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How do people answer polar questions? In this fourteen-language study of answers to questions in conversation, we compare the two main strategies; first, interjection-type answers such asuh-huh(or equivalentsyes,mm, head nods, etc.), and second, repetition-type answers that repeat some or all of the question. We find that all languages offer both options, but that there is a strong asymmetry in their frequency of use, with a global preference for interjection-type answers. We propose that this preference is motivated by the fact that the two options are not equivalent in meaning. We argue that interjection-type answers are intrinsically suited to be the pragmatically unmarked, and thus more frequent, strategy for confirming polar questions, regardless of the language spoken. Our analysis is based on the semantic-pragmatic profile of the interjection-type and repetition-type answer strategies, in the context of certain asymmetries inherent to the dialogic speech act structure of question–answer sequences, including sequential agency and thematic agency. This allows us to see possible explanations for the outlier distributions found in ǂĀkhoe Haiǁom and Tzeltal.

This article investigates mobile phone calls initiated or received by drivers and passengers in cars and focuses on the participants' actions before the telephone conversation proper. Drawing on video-recorded data of real driving situations, and building on conversation analysisand multimodal interaction analysis, this article discusses how participants temporally and sequentially coordinate situations that require multitasking, that is, use a phone while on the move. This article shows how participants draw on the current social-interactional, material context to handle the call as relevant at that point and how they, through their vocal and bodily conduct, manage the prebeginning as a collaborative effort. The findings have relevance for research both on driving and on human-human and human-technology interaction.In this article, we wish to add to interdisciplinary research on human communication, human-technology interaction, and driving and traffic safety by investigating how drivers and passengers use a mobile phone while traveling in a car. We examine how the use of a mobile phone impinges on the social situation and influences the actions of participants inside a car. We specifically focus on the driver's or a passenger's use of the driver's phone and on a particular crucially important phase that precedes the phone conversation: the prebeginning. We define the prebeginning as a series of actions during which the caller or a potential answerer visibly and/or audibly attends to and prepares for an upcoming telephone conversation. 1 Importantly, the analyses also address such issues as how humans communicate with mobile technologies and what new forms of communicative practices emerge and develop around mobile technologies (see, e.g., Katz, 2008;Katz & Aakhus, 2002a). We wish to investigate how humans prepare to interact by means of a technology and how they solve the challenge of managing and coordinating multiple competing activities. The interior of a car is a particularly complex space for multitasking in that, for example, conversation and the use of technologies have to be coordinated with the demands of the

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