Coordination and Interpretation of Vocal and Visible Resources: ‘Trail-off’ Conjunctions

Walker, Gareth

doi:10.1177/0023830911428858

Cited by 97 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Mom weakly receipts their suggestion with an mmhm continuer, after which Donna provides more detail about volunteering (lines 10-11). Donna's turn concludes with a trail-off conjunction and, which exhibits her turn as being complete (Walker, 2012). In this environment, some reaction from Mom might be appropriate, like an evaluation of the informing.…”

Section: The Situated Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Speakers Continue with Talk After a Lapse in Conversation

Hoey

2018

Research on Language and Social Interaction

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How do conversational participants continue with turn-by-turn talk after a momentary lapse? If all participants forgo the option to speak at possible sequence completion, an extended silence may emerge that can indicate a lack of anything to talk about next. For the interaction to proceed recognizably as a conversation, the postlapse turn needs to implicate more talk. Using conversation analysis, I examine three practical alternatives regarding sequentially implicative postlapse turns: Participants may move to end the interaction, continue with some prior matter, or start something new. Participants are shown using resources grounded in the interaction's overall structural organization, the materials from the interaction-so-far, the mentionables they bring to interaction, and the situated environment itself. Comparing these alternatives, there's suggestive quantitative evidence for a preference for continuation. The analysis of lapse resolution shows lapses as places for the management of multiple possible courses of action. Data are in U.S. and UK English. Much of social life occurs in situations where conversation is the central activity (Schegloff, 2006). For these situations, participants arrange themselves for sustained mutual involvement (Goffman, 1963; Kendon, 1990) and exchange speaking turns one after another with minimal gap and overlap (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). Any observer of such a scene could identify it as "a conversation." It's somewhat of an idealization, however, to picture these situations as uniformly consisting of continuous turn-by-turn talk. Certain contingencies might result in periods of extended silence. The conversation might be paused for participants to attend to another matter, it might get interrupted by an unexpected event, or-as I address in this article-it might lapse into silence for lack of a next speaker. The problem I am concerned with is how participants in ordinary conversations continue with talk-in-interaction after it lapses. Lapses are periods of nontalk that develop when all interactants forgo the opportunity to self-select in a place where speaking was possible (Sacks et al., 1974). Some activities provide for lapses. For example, lapses that emerge during group coursework (Szymanski, 1999) or when watching television (Ergül, 2016) are accountable by reference to those activities. These situations have been characterized as "ongoing states of incipient talk" (Schegloff, 2007;

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Section: The Situated Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Speakers Continue with Talk After a Lapse in Conversation

Hoey

2018

Research on Language and Social Interaction

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“…(3) CAAT: AusAus07 The question that prompts this self-disclosure is formatted with a trailingoff disjunctive, through which Charles orients to potential sensitivity in seeking such information from Lisa (Haugh 2011b;Walker 2012). Lisa initially responds with hedged confirmation (line 365), followed by an account as to why she expects to stay working at that university (line 367).…”

Section: Jocular Quips In Initial Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the point the excerpt begins, Connor is proposing a stepwise topic transition (Jefferson 1984a) to the question of where Mary lives, given it has been established that she is working part-time in a (presumably) well-paying job, yet is also a student. Connor's question in lines 253-254 is formatted with a trailing-off disjunctive that orients to the candidate answer embedded within it (Pomerantz 1988) as a potential sensitive or delicate one (Haugh 2011b;Walker 2012), an orientation that appears warranted in light of Mary's subsequent response in line 255, which disconfirms that candidate answer. Mary then goes on to elaborate that she moved out of home some time ago (lines 255-256, 258), in response to which Connor quips that Mary does not look as one might have otherwise presumed (line 259).…”

Section: Jocular Quips In Initial Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divided by a common language? Jocular quips and (non-)affiliative responses in initial interactions among American and Australian speakers of English

Haugh

Weinglass

2018

Intercultural Pragmatics

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Studies of conversational humor in intercultural settings have focused largely on illustrating how participants can successfully draw on humor to build rapport. However, it is nevertheless clear that attempts at humor can also go awry in settings in which participants come from different cultural backgrounds. In this paper, we focus on the responses of American and Australian participants to playful or light-hearted comments on, or responses to, another speaker’s just prior serious talk, which are designed to initiate a non-serious side sequence, or what we term “jocular quips”. Drawing from a comparative analysis of thirty recordings of initial interactions involving participants from ostensibly the same (AmAm; AusAus) and different (AmAus) backgrounds, we report our finding that affiliative responses to jocular quips are more prevalent in the “intracultural” dyads (AmAm, AusAus), while non-affiliative responses are more frequent in the “intercultural” dyads (AmAus). We suggest this is due to troubles in accomplishing particularistic co-membership and shared critical, mocking attitudes that are attributed to, or directed at that category. We conclude that Americans and Australians are not “divided by a common language” as such, but rather that affiliating with jocular quips in initial interactions is contingent on the locally situated accomplishment of particular membership categories and predicates associated with these categories.

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“…Following an account for why she felt surprised that Fen didn't want to visit the US in light of her connection (i.e., having been born there) (data not shown), Jill recognizably trails off her talk at the point excerpt (4) begins. In line 75, Jill leaves something hearably unsaid through the utterance-final, trailing off "but" (Walker 2012), thereby orienting to a possible delicacy (Lerner 2013;Haugh 2015), namely, the impropriety of Fen's embarrassment about being associated with the US and her reluctance to go and visit. Lara then offers a candidate understanding in lines 78 of what Jennifer has left unsaid, namely, that she was "offended".…”

Section: Implicated Criticisms In Initial Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agency, accountability and evaluations of impoliteness

Mitchell

Haugh

2015

Journal of Politeness Research

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It is now well recognized that the recipients’ evaluations need to be given serious consideration when theorizing impoliteness. Yet despite the importance placed on evaluations by recipients, the role of the recipient in interaction has been reduced through theorizing within the field to the ascribing of (perceived) intentions or interpreting of (perceived) social norms and expectations. We suggest, in this paper, that this under-theorizes the role of the recipient vis-à-vis evaluations of impoliteness. Building on an account of (im)politeness as social practice (Haugh 2013b, 2015; Kádár and Haugh 2013), we argue that evaluations of impoliteness inevitably involve those recipients construing the speaker’s action as a particular kind of social action, and holding them accountable for that particular kind of social action with respect to particular dimension(s) of the moral order (Haugh 2013a, 2015). The accountability of social action is underpinned, in part, by the presumed agency of participants. Agency involves the

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Coordination and Interpretation of Vocal and Visible Resources: ‘Trail-off’ Conjunctions

Cited by 97 publications

References 47 publications

How Speakers Continue with Talk After a Lapse in Conversation

How Speakers Continue with Talk After a Lapse in Conversation

Divided by a common language? Jocular quips and (non-)affiliative responses in initial interactions among American and Australian speakers of English

Agency, accountability and evaluations of impoliteness

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