic system—just what kind of a thing it is—answers to which are

unfortunately well-beyond the scope of the present chapter.

9.4.1 Interaction and Language Structure: A Comparative,Typological Perspective

So far we have considered only work on English. Recently conversation analysts have

begun to ask whether well-established differences in the grammatical and lexical struc-

ture of languages have any consequences for the organization of talk-in-interaction.

The basic issue here may be summarized as follows:

whatever happens in interaction happens through the medium of some specific

set of locally available semiotic resources. . . . conversation analysts have shown thatactions in talk-in-interaction are formed through the use of distinctive prosodic

patterns, lexical collocations, word order patterns as well as language-specificobjects. . . . Of course, these semiotic resources vary significantly and systemati-cally across different languages and communities. . . . Because every turn-at-talk is

fashioned out of the linguistic resources of some particular language, the rich andenduring semiotic structures of language must be consequential in a basic way forsocial interaction. So although the problems are generic and the abilities apparently universal, the actual forms that interaction takes are shaped by and adapted to theparticular resources that are locally available for their expression.

(Sidnell 2009b : 3–4)

Initial attempts to address this issue focused largely on Japanese for at least tworeasons. First, by the mid-1990s, there were several conversation analysts who were

also native speakers of Japanese. Second, Japanese, with its agglutinating morphology,

elaborate system of particles, and verb-final basic word order, differs from English in

ways that could potentially be quite consequential for the organization of interaction

and specifically for turn-projection and thus turn-taking (see Fox et al. 1996; Tanaka

2000).

Of the many studies that have been published since the late 1990s I will focus

on just one. Hayashi and Hayano (2013) note that “[i]n every language for whichwe have adequate description, speakers have available a relatively stable set of turn-

constructional practices that can be used to initiate repair on an utterance pro-

duced by a prior speaker” but that “the formatting of initiator techniques is sen-

sitive to the grammatical inventory of the language in which they are produced”

(2013: 293). These authors go on to contrast an other-initiation format in Japanese

which they term “proferring an insertable element” (PIE) with the English practice


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which Sacks (1995a ) described as an “appendor question.” As an example of the latter

consider:

(24) GTS Sacks 1995

01 Roger: They make miserable coffee.02 Ken: hhhh hhh

03 Dan: Across the street?

04 Roger Yeh

Here Dan checks his understanding of the reference to “they” in Roger’s turn by

producing talk that is grammatically continuous with the trouble source turn. The

case below is an example of the practice Hayashi and Hayano describe as “proferring

an insertable element” (PIE):

(25) [BB] ((A conversation between a barber and his customer. ‘Backward sham-

poo’ in line 2 refers to the method of shampooing with the customer

reclining backwards into a sink while facing up.))5

1 BARB: yappari: (.) nenpaisha no hito iyagaru (yo)ne,

after.all elderly LK person dislike FP

‘After all (.) elderly people dislike ((it)).’

2 -> CUST: bakkushanpuu o:?,

backward.shampoo O

‘Backward shampoo:?,’

3 BARB: n:.

‘Yeah.’

4 (0.2)

5 CUST: soo ka na:.

that Q FP‘I wonder if it’s that ((bad)).’

Like the appendor question in (24), the customer’s “bakkushanpuu o:?,” articulates

a candidate understanding of the prior utterance—specifically what it is that elderly

people dislike. The authors note that “the customer’s utterance is formatted in such

a way as to be structurally insertable into the barber’s turn in line 1, as in yappari

nenpaisha no hito bakkushanpuu o iyagaru yone.”

While the English and Japanese practices are similar in that both initiate repair by articulating a candidate understanding and by doing so with talk that is grammatically

5 In the example from Japanese the following abbreviations are used:LK: linking particleFP: final particleQ: question particle


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190 j ack sidnel l

dependent upon the turn that contains the trouble source, they also differ in a number

of ways. These differences reflect basic differences in the structure of English and

Japanese. Appendor questions exploit the fact that “English does not mark the end of

a syntactic unit” such that elements can be tacked on indefinitely (at least in principle)

to recomplete the preceding unit. In Japanese, on the other hand, with its predicate-

final structure, “closure of a clausal TCU is strongly marked with the clause-final

predicate. . . . Thus, additional elements tacked on to the end of a preceding clausal

TCU are ‘out of place’ in most cases because their ‘canonical’ position is before the

clause-final predicate” (Hayashi and Hayano 2013: 300).

Moreover, appendor questions typically take the form of grammatically “optional”

adjuncts (e.g. prepositional phrases) whereas PIEs include not only adjuncts, but also

“core arguments” of the clause. In (19), for instance, “backward shampoo” is the direct

object of the clause. The authors explain:

This difference stems from the fact that clauses in Japanese can be syntactically complete with unarticulated but contextually-recoverable core arguments (i.e.,so-called ellipsis or zero-anaphora), whereas in English core arguments are typically expressed overtly and, in fact, this may be required if the turn is to be heard assyntactically complete.

(Hayashi and Hayano 2013: 294)

Hayashi and Hayano’s study thus illustrates how the expression or realization of thegeneric organization of other-initiated repair is shaped by the available grammatical

resources of particular languages. The contrasting forms that initiation takes in

English and Japanese clearly reflect structural differences between those two languages

in terms of clause structure, basic word patterns and the degree to which overt core

arguments are required.

As we have seen, turns-at-talk are produced to accomplish actions—to question, to

tell, to complain, to excuse, to agree, and so on. We can ask then whether the language-

specific patterns described here and elsewhere might have some bearing on the actions

they are used to implement resulting in a form of linguistic relativity (see Sidnell and

Enfield 2012 for an initial attempt to address this issue).

9.5 Conclusion................................................................................................................................................

Given the constraints of an overview chapter, I have not been able to describe or prop-

erly exemplify conversation analytic methods (see Sidnell 2012). This involves careful

analysis of multiple instances across a collection so as to reveal the context-independent

and generic features of a practice or phenomenon. Instead, in this chapter, I have tried

to review some of the basic findings of CA and illustrate these with particularly clear

examples. Those who wish to further explore CA would do well to read a study (such as

Schegloff 1996) that will give a better sense of what is involved in developing an analysis


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of some particular practice. In the preceding discussion I have tried to introduce some

of the main concerns of CA with a focus on the guiding principles and underlying

assumptions of analysis, the key findings relating to different domains of organization

(e.g. overall structural organization, turn-taking organization, sequence organization),

and some intersections with topics in linguistics.

Sidnell, Jack (2015) - Conversation Analysis

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