Abstract This conversation-analytic study takes as its focus one kind of adjacency pair, comprising a first pair-part that is a tentatively (i.e., provisionally and/or approximately) formulated questioning turn, and a second pair-part that supplies an answer (or sometimes a non-answer response). Such tentative questioning turns, through a range of turn design features, are routinely built to (1) relax the expectations for any particular mentioned candidate answer to be confirmed by the answerer, (2) display difficulties with finding an optimal wording of the question, (3) treat the prospective answerer as better placed for setting the terms in which the answer will be framed, and (4) defer to the prospective answerer some rights to shape the topic and/or action agenda. Qualitative and quantitative evidence is provided showing that answerers orient to this tentativeness by usually beginning to answer in overlap with the questioning turn. The answers themselves also attest that TQTs set only loose constraints for the response turn.

Abstract In this article we conduct a multimodal conversation analysis of the use of OH directive constructions where police officers instruct citizens to step into a police van as the final phase of an apprehension. To perform the task, officers typically formulate a directive turn that uses an imperative clause (IMP), but in the examples analysed in this article, it is combined with ole hyvä (OH) — ‘please’. In the case of these OH directive constructions, the preferred next action by the citizen is to step into the van, which may either take place unproblematically or require verbal and embodied upgrading from the officers. We show that the sequential position of the OH directive construction can be (1) the first-pair part of a sequence initiated in a series of collaborative actions, (2) an upgrade to a previous directive in the effort to maintain a police-led project during a prolonged directive sequence, or (3) a response to a citizen’s turn which has bypassed the police’s directive. From the embodied action perspective, we suggest that the OH directive constructions allow the police to divide their attention between the van and the citizen, thus providing a strong orientation for the citizen to step into the van themselves.

Abstract This article examines the use of excuse me as a practice for invoking the complainability of another person’s conduct in the service of sanctioning it as misconduct. It explores how a form that semantically expresses its speaker’s desire to be excused (excuse me ) can be used to flag another person’s doings as transgressive or untoward. It is proposed that, to elucidate this puzzle, it is necessary to adopt a more holistic perspective and to incorporate other uses of the format (e.g., in other-initiated repair, as an attention-drawing device), as well as possible relationships between them, into the analysis. The paper offers a sketch of such a more holistic, integrative account. This account revolves around the idea that practices of speaking that mobilize similar or even the same linguistic resources implicate partially overlapping sets of affordances for action which link different usages together in a larger pragmatic landscape. As such, form-based practices of speaking and the various actions they can implement exhibit demonstrable relationships across different domains of use which may need to be taken into account when thinking about a practice’s fit to the action it implements. One of the key benefits of such an approach is that it allows for mapping out larger pragmatic landscapes and to move beyond the isolated description of individual practices of speaking.

Abstract This paper shows how horse-riding instructors vocally depict, and thereby co-design and mobilize the unfolding progression of horses’ and riders’ actions through gradually escalating prosody. Escalating prosody involves the stepwise raising of a speaker’s overall pitch across a series of turn components, often accompanied by increases in overall loudness and occasionally by changes in voice quality. Escalating prosody can accompany instructed activities from beginning to end or only during certain phases of the activity. The prosodic delivery mirrors the building and subsequent sustaining of physical effort expected of the horse-rider pair. It can occur with lexical instructions to perform series of actions or with repeated directives to sustain the current activity. It can also occur with repeated praise as a successful performance unfolds, and with repeated corrections, which temporally frame moments of trouble. Prosody is shown to be a resource for co-designing the actions of others, specifically, their mobility, physical effort, and sequential progression. The data are horse-riding lessons recorded in the UK and in Germany.

Abstract In this introductory paper to the inaugural volume of the journalInteractional Linguistics, we raise the question of what a theory of language might look like once we factor time into explanations of regularities in linguistic phenomena. We first present a historical overview that contextualises interactional approaches within the broader field of linguistics, and then focus on temporality as a key dimension of language use in interaction. By doing so, we discuss issues of emergence and its consequences for constituency and dependency, and of projection and its relation to action formation within and across languages. Based on video-recorded conversational data from French and Garrwa (Australian), we seek to illustrate how the discipline of linguistics can be enriched by attending to the temporal deployment of patterns of language use, and how this may in turn modify what we understand to be language structure.

The first textbook dedicated to interactional linguistics, focusing on linguistic analyses of conversational phenomena, this introduction provides an overview of the theory and methodology of interactional linguistics. Reviewing recent findings on linguistic practices used in turn construction and turn taking, repair, action formation, ascription, and sequence and topic organization, the book examines the way that linguistic units of varying size - sentences, clauses, phrases, clause combinations, and particles - are mobilized for the implementation of specific actions in talk-in-interaction. A final chapter discusses the implications of an interactional perspective for our understanding of language as well as its variation, diversity, and universality. Supplementary online chapters explore additional topics such as the linguistic organization of preference, stance, footing, and storytelling, as well as the use of prosody and phonetics, and further practices with language. Featuring summary boxes and transcripts from recordings of everyday conversation, this is an essential resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate courses on language in social interaction.