Indexing one’s own previous action as inadequate: On ah-prefaced repeats as receipt tokens in...

Indexing one’s own previous action as inadequate: Onah-prefaced repeats as receipt tokens in French

talk-in-interaction

R A S M U S P E R S S O N

Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, Heslington,York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom

French Studies, Centre for Languages and Literature Lund University, P.O. Box201, 221 00 Lund, [email protected]

A B S T R A C T

This article considers a practice in French talk-in-interaction, formally char-acterized as other-repeats prefaced by the change-of-state particle ah. Thetarget practice accomplishes a claim of receipt, while at the same time index-ing as somehow inadequate a previous turn by the receipt speaker. Evidencedrawn upon includes: (i) the sequential locations of the examined phenome-non; (ii) ensuing developments of the sequence, wherein the indexed inade-quacy is more explicitly acknowledged; and (iii) the discriminability of thefocal practice with respect to alternative practices. Two phonetically distin-guished variants of the practice, and their respective sequential projections(‘problematizing’ topicalization or ‘accepting’ closure), are discussed. Thisarticle contributes to the study of how intersubjectivity is managed and ad-ministered by participants, and to research on the management of account-ability for producing ‘adequate’ turns and actions. Finally, it addressesongoing discussions concerning the analysis of multiple actions (first- andsecond-order) conveyed simultaneously in single turns. (French, talk-in-interaction, repetition, receipts, particles, indexicality, intersubjectivity,prosody, phonetics)*

I N T R O D U C T I O N

This article deals with a practice in French talk-in-interaction that is formally char-acterized as other-repetition prefaced by the particle ah. This particle has often beentreated as comparable to English oh in many of its uses, including those where itconstitutes or forms part of a receipt. Although the linguistic form [ah þ other-repeat] is occasionally used for other purposes in other sequential positions,1 itoverwhelmingly appears in postexpansions. In this position, ah-prefaced repeatscan be characterized as doing the work of a receipt, specifically receipt of turns

© Cambridge University Press, 2015 0047-4045/15 $15.00 497

Language in Society 44, 497–524.doi:10.1017/S004740451500041X

mailto:[email protected]

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1017/S004740451500041X&domain=pdf

conveying responsive actions. The structure in Table 1 can be taken to represent,very generally, the sequences in question.

For a first illustration of how the practice may be deployed, consider the extractin (1).

(1) (UBS.187_000000BC.0:00)(C is calling her mother M who works at UBS, a university)

A few simple initial observations are in order. First, when C does a turn (line 3: ouic’est moi::) explicitly dedicated to securing identification (relying on her voice), shedisplays the understanding that M is not aware of who is calling, judging by M’sinitial institutional greeting. The focal turn at line 5 (ah c’est toi:::) does the job ofmarking receipt, claiming that M has heard, understood, and taken in what C’sturn was doing. Second, the focal turn does more than that: it claims that while Mis informed now, she did not know that it was her daughter callingwhen she answeredthe phonewith the institutional greeting. ThusM retrospectively casts her first turn asless than optimal for launching a conversation that has now turned out to be betweenherself and her daughter. Third, it can be noticed that the work done by the receiptimplicates not only the receipted turn (line 3), but also the turn to which that turn re-sponds (line 1). These initial remarks are some indications of issues that the focalpractice deals with, and that the remainder of this article explores more in depth.

TABLE 1. Schematised representation of sequencesinvolving ah-prefaced repeats.

1 A: turn T1 (may or may not be a first pair part)2 B: turn T2 (responsive to T1)3 A: ah + partial or full repeat of T2

498 Language in Society 44:4 (2015)

RASMUS PERSSON

The article is organized as follows. After some short remarks on the data and themethodology, previous research on various types of recipiency tokens and other-repeats is reviewed. In the analytic section which follows next, the phenomenonis more precisely delimited and its sequential environments of occurrence explored,before the analysis turns to so-called attendant activities, undertaken later in thesame sequences as the ah-prefaced repeats. Next, the focal practice is contrastedand compared with other types of receipts, and with alternative practices in contextswhere an ah-prefaced repeat would seem to be a relevant option. Two phoneticallydifferentiated variants of the practice are then investigated, along with the sequen-tial organization of each variant. Finally, a concluding discussion draws out someimplications.

D A T A A N D M E T H O D

This study is undertakenwithin a conversation analytic framework (cf. e.g. Heritage1984b; Schegloff 2007; Sidnell & Stivers 2013). Where phonetic aspects of talk areconsidered, the approach taken is along the lines of Local & Walker (2005).

The study is based on a core collection of fifty-three instances of the target prac-tice (in addition to instances of nonoccurrence, cf. the section DISCRIMINABILITY),collected from naturally occurring French talk-in-interaction. Data include both or-dinary conversations and interactions in various different institutional settings,originating from several different corpora recorded under varying circumstances.While no claims of universality are made, the heterogeneity of the data suggestsa widespread use. The majority (about 75%) of the examined recordings are tele-phone conversations, but some audio recordings of co-present interaction havebeen included.

The transcriptions and translations have been made by the author (see the appen-dix for conventions and some remarks on these).

Pitch traces were produced with the Praat software (retrieved from http://www.praat.org), and manually verified by comparison of tracked pitch and perceivedpitch. Impressionistic phonetic transcriptions were made in accordance with theIPA (2005 version).

P R E V I O U S R E S E A R C H

Previous work within various traditions has explored particles (such as ah/oh) aswell as repeats from the point of view that they may constitute less-than-fullturns at talk. Given the composition of our focal practice, such research is worthconsidering. At least since Yngve (1970), researchers have investigated tokenssuch as mm-hm, uh-huh, yeah, right, oh, I see, collaborative completions, requestsfor clarification, and other types of short utterances, as well as some bodily move-ments, as instances of back-channels or feedback (Sinclair & Coulthard 1975:42;Duncan & Fiske 1977:201–202; for a more thorough review, see Gardner 2001).

Language in Society 44:4 (2015) 499

ON AH-PREFACED REPEATS AS RECE IPT TOKENS IN FRENCH

http://www.praat.org

http://www.praat.org

In many cases, repeats have also been included in the back-channels category (e.g.Clancy, Thompson, Suzuki, & Tao 1996), and in fact the precise delimitation of thecategory has not always received much attention (Gardner 2001:15). The mainfunction of back-channels has holistically been taken to be the display of attentionand/or understanding, and the contribution of individual back-channel utteranceshas often been deemed difficult to analyze (Ward & Tsukahara 2000:1184).Hence, many studies have focused not so much on detailed analysis of particularoccurrences, but on the (quantitative) characterization of the distribution of back-channel objects (Clancy et al. 1996; Koiso et al. 1998; Ward & Tsukahara 2000;Edlund & Heldner 2005), and this holds for research on back-channels in Frenchas well (Laforest 1992, 2006; Bertrand, Ader, Blache, Ferré, Espesser, & Rauzy2009; several of the contributions to Cosnier & Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1987).

Within conversation analytic research, these tokens have been treated not assomething to be studied separately from what goes on in the main channel, butas part of the same flow of interaction. Consequently, they have been shown tobe used by interactants in specific and orderly ways, thus enabling the analyticdistinction of different tokens (in given sequential positions) as discriminable inter-actional objects, and the teasing apart of different items in the tentative class back-channel (Schegloff 1982; Heritage 1984a; Jefferson 1984, 1993; Mazeland 1990;Zimmerman 1993). As Schegloff (1982) remarks on the subject of uh-huh, whileit is one way in which a speaker may display attention or understanding, it is butone way among many. In fact, such a holistic analysis does not explain why, inany particular situation, a speaker would choose uh-huh rather than any othertalk or behavior that would also signal attention or understanding. In analyzingsome instances of uh-huh as continuers, Schegloff (1982) provides an illustrationof how careful sequential analysis can reveal the systematic and rational use ofsuch tokens, while at the same time questioning the usefulness of the categoryback-channels. Indeed, it seems unreasonable to include in one catch-all categorysuch different things as, on the one hand, continuers, which pass on an occasionto initiate repair, and on the other hand, requests for clarification, which may bethought of as (a paraphrase for) repair initiation (Schegloff 1982:87–88).

Various other types of short utterances, elsewhere treated as back-channels, havesince received action-sequentially based accounts. These include, for instance, assess-ments (Goodwin 1986), the receipt token oh (Heritage 1984a), news receipts (Local1996), collaborative completions (Lerner 2004), and many others. One generalfinding that may be noted from such research, is that other (and arguably more inter-esting) things may be learned about these objects if they are studied case by case on amicro-level, focusing on their role in the moment-by-moment unfolding of particularinstances of interaction, as opposed to a macro-level, where discoveries and explana-tions are sought and warranted in the aggregate of many instances (cf. Zimmerman1993:190; Schegloff 1993:117; Sacks 1995:27–28, 65). The investigated objectsmay differ in many respects relevant to the emerging structure of interaction, forexample the degree to which they claim incipient speakership (cf. Jefferson 1984,


RASMUS PERSSON

1993; Beach 1993; Drummond & Hopper 1993), the degree to which they treat pre-ceding talk as a completed unit (cf. Schegloff 1982; Heritage 1984a; Goodwin 1986;Gardner 1997, 1998), or the degree to which they mobilize response, such as a confi-rmation or a topical development (cf. Heritage 1984a; Maynard 1997).

A brief and selective survey of research on other-repeats is also due here (self-repeats are not discussed here, but see Curl 2002). Repeats (sometimes termedecho utterances) have long been studied within both linguistics and morediscourse-oriented approaches (e.g. Bolinger 1957; Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, &Svartvik 1985; Halliday & Hasan 1976; Norrick 1987; Tannen 1987), but it isconversation analytic research that has contributed the most to our current knowl-edge of the work repeats can do in talk-in-interaction. Schegloff (1996:177–79)describes three general sequential positions in which repeats appear, and the conse-quential differences in terms of function. First, repeats may be used sequence-initially, typically initiating repair (some relevant references are Jefferson 1972;Selting 1996; Sorjonen 1996; Schegloff 1997; Drew 2003; Wu 2006; Svennevig2008; Robinson 2009, 2013; Robinson & Kevoe-Feldman 2010; Benjamin &Walker 2013). Second, repeats may be used responsively, in second position, todo an answer (cf. Schegloff 1996; Sorjonen 2001a:72–80, 2001b; Svennevig2003; Heritage & Raymond 2012) or otherwise (Couper-Kuhlen 1996; Schegloff1997:531–36; Bolden 2009). Third, repeats sometimes do the work of sequence-closing thirds, registering and receipting previous talk (Goldberg 1975:276–78;Sorjonen 1996; Schegloff 1997:527–31; Svennevig 2004). In particular, Robinson(2009) shows that repeats may serve to register a correction proposed by a coparti-cipant, independently of the acceptance of that correction (Robinson 2009:570). Tothe best of my knowledge, Robinson (2009) is as close as previous research hascome to a treatment of oh-prefaced repeats in English (or ah-prefaced repeats inFrench). Robinson (2009) describes a practice whereby a speaker repeats acounter-informing to challenge it, while at the same time providing the counter-informer with an opportunity to modify the counter-informing. One variation ofthis practice involves prefacing the repeat with oh, which ‘tends to laminate [a]stance of tentative acceptance onto the focal practice, and can begin to transformit into more of a “newsmark”’ (Robinson 2009:581; cf. also Heritage1984a:312). We may note, then, that this kind of receipt is sequentially sensitivenot only to the repeated turn (the counter-informing), but also to the turn before that.

The present article takes into account phonetic aspects of the investigatedphenomenon. Space considerations here prohibit a full review of the researchstrand dealing with the phonetics and prosody of talk-in-interaction, but seeSelting (2010) for a fairly recent overview. Suffice to say here that studies ofvarious types of receipts, continuers, and particles (often in German: Golato &Fagyal 2008; Betz & Golato 2008; Golato 2012; Barth-Weingarten 2011; butalso in English: Local 1996; Gardner 2001; and in Italian: Müller 1996) have dem-onstrated that participants use the phonetic and prosodic design of these objects asresources for handling such things as (dis)affiliation, epistemic issues, and



sequence organization. Thus, assuming a participants’ perspective necessitatesconsidering phonetic and prosodic design.

A N A L Y S I S

A few short remarks on the delimitation of the examined practice are in order. First,the particle ah is not separated from the repeat by a pause (the absence of a pause isessential for an instance of the practice to be recognizable as such to participants,since each of the two components is—by itself—a form of receipt). Second, therepeat may be a partial or a complete recycling of lexical material from the previousturn. Third, the repeat may incorporate certain transformations, such as deicticchanges due to the speaker shift, and pronominalization of nouns (for moredetails, see Persson 2014:119). It should be noted that this delimitation is anoutcome of the process of collecting and excluding cases, rather than a part ofthe research design a priori (cf. Schegloff 1997).

Any interactional practice has generic and recurrent (context-free)2 properties, bymeans of which it can be deployed and understood in always new and ultimatelyunique situations, in relatively stable ways. Practices also have potential for particu-larization (context-sensitivity), that is, they take on particularized meanings and func-tions in each situated instantiation. The argumentmade andwarranted in this article isthat the work generically accomplished through the focal practice involves claimingreceipt of the other’s turn, while at the same time retrospectively indexing one’s ownprevious action as inadequate or inapposite. Importantly, this is not the ‘sum’ of theeffects of two separate receipt elements (change-of-state particle and repeat), but theeffect of a practice involving both elements. The expressions inadequate/inappositeare intentionally vague in order to cover thewide range of ‘failures’ that speakers rec-ognizably index as such by deploying the target practice. Returning to extract (1), wecan see that M deploys the target practice (line 5) to claim receipt of C’s self-identi-fying informing (line 3), while also indexing her own previous action (the initialgreeting at line 1) as inadequate, in this case for reasons related to recipient design.

Sequential environments

Oneway of showing that a conversational practice is systematically and purposeful-ly deployed by participants is to examine the particular sequential environments inwhich it regularly appears, and to demonstrate how the practice is responsive tocertain concerns that arise in such sequential environments, that is, how the practiceis a solution to practical problems apparent in those environments. This article dis-cusses the twomost frequent sequential environments for the target practice, as wellas a less frequent one. For clarity, it can be pointed out that the sequential position ofthe ah-prefaced repeat in relation to its immediate context is constant to a certaindegree—it is always in a receipt position—so what is examined here are ratherthe wider sequential environments in which the receipt is used and, relatedly,which type of turn is being receipted.


RASMUS PERSSON

The first of the two frequent sequential environments is after third positionrepairs (Schegloff 1992). In short, a third position repair is one that is initiatedand effected not in the same turn as the trouble source, nor in the next turn, butin the turn that is responsive to the next turn. Consider the concise examplegiven in (2) (reproduced here as given by Kitzinger 2013:247).

(2) (Holt corpus – X(C):1:2:7)

Line 2, being in second position and responsive to the turn in first position at line1, reveals an understanding thatMum treats as problematic at line 4. This turn at line4, then, is the repair done in third position, upon discovery of how the turn in firstposition was analyzed (in second position) by Les.

The extract in (3) illustrates the focal practice as deployed in receipt of a thirdposition repair.

(3) (OTG.1PF0491.0:00)(Interaction in a tourist information office, between the clerk A and thecustomer C.)



The customer C’s elliptic inquiry, in the second part of line 2, is responded to byA at line 3 (line 5 seems to reconfirm that response). After a next-turn repair initi-ation at line 7 (concerning the response), the response is redone at line 9 and then atline 11. This repaired response is thus a sequential next to the inquiry made at line 2.As it turns out, C treats the repaired response as warranting a third position repair,clarifying how the initial inquiry should be understood, and the third position repairis done at lines 12–13. While not serially third, due to the interfering next-turnrepair sequence, the third position repair is in fact sequentially third, by referenceto the initial inquiry. The third position repair is composed of a rejection component(notably the part pas les TAG) and the repair proper (line 13). The clerk A respondsto the repair with an ah-prefaced repeat (a::h les VFD), followed by a renewed re-sponse to the inquiry made in first position.

The focal practice lends itself well tomanaging two relevancies that systematicallyarise after third position repairs. First, it serves to acknowledge receipt of the thirdposition repair, which may now be treated as successful—no further efforts beingnecessary to establish the reference. Second, it acknowledges the claimed inadequacyof the previous attempts to respond to the trouble source turn (the inquiry). In doingso, it is away for A to align with C’s representation of A’s displayed understanding asproblematic. The aforementioned two relevancies seem to be the basis for the recur-rence of ah-prefaced repeats in this particular sequential environment.

The second sequential environment, where the focal phenomenon is frequentlyfound, is after turns that challenge the presuppositions or assumptions of the pre-vious turn. Consider extract (4).

(4) (TCOF.Reunion_LUC_08.11:36)(Informal meeting between two business associates.)


RASMUS PERSSON

While A’s turn that takes up lines 1–3 and 6 is designed as a news telling about acommon acquaintance, B does not accept this telling as news (line 7). Thus, B’sresponse is challenging, in that it rejects one basic assumption of A’s newstelling: that B does not already know. This is also lexically conveyed via theturn-initial particle ben, roughly ‘well’, which enacts some form of resistance tothe appositeness of the turn responded to. Two relevancies in this context (for A)are registering B’s informing and acknowledging the implicated inadequacy ofA’s news telling. The ah-prefaced repeat that A produces at line 10 is a way ofdealing with both of these relevancies. After the focal turn (line 10), B reconfirms(ben oui ‘well yeah’) and then accounts for his knowledge.

The two types of sequential environments explicated above are similar to someextent, in that one participant indicates some misconception on the part of another.The essential difference between the two environments is that while third positionrepairs are aimed at providing another opportunity to respond to the ‘misunderstood’turn, the ‘challenging’ turns are not as clearly produced in search of a renewed re-sponse to something prior to the challenged turn. In both environments, ah-prefacedrepeats serve to claim that intersubjectivity has been re-established after a breakdownin understanding, or after a discrepancy of background assumptions, respectively.

It is illuminating to also consider the deployment of the focal practice in less fre-quent sequential environments. Extract (5) is one such case.

(5) (OTG.3AP0272.0:00)(Interaction at a tourist information office, between the clerk H and thecustomer C.)



At line 2, C produces a three-part request, towhich H replies with a first responsepart at lines 3–4. A second part of the response (concerning hotels) is begun at line5. At that point, C renews the ‘campsites’ part of the request (line 7), andH respondsto that (lines 9, 11), with C acknowledging the response at line 12. Beginning inoverlap with C’s acknowledgment, H returns to the ‘hotels’ part of the response(at the end of line 11 and at line 13). An adjacency pair concerning the hotelguide follows (line 14 and the first part of line 15).

The second part of line 15 (et après les locations ‘and then the rentals’) mentionsanother type of accommodation. As indicated by the increment subsequently addedat line 17, this part is closer to a volunteered offer than a response part directlyprompted by C’s request, and line 19 shows that C accepts the offer. C’s delayedresponse to all of this begins with the ah-prefaced repeat at line 20 (ah les loca-tions). Similarly to the more frequent sequential environments discussed above,here the target practice serves to acknowledge receipt of the repeated expressionles locations (apparently unfamiliar to C), and to index C’s sequentially previousaction as inadequate: the request that yielded H’s responses and the more volun-teered part about the rentals. The remainder of C’s turn at line 20 provides evidenceof C orienting more explicitly to the specifics of the indexed inadequacy of therequest: les locations is something that the request should have mentioned, sincethat turns out to be what C was putatively after.


RASMUS PERSSON

Extract (5) illustrates the deployment of the focal practice in a less frequent se-quential environment (the collection does not contain any similar cases), and thetype of sequential environment itself might be a less recurrent one (a volunteeredoffer following a prior request for something related). However, the focal receiptturn, constituted by the ah-prefaced repeat, appears to do the same type of interac-tional work here as in the two more frequent sequential environments.

It should be noted that in the two more frequent environments (cf. extracts (3)and (4)), the turn prior to the receipt is where the inadequacy or inappositenessof the receipt-speaker’s turn is first brought up. In those cases, by using the ah-prefaced repeat, the receipt-speaker aligns with the interlocutor’s portrayal of theturn that is treated as problematic. The inadequacy, however, is not always first in-troduced by the interlocutor: as extract (5) shows, the ah-prefaced repeat can beused by receipt-speakers themselves to acknowledge the inadequacy of a priorturn, without any indications to that effect in the interlocutor’s talk.

Attendant activities

Further insight into the work of the target phenomenon can be gained by examiningother actions conveyed later in the same turn, as well as in the wake of the target turn.In fact, the phenomenon recurrently appears together with what has been termedattendant activities, typically found where correction is involved. These attendantactivities include for instance instructing, complaining, admitting, forgiving, accus-ing, apologizing, and ridiculing—that is, behaviour ‘specifically addressing lapsesin competence and/or conduct’ (Jefferson 1987:88). Extract (6), which bears a resem-blance to extract (1), illustrates several of these activities (or actions).

(6) (UBS. 390_00000187.0:00)(C is calling her mother M at work.)



After M’s institutional greeting (line 1), C does not immediately self-identify,but instead produces, in between laughter tokens, a very high-pitched greeting atline 3 ( f0 between 500 and 700 Hz), which might complicate voice identification.M does not display having recognized C’s voice, but returns the greeting (line 4),providing an opportunity to state the reason for the call. Relying on her ‘normal’voice for self-identification, C does so while prefixing mais ‘but’ to her informingat line 5, lending the turn an objecting character—unlike in extract (1). The ah-prefaced repeat (line 6) that receipts the informing is M’s first acknowledgmentof the ‘mistake’, indexing her previous move as inadequate. In overlap with C’sensuing laughter, M follows this up with an account (lines 8–9) indicating thatthe ‘mistake’ was to respond as if it was a regular call to the institution, notknowing that it was her daughter calling. The account does not, by contrast, indicatethat the inadequacy had to do with failed voice recognition.

Repeating her greeting at line 10 (at even higher pitch: f0 between 700 and 1000Hz), C once more manifests its nonordinary character. After some interveningbusiness, C makes another effort to expose, or even ridicule, M’s mistake: atlines 13–14, C quotes her own greeting in a nonordinary (potentially nonserious)voice, and M’s ordinary response in a ‘serious’ voice, including an imagined ordi-nary follow-up (c’est pour qui ‘who do you want to speak to’). The inadequate be-haviour, as it is retrospectively portrayed here by C, is slightly different from whatM’s account indicated: it has to do with M’s not recognizing a nonserious callopening. M responds to C’s reconstruction of the call opening with an objecting,multiple mais non (line 15) (cf. Stivers 2004), and another account (line 16), lexi-cally designed as such (c’est pour ça ‘that’s why’), which justifies M’s failure torespond adequately to C’s jocular greeting, by claiming ‘not being in the mood’


RASMUS PERSSON

(arguably also representing C’s ridiculing as coming at a bad time). Note that thissecond account is more suitable than the first (lines 8–9) with respect to the faultexposed by C at lines 13–14.

Extract (6) shows how the retrospective indexing works indexically indeed: itpoints to the presence of a prior inadequacy, the specifics of which may be furthernegotiated subsequently. Attendant actions and activities may thus provide further(and diverging) indications of the nature of the indexed inadequacy. Where attendantactivities are present, they always follow (and never precede) the ah-prefaced repeat,whereas there appears to be no natural ordering among different attendant activities,explicit acceptances, and other elements co-occurring with the focal practice. Areason for the ordering of ah-prefaced repeats and attendant activities may be thatthe former indexes some inadequacy, thus minimally acknowledging it, whereas at-tendant activities bring it to the interactional foreground. The participants’ strategywould then be to begin, as a first step, with the minimal and possibly sufficient ac-knowledgment, and only as a second step, subject to interactional contingencies,resort to foregrounding and more explicitly dealing with the inadequacy.

Discriminability

One essential way of showing that the target practice does some characteristic,discriminable work is to demonstrate that other, similar practices (such as otherah-prefaced receipts, or repeats without any preface) achieve different things.This discovery and proof procedure is used in two ways here. First, the analyticaccount covers some ‘ineligible’ contexts, that is, environments that favor someform of receipt, but do not warrant the use of an ah-prefaced repeat because ofthe action(s) it would convey. Second, the deployment of alternative practices in‘eligible’ contexts, that is, contexts of potential relevance, is considered. Thus,one can get a clearer sense of the deployment of the focal practice as a possibleoutcome among others, as a strategy used for certain interactional purposes,rather than a mere reaction, mandated by the context alone.

Concerning ineligible contexts, a simple, perhaps self-evident, observation tobegin with is that other types of receipts are relevant where there is no previousaction close at hand that the receipt-speaker could index as inadequate, such aswhen a volunteered, sequence-initiating informing is receipted. Some receipttokens regularly used in such situations are for instance ah ouais ‘oh yeah’, ahbon ‘oh really’, and c’est vrai, roughly ‘really’.

One may continue by noting that second pair parts that align with and accept thepresuppositions and assumptions of a first pair part do not in general make relevanta receipt in the form of an ah-prefaced repeat. An illustrative case, where a solicitedinforming is receipted by two different speakers, is extract (7).

(7) (CLAPI.chez_les_logeurs.5:13)(German student S is spending a semester in France. Here, she is talking to herlandlords, the couple E and F.)



E and F both contribute to soliciting the informing (lines 1 and 2), and S delivers itat line 4. E receipts it with ah oui ‘oh yeah’, and F with an unprefaced partial repeat(lines 5 and 6). The informing is extended by S (line 7), and E and F both receipt thiswith ah oui (lines 9 and 10), the latter in overlap with S’s reaffirmation at line 11.While S’s informing is apparently ‘news’ to both E and F, nothing about it warrantstreating the soliciting as inadequate, and an ah-prefaced repeat is not relevant here.

Thus, even where a responsive action is putatively informative or unexpected, thisdoes not warrant the deployment of the target practice; something else, or something‘more’ is required for an ah-prefaced repeat to be relevant. This can for instance bethat the initiating action failed to take into account some possibility that the respon-sive, to-be-receipted action brings up. Compare extract (8) with extract (4).

(8) (CORAL.FFAMCV03.5:50)(S has just described an annual manifestation taking place in Leipzig, where S’ssister used to live.)

Unlike the news telling in extract (4), here M builds into his telling (lines 1–2)the possibility that S already knows. This turns out to be the case (line 4), and while


RASMUS PERSSON

(at line 6) this is treated as news, or even arguably as unexpected, it is not relevant toretrospectively treat the news telling as inadequate, since the telling did not presup-pose that S was unaware.

Turning from ineligible contexts to nonoccurrences in contexts of potential rel-evance, the focus next is on alternative actions after turns challenging the presup-positions or assumptions of the prior turn.

While it may seem strange to speak of a context of relevance for repair (which ispotentially relevant anywhere), initiating repair, for examplewith a repeat, is indeedone option for responding to challenging turns. This is for example demonstrated inRobinson’s (2009) work on counter-informings, which challenge the appositenessof a prior turn in terms of its veracity.

Another way of responding (in third position) to challenging turns (in second po-sition) that treat the initiating action as inapposite is to claim only-now-remembering,as shown by Koivisto (2013). While this type of receipt is similar to ah-prefacedrepeats in one sense—they align with the challenging turn’s stance toward the puta-tively inapposite initiating action—a crucial difference is that claiming only-now-remembering does not involve acknowledging receipt of something new. On thecontrary, it relies on claiming that one already knew something, and failed to takeit into account in the initiating action. Koivisto (2015) identifies another type ofreceipt, the Finnish particle aa, which claims now-understanding something previ-ously available. Again, this seems to differ from French ah-prefaced repeats in thatthe Finnish particle aa does not involve treating the receipted turn as something new.

Another option is to minimize rather than acknowledge the inadequacy, as inextract (9).

(9) (CORAL.FPUBDL08.0:10)(Interaction in a bakery between the employee A and the customers F and H,presumably a couple.)



At lines 6 and 8, F challenges the assumptions of A’s question (line 3). Line 10 isan attempt to claim only-now-remembering, but it is unsuccessful (cf. line 11). Notethat once the correction is completed (lines 15, 17), amere, unprefaced repeat is thefirst step in A’s work to minimize the claimed inadequacy of the question (cf. lines18 and 21) and reclaiming some epistemic authority (line 19). While receipting thecorrection as such, A portrays the inadequacy as inconsequential, and herprior guess(es) as ‘close enough’. As made obvious by line 21, minimizing the in-adequacy is hearable as dismissing the correction as ‘quibbling’ (particularly unco-operative since F first withholds the ‘correct’ toponym twice, after rejectingMartinique and Guadeloupe at lines 8 and 11). In this perspective, the sequentialprogressivity would have been less hindered if the putatively unimportant inade-quacy were let pass, or remedied through embedded correction (Jefferson 1987)or in some other, less cumbersome way.

A final possibility considered here is to overtly and fully acknowledge the inad-equacy, for example, with an apology, without first indexing it with an ah-prefacedrepeat. This is further considered in the concluding discussion.

As a caution, it should be underscored that the consideration of nonoccurrencesin this section is a mere heuristic device. It is useful in the process of characterizing


RASMUS PERSSON

contexts of potential relevance, and for showing that the focal phenomenon is anachieved outcome among other possibilities. Importantly, there is no claim thatany of these nonoccurrences are cases of relevant absence of the focal practice.

Two distinct variants of the practice

A systematic investigation of the phonetic design of the focal turns shows that par-ticipants mobilize phonetics as a resource for projecting specific sequential trajec-tories after the ah-prefaced repeat (beyond its generic, retrospective work).Participants (at the least) distinguish between two variants of the practice, whichcan be termed (a) ‘problematizing’ (or disaligning) and (b) ‘accepting’ (or align-ing). The former (a) serves to treat the receipted turn as not-yet-fully accepted orproblematic to take into account in the course of action underway, and to topicalizethe receipted talk, making further sequence expansion relevant, often involving rec-onciliatory information (Robinson 2009). The latter (b) involves treating the re-ceipted turn as unproblematic, and implies a fully accomplished acceptance(sometimes accompanied by an acceptance token like d’accord/oké). In ‘accepting’cases, any further sequence expansion treats the correction or repair as already ac-complished and not requiring further interactional work. Attendant activities areseemingly undertaken only after acceptance has been demonstrably accomplished.

Phonetically, ‘problematizing’ cases are characterized by:

(i) tighter articulatory settings, and more peripheral (more ‘full’) vowels, corre-sponding to an impressionistically more distinct, ‘careful’ enunciation,

(ii) increasing or maintained loudness, and(iii) relatively wide rising or rising-falling pitch movements associated with syllables

carrying primary (final) accentuation.

‘Accepting’ cases, by contrast, involve:

(i) laxer articulatory settings (in particular near the end of the repeat) going as far assyllable deletion, and less peripheral (more ‘reduced’, more schwa-like) vowels,corresponding to an impressionistically less distinct enunciation,

(ii) decreasing or maintained loudness, and(iii) typically an accentuation early in the TCU followed by a stretch of falling pitch,

with falling or virtually flat pitch during the final accented syllable.

Extract (10) illustrates the problematizing variant.

(10) (MOUV. 2011-04-14.1: 40:53)

(Radio phone-in show. After the discussion with a previous caller fromQuébechas ended on the topic of the evaluation of teachers’ success (independently ofstudents’ achievements), the host E encourages listeners to call in and discussthis topic. Another (separate) topic discussed with other callers on this



evening’s show is the island of Reunion, as an example of a place where peopleof different cultures and religions manage to live together harmoniously.)

(Some thirteen minutes later, the caller A, from France, has now come on theair, right before the end of the show. A has just agreed to continue the discussionthe following day, before she has announced her reason-for-the-call.)

After confirming E’s assumption that Awanted to discuss the Reunion issue (o::h oui:: sur la Réunion), A extends her turn (lines 8–9: et puis juste te dire…) toalso respond to E’s distant call for opinions on teacher evaluation (lines 1–4).By asserting that teachers are evaluated in actuality (line 9), A challenges one


RASMUS PERSSON

assumption of E’s call for opinions: that it is a matter of discussion whether teacherscan be evaluated. E’s ah-prefaced repeat (line 11) does receipt of A’s assertionand indexes as inadequate the (distant) turn which embodied the problematicassumption.

The phonetic design of the ah-prefaced repeat is characterized by a final accentcarrying a rather wide (7.5 st) rise to high in the speaker’s range (slightly higherthan the nonfinal accents), and by more or less maintained loudness throughoutthe utterance. Comparison with the vowels of the first saying gives that the repeathas a fronter /i/ (represented as [ɪ ] vs. [ɪ]), a more open /a/ ([ɐ] vs. [ε]), and amore rounded /õ/ ([õ ] vs. [õ]). Analysis of segmental durations and formant move-ments also corroborate the auditory impression that [õ e] is less diphthongal (moredisyllabic) than [õe] (with nasality spread), and the full vowel [ʉ] in the repeat ismore fully articulated than the (canonical) approximant [ɥ] in the first saying.Overall, the repeat has relatively fully articulated vowels.

The phonetic design of the focal turn is subsequently oriented to as displayingsome measure of resistance to the assertion: at line 12, A makes a further attemptat convincing E, and failing an observable acceptance (cf. line 13), anotherattempt at line 14 (this time unambiguously4 implicating the speaker as a teacherherself). The acceptance is then explicitly produced (line 17), however with consid-erable delay (lines 15–16).

Extract (11) illustrates the accepting variant.

(11) (MOUV.2011-04-11.0:23:00)(Radio phone-in show. Discussion between the host E and the caller A, a part of anongoing discussion about animal welfare and about halal and kosher slaughter.)



In the course of characterizing A’s concern for animals as emotional (lines 1–2),E initiates self-repair on the expression droits des animaux ‘animal rights’ (lines 2–3), asking A whether such a term is warranted (ils ont des droits les animaux) andproviding a candidate (negative) answer (non ils ont pas de droits non). At lines4–5, A attempts a contrasting answer, with a dispreference-marking turn-initialstretched b::e:::::n. This attempt is overlapped by E’s comment at line 6,which jokingly (or with resignation) trades on the assumption that animals donot have ‘real’ rights. Next, A makes a renewed attempt to do the dispreferredanswer stating that animals do have rights (lines 9–12), which disconfirms E’scandidate answer and sequentially deletes the comment at line 6. A’s answer ishearable as possibly complete after obligatoire at line 12, at which point E deliv-ers the ah-prefaced repeat (line 13), followed by explicit acceptance (d’accord).Besides acknowledging receipt of A’s informing, E’s ah-prefaced repeat indexeshis own previous action as inadequate. Rather than the question by itself, theaction closest at hand as being inadequate is E’s candidate answer, which he ‘en-forces’ and assumes acceptable to A: he produces the comment at line 6 in a slotwhere A’s answer is expectable, and that comment also assumes the definitiveanswer to be negative.

Prosodically, the ah-prefaced repeat has a pitch prominence early in the wordobligatoire (see the pitch trace in (11)), from which point the pitch falls to very


RASMUS PERSSON

low, and loudness decreases over the repeat, to a low level. Compared with the near-canonical first saying, the lax articulation of the repeat is unmistakable. The vowelsof c’est o- are rendered as a gradual labialization of the preceding fricative (heretranscribed as [ssʷ]), and instead of a complete closure for [b], the lips arebrought close together without making a full closure (yielding the approximant[β]), that is, a more open, laxer articulation is produced. Furthermore, the lateral/l/ is dropped, and the /i/ vowel is centralized ([ɪ]). The subsequent velar stop [ɡ](in the first saying) is ‘reduced’ to a (fronted) velar approximant ([ɰ]) in therepeat, and the labializing gesture in the last syllable of the first saying (cf. [tʷ]and [w]) is absent from the repeat. The vowels of the two final syllables ([ə] and[əɐ]) are also centralized (less peripheral) in the repeat. The explicit acceptance(d’accord) is produced with equally lax articulation, and the last syllable is fullydevoiced, almost as if whispered.

The phonetic design of E’s receipt, congruently with the subsequent explicit ac-ceptance, specifies the receipt as the variant involving acceptance and alignment.Consequently, A next goes on to respond to E’s earlier portrayal of A as emotionaland strangely moved by animal rights issues (see lines 1–2), by claiming thatconcern for animals is not some new or western civilization-specific idea (lines14–18). In doing so, A also treats the counter-informing, and the fact thatanimals do have legal rights, as fully accepted by E.

To recapitulate, phonetic design is used to differentiate between two variants ofthe target practice, which make relevant different sequential trajectories after thereceipt.5 The trajectory after the problematizing variant is typically expansion, in-volving reconciliatory information (as in extract (10), also clearly illustrated inextract (4)). It may also project some trouble with taking the receipted turn intoaccount in the course of action underway (see extract (3)). The accepting variantis closure-relevant, treats the receipted turn as a completed informing, and doesnot make relevant any further expansion.

The two variants are also distinguished on other levels, which we can mentiononly briefly here. First, they exhibit different types of co-occurring objects in thesame turn as the receipt: explicit acceptance only occurs with the acceptingvariant, and the problematizing variant may co-occur with items such as tu crois‘you think’. Second, they differ in turn-taking aspects, where the beginning and/or the end of the accepting receipts often are produced in noncompetitiveoverlap, much like continuers (Goodwin 1986), and the problematizing onesmay be somewhat delayed, not unlike repair initiations. Third, the acceptingvariant is not uncommonly left incomplete, that is, cut-off and abandoned beforerecognizable completion. It is tempting to think of this as an extreme form of thelax and ‘de-emphasized’ delivery of the accepting variant. This incompletiondoes not seem to happen in ah-prefaced repeats recognizable as developing instancesof the problematizing variant.

The problematizing variant of the target phenomenon in many ways seems toapproach a repair initiator, though always involving issues of acceptability (as



opposed to understanding or hearing). However, ah-prefaced repeats alwayscommunicate some degree of tentative acceptance or uptake, unlike, forexample, mere repeats functioning as repair initiators. This has sequential cor-relates: while ah-prefaced repeats can displace and delay acceptance (cf. extract(10)), they do not appear to function as pre’s to straight-out rejections or dis-agreements, unlike repair initiators (cf. Schegloff 2007:102–104). This onceagain shows that the change-of-state particle preface is essential to the practice(cf. Robinson 2009:581).

C O N C L U D I N G D I S C U S S I O N

In contrast to what research on back-channels may lead to think, this study hasshown that ah-prefaced repeats do specific and discriminable interactional work.This article thus contributes to a body of research demonstrating that utterancessuch as those examined here are not discursively neutral displays of attention andunderstanding, but intricate and systematic interactional doings within sequentialstructure. Several types of data-internal evidence, grounded in sequential analysis,have been used to support the claims made about the generic work of the focal prac-tice, while also recognizing its particularization in and through situated deploy-ment, and its indexical relation to the sequential context. Ah-prefaced repeatsplay a part in the sequential organization of re-establishment and ratification of in-tersubjectivity, as shown by the investigation of frequent sequential environments.Ah-prefaced repeats also serve to manage issues related to interactants’ accountabil-ity for producing adequate and appropriate actions. Comparisonwith other practicesshows that participants systematically employ practices of talking, based on linguis-tic and phonetic resources, for closely attending to, and negotiating, issues such ashaving produced an inadequate, or on the contrary a ‘good enough’, contribution totalk-in-interaction. This underlines the social significance of such concerns.

Previous conversation analytic work has demonstrated that there are different re-spects in which turns can do several things simultaneously. One sense in whichturns can convey multiple actions is through double-barreled actions, where oneaction is a vehicle for another, for example, questions used as vehicles for offers,and where recipients can respond to both actions (Schegloff 2007:73–76).Another sense in which a turn can implement several actions is illustrated bythe indexing work that ah-prefaced repeats do when used as receipts. Indexing aninadequacy may be thought of as the unofficial, off-record work of these turns—acknowledging receipt being their official job. This can be compared with previous-ly examined practices for indexing something about the current turn’s relation toprevious talk or conduct. For instance, Schegloff (1996) shows that doing confirma-tion by repetition indexes the repeated talk as having been previously alluded to orhinted at. Furthermore, Ogden, Hakulinen, & Tainio (2004) describe a stylizedpitch figure in Finnish, used mostly in second pair parts and other closing implica-tive turns, which indexes what is said as already known or self-evident in light of


RASMUS PERSSON

one’s own or co-participants’ talk. These are some layers of nuance that can beadded to the official job of a turn, involving connections to talk before the justprior turn. Levinson terms this type of work second-order actions, and comparesthis level of action to an undercurrent (2013:107, 122–23). Second-order actions‘do not change the nature of the sequential action type’ due next (Levinson2013:107; emphasis in original) – one would hardly be able to respond to an ah-prefaced repeat with a forgiving turn, as one would in the case of an apology orother attendant activities. Thus, it is clear that ah-prefaced repeats do not conveydouble-barreled actions, and in this sense, indexing an inadequacy is more subtlethan bringing it to the interactional surface, for example, by apologizing or explic-itly admitting the fault, which would be first-order actions different from claimingreceipt (cf. the end of the section DISCRIMINABILITY). Levinson (2013:123) cautionsanalysts against focusing too much on second-order actions and their finer granu-larity, recommending an analytic focus on the official business of turns. Whatthis article has shown might perhaps be taken as a demonstration of how partici-pants’ concerns include both orders of action, which are indeed intertwined: as pre-viously mentioned, the second-order action of indexing an inadequacy may be alead-up to its on-record recognition, or as it were stand in for that recognition, byonly minimally acknowledging the inadequacy. Mapping the inventory of first-order social actions is clearly a task of the utmost importance, but given thatsecond-order actions indeed are participants’ concerns, and apparently can blendinto the stream of first-order actions, researchers should not set them aside as amatter of principle.

Lastly, one can note that his article contributes to, and expands, the strand of re-search documenting how the phonetic design of turns is inextricably linked to se-quence and social action. Much like previous research has found for English (Curl2002; Local &Walker 2005, 2012; Ogden 2012), we find for French that particularsets of various prosodic, phonatory, and articulatory features can form distinct clus-ters that correspond to contrasting communicative functions, at particular places ininteractional-sequential structure. In particular, evidence of participants’ orienta-tion to phonetic detail in the two variants of our target phenomenon shows that par-ticipants employ concurrently both prosodic and nonprosodic resources in thephonetic design of turns, in order to form and recognize social actions embeddedwithin sequential organization.

A P P E N D I X : T R A N S C R I P T I O N C O N V E N T I O N S

(.) silence , 0.2 s(0.4) silence measured in secondseu:::h stretching of the sound preceding the colon, each colon representing

0.1 s.hh audible oral inbreath, each ‘h’ representing 0.1 s



hhh audible oral outbreath, each ‘h’ representing 0.1 s.ouais ingressive speech.p, .t, .k sound of ingressive release of an occlusion, with the letter indicating

the place of articulation!p, !t, !k click sound, produced through release of occlusion involving

suction, with the letter indicating the place of articulationje- the ‘-’ indicates an audible cut-offha ha laughter tokensou@ais laughter coinciding with the syllable ouais(ouais) uncertain transcription(beh/mais) alternative transcriptions(* *) unintelligible verbal production, the number of asterisks corresponding

to estimated number of syllables[voilà] talk in overlap with a co-participant, the square brackets vertically

aligned with those of adjacent lines to indicate the boundaries ofthe overlapping talk

(( )) author’s descriptions, comments, and explanations, . delimitation of a phenomenon described between (( ))PCL untranslatable particle (throughout the article, the particle ah in the

focal practice is not translated but simply glossed as AH)

As others have pointed out (Curl 2002:45–47;Walker 2013:469–72), the Jefferson transcrip-tion conventions satisfactorily capture many aspects of talk, especially its temporal organi-zation, while it suffers from limitations in terms of the intonational features it captures. Inthis article, pitch features therefore are not represented in the transcripts. Nor should thesetranscripts be considered to be a full rendering of the data, but only a readable partial repre-sentation of it, standing in for the recording without claiming to capture interactionally rel-evant phonetic or prosodic details. Such details may be provided on separate lines whereanalytically relevant, as in extracts (10) and (11). All analyses were performed on theactual recordings, with the transcripts serving as an aide-memoire only.

N O T E S

*I am most grateful to Richard Ogden, Paul Touati, two anonymous referees and the editors for valu-able comments and suggestions. Aversion of this work was presented at the 4th International Conferenceon Conversation Analysis in Los Angeles, June 2014, and discussions on that occasion have also ben-efitted this paper.

1For an example of an ah-prefaced repeat not in a receipt position, consider extract (i) below.

(i) (Telephone call to a university. Just prior to the extract, M has explained to the caller C thatgrades can be retrieved either by fetching them in person, or by sending the university astamped and addressed envelope.)

Although C’s turn ends with a non (here working as a question tag), andM’s turn begins with ah non,M’s answer should properly be understood not as an instance of the focal practice, but as an ah-prefaced


RASMUS PERSSON

answer, where ah-prefacing works according to a different logic (cf. Heritage 1998 on oh). Furthermore,cases such as this seemingly do not come to be designed specifically as repeats on any systematic basis—unlike the cases I investigate.

2The terms context-free (cf. Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974:699–700;Heritage 2011) and genericdo not denote that the practice is insensitive to sequential context, but rather that it is independent ofmanyof the particulars of specific conversations, for example, identities and relations of participants, setting,topic, and number of participants. The obvious exception is that the formal aspects of this practice areparticular to French talk-in-interaction.

3Anneka is a member of the production team, and she talks to the callers before they go on the air withthe host.

4The pronoun on at line 12 is in fact ambiguous: it may be an impersonal pronoun or the first personplural.

5However, the two variants appear to be independent of the sequential context of deployment, that is,the type of sequence preceding the receipt (cf. the section SEQUENTIAL ENVIRONMENTS).

R E F E R E N C E S

Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar (2011). Response tokens in interaction: Prosody, phonetics and a visualaspect of German JAJA. Gesprächsforschung – Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion12:301–70. Online: www.gespraechsforschung-ozs.de.

Beach, Wayne A. (1993). Transitional regularities for ‘casual’ ‘Okay’ usages. Journal of Pragmatics 19(4):325–52.

Benjamin, Trevor, & Traci Walker (2013). Managing problems of acceptability through high rise-fallrepetitions. Discourse Processes 50(2):107–38.

Bertrand, Roxane; Morgane Ader; Philippe Blache; Gaëlle Ferré; Robert Espesser; & Stéphane Rauzy(2009). Représentation, édition et exploitation de données multimodales: Le cas des backchannelsdu corpus CID. Cahiers de linguistique française 33(2):183–212.

Betz, Emma, & Andrea Golato (2008). Remembering relevant information and withholding relevantnext actions: The German token achja. Research on Language & Social Interaction 41(1):58–98.

Bolden, Galina B. (2009). Beyond answering: Repeat-prefaced responses in conversation. Communica-tion Monographs 76(2):121–43.

Bolinger, Dwight L. M. (1957). Interrogative structures in American English. Tuscaloosa: University ofAlabama Press.

Clancy, Patricia M.; Sandra A. Thompson; Ryoko Suzuki; & Hongyin Tao (1996). The conversationaluse of reactive tokens in English, Japanese, and Mandarin. Journal of Pragmatics 26(3):355–87.

Cosnier, Jacques, & Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (eds.) (1987).Décrire la conversation. Lyon: PressesUniversitaires de Lyon.

Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth (1996). The prosody of repetition: On quoting and mimicry. In Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 366–405.

———, & Margret Selting (eds.) (1996). Prosody in conversation: Interactional studies. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Curl, Traci S. (2002). The phonetics of sequence organization: An investigation of lexical repetitionin other-initiated repair sequences in American English. Boulder: University of Coloradodissertation.

Drew, Paul (2003). Precision and exaggeration in interaction.American Sociological Review 68(6):917–38.Drummond, Kent, & Robert Hopper (1993). Back channels revisited: Acknowledgment tokens and

speakership incipiency. Research on Language & Social Interaction 26(2):157–77.Duncan, Starkey, & Donald W. Fiske (1977). Face-to-face interaction: Research, methods, and theory.

Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Edlund, Jens, & Mattias Heldner (2005). Exploring prosody in interaction control. Phonetica 62(2–4):

215–26.



http://www.gespraechsforschung-ozs.de

Gardner, Rod (1997). The conversation objectmm: Aweak and variable acknowledging token. Researchon Language & Social Interaction 30(2):131–56.

——— (1998). Between speaking and listening: The vocalisation of understandings.Applied Linguistics19(2):204–24.

——— (2001).When listeners talk: Response tokens and listener stance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Golato, Andrea (2012). German oh: Marking an emotional change of state. Research on Language &

Social Interaction 45(3):245–68.———, & Zsuzsanna Fagyal (2008). Comparing single and double sayings of the German response

token ja and the role of prosody: A conversation analytic perspective. Research on Language &Social Interaction 41(3):241–70.

Goldberg, Jo Ann (1975). A system for the transfer of instructions in natural settings. Semiotica 14(3):269–95.

Goodwin, Charles (1986). Between and within: Alternative sequential treatments of continuers andassessments. Human Studies 9(2–3):205–17.

Halliday, Michael A. K., & Ruqaiya Hasan (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Heritage, John (1984a). A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In John

Maxwell Atkinson & John Heritage (eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation anal-ysis, 299–345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

——— (1984b). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity.——— (1998). Oh-prefaced responses to inquiry. Language in Society 27(3):291–334.——— (2011). Conversation analysis: Practices and methods. In David Silverman (ed.), Qualitative

research: Issues of theory, method and practice, 208–30. London: SAGE.———, & Geoffrey Raymond (2012). Navigating epistemic landscapes: Acquiescence, agency and re-

sistance in responses to polar questions. In Jan P. de Ruiter (ed.), Questions: Formal, functional andinteractional perspectives, 179–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jefferson, Gail (1972). Side sequences. In David Sudnow (ed.), Studies in social interaction, 294–338.New York: Free Press.

——— (1984). Notes on a systematic deployment of the acknowledgement tokens ‘yeah’ and ‘mm hm’.Papers in Linguistics 17(2):197–216.

——— (1987). On exposed and embedded correction in conversation. In Graham Button & John R.E. Lee (eds.), Talk and social organisation, 86–100. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

——— (1993). Caveat speaker: Preliminary notes on recipient topic-shift implicature. Research on Lan-guage & Social Interaction 26(1):1–30.

Kitzinger, Celia (2013). Repair. In Jack Sidnell & Tanya Stivers (eds.), The handbook of conversationanalysis, 229–56. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Koiso, Hanae; Yasuo Horiuchi; Syun Tutiya, Akira Ichikawa; & Yasuharu Den (1998). An analysis ofturn-taking and backchannels based on prosodic and syntactic features in Japanese map task dialogs.Language and Speech 41(3–4):295–321.

Koivisto, Aino (2013). On the preference for remembering: Acknowledging an answer with Finnish ainii(n) (‘oh that’s right’). Research on Language & Social Interaction 46(3):277–97.

——— (2015). Displaying now-understanding: The Finnish change-of-state token aa. DiscourseProcesses 52(2):111–48.

Laforest, Marty (1992). L’influence de la loquacité de l’informateur sur la production de signaux back-channel par l’intervieweur en situation d’entrevue sociolinguistique. Language Variation andChange 4(2):163–77.

——— (2006). Les manifestations vocales de l’écoute et leur place dans la conversation. InMartina Drescher (ed.), Les marqueurs discursifs dans les langues romanes: Approches théoriqueset méthodologiques, 55–69. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Lerner, Gene H. (2004). Collaborative turn sequences. In Gene H. Lerner (ed.), Conversation analysis:Studies from the first generation, 225–56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.


RASMUS PERSSON

Levinson, Stephen C. (2013). Action formation and ascription. In Jack Sidnell & Tanya Stivers (eds.),The handbook of conversation analysis, 103–30. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Local, John (1996). Conversational phonetics: Some aspects of news receipts in everyday talk. InCouper-Kuhlen & Selting, 177–230.

———, & Gareth Walker (2005). Methodological imperatives for investigating the phonetic organiza-tion and phonological structures of spontaneous speech. Phonetica 62(2–4):120–30.

———, & Gareth Walker (2012). How phonetic features project more talk. Journal of the InternationalPhonetic Association 42(3):255–80.

Maynard, Douglas W. (1997). The news delivery sequence: Bad news and good news in conversationalinteraction. Research on Language & Social Interaction 30(2):93–130.

Mazeland, Harrie (1990). ‘Yes’, ‘no’ and ‘mhm’: Variations in acknowledgment choices. InBernard Conein, Michel de Fornel, & Louis Quéré (eds.), Les formes de la conversation, 251–82.Special issue of Réseaux. Issy-les-Moulineaux: CNET.

Müller, Frank E. (1996). Affiliating and disaffiliating with continuers: Prosodic aspects of recipiency. InCouper-Kuhlen & Selting, 131–76.

Norrick, Neal R. (1987). Functions of repetition in conversation. Text 7(3):245–64.Ogden, Richard (2012). Making sense of outliers. Phonetica 69:48–67.———; Auli Hakulinen; & Liisa Tainio (2004). Indexing ‘no news’ with stylization in Finnish. In

Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen & Cecilia E. Ford (eds.), Sound patterns in interaction: Cross-linguisticstudies from conversation, 299–334. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Persson, Rasmus (2014).Ressources linguistiques pour la gestion de l’intersubjectivité dans la parole eninteraction: Analyses conversationnelles et phonétiques. Lund: Centre for Languages and Literature.

Quirk, Randolph; Sidney Greenbaum; Geoffrey Leech; & Jan Svartvik (1985). A comprehensivegrammar of the English language. Harlow: Longman.

Robinson, Jeffrey D. (2009). Managing counterinformings: An interactional practice for soliciting in-formation that facilitates reconciliation of speakers’ incompatible positions. Human CommunicationResearch 35(4):561–87.

——— (2013). Epistemics, action formation, and other-initiation of repair: The case of partial question-ing repeats. InMakoto Hayashi, Geoffrey Raymond,& Jack Sidnell (eds.),Conversational repair andhuman understanding, 261–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

———, & Heidi Kevoe-Feldman (2010). Using full repeats to initiate repair on others’ questions.Research on Language & Social Interaction 43(3):232–59.

Sacks, Harvey (1995). Lectures on conversation, vol. 1. Oxford: Blackwell.———; Emanuel A. Schegloff; & Gail Jefferson (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of

turn-taking for conversation. Language 50(4):696–735.Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1982). Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of ‘uh huh’ and

other things that come between sentences. In Deborah Tannen (ed.), Analyzing discourse: Textand talk, 71–93. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

——— (1992). Repair after next turn: The last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in con-versation. American Journal of Sociology 97(5):1295–1345.

——— (1993). Reflections on quantification in the study of conversation. Research on Language &Social Interaction 26(1):99–129.

——— (1996). Confirming allusions: Toward an empirical account of action. American Journal ofSociology 102(1):161–216.

——— (1997). Practices and actions: Boundary cases of other-initiated repair. Discourse Processes23(3):499–545.

——— (2007). Sequence organization in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Selting,Margret (1996). Prosody as an activity-type distinctive cue in conversation: The case of so-called

‘astonished’ questions in repair initiation. In Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 231–70.——— (2010). Prosody in interaction: State of the art. In Dagmar Barth-Weingarten, Elisabeth Reber, &

Margret Selting (eds.), Prosody in interaction, 3–40. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.



Sidnell, Jack, & Tanya Stivers (eds.) (2013). The handbook of conversation analysis. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Sinclair, John McHardy, & Malcolm Coulthard (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse. London:Oxford University Press.

Sorjonen, Marja-Leena (1996). On repeats and responses in Finnish conversations. In Elinor Ochs,Emanuel A. Schegloff, & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Interaction and grammar, 277–327.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

——— (2001a).Responding in conversation: A study of response particles in Finnish. Amsterdam: JohnBenjamins.

——— (2001b). Simple answers to polar questions: The case of Finnish. In Margret Selting &ElizabethCouper-Kuhlen(eds.),Studies in interactional linguistics, 405–31.Amsterdam:JohnBenjamins.

Stivers, Tanya (2004). ‘No no no’ and other types of multiple sayings in social interaction. HumanCommunication Research 30(2):260–93.

Svennevig, Jan (2003). Echo answers in native/non-native interaction. Pragmatics 13(2):285–309.——— (2004). Other-repetition as display of hearing, understanding and emotional stance. Discourse

Studies 6(4):489–516.——— (2008). Trying the easiest solution first in other-initiation of repair. Journal of Pragmatics

40(2):333–48.Tannen, Deborah (1987). Repetition in conversation: Toward a poetics of talk. Language 63(3):

574–605.Walker, Gareth (2013). Phonetics and prosody in conversation. In Jack Sidnell & Tanya Stivers (eds.),

The handbook of conversation analysis, 455–74. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Ward, Nigel, & Wataru Tsukahara (2000). Prosodic features which cue back-channel responses in

English and Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 32(8):1177–1207.Wu, Ruey-Jiuan Regina (2006). Initiating repair and beyond: The use of two repeat-formatted repair ini-

tiations in Mandarin conversation. Discourse Processes 41(1):67–109.Yngve, Victor (1970). On getting a word in edgewise. In Mary Ann Campbell (ed.), Papers from the 6th

regional meeting, 567–77. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society.Zimmerman, Don H. (1993). Acknowledgment tokens and speakership incipiency revisited. Research

on Language & Social Interaction 26(2):179–94.

(Received 1 July 2014; revision received 21 October 2014;accepted 16 December 2014; final revision received 17 December 2014)


RASMUS PERSSON

Indexing one’s own previous action as inadequate: On ah-prefaced repeats as receipt tokens in...

Documents

Transcript of Indexing one’s own previous action as inadequate: On ah-prefaced repeats as receipt tokens in...