Siitonen-Wahlberg2015

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Siitonen-Wahlberg2015
BibType ARTICLE
Key Siitonen-Wahlberg2015
Author(s) Pauliina Siitonen, Karl-Erik Wahlberg
Title Finnish particles mm, jaa and joo as responses to a proposal in negotiation activity
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Interactional Linguistics, Finnish, Negotiations
Publisher
Year 2015
Language
City
Month
Journal Journal of Pragmatics
Volume 75
Number
Pages 73–88
URL Link
DOI 10.1016/j.pragma.2014.11.001
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

Negotiation activity, as a form of social interaction, is founded on a proposal sequence. A proposal projects an acceptance or a rejection as the possible next action, and response particles occurring in this position may be heard accordingly. In some languages, response tokens have been identified as weak agreements, and in some cases they may even function as pre-rejections. This study examines Finnish response particles as a resource in negotiation. Using conversation analysis, we analyse the particles mm, jaa and joo which form whole turn-constructional units as responses to proposals. Our data come from psychological interaction tests and encompass 119 sequences with a proposal and an accompanying particle response. The study shows that, despite sharing some functions on a general level, the particles are not interchangeable as far as accepting and committing oneself to a proposal are concerned. Indeed, they constitute a continuum with mm at one end as the least encouraging response particle and joo at the other end as the most encouraging. However, even the most encouraging particle joo is not sufficient to accomplish acceptance of the proposal on its own, but an explicit acceptance or further development of the proposal is needed after the joo.

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