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Responding indirectly

Traci Walker *, Paul Drew, John Local

Centre for Advanced Studies in Language and Communication, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom

1. Introduction

This research presents an analysis of the sequential environments in which interlocutors respond indirectly to inquiriesput to them. The fragments below are representative examples of our collection of indirect responses; the turn of interest ishighlighted in grey.

1 IND 64 HV

1. Mot: I've taken maternity leave.2. HV: ([ )3. Mot: [I'm due to go back in Ma:rch4. HV: and who will look after (.) ((baby's name)).5. Mot: I was goin' back on nights.6. HV: I see.

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A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:

Received 20 May 2010

Received in revised form 11 February 2011

Accepted 20 February 2011

Available online 5 April 2011

Keywords:

Indirectness

Responding

Conversation analysis

Sequence organization

A B S T R A C T

In this research, we analyse the sequential environments in which indirectness is used in

everyday conversations. This is a distinct breakwith traditional research into indirectness,

which often focuses on the psychological conditions for felicitously doing and/or

comprehending an indirect speech act. This innovative approach allows us to show what

interactional pressures there are to respond indirectly – in effect,why speakers sometimes

respond indirectly. One of the interactional pressures we note is that utterances consisting

only of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ are often not treated as adequate responses, even to syntactically polar

questions. Upon receiving such responses, participants regularly pursue further

information. So, rather than produce responses that are only superficially matched to

the syntactic structure of the prior inquiry, speakers can and do produce responses that

display their analysis of the activity being pursued in that inquiry – so-called indirect

responses. We show that by responding indirectly, one participant can uncover the prior

turn’s agenda, or can display that a previous inquiry is inapposite in some way. Such

explanations for why indirect responses are produced can come only from the analysis of

naturally occurring conversations. For certain activities, in specific sequential locations,

responding indirectly may be the most efficient form of communication.

� 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

* Corresponding author.

E-mail address: traci.walker@york.ac.uk (T. Walker).

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0378-2166/$ – see front matter � 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2011.02.012

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2 IND 2 Field

1. Dan: Becuz (0.3) I'm g'nna go see nice Mister Chemist 'n ask 2. im what 'ee c'n do about my eye. Becuz it itches a lot.3. ...7 lines omitted4. Gor: =hmhhhh Could it be pollen.5. (0.8)6. Dan: Par don?7. Gor: Pollen:.8. (0.3)9. Gor: .k As in: uh hay fever.10. (0.2)11. Dan: It's in one eye:.

We categorise these two responses, ‘‘I was going back on nights’’ and ‘‘it’s in one eye’’, as indirect because of the relationshipthey display to the preceding inquiries. In the first case, HV (a health visitor; in the UK, a nurse or midwife who visits a babyand mother at home in the first days after a baby’s birth) has been asking a new mother about her work arrangements,culminating in a wh-question (line 4) asking who will care for the baby when the mother returns to work. Because thelinguistic format of the response to this question does not provide a referent for the ‘‘who’’, it is, for our purposes, indirect.

In the second case, Dana’s turn ‘‘it’s in one eye’’, is produced in response to a polar question posed by Gordon: ‘‘could it bepollen’’, line 4. This response does not contain a yes or no, as would be expected after a polar question (see Quirk et al., 1985for a traditional grammar approach, or Raymond, 2003 on type-conforming questions). Instead, it requires the recipient todeduce a answer to the question, based on the information given in the response.

Formal interest in the use of indirectness in language can be traced to the late 1960s and the rise of speech act theory(Searle, 1969). From its inception, speech act theorywas concernedwith theways inwhich language is used to do activities –how ‘‘I promise’’ performs the act of promising, ‘‘I wish’’ makes a wish, and so on. In addition to the actions for whichperformative verbs exist, speech act theory recognised that language was also the instrument by which other, moremundane, actions were carried out – for instance, making (as well as responding to) requests.

Searle (1969:48) maintained that sentence meaning is determined by rules, but simultaneously realised that sentencescan perform acts which are not determined by those same rules. Speech act theory was developed to address the question ofhow to bridge the gap between abstract sentence meaning and the speech act performed by it. One way is by positing theexistence of indirect speech acts. Indirect speech acts can be understood by appeal to the mismatch between the literalmeaning of an utterance and its illocutionary force (i.e., the act it is performing). Thus we find that the object of interest forspeech act theory is not in fact the actions accomplished through speech, but the process of inferencing from the literalmeaning of the sentence to its primary illocutionary point (by means of necessary and sufficient conditions, etc.). The literalmeaning of sentences is afforded prime of place, as Searle (1975:70) rejects as ‘‘obviously false’’ the idea that a sentence canhave a different meaning depending on context. Thus, even indirect speech acts are understood by knowing the literalmeaning of a sentence.

Several psycholinguistic studies of indirectness address this division between putative types ofmeaning – literalmeaningand meaning in context, which Gibbs (1999) describes as the Standard Pragmatic View. A good deal of psycholinguisticevidence suggests that we ought to reject the Standard Pragmatic View in favour of ‘direct access’ to figurative or indirectmeanings (Gibbs, 1979, 1999; Holtgraves, 1999). In his overview of the research literature, Gibbs (2002) shows that althoughspeakers can (i.e. sometimesmight) use the distinction between literal and indirect meanings (his ‘what is said’ and ‘what isimplicated’), there is no evidence to support the claim that literal meaning is always computed first. If literal meaning is notprimary, then ‘literal’ is nothing more than a label for a meaning which, like any other, is derived from a particularenvironment. Since literal meaning is congruent with directness, its deposing means that indirect speech is not deviant, isnot something less than an ideal, direct way of interacting, but simply another way of making meaning in an interaction.

The focus of the work presented here is neither a critique of the treatment of indirectness in speech act theory, nor ofpsycholinguistic investigations of the understanding of indirect speech. We mention these two strands of work because ofthe pervasive influence that they have had on the study of indirectness. Whereas speech act theory concentrates oninvestigating the form of (in)directness, rather than its function, and psycholinguistics investigates the use of inferencingrules and their role in how, psychologically speaking, people come to understand non-literal or indirect uses of language, inour work we focus instead on the function of indirectness in responsive actions – where are indirect responses employed,and what actions do they themselves constitute? Although a good deal of recent psycholinguistic work supports a morecontext-driven, interactive, multipartite construction ofmeaning, we find that themajority of this work relies on the conduitmetaphor of language, and investigates only the role of comprehension, rather than production.1 Rather than cling to theidea that language delivers meaning,2 in this paper we provide an analysis of naturally occurring talk-in-interaction that

1 Politeness theory is a line of enquiry which has focussed on the production and/or use of indirect speech acts. We, however, agree with Watts’s (2003)

critique of politeness theory as it is most commonly practiced.2 An idea that can be traced to the philosopher Frege, writing in the 19th century.

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starts from the premise that language is in fact used to deliver actions. Although we continue to use the terms direct andindirect, we hope to re-examine and extend these terms, and to disassociate them from literal and non-literal.

This report is a study of indirect responses to questions conducted using the methods of Conversation Analysis (for anoverview of this methodology see Drew, 2005). Our focus is what speakers are doing when they respond indirectly. Toanswer this question, we have collected a set of naturally occurring instances of indirect responses to enquiries, andexamined the sequential location and linguistic format of the responses. Unlike a good deal of conversation analytic workwhich takes as its starting point a particular action or activity and explicates how that action is performed, we are not hereclaiming that ‘being indirect’ is an action in the same way that requests or offers of assistance are identifiable actions. Ourinterest in analyzing indirect responses arose from the longstanding use of the term in linguistics as well as the fact that‘indirectness’ is a well-known folk category. Our research is aimed at discovering what if anything instances of indirectresponse have in common, by investigating what they are being used to do.

First, we must explicate howwe built our collection of indirect responses. Therefore, in the following section we analyseother, more (and less) direct responses to polar questions, in order to arrive at an ostensive definition of indirectness.Sections 3 and 4 discuss two interactional issues that speakers manage by responding indirectly, and section 5 summarizesand discusses our findings.

2. Direct, ‘direct’ and indirect

As mentioned in section 1, this study looks at the use of indirect responses to inquiry, mainly (though not exclusively) inresponses to polar questions. According to a strict, Searlean approach to speech acts and (in)directness, a direct response toany polar question requires a yes or no; similarly, Raymond (2003:946) defines type-conformity as adhering to the(grammatical) constraints set up by a prior turn. By this definition, fragment 2 presented in section 1 would be classed asnon-type conforming; that is, the response given to a polar question (‘‘could it be pollen’’, line 4) does not contain either a yesor a no token. It has been shown, however, that participants in an interaction do not always treat a yes/no response as anadequate answer to a polar question (Heritage and Raymond, in press). The data fragments below provide examples of how,in certain sequences, participants can find both negative and affirmative answers insufficient. In the first fragment, a healthvisitor, or visiting nurse, is meeting a new mother and father and their baby for the first time. The interaction takes place intheir home, when the baby is a few weeks old.

3 HV 4A1 p1

1. HV: Lovely.=a little bo:y.=what are you ca[:lling him. ((spread lips))2. Fat: [yes3. Fat: Michael.4. Mot: Michael.5. HV: Mi:chael6. Fat: ye[h7. HV: [that's a nice name[:.>is that your name?<8. Mot: [mm9. Fat: no10. (0.6)11. HV: no?=12. Fat: =Michael Thomas. (.) is my- (.) my name Thomas.13. HV: Oh ri:ght

Lines 7–12 provide an example of ‘‘no’’ being treated as an insufficient response, even though it fits the definition of ‘type-conforming’ (Raymond, 2003). By respondingwith ‘‘no’’ in this instance, the father treats the inquiry as only about the originof the baby’s name, and hearably withholds his own name. His ‘‘no’’ response treats the proposition in question, i.e., ‘yourname is (also) Michael’, as requiring no action other than agreement or disagreement. The HV’s question clearly displays,however, that she does not know the father’s name, and thus the inquiry is designed as an elegant solution to theinteractional problem of asking for his name (cf. Schegloff, 1979). By pursuing a more elaborated response, the health visitorindicates that in this sequence, a simple negative reply is insufficient, because it does not treat her question as initiating, orcontinuing, the exchange of information.

It is not only negative type-conforming responses that can be treated as inadequate. In the following fragment, a couple(Alice and Bernard) are discussing where Bernard will live when he returns from a year teaching in Japan. He is still in Japanwhen this conversation takes place, but his return to the US is imminent.

4 CHAm4432

1. Ali: so have you written to Joe (0.3) John (.) John2. (0.3)3. Ber: yeah4. (0.4)

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5. Ali: and6. Ber: couple times7. (0.3)8. Ali: yeah9. Ber:10. Ali:11. Ali: oh (.) well12. (0.3)13. Ali: okay

[what’s he]

14. (0.4)15. Ber: he: en that was like (.) th

he:::: [didn’t re]spond to my latest one

ree four days ago

Here, the type-conforming response ‘‘yes’’ is formatted as if it were dispreferred – it is produced after a 0.3 gap of silence(Heritage, 1984a). Furthermore, it does nomore than affirm the fact that he has indeed ‘‘written to . . . John.’’ Although this isa lexicosemantically positive response, ‘‘yes’’ on its own fails to, or by design declines to, demonstrate to Alice anywillingness to engage in an expanded response. In effect, ‘‘yes’’ is in this instance, an almost totally uninformative response.Alice treats it as such by pursuing an elaboration with a conjunction, ‘‘and’’ (line 5), which invites Bernard to provide thesubstantial information her initial question sought.

In these examples, the additional information being sought is made explicit in the subsequent talk. The health visitor’srepetition of ‘‘no?’’ leads to the father providing his own name; Alice’s pursuit of whether or not Bernard’s supposedaccommodation is still available takes much longer, and ends with him admitting he is still not sure (data not shown). Thepolar question producers demonstrate, by their pursuit of the information, that they expected their enquiries to engenderresponses thatweremore elaborate than a simple yes or no, however direct (in a speech act sense) such responsesmay be.3 Inother words, it seems that they were counting on their co-participants’ ability to respond to ‘why that now’ rather than theresponse explicitly provided for by the prior turn’s syntactic structure. This suggests that there can be an organizationalpressure on interlocutors to ‘do more’ than respond (only) to the grammatical form of (polar) questions.

2.1. ‘Direct’ responses

One way in which speakers can do more is to provide not a yes or no token, but a ‘direct’, clear and obvious, response.What we mean by clear and obvious is shown by the responses highlighted in the following examples, which are non-typeconforming (in Raymond, 2003’s terms), but are, we claim, ‘direct’ (though modulated or qualified) responses to thepreceding inquiries.

5 Heritage I.6

1. MrsH: O:keh-eh Oh he i:s coming back t'[morrow i[s he?2. Edg: ['t! [He'll be back3. again tomorrow I would think ahout mid da:y so if you: you4. could pho:ne throu:gh,

6 NB 13

1. Emm: .hhhh is there any place around here that u-has those Lottie2. do yih know 3. [I know 4.5.

In fragment 5, the response ‘‘he’ll be back again tomorrow’’ addresses the question by recycling lexical material from it, andgiving the confirmation that Mrs H’s question seeks. Understanding it as an affirmative response requires no inferencing; allthat prevents it from being a direct (in Searlean terminology) or type-conforming response is a positive polarity lexical item.

In fragment 6, Lottie’s response ‘‘Akrun’s I think’s the only place that I know’’ responds to the activity Emma has enactedin the prior turn – that of enlisting Lottie’s help in thinking of, or remembering, a ‘‘place around here that has those’’.Although syntactically the question is polar – that is, it is built for a yes or no answer – we saw above how some yes/noresponses can be treated as, and are possibly designed to be, inadequate, as they do not display that the speaker has anyunderstanding of the activity being undertaken or continued by the turn employing the polar question. On the contrary thisresponse, as well as the one in fragment 5, is a clear display that the question recipient understands and is responding to the

3 Note thatwe are not claiming that speech act theorywould claim that these sentences fulfil the necessary and sufficient conditions to perform adequate

responsive speech acts; we are not concerned with proving or disproving the merits of a speech act analysis. Rather we simply wish to point out how, in

naturally occurring interactions, CA methodology shows how the production of (nominally) ‘direct’ responses may not be interactionally adequate.

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activity being furthered by the question. Therefore, we propose that examples such as these ought not be classified asindirect responses – even though they lack affirmative lexical items.

Stivers and Hayashi (2010) analyse the ways in which responses can transform the terms of the questions they answer.The phenomena they examine comprise more types of responses than our collection of indirect responses, though at leastone of their findings, the ‘‘specification’’ function of transformative answers, is related enough to bear mention here. Thefollowing examples reprinted from their work support their claim that some transformative responses are designed toprovide additional, qualifying (specifying) information that limits the extent to which the speakers are willing to affirm theterms of the inquiries. The provision of this additional information, we would argue, makes these responses more (ratherthan less) ‘direct’, despite the fact that they lack a yes/no.

7 SB1 55:35 (edited)

1. Uria: was it an open party, or was it (an ex-) I never understood that.2. (0.4)3. Vicki: we:ll:, yea:h.4. Uria: was it like an excha:nge?=5. Vicki: =it- I think it was supposed to be:,

8 SB1 39.35

1. Kri: (you did it) on the pho:ne?2. Tar: what?3. Kri: you cried to him on the pho:ne?4. Tar: not on purpose;

The responses in both these examples directly address the object of the prior turn’s inquiry; in fragment 7, whether the partywas an exchange or not; and in fragment 8,whether or not Tar cried on the phone. They are, additionally, syntactically parasiticupon them. In fragment 7, Vicki asserts her lack of certainty about the particular aspect of the party about which she is beingquestioned (whether itwas anexchange, a typeof invitation-only party heldby fraternityhouses)with ‘‘I think’’ and ‘‘supposedto be’’. These devicesmark her response as epistemically uncertain, and display that she is providing an answer to the questionto thebestofher ability. Thus it is her lackof epistemicauthority that isdisplayed in the response,not indirectness (for accountsof the role of epistemics in conversation, see Heritage and Raymond, in press; Stivers et al., 2011).

In fragment 8, Tar’s response directly addresses ‘‘cried to’’ in the inquiry, asserting that she did cry but qualifying heraction as not done purposefully. Again, this kind of qualification, which is additional to the confirmation (or disconfirmation)of the inquired-about action, does not make a response indirect. In both examples, there are elided grammatical elementsthat link each response to the preceding question: in 7, ‘‘an exchange’’; and in 8, ‘‘[I] cried to him’’.

What the preceding fragments, as well as those discussed in the next section show, is that there is a coherent group of‘direct’ responses, whichwhile not technically direct, are clearly distinct from the intended object of our investigation. Theseprovide a contrastive set of actions, guiding us closer to an ostensive definition of indirectness.We turn now to an explicationof the formal qualities of what we will henceforth call direct responses, dispensing with the scare quotes.

2.1.1. The formal properties of direct responses

In order to produce a turn at talkwhich can be understood as responsive to the immediately prior turn, speakers can buildsequential links by utilizing certain linguistic design features, principally, ellipsis, repetition, and pronominalization.Repetition needs no explication. Ellipsis is the omission of a previously produced syntactic unit such a verb phrase; forinstance, ‘‘I do’’ as uttered in amarriage ceremony is an elided version of ‘‘I do [take thisman/woman to bemy lawfulweddedhusband/wife]’’. Pronominalizationmay be anaphoric, e.g. a change of a proper noun to a pronoun (‘Nancy’ to ‘she’); or deictic,e.g. the replacement of an entire utterance with ‘that’ or ‘this’ (e.g. ‘are you going to the US for Christmas?’ ‘That is the plan’,with ‘that’ standing for ‘going to the US for Christmas’. By using one (or more) of these linguistic devices, co-participantsdisplay that, and how, their current turn relates to the prior talk, and thus display how the current turn can be understood asa continuation (or curtailment) of the activity or project that is underway.

Fragments 10–12 exemplify the use of these devices in direct (but not yes–no prefaced) responses to enquiry.

9 SBL:2:1:6:R

1. Tes: Dih you need any ca:rds I have (0.2) I have a coupla de:cks2. thet'v never b'n o:pened.3. Bea: So hev I:, I gotta[couple'v[noo]w'ns, ]4. Tes: [ hhh [^Aw]_right]ho[_ney.5. Bea: [Ah ha:h,6. Bea: B't thanks a lo:t,hhh

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10 SBL:3:5:R

1. Gin: Dju want me tuh stop by:?2. Mil: hh We:ll you ^better no:t may:be: uhm buhcuz I- I sorta3. Mil: dou:bt ah: think Jan has ulotta wo:rk=4. Gin: =[Ohh5. Mil: =[en I'm sert'v uh t hhh MAYBE ah'll cah:ll you if I decide6. I c'n go[: would that be] be[tter?]7. Gin: [^ O k a : y] [Swel ]l.

The response in fragment 10 uses both repetition (of ‘‘have I’’, ‘‘couple’’) and pronominalization (‘‘decks’’ to ‘‘ones’’) to linkthe response turn to the just-prior enquiry (an enquiry which, we note, performs the activity of offering). In fragment 11, theresponse is linked to the enquiry through ellipsis of the verb phrase ‘‘stop by’’ (i.e., Millie’s turn in line 9 is comprehensibleand grammatical by virtue of being understood as ‘well you better not [stop by]’, where the [stop by] is not actually produced.

11 CBS 60 Minutes: 17 December 1995

1. INT: If I were (.) a citizen out here (0.2) and I heard your answer2. .hh I'd sa:y (0.2) to myself (0.2) we are spending more 3. money (0.4) than has ever been spent on a subway (0.2) in the 4. history (0.2) of subway construction (0.4) .hh and this guy 5. is telling me he's learning on the job (.) we've made mistakes,6. we are learning (0.2) [I mean- should not they expect7. IVE: [where we-8. INT: that (.) when you pa:y that much money that- that we 9. shouldn't be having all these mistakes?10. IVE: I agree: that (.) we should not be having those mistakes (0.4) 11. absolutely agree (0.2) I wish these things did not happen to12. us (0.4) but we have to to (0.2) get better (.) and move o:n

Fragment 11 shows a response to the action being done in the prior, negative interrogative turn, ‘‘should not they expect thatwhen you pay that much money that that we shouldn’t be having all these mistakes’’. This turn performs the action ofasserting a fact, rather than actually questioning the interviewee (Drew and Atkinson, 1979; Heritage, 2002). Theinterviewee’s turn-initial ‘‘I agree’’ (line 10) overtly responds to the assertion made in the prior turn; additionally, theresponse uses repetition (of ‘‘we should not be having all those mistakes’’) to link the enquiry and response.

The responses shown in fragments 9–11 illustrate theways in which speakers regularly use linguisticmeans to link turnsat talk together, rather than relying on sequential location alone. Furthermore, these fragments demonstrate that the meansof tying one turn to another are available regardless of the activity begin pursued in the interrogatively framed turn. By usingthese linguistic means to display the sequential connections between turns, speakers respond directly – or more properly,display that they are responding directly – to the prior speaker. However, these means are not exploited when speakersrespond indirectly.

2.2. Indirect responses

We now turn to some short fragments which exemplify our collection of indirect responses to inquiry. We can bestdescribe what an indirect response is by comparison to the cases of direct responses, thus arriving at an ostensive definitionof indirectness. The characteristics of indirect responses described in what follows is the outcome of our analysis of thecollection, rather than being an a priori definition.

The indirect responses below, highlighted in grey, are non-type-conforming, i.e., they are not yes/no prefaced whenproduced as responses to polar questions. Additionally, they do not regularly use ellipsis, repetition, or pronominalization totie back to the preceding turn, and they require some sort of inferencing to be understood as responses to the prior turn.

12 IND 6 NB

1. Nan: I [just uh,h forward iz mai:l stick it in th'envelope'n2.3. (0.4)4. Nan: send it all on up to im en .hhh[hhh5. Emm: [Yih know wher'e is the:n,6. (0.8)7. Nan: I have never had any of it retu:rned Emma,h8. Emm: Oh::.

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13 IND 64 HV (reproduction of fragment 1)

1. Mot: I've taken maternity leave.2. HV: ([ )3. Mot: [I'm due to go back in Ma:rch4. HV: and who will look after (.) ((baby's name)).5. Mot: I was goin' back on nights.6. HV: I see.

14 IND 5 Field

1. Fre: H'llo ((--break--)) ( ) speaking,]2. Ski: [.h h h h h h h]h h h hOh Fre:d,3. (0.3)4. Fre: Ye[ :s.5. Ski: [.hh Oh it's Ski:p..h6. Fre: Yes Ski[p.7. Ski: [.h Did you go back to wo:rk,h8. (0.2)9. Fre: I've got a me:ssage to ring Raymond Smi[th.10. Ski: [Oh: yes:.

15 IND 1 Trip to Syracuse

1. Ile: .hhh So yih not g'nna go up this weeke2. ( ): (hhh)/(0.2)3. Cha: Nu::h I don't think so.4. Ile: How about the following weekend.5. (0.8)6. Cha: .hh Dat's the vacation isn'it?7. Ile: .hhhhh Oh:. .hh ALright so:- no ha:ssle,

16 IND 2 Field (reproduction of fragment 2)

1. Dan: Becuz (0.3) I'm g'nna go see nice Mister Chemist 'n ask 2. im what 'ee c'n do about my eye. Becuz it itches a lot.3. ...7 lines omitted4. Gor: =hmhhhh Could it be pollen.5. (0.8)6. Dan: Par don?7. Gor: Pollen:.8. (0.3)9. Gor: .k As in: uh hay fever.10. (0.2)11. Dan: It's in one eye:.

It is immediately apparent that one major difference between these responses and those in examples 10–16 is a lack of thelinguistic design features that are recurrently used to link one turn to another, e.g. ellipsis, repetition, and pronominalization.The highlighted turns are interpretable as responses to the preceding inquiry, not only because of their sequential location,but also because of the way in which the talk contained in the turns instructs the co-participants to draw inferences basedeither on prior talk, their shared knowledge, or both.

In fragment 12, the response to ‘‘you knowwhere he is then’’ does not use ellipsis, nor repetition, nor pronominalization ofany item in the just-prior turn.Thepronoun ‘‘it’’ in line7 ‘popsbackover’ theprior inquiry (Fox, 1987) to ‘‘mail’’, fromline1 (alsopronominalized in line 4). So this turn, ‘‘I have never had any of it returned Emma’’, is comprehensible as a response to theinquiry not only by virtue of its sequential placement, but because the recipient is directed to make a connection with theadjacent contiguous turn, and infer ananswer toher inquiry fromthat. (Wewill address later how, or even if, ‘neverhavingmailreturned’ is congruent with ‘knowing where someone is’.) That the recipient does make these inferences is displayed by heracceptance of ‘‘I have never had any of it returned’’ as a legitimate response (i.e., one not needing repair) with her ‘‘oh’’ (line 8).

In fragments 13–15, the co-participants need not examine prior talk in order to arrive at an inference which willconstitute a response to their inquiry; rather, these indirect responses appeal to shared knowledge, either about theworld atlarge or knowledge specific to the two interactants. In fragment 13 (fragment 1, reproduced here), the mother’s response, ‘‘Iwas goin’ back on nights’’ appeals to the HV’s knowledge about the world. Instead of naming someone as the referent of the‘‘who’’ (line 5), the mother describes what her working hours will be. From this, the HV can infer that the mother and father

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will continue to be the (sole) caretakers for the baby, since the mother will be home during the day and the father at homeduring the night.

Fragment 14 is an interaction between an employee (Skip) and his boss (Fred). Fred’s response to Skip’s inquiry appeals totheir shared knowledge of how it would be possible for him to ‘‘get a message to ring Raymond Smith’’ – (only) if he didindeed ‘‘go back to work’’ (see lines 7–9). Once again, there are no linguistic means used to display a link between the twoturns.

Although there is a deictic link between the response and the enquiry in fragment 15 (‘‘that’’ in line 6 pronominalizes ‘‘thefollowingweekend, line 4), the response is still indirect. It does not inherently specify whether or not hewill be ‘going up thefollowing weekend’; it only states his opinion (offered for confirmation via a tag question) that next weekend is ‘‘thevacation.’’ That a particular weekend falls within a vacation period does not preclude these participants ‘going up toSyracuse’ then. This turn (line 6) could just as easily have been designed and/or treated as the beginning of an insert sequence– Charlie could have been checking that next weekend was indeed the vacation; Ilene could have confirmed that it was, andCharlie could then have gone on to offer Ilene a(nother) ride at that time. However, Ilene’s response, ‘‘oh all right so no hassle’’(line 7) shows that, in spite of his use of deixis, she interprets Charlie’s turn at line 6 as an indirect refusal, and that he is notchecking whether or not next weekend is the vacation. Thus, they must have some kind of shared knowledge that, for them,the vacation period does preclude their travelling.

The final fragment in this section, fragment 16 (a reproduction of fragment 2), combines an appeal to shared knowledgewith a link to previous talk. The response ‘‘it’s in one eye’’ is a repetition of what Dana has already said – that she is onlyexperiencing a problem with one eye (see line 2, ‘‘my eye’’ . . . ‘‘it itches’’). So, while this response picks up on and reinforcesinformation she has already presented to her co-participant, it also forces (albeit mistakenly) the inference that thecandidate diagnosis must be wrong by claiming the ailment only affects one eye (thus appealing to the ‘knowledge’ that hayfever affects both eyes equally). That Dana’s understanding of a fact about the world is incorrect is immaterial here; what isimportant is that she presents her understanding as the correct one, and one that ought to be shared.

To sum up: the indirect responses we have collected and analysed generally lack certain structural features which arerecurrently found in more direct responses (e.g. repetition, ellipsis, and pronominalization). Furthermore, and againdifferently from direct responses, indirect responses refer either to non-contiguous talk, prior to the inquiry; or to (shared)knowledge about the world they inhabit in order to generate inferences that will provide an answer to the inquiry. In thislatterway, indirect responses are distinct fromqualified or ‘‘specified’’ responses (Stivers andHayashi, 2010). Such responsesare used to resist inferences or implications of the inquiries, whereas the indirect responses onwhich our analysis focuses onare used to create new inferences.

Most previous research into indirect responses (as well as indirect initiating turns) has inquired into how they areunderstood. Here, however, our focus is different.We are interested inwhat indirectness accomplishes; what are speakersdoing when they respond indirectly? Politeness is the most commonly offered answer to this question; however, theindirect response examples provided in fragments 12–16donot seem tobe particularly polite (or impolite, for thatmatter).Being (or wanting to be) polite may be deserving of analysis as an activity in its own right, but a clear orientation to (im)politeness by the participants would first need to be shown (seeWatts, 2003; Hutchby, 2008 for a fuller explication of thisproblem).

There are, however, recurrent interactional issues that indirect responses are employed to manage. We call them issuesrather than problems or a similarly negative term because it is only by virtue of responding indirectly that participantsproblematize the proposed course of action embodied in the preceding turn(s). The issues can be described as uncovering theperceived purpose or agenda displayed in the prior turn, and treating the inquiry as inapposite, e.g. lacking or deficient insome way. The following sections treat each of these activities in turn; and in the conclusion, we speculate as to anotherreason for employing indirect responses – taking advantage of an opportunity to launch one’s own activities as early aspossible in an interaction.

3. Indirect responses uncover the perceived purpose or ‘agenda’ of the prior turn

One of the main ways indirect responses are used is to uncover the perceived purpose or agenda of the previous turn.These indirect responses are designed to go straight to the heart of the project being launched (or furthered) by the inquiry;by using indirect responses, speakers can displaywhat they take the inquirer ‘really’ to want to know. In short, these indirectresponses are used to answer a question that isn’t asked, and instead respond to something like the motivation behind thequestion that is asked.

The first example of responding to the perceived purpose of an inquiry is shown in fragment 17. When this conversationwas recorded, Gordonwas just about to leave for university, as weremany of his friends: his girlfriend Dana still has anotheryear of secondary school study before she goes to university.

17 IND26 Field SO882:2:8

1. Dan: I thought working (this way) would be the easy way2. ou:t[but uhh .hh3. Gor: [.t

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4. (.)5. Gor: ihNO:W. u-Uh:m u6. often see Norm.7. (0.5)8. Dan: I saw him toda::[y9. Gor: [.tch Yea-:h,?=10. Dan: =A::nd (.) he sa11. Gor: [.hh.hh.hh.hhhh12. Gor: uhRi::gh[t,13. Dan: [So I14. (0.3) 15. Gor: Okay,16. (0.8)17. Gor: Good.18. (0.6)19. all I wanted to know.

On the face of it, Gordon’s polar interrogative in lines 5–6 explicitly questions the frequency with which Dana sees amutual friend, Norm. Dana’s response, however, does not address how often she sees him, but rather specifies when shelast saw him and when she expects to see him again: ‘‘I saw him today and he said he’d be in tomorrow so I’d see himbefore he went away’’. In fact, saying that she ‘‘saw him today’’ may be offered to support the claim that she will ‘‘see himtomorrow’’.

Although spread out over several lines of transcript, this utterance of Dana’s is produced with rises to the middle of herpitch range at the ends of the talk represented in line 8 and 10, and a fall to low at the end of line 12 –which is familiar as ‘list’intonation. So, Dana is responding not to what Gordon observably (or audibly) inquires about, but what she perceives to behis agenda: finding out whether she is likely to see Norm again before he leaves for university. By responding in this way, shepresents seeing Norm before he goes to university as the ‘reason’ motivating Gordon to ask the question ‘‘do you often seeNorm’’; in conversation analytic terms, Dana responds to the underlying ‘why that now’ rather than to the linguistic form ofthe inquiry. And by doing this, her response appears to be indirect.

Although Gordon has, for whatever reason, designed his inquiry to question the frequency of Dana’s contact withNorm, he does not treat her failure to give a direct answer as problematic. On the contrary, his next utterances, ‘‘okay . . .

good . . . That’s all I wanted to know’’, confirm Dana’s displayed understanding as a, if not the, correct one. In short, wecan say that he accepts her indirect response as correctly uncovering and addressing his agenda. Thus it seems that inthis case at least, the indirect response is treated as ‘better’ than a more direct response would have been, because hisstatement ‘‘that’s all I wanted to know’’ displays that how often she sees Norm is actually not what is of most interest tohim.

Fragment 18 is another example of an indirect response that displays an understanding of the perceived purpose of theinquiry. The transcript that appears here is a longer excerpt of fragment 13.

18 IND 5 Field SO88:U:1:10

1. Fre: H'llo ((--break--)) ( ) speaking,]2. Ski: [.h h h h h h h]h h h hOh Fre:d,3. (0.3)4. Fre: Ye[ :s.5. Ski: [.hh Oh it's Ski:p..h6. Fre: Yes Ski[p.7. Ski: [.h Did you go back to wo:rk,h8. (0.2)9. Fre: I've got a me:ssage to ring Raymond Smi[th.10. Ski: [Oh: yes:.11. That's alright I just wanted to make sure: (.) whether12. you'd p'hh gone back or not.h13. ((about 30 lines omitted dealing with payments in and out of the business))14. Ski: But uh dHave you rung Raymond,[h-h-h]=15. [(0.4)]=16. Fre: =No[:.17. Ski: [Oh .hh He didn't say what it was but somebody's18. given im s'm wrong information 'ee wz: oo-afraid that19. you might- (0.4) en'ee gave it to you: 'n you might act on20. it. so 'ee was rather anxious for you to ring eIther21. .hhhhhh later this evening .khhhhh cz 'eez out earlier

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Taken out of its naturally occurring sequential environment, ‘‘I’ve got a message to ring Raymond Smith’’ might appear to benon-responsive. The co-participants, however, treat it as acceptable and comprehensible: Skip replies ‘‘Oh yes that’s alright.’’

Answering ‘‘did you go back to work’’ with ‘‘I’ve got a message to ring Raymond Smith’’ provides different informationthan was explicitly requested. In this case, the information provided allows the recipient to arrive at a positive response (hedid go back to work) because of the co-participants’ shared knowledge of how and where Fred would ‘get a message to ringRaymond Smith’. In addition to answering positively, however, the indirect design of the response allows the speaker todisplay a particular understanding of why the question was asked. So in one turn, Fred is able to convey both a ‘yes’ answer,as well as to display ‘I know why you asked – because of the message’.

Unlike Gordon in the prior example, Skip displays some reluctance to accept the agenda attributed to his inquiry by Fred’sindirect response. Skip claims that he ‘‘just wanted to make sure whether you’d gone back or not’’ (lines 11–12), using the‘‘just’’ to resist Fred’s displayed conclusion that he ‘really’ called to find out whether Fred had received the message.However, later in the call it becomes apparent that Fred’s receipt of the message is indeed of paramount importance – notleast because it seems Skip is the one who took the message (see line 17, ‘‘he didn’t say what it was’’).

Regardless of their treatment – and Skip’s resistance is very slight – using an indirect response to uncover ulteriormotivesis not necessarily a censorious activity. That is, although having ulterior motives has come be to understood as a negativeevaluation, these indirect responses seem designed to display alignment (but not necessarily affiliation – see Stivers (2008)on the distinction between the two) by providing information that one participant has deemed likely that their co-participant wants or needs to know.

In fragment 17, Dana’s indirect response displays her understanding that how often she has been seeing Norm is lesssalient than whether or not she will see him before he leaves for university; providing Gordon with this information ratherthan the y/n his inquiry syntactically demands, is designed to assist him. She displays her willingness to collaborate withwhatever project Gordon may be proposing to undertake. Later it transpires that Gordon asks Dana to take Norm a gift, so itwas indeed whether she would see Norm, and not how often, that was more pertinent.

Fred’s indirect response to Skip’s inquiry does deliver the information requested, but does so by going directly to what heestimates Skip’s real concern to be – the receipt of a message that Skip himself left for Fred. Producing this indirect responseinstead of a simple yes or no allows him to give Skip the information as early as possible in the interaction, thereby treatingthe information as important – to both of them. Skip displays his orientation to the importance of this message in the closingsection of the call (after an insert sequence initiated by Fred), lines 14–40: ‘‘somebody’s given him some wrong information. . . and he’s given it to you . . . hewas rather anxious . . . he told you don’t act on it til you’ve spoken to him’’. Thus it seems thathis earlier claim that he ‘‘justwanted tomake surewhether you’d gone back or not’’ (lines 11–12) is somewhat disingenuous.Skip’s later talk belies the importance he attaches to Fred having gotten themessage, not only because ofwhat the it contains,but because (although this too is conveyed somewhat indirectly) he, Skip, took the message (see line 17).

An indirect response can of course also be used to address an agenda that is less than innocent. Here we revisit fragment12, and the question of the relationship between forwarding someone’s mail and ‘knowing where he is’.

19 IND 6 NB

1. Nan: I [just uh,h forward iz mai:l stick it in th'envelope'n2.3. (0.4)

22. o:n .hh ah:[:: or first thing tomorrow mor[ning23. Fre: [( ) [e's at home now is 'ee24. (d' you think)25. Ski: .hwhhewhh Well (.) 'ee said 'ee wz gon'26. to be out (.) quite a bit of the e:vening so: eIther27. later this evening o:r[: .hh f- first thing in the= 28. Fre: [Yes I 'll ring im29. Ski: =mor[ning30. Fre: [I'll ring 'im t'morrow morning a[nyway.31. Ski: [dee Ye:s.32. (.)33. Ski: Okay Fred34. (0.3)35. Fre: Because I've gotta go: I eh I'll try to ring 'im from Bedford36. sometime [yea[h37. Ski: [((<noise))38. Ski: [.hhh Oh: (.) yes. .hhh=39. Fre: (I sh, I'll try)40. Ski: B t 'ee, 'ee 'ee said (.) wuh well I don'know what it wa:s but41. whatever it is- (.) whatever 'ee told you don' act on it 'ntil42. you've spok'n to 'i[m .hhh- .hhh43. Fre: [Yeh. Okay fine. 44. Ski: Okay

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19. addre:ss:,h [.hhhhhhh]h20.

4. Nan: send it all on up to im en .hhh[hhh5. Emm: [Yih know wher'e is the:n,6. (0.8)7. Nan: I have never had any of it retu:rned Emma,h8. Emm: Oh::.9. Nan: At a:ll, so: I just assume that the notice the e: the10. =telegram thet went fr'm th'bank w'ss return' because he 11. didn't w:ant to accept it.12. (0.4)13. Emm: OH:.h14.15.16. (0.4)17. Nan: .tch But guh nothing is been return' to me:, (.) en I've had18. my return address on it e.-a:nd addressed it to him at that

Nancy’s indirect response resists the complex web of meanings that can be associated with ‘knowing’ a person, or knowingwhere a person is. The response ‘‘I have never had any of it returned Emma’’ further distances her from any involvementwiththe recipient of the items she consigns to the mail. This indirect response serves to emphasize the degree of her separationfrom her estranged husband – they don’t even share in the pseudo-interaction of him returning mail to her. Nancy thusaddresses the purpose of Emma’s inquiry – that of suggesting that despite Nancy’s protestations that she has nothing to dowith her estranged husband, she does in fact ‘‘knowwhere he is’’. By refusing to accept the construction ‘‘knowwhere he is’’,Nancy treats Emma’s inquiry as suspect, and provides additional ‘proof’ that their separation is as complete as Nancy hasbeen describing.

The indirect response allows Nancy to resist Emma’s agenda by arguing against it (see also Stivers and Hayashi, 2010). Sheresists the implications of ‘knowingwhere he is’ by stating only that themail she sends him is not returned to her. By using thisindirect response, Nancy displays that ‘‘where he is’, is not important – he (apparently) gets the mail she sends, and thereforewhether he is physically present at that address is of no concern to her, and therefore should not be of concern to Emma.

4. Using an indirect response to treat an inquiry as inapposite

The other principal activity managed through responding indirectly is to treat an inquiry as inapposite – as somehowinappropriate or going in the wrong direction, or asking about the wrong kind of thing. This – the indirect response – isgenerally achieved by making reference to some state of affairs that the recipient should know about but seems not to havetaken into account in their inquiry.When used to treat an inquiry as inapposite, indirect responses are often built to display alexico-semantic opposition with the inquiry. They thus provide for their understanding as negative responses, and are (innearly all cases) treated and accepted as such.

20 IND29 Rahman B:1 (10)

1. Jen: H'llo there Ver[a.2. Ver: [Hello Jenny,3. (.)4. Ver: Are yih coming down,5. Jen: Ehm- ah'm ^jist ah wz ^jis'comin ou:t.6. (.)7. Ver: Oh: goo[d.]Is-8. Jen: [I ]luh-9. (.)10. Ver: Is Ann coming,11. (0.2)12. Jen: Ehm- Ann is eh gone tih North Ohrmsby Market.13. Ver: [Oh:[I see.14. Jen: [.hh[Eh dju r'member she wz saying she's gotta go'n get s'm15. chi:na or something fr'm Stockton.16. Ver: Oh:: yes::,[yes.]17. Jen: [An' ] an' she said she hadtuh go tih North 18. Ohrmsby Market ti[hda:y.19. Ver: [Ah:: that's awright then,

Fragment 20 provides a clear example of the use of an opposing term in the indirect response. ‘‘Gone’’ in line 12 contrastswith ‘‘coming’’ in the inquiry; thus, the recipient can infer a negative answer to her inquiry – if Ann is ‘‘gone’’ she cannot be

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‘‘coming’’ with them. In this way, Jenny does not explicitly tell Vera whether or not Ann is coming, but rather respondsindirectly to the inquiry.

The design and production of this indirect response allows the speaker to point out deficiencies with the inquiry. By notresponding to the syntactic design of the turn (i.e., by not employing a yes or no), Jenny treats the design as inapposite.Although there is recycling of the name ‘‘Ann’’, in this particular environment the re-use of a proper noun is unusual (Fox,1987). By re-using the name, however, Jenny avoids creating a deictic link to the inquiry.4 Indeed, in the following talk, Jennyexplicitly claims that Vera should have known Ann wasn’t coming, by prompting ‘‘dju remember. . .she said she had to go toNorth Ohrmsby Market today’’ (lines 14–18) – rather than waiting for Vera to display, independently, that she remembers.Vera confirms these reminderswith ‘‘oh yes yes’’ and ‘‘aw that’s alright then’’, thus claiming, through her own turn design (cf.Heritage, 1984b; Betz and Golato, 2008; Emmertsen and Heinemann, 2010), that she has just remembered this information.This in turn justifies Jenny’s treatment of the inquiry as inapposite, because Vera did indeed have the information to answerher own inquiry (even though she claims to have forgotten it for that moment).

By highlighting the inappropriateness of the inquiry (usually through the employment of a lexico-semanticallyopposite term), an indirect response allows the speaker to abdicate responsibility for the delivery of a negative response.The indirect response ‘merely’ points out some fact5; crucially, however, this fact is presented as one the co-participantalso does, or should, know. And if the speaker already knows the answer to the inquiry, the inquiry itself is treatable asinapposite.

In the following fragment, Bea has been trying to get her friend Ros to take on a home nursing job, but Ros hasn’t shownmuch interest. Ros and Bea are both nurses.

21 IND40 SBL1:1:10 3:58

1. Bea: ah-hah well en they're wanting to cut do:wn a bi:t,2. they're wanting to make some cha:nges hh: hh would like to:3. uh ha:ve one:: uh R N: o:n,h (0.2) in the twenny four hours4. hh hh an' have: uh (2.1) yihknow a good5. (1.0)6. Ros: we:ll u-of course I am en R N, too:. En you're en R N7. Bea: ye:s ah[hah.8. Ros: [mean they might prefer en L P N (ez a twunny four shift)=9. Bea: =no: they want one: uh:: they want one R N:10. (0.4)11. Bea: .hhhh en that's:: the one I wz help- trying tuh help them fi:nd.h12. Ros: well arn'tchu going t'stay o:n?13. (0.2)14. Bea: Oh I only relie::ve:=15. Ros: =you only re[lie[:ve16. Bea: [hh [I just work two uh three days a mo:nth.h17. Ros: oh:

Before the inquiry that received the indirect response, Bea has provided Ros with a great deal of information about her roleand about the nursing position she is recruiting for. At the beginning of the call, in response to Ros’ query about whether sheis currently working on the case, Bea explains, ‘‘I relieve. It’s the one I’ve been relieving on ever since March.’’ (data notshown). Then in line 3 of the fragment shown above, she explains that the clients want to change from their currentarrangements to a fully qualified nurse (an RN, or Registered Nurse) on a 24 h shift, stating this again in response to Ros’suggestion of a less-qualified nurse (see lines 8–9).

We can see, then, how Bea can come to treat Ros’ inquiry ‘‘well aren’t you going to stay on?’’ as inapposite. The way shedoes so is through the production of the indirect response ‘‘Oh I only relieve’’. Remember that Bea has already stated that sheis a relief nurse on the case, not the main employee. The ‘‘Oh’’ and ‘‘only’’ she employs in her response highlight theopposition inherent between ‘‘relieving’’ and ‘‘staying on’’ (Heritage, 1998). As she herself goes on to point out, she onlyworks ‘‘two or three days amonth’’ (line 16).Whether or not she continues to do sowould have little impact on the hiring of anew, full time nurse – a fact indexed by her use of the qualifier ‘‘only’’. Just as in fragment 20, in which a person who has‘‘gone [somewhere else]’’ cannot be ‘‘coming [with them]’’, here, a personwho ‘‘only relieves’’ cannot appropriately be said tobe ‘‘staying on’’ or not; it is in fact immaterial whether Bea is staying on, since her work schedule does not meet the (new)desires of the client. Therefore, she treats the question ‘‘aren’t you going to stay on’’ as inapposite because the ‘direct’response to it, i.e. a yes or no, has no bearing on the project she has undertaken (that of finding a new nurse).

4 The repetition of the proper noun here seems unavoidable; it is perhaps the lesser of two evils. In order to refer to the person, Jenny must use either a

pronoun –which she does not to – or a proper name –which she does. This datum therefore suggests the possibility that anaphoric links between turnsmay

mark them as more strongly linked than repetition. This is not an issue we can delve into any further here; see Stivers and Rossano (2010) for more on the

related idea of gradience in linkages between initiating actions and responses.5 Whether this fact is true or correct is immaterial; the importance is that something is presented as a fact.

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Fragment 22 is another example of an inquiry treated as inapposite by means of an indirect response that addresses andpoints to both the inappropriacy of a yes/no answer, and the inappositeness of asking a question to which one knows theanswer.

22 IND77 CHAm4247

1. A: yeah (.) well you can be sure that we will send you information2. .hhhh because uh (0.5) you know I've got to go down there and 3. we're trying to r- to improve the program we're adding .hhhh 4. they're adding thousands of dollars of uh state of the art 5. language e- you know equipment uh lab equipment and all of that6. and they're (.) restructuring everything so .hhhhhh that's what 7. I'm supposed to do next phhhhhh 8. B: do they have any scholarships for foreign students9. A: .hhhhhh I- I'm- I've never heard of a scholarship for an English10. language program personally b[ut I think11. B: [>we never did< either but I 12. keep thinking I'm going to fin::d one one of these days 13. uh huh ((laughter))

In this fragment, A and B are discussing a program for teaching English to speakers of other languages, administered by anAmerican university. A and B are former colleagues with similar jobs (i.e., the set-up and administration of such programs).

A’s response does not in this case use a simple lexical opposition as seen in the previous examples. Instead, the indirectresponse claims that the inquired-about object, ‘‘scholarships for foreign students’’, do not exist. As a colleague of his, as wellas an administrator of similar programs for non-English speakers, B could be, and is here treated as, expected to know this. Bystating a fact that both of them (should) know, A treats the inquiry as inapposite because of the implication that his programis unique in not offering a scholarship – it isn’t; in fact, he’s ‘‘never heard of a scholarship for an English language program’’.

B, for her part, admits the inappropriateness of her question in her next turn. In line 11, she reveals that she was prettysure that such scholarships don’t exist: ‘‘we never did either’’, i.e., she’s never heard of (the existence of) a scholarship for anEnglish language program. This supports the analysis of A’s indirect response as being employed to point out a deficiency inthe design of B’s inquiry – B did know that no scholarships of that type existed, but she asked anyway. A orients to theinappositeness of asking a question that one knows the answer to by responding indirectly (see Heritage and Raymond, inpress; Stivers et al., 2011 for additional discussions of such epistemic struggles).

Fragment 23 provides a very similar example of the use of an indirect response to point out the unavailability of the objectof the inquiry. A and B are both American-born; B is currently living in the Netherlands.

23 IND 33 CHAm 4093 22:20

1. B: ye-ah:::v mean >if if< if- if they denied my citizenship2. and I became a citizen here I probably wouldn't ha- (.)3. be a horror either .hh but uh (.) yeah right now I'm ((**))4. I mean I do wanna keep my American citizenship so5. (0.5)6. A: [are you gonna become a dual] citizen7. B: [I k i n d a w a n n a ]8. (1.0)9. B: what's that10. (0.2)11. A: are you gonna try and become a dual citizen12. (0.8)13. A: have dual [citizenship]14. B: [y' can't ] do (0.7) y' can't do that15. (0.2)16. B: um: the only way to be a dual citizen is if you're born17. in a foreign country like if I were born in- in in: Holland18. and then w- and then had American parents then I could be19. a dual citizen but you can't- .hhhh if I were to ask to become20. a citizen in Holland I would automatically lose my American21. citizenship22. A: as far as the Americans are concerned yeah

In response to A’s inquiry about whether B will try to become a dual citizen (of the US and the Netherlands, B states the fact‘‘you can’t do that’’. By claiming the impossibility of ‘becoming a dual citizen’, the question – more specifically, the syntacticformat of the question – is treated as inapposite: to answer either yes or no implies that the inquired-about action is in factpossible, when speaker B knows it is not.

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Although B’s indirect response treats A as lacking some knowledge he should have had, he continues to explainmore fullywhy ‘‘you can’t do that’’ when B’s next turn is not immediately forthcoming (see the 0.2 s silence at line 15). This might seemtoweaken the argument that B’s indirect response is employed to point out to A that this is something he should have known(i.e. something that would have prevented him from even making the inquiry); however, A attempts to treat B’s explicationas something he did know, by responding ‘‘as far as the Americans are concerned yeah’’ (line 22). The lack of a turn-initial‘‘oh’’ (Heritage, 1984b) as well as the use of a turn-final ‘‘yeah’’ both display that B’s information was not in fact news to A(Raymond, 2003; Heritage and Raymond, 2005). So it seems that A is attempting to claim to know something that contradictsthe very thing he inquired about. A’s talk claims that he too takes information about citizenship as part of the worldknowledge he shares with B, and thus supports our contention that one function of indirect responses is to treat inquiries asinapposite when they ask about something the inquirer should rightfully already know.

In the following fragment, the inquiry takes on the role of a repair initiation – an initiation treated as inapposite because ofone of the candidate hearings offered.

24 IND50 GTS 4,28 (GTS4tape 1 side b)

1. Ken: bu-that convertible we went to Huntington Beach an' he jumped.2. He jumped outta the convertible goin' sixty miles an hour.3. [big fat slob-4. Rog: [sixteen or sixty?5. Ken: we-i-di-wu-we were on the f-on that Huntington Coast Road?

Roger’s interrogative request for repair, ‘‘sixteen or sixty’’, is obviously designed to do more than indicate a problem withhearing. Although to the naı̈ve overhearer the possible hearing of Ken’s ‘‘sixty’’ in line 2 as ‘‘sixteen’’ may be plausible, forthese speakers in this situation it clearly is not. This fragment comes fromSacks’ ‘‘hotrodders’’ – teenage boyswhomake theirreputations by driving fast cars (or at least talking about driving fast cars). So Roger’s offering of ‘‘sixteen’’ is hearablydesigned to undermine Ken’s story about reckless behavior in fast cars (‘‘he jumped outta the convertible goin’ sixtymiles anhour’’).

Ken’s response could be said not to deal with the repair initiation by not selecting either of the possible hearings offered;however, it fits neatly alongside our collection of indirect responses to inquiries. What Ken does is place an appeal to theshared knowledge of the group as to what speed they (as hotrodders) are likely to be going on ‘‘that Huntington Coast Road’’as the response to this inquiry/repair initiation. His assumption that the others will know the road he means, and itscharacteristics, is displayed by his use of the demonstrative determiner ‘‘that’’. He thus treats Roger’s inquiry as inappositenot only by not selecting one of his candidate repairs, but by marking the question(er) as lacking basic knowledge about theroad the event took place on.

The next fragment again shows the use of lexico-semantic opposition to highlight the inappositeness of the inquiry. Thisinquiry, however, is not treated as inapposite because of a lack of real-world knowledge, but rather because of theassumptions the inquiry displays about the co-participant. The fragment comes from an interaction between a health visitorand a new mother and father, and takes place in their home shortly after the baby’s birth.

25 IND63 HV:1A1

1. HV: Did you (0.6) uhm have a normal delivery,=did 2. you wat[ch it.3. M: [Ye::s4. F: Mm hm,5. HV: Did you?=What did you thi:nk. ((smile voice))6. (1.0)7. F: (What it's for)8. (): hhhhh heh9. HV: Pardon?10. M: Oh it w's the same [as the ones that we watched on the 11. F: [It's what it's for.12. M: telly.13. HV: Oh you watched it on the telly.=So it wasn't any different.14. F: I should imag[ine (0.2) yes.15. M: [Ye:::s,16. (1.5)17. HV: ( ) were you=18. F: =it's the same,19. (.)20. M: Yeh [( )21. HV: [(An') then did you feel (.) thrilled or=22. F: =Oh yeh o'course.

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23. M: Yeah.=24. F: ='specially as it (w-) a girl 'cos that's what we wanted.25. (.)26.27. (1.0)28. HV: I u:h (w's) quite alarmed the first baby I saw29. delivered (0.2) it looked (0.7) uhm:: (0.7) 'cos 30. you don't a through- (.) uh- a full frontal view31. do you? (.) (fath[ers).32. F: [W'll I was holding 'er leg see?33. M: Ye:s.34. HV: So [you- in fact you did see [the head 35. : yeh every[think36. M: [Oh 'e [w's-37. F: [Oh yeh.38. M: 'E watched it all 'e was telling me:.

The opposition pointed out in the indirect response is the difference between (not having) ‘‘a full frontal view’’ of the birthand ‘‘holding her leg’’. The father’s response in line 32 appeals to the health professional’s knowledge of where he would beand what he would be able to see if he were holding his wife’s leg during delivery – i.e., he would be facing her as she bracedher leg against him, and would indeed have a ‘‘full frontal view’’.

This response nominally responds only to where he was, and as such indirectly contradicts the HV’s displayedunderstanding that he probably didn’t have a full view of the baby’s birth. However, the indirectness of the response alsodisplays the inappositeness of the way the inquiry is constructed – the way the inquiry displays the HV’s assumption thatfathers might not necessarily want such a view.

Even before the HV makes the inquiry leading to the indirect response, we see the father treating giving birth in a verymatter-of-fact way. When the HV asks ‘‘what did you think’’ after learning that both mother and father had watched thedelivery, he responds ‘‘it’s what it’s for’’ (line 11) and ‘‘it’s the same [as those they watched on television]’’ (line 18). He thusdeclines to sensationalize the event, instead treating it as ordinary and expected; not something he thinks about in anyparticular way at all. So he is, from the beginning, resisting any suggestion that he found being present at a birth remarkable(at least not in any negative sense).

Given this prior talk, we can see how his indirect response addresses not only his physical location when the birth tookplace –what he saw – but how it treats the inquiry as inapposite. His response promotes his role in the birth as an active one,rather than someone who doesn’t get (and possibly doesn’t want) a ‘‘full frontal view’’. Through this response, and in thefollowing talk in which the mother joins, the father rejects the HV’s assessment of the first birth one sees as alarming (seelines 28–29). Rather, the father reports that he saw ‘‘everything’’,6 and themother chimes in, ‘‘hewatched it all hewas tellingme’’ (lines 35–38), as they collaborate in providing a positive assessment of the experience.

The final two examples of indirectness used to treat the prior as inapposite both employ lexico-semantic opposition todisplay their differenceswith the inquiry/inquirer. They also are both presented as a statement of fact that the inquirer oughtto, but appears not to, know. In the first case, fragment 26, the recipient of the indirect response accepts the fact as pointedout in the indirect response and thus accepts the treatment of her inquiry as inapposite; however, in fragment 27, therecipient does not display such an understanding. Although in the majority of cases indirect responses succeed in conveyingnot only a positive or negative response, but also the understanding that the inquiry as stated was inapposite orinappropriate, these final examples show that they can also fail.

Nora and Ilene are discussing dog-breeding in fragment 26. ‘‘Minx’’ and the pronoun ‘‘she’’ used throughout the fragmentrefer to a bitch of Nora’s.

26 IND30 Heritage I:11

1. - Mi:nx is (most ahk-) she's2. such a funny little thing,hhh hh most o:dd (.) little3. creature rea::lly,=4. Ile: =Is she?5. Nor: iWe:ll yes she i::s. She's a funny- she is a funny little6. she's (0.2) gih- al:tering et th'moment=7. Nor: =(not[th't) I ca:n't- wo:rk it ou:t b't she still hasn't=8. h

6 Note also that the father prefaces his confirmation in line 35 that he saw everything with ‘‘Oh" – a preface which Heritage (1984a) has shown displays

that ‘‘a question is problematic in terms of its relevance, presuppositions, or context.’’ In other words, answering Oh yeh, rather than just Yeh, indicates

something like that the question need not have been asked. In this respect it is also relevant that the father begins answering before the Health Visitor has

‘named’ what he might have seen, i.e. he begins responding in overlap with (and therefore before) the head (lines 34 and 35).

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9. Nor: =uh hh £had anything y'know come on or anything li:ke10. [t h a t£ et the mo:ment,]11. Ile: [No well she's still a bit]young though isn't[she<ah me]an:=12. Nor: [S h e : :]13. Ile: =uh[:14. Nor: [She wz a year: la:st wee:k.15. Ile: Ah yes. Oh well any time now: then.

Nora is in the midst of producing what might be understood as a mild complaint (or the beginning of a complaint) about herbitch’s failure to come into her first heat. Nora herself introduces the element of lateness by her production of ‘‘still’’ in line 7.Used in this way, ‘‘she still hasn’t had anything y’know come on or anything’’, this adverb indexes the fact that something isexpected but has not yet happened. In response to this, Ilene produces the inquiry ‘‘no well she’s still a bit young though isn’tshe’’. Although potentially (designed to be) supportive – along the lines of suggesting that there’s nothing unusual in Nora’sbitch not yet ‘coming on’ heat, since she’s too young – in her response Nora seems to contradict Ilene’s characterization of thebitch as too young. But she does so indirectly, by responding that Minx is a year last week.

Nora thereby treats Ilene’s enquiry ‘‘she’s still a bit young though isn’t she’’ as inapposite partly because she (Ilene) wasincorrect in remembering how old Minx is (by saying ‘‘she’s still a bit young though’’ Ilene is claiming some knowledge ofMinx’s age); but partly also because had Minx not been old enough to begin breeding, Nora would not have been so puzzledat her not coming into heat. She would not have been puzzled (‘‘I can’t work it out’’) by her still not having ‘‘had anythingcome on or anything like that’’: Nora’s use of still not conveying thatMinx ought to have – amatter that an expert dog breederwould be expected to judgewith some accuracy. Hence she treats Ilene’s inquiry as failing to take into account that she, Nora,would know when Minx might be expected to come into heat.

As noted above, Ilene displays an understanding of the indirect response as refuting her inquiry (i.e., answering itnegatively): ‘‘ah yes oh well any time now then’’. By virtue of not arguing with the facts as displayed by Nora’s indirectresponse, she also thereby accepts that her inquiry was in some way inapposite. Participants need not, and indeeddo not always, accept or acknowledge the ‘facts’ as put forward in an indirect response, as shown in the followingexample.

27 IND31 Heritage_undated_3

1. Ray: good morning Mister Spanton2. Edg: uh::m I was wondering I spoke to you about a month ago::3. (0.5)4. Edg: I have uh: a few small jobs here in the house5. (0.4)6. Ray: yeah7. (0.2)8. Edg: uh:m you told me that you would be fully occupied until Christmas9. (0.9)10. Ray: yea[h11. Edg: [I was wondering uh whether you would have a day: to: to come 12. on over here13. (0.5)14. Ray: well I'm on holiday to the fifth officially15. (.)16. Edg: yes17. (0.4)18. Ray: but uh:a (0.7) I'll try and fit it in what have you got

Edgar has called a handyman, Ray, to inquire whether he could ‘‘come on over’’ to the house to do some minor repairs. Raydoes not answer directly ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to Edgar’s inquiry/request, but instead responds indirectly by telling Edgar that he (Ray)is on holiday until the fifth (of January; given this call’s location in the corpus, we can place it as taking place betweenChristmas Day and New Year’s Eve). As with other indirect responses, this is designed to imply a contrast, here between‘coming over’ (to do work) and ‘being on holiday’.

Ray’s response treats the supposition embedded in Edgar’s inquiry/request – that he would be available to do thework immediately after Christmas – as inapposite. Edgar has been edging toward making this request from the veryopening of the call, shown in the transcript from line 2. Ray, however, withholds any response other than minimal‘‘yeah’s’’, which are themselves produced only after rather long gaps of silence (0.4 and 0.9 s each). Through this prefaceto his request, Edgar displays that he has inferred from Ray’s having told him that he was ‘‘fully occupied untilChristmas’’ that Ray would therefore be available immediately after Christmas. It is this inference which Ray’s response

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‘resists’, i.e. that saying one is ‘busy until Christmas’ does not mean one expects to take on new work between Christmasand New Year.7

Although Edgar orients to the highly contingent nature of his request by choosing the form ‘‘I was wondering whether’’(Curl and Drew, 2008) and by minimizing the amount of work he needs (‘‘a few small jobs’’, line 4), he does not display anunderstanding of Ray’s indirect response as a rejection. His only response is ‘‘yes’’, followed by a 0.4 s gap of silence. Thisminimal response does not treat the indirect response as a negative answer to the request because it does not accept the‘fact’, as put forward by Ray, that he is still on holiday; it does not orient to any possible inappositeness in the inquiry (notethat acknowledging a contingency is not equivalent to admitting inappropriacy). And accordingly, Ray in his next turn offersto do what is requested of him – he’ll ‘‘try and fit it in’’ (line 18).

5. Indirectness in everyday interaction

To sum up, in this report we show that by responding indirectly, one participant can uncover the prior turn’s agenda,or can display to another that a previous inquiry is lacking or inapposite in some way. These indirect responses arecarefully designed to point out the perceived purpose of, or putative problems with, the prior talk. The provision of amore substantive response than a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, when delivered in response to a polar question, displays thespeaker’s analysis of what the questioner was ‘really’ asking. In our data, this display either made clear a motive hiddenin the prior inquiry, as in ‘‘I saw him today and he said he’d be in tomorrow so I’d see him before he went away,’’fragment 17; or, it made a claim as to the inappropriacy of the inquiry, as in ‘‘well I’m on holiday to the fifth officially,’’fragment 27.

In a distinct break with traditional research into indirectness, which often focuses on the psychological conditions forfelicitously doing and/or comprehending an indirect speech act, we have explicated the interactional environments inwhichindirectness figures. Rather than ask for judgements about the indirectness of an utterance, we have instead explored the useof indirect expressions in everyday interactions. One of the benefits of this innovative approach is that it allows us to show, inan empirically grounded way, what interactional pressures there are to respond indirectly – in effect, why speakerssometimes respond indirectly.

One of the interactional pressures we note is that utterances consisting only of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ are often not treated asadequate responses, even to syntactically polar questions. Upon receiving such responses, participants regularly pursuefurther information. So, rather than produce responses that are only superficially matched to the syntactic structure of theprior inquiry, speakers can and do produce responses that display their analysis of the activity being pursued in that inquiry.In so doing, speakers display a level of affiliationwith their interlocutors – they are attuned not just to the linguistic design ofthe preceding turn, but have also examined the talk for what it is doing, and are responding to that.

The extra work that speakers do by responding indirectly accounts for our discovery of positive indirect responses;that is, indirect responses that are not used to say ‘no’ or to disagree with the prior turn. The conventional wisdom aboutindirect responses, or indirect speech acts in general, is that they are used as a way of softening rejection, or being polite.Thus it was a surprise to find several instances in the data in which indirect responses could only be glossed as saying yes, oragreeing with the prior talk (e.g. fragment 17). This provides further evidence that responding indirectly is a more generaldevice used to display a speaker’s analysis of the action of the prior turn, rather than a device for avoiding or softening anaction.

Another interactional pressure that bears on the production of indirect responses is that of turn-taking in conversation(Sacks et al., 1974). After the production of a question in two-party conversation, the other participant is accountable forproducing a response. However, in addition to this pressure to respond, a participant in a conversation can also takeadvantage of being presented with the opportunity (indeed, the responsibility) to take a turn at talk in order to do someactivity not expressly provided for by the interaction so far. In other words, we propose that what we have collected here asindirect responses may be designed and produced to take advantage of an opportunity to say and do something that mightotherwise not come to fruition. Rather than waiting for a sequential slot that may never arise, responding indirectly can be ameans by which participants accomplish their own activities as early as possible in the interaction.

These two explanations for why indirect responses are produced can come only from the analysis of naturally occurringconversations. Both explanations are deeply rooted in a close examination of the sequential placement of, and the activityaccomplished by, a turn at talk. The finding that people regularly, and without giving rise to problems of understanding,respond to the action of a turn rather than its linguistic form should cause us to question the presumed association betweenlinguistic forms and activities. Syntactic questions need not be doing questioning; indirect responses need not be polite, norunclear or obfuscatory. For certain activities, in specific sequential locations, responding indirectlymay be themost efficientform of communication.

7 A reviewer suggests that Ray’s use of word ‘‘officially" actually displays his willingness to take on any work Edgar might have, by appealing to the

difference between work done ‘on the books’ and off. That is, he is ‘officially’ on vacation, but happy to be paid directly for any ‘unofficial’ work he could do.

However, given the long gaps andminimal responses both before and surrounding this response, we findmore evidence to support our contention that he is

attempting to reject or head off the request rather than indicate his availability. ‘‘Officially" could instead index the commonsense knowledge that no one

works between Christmas and New Year’s Day, and that he himself is actually staying off work until January 5 – and perhaps longer, if there is not any work

to be had.

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Traci Walker is an RCUK Fellow in Communication and Language Use in Interaction at the University of York (UK). Her publications analyse the structure oflanguage in use using themethodology of conversation analysis, with a special interest in the manipulation of fine phonetic detail to achieve particular outcomesin interaction.

Paul Drew is professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Language & Communication at the University of York (UK). He haspublished widely in Conversation Analysis, on some of the basic practices of social interaction, and is currently researching how we construct ‘action’ ininteraction. He also conducts applied research, most recently for the UK’s Department ofWork and Pensions, on interviews with benefits claimants (with MerranToerien).

John Local is Professor of Phonetics and Linguistics in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York (UK). He has published on thephonetics of talk-in-interaction, non-linear phonologies, speech synthesis and sociolinguistics. With Gareth Walker he is currently writing a book on thephonetics of talk-in-interaction.

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