Teasing via the [lo, ki ‘no, because’ + ironic utterance] structure in Hebrew talk-in-interaction

Abstract

The current study elaborates on one mechanism through which teasing is accomplished in Hebrew interaction. Investigating naturally occurring casual conversation from the Haifa Multimodal Corpus of Spoken Hebrew, and employing the methodologies of Interactional Linguistics and Multimodal Interaction Analysis, we explore a recurrent and recognizable practice used by Hebrew speakers – the deployment of lo ‘no’ followed by a ki ‘because’-prefaced ironic utterance. We suggest that the [ lo, ki + ironic utterance] structure is a fixed format that encapsulates a practice of providing a teasing comment as a responsive action. We propose that via the use of this structure, speakers convey a negative stance of inappropriacy toward the previous action by appealing to knowledge that the recipient is obliged to know, while simultaneously mocking the recipient responsible for the inappropriacy and indirectly reproaching them for disregarding this knowledge, whether by failing to take it into account, or by a deliberate choice to ignore it.