So…?: Pragmatic Implications of So-Prefaced Questions in Formal Police Interviews

Johnson, Alison

doi:10.1057/9780230522770_6

Cited by 62 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…For example, the article specifies Howe's (1991) overly generic description of 'so' as a ''marker of connection'' by detailing the types of connections this discourse marker indexes and in what sequential contexts. The article also extends Johnson's (2002) view of 'so' as a ''topic developer'' that advances institutional agendas by explicating how 'so' is deployed in its home environmentmundane conversations. Methodologically, the findings presented here underscore the importance of examining discourse markers within action sequences as well as within larger stretches of talk.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 81%

Implementing incipient actions: The discourse marker ‘so’ in English conversation

Bolden

2009

Journal of Pragmatics

291

112

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The discourse marker 'so' is most commonly described as indexing inferential or causal connections. However, recordings of everyday talk show that these are not its only functions. The article uses the methodology of conversation analysis and examines a large corpus of recorded conversations to explicate the role of 'so' in implementing incipient actions. The analysis focuses on the use of 'so' for prefacing sequence-initiating actions (such as questions) and demonstrates that speakers deploy this preface to indicate the status of the upcoming action as 'emerging from incipiency' rather than being contingent on the immediately preceding talk. 'So' prefacing is recurrently used in contexts where the activity being launched has been relevantly pending. Additionally, speakers can use 'so' to characterize and constitute a particular action as advancing their interactional agenda. The article shows that this marker is a resource for establishing discourse coherence and, more fundamentally, accomplishing understanding. #

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 81%

Implementing incipient actions: The discourse marker ‘so’ in English conversation

Bolden

2009

Journal of Pragmatics

291

112

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, Howe (1991) indicated that in topic initial utterances, so can function as a "marker of connection," supposedly to invoke the participants' shared background knowledge (p. 93). Johnson (2002) described the use of so for prefacing questions in police interviews and argued that it is used to focus the participants' attention on the interview's agenda. Most recently, Bolden (2006) argued that, when introducing new topics in conversation, so can be used to highlight the speaker's involvement in the addressee's life world by marking the topic as pending or incipient.…”

Section: So … What Is So?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This marker is often used in various nonformal institutional interactions in similar sequential environments: to preface turns that implement a delayed move to the interaction's official business or the interaction's agenda (cf. Johnson, 2002). In many institutional settings, the business of the interaction has to do with requesting/providing services, and the moves to business, often initiated by service providers, take shape of service request solicitations (such as the generic How can I help you?).…”

Section: Moves To Business In Institutional Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“So What's Up?”: Using the Discourse MarkerSoto Launch Conversational Business

Bolden

2008

Research on Language & Social Interaction

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In this article, I use conversation analytic methods to analyze interactional junctures in which transitions to the first conversational topic are accomplished. I examine several ways in which parties in ordinary (and especially telephone) conversations coordinate the launching of first "talkables," focusing specifically on environments in which such moves are delayed. I observed that many such moves are prefaced with the discourse marker so, suggesting that it plays an important role at this interactional juncture. In the article, I demonstrate that the underlying meaning of so as a marker of "emergence from incipiency" serves to characterize the upcoming action as introducing the conversation's first intended topic-something that was projected by the very act of initiating the contact and oriented to by participants as having been pending or incipient. In addition to mundane telephone conversations, I briefly examine several institutional encounters to explore how so gets deployed for introducing institutional agendas.

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“…Johnson, 2002;MacLeod, 2010). According to this trend, discourse markers such as so --which activate particular types of contexts --are characterised by the highest correspondence rates, followed by procedural (generally adversative) elements such as but or however.…”

Section: Preliminariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Point of view in free indirect thought and in community interpreting

Gallai

2016

Lingua

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So…?: Pragmatic Implications of So-Prefaced Questions in Formal Police Interviews

Cited by 62 publications

References 6 publications

Implementing incipient actions: The discourse marker ‘so’ in English conversation

Implementing incipient actions: The discourse marker ‘so’ in English conversation

“So What's Up?”: Using the Discourse MarkerSoto Launch Conversational Business

Point of view in free indirect thought and in community interpreting

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