The Multifunctionality of Discourse Operator Okay: Evidence from a police interview

Gaines, Philip

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2011.06.005

Cited by 55 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Delphine confirms the repetition with "yes" (line 13). The police officer projects a next sequence with '"mkay" (line 15) (Beach, 1993;Gaines, 2011) and directing her gaze to her notes. The girl, however, expands her answer with a rather dramatic move before the police officer can produce a next question.…”

Section: Excerpt 2: I Really Pret(h)ended That I Was Falling Asleepmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Interactional Costs of “Neutrality” in Police Interviews with Child Witnesses

Jol¹,

Stommel²

2021

Research on Language and Social Interaction

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This paper concerns the interactional dilemma between displaying affiliation and doing being neutral. This dilemma is highly salient in police interviews with child witnesses where interviewing guidelines encourage police officers to take a neutral stance to avoid steering children's stories. In this article, we use conversation analysis to analyze childrens' volunteered accounts of their own role during the alleged offense, e.g., how they resisted. Such accounts make relevant affiliative uptakes such as approval, disagreement, or reassurance that may be seen as nonneutral. Hence, these accounts raise interactional dilemmas for police officers: Should they do what is interactionally relevant or follow the guidelines? Our analysis shows how police officers display and deal with this dilemma and that children may add to it by pursuing something more than neutralistic uptakes. The upshot of this analysis is that attempting to be neutral in interaction may cause apparently undesirable interactional difficulties. The data are from the Netherlands.Because fact finding is key, the interview must be conducted in the most neutral way possible. (. . .) In this context, neutral means: without influencing the witness's testimony, neither in posture, mimic and intonation, nor in the way questions are formulated. No matter the means, influencing must be avoided. (Dekens & Van der Sleen, 2013, pp. 13-14, our translation).An instructor at the police academy explained that police officers should not assume that something has happened because the child's story is still under investigation, and it is the police officer's task to find the truth. 1 The phrase "the most neutral way possible" in the quote acknowledges that being fully neutral is not possible. Elsewhere in the Manual this is made even more explicit by stating that "in practice, it is difficult or maybe even impossible to do an interview in an entirely neutral way" (Dekens & Van der Sleen, 2013, p. 47). Nevertheless, being neutral is prescribed as the police officer's aim and is mentioned as important by police officers and trainers (Rassin & Van Koppen, 2002, p. 26).

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Section: Excerpt 2: I Really Pret(h)ended That I Was Falling Asleepmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Interactional Costs of “Neutrality” in Police Interviews with Child Witnesses

Jol¹,

Stommel²

2021

Research on Language and Social Interaction

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“…The study of particles began in the 1970s; since that time, the particles/ markers have been the subject of extensive research in the field of pragmatics and discourse analysis in different languages, including Swedish (Hansson, 1999(, French (Didirková et al, 2018, Japanese (Wang, 2011), English (Fairhurst, 2013;Filip and Wales, 2003;Gaines, 2011;Matzen, 2004), and Canadians English (Tagliamonte, 2005). I first present the works by Filip and Wales (2003), Gaines (2011), andFairhurst (2013) because their discussion of the particle okay in English is somewhat related to the present study's focus on the functions of the particle tˤayb, which literally means "good" and could also mean "okay." These works will help me compare the functions of the particle tˤayb with the functions of "okay" in these studies and determine similarities and differences in their functions.…”

Section: Overview Of the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Prosodic correlates and pragmatic functions of the particle tˤayb in spoken Saudi Arabic

Aljutaily

2021

JLLS

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This study describes the prosodic and functional patterns of the particle tˤayb 2 in Spoken Saudi Arabic (SSA; the variety of Arabic spoken in Saudi Arabia) through phonetic and conversational analysis. This particle, literally meaning "good/well/okay," is one of the most common spoken particles used in SSA. Data were collected by recording four hours of oral spontaneous speech produced by five Saudi speakers. The findings reveal that, structurally, the particle tˤayb can occur independently before questions and before negative and affirmative statements. Moreover, its meaning depends on its context and, sometimes, prosody. The particle is identified 109 times in the corpus, and consistently occupies an initial (i.e., turn-initial) but not a medial or final position. The results provide the pragmatic functions and the prosody of the particle tˤayb as well as the participants' use frequency of such functions. Tˤayb conveys nine pragmatic functions in the data, which are listed in order from the most frequent (i.e., turn-taking marker) to the least frequent use (i.e., request for patience). From a phonetic perspective, the results show different patterns in the production of the particle tˤayb; it may show an almost flat contour with medium length, as in the functions representing (turn-taking, change and close topic); a sharp rising/falling contour with medium length, particularly with the functions conveying (reproach and refusal); or a high contour that decreases gradually with long duration, as found in the particle marking Be patient or showing little/no importance.

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“…The intake-officer begins their response to the caller's first problem presentation with okay (line 08). The term 'okay' has multiple discourse functions (Gaines, 2011). In response to information it simply receipts without showing any particular stance towards the information, for example, as surprising or troubling.…”

Section: ->Intmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘I need to get some details first’

Weatherall

2016

MTP

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In this article, I examined audio-recordings of calls to an independent dispute resolution service in which customers complained about their electricity, gas or water providers. Part of the job of the intake-officers, who answer the calls, was to enter relevant information about the caller and the complaint into a computer software system called RESOLVE. Around 120 calls were analysed using conversation analysis. Although there was no fixed order for registering caller and complaint details, intake-officers regularly prioritised registering caller details. Sometimes that meant interrupting callers as they were telling about their problem. On the whole callers who were interrupted co-operated with the intake-officer redirecting the conversation to collect details about themselves. An analysis of a call is presented where the caller did not co-operate. The intakeofficer's insistence of registering the caller's details first, proved to be a barrier and no progress towards dispute resolution was made. The findings are used to support a recommendation for flexibility in the order of activities that achieve telephone-mediated dispute resolution. Being flexible is most likely to effectively progress the interaction to accomplish the institution's business in this case. Flexibility may be a general principle for the delivery of an effective dispute resolution service.

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The Multifunctionality of Discourse Operator Okay: Evidence from a police interview

Cited by 55 publications

References 33 publications

The Interactional Costs of “Neutrality” in Police Interviews with Child Witnesses

The Interactional Costs of “Neutrality” in Police Interviews with Child Witnesses

Prosodic correlates and pragmatic functions of the particle tˤayb in spoken Saudi Arabic

‘I need to get some details first’

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