Vatanen2023a

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Vatanen2023a
BibType ARTICLE
Key Vatanen2023a
Author(s) Anna Vatanen, Pentti Haddington
Title Multiactivity in adult-child interaction: accounts resolving conflicting courses of action in request sequences
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Account, Request, Multiactivity
Publisher
Year 2023
Language English
City
Month
Journal Text & Talk
Volume 43
Number 2
Pages 263-290
URL Link
DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0165
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

This paper studies adults’ responses to children’s requests by focusing on turns that account for not granting the request on the grounds of involvement in another activity, i.e., multiactivity. The data consist of everyday interactions among family members at homes and in cars. The collection – 17 request sequences – is analysed with the conversation analytic method. We show the following: first, account turns verbalise either the ongoing or the requested activity, or both; second, account turns are a practice for foregrounding and communicating “exclusive order”, i.e., they indicate that two progressing activities intersect with each other and cannot be progressed simultaneously, and that one activity is prioritised over another; third, account turns are used either to suspend or abandon the course of action initiated by the request; fourth, accounts – through various sequential and turn design features – display adults’ level of commitment to resuming and returning to the requested activity later; and, finally, accounts indicating high commitment negotiate the “sequential implicativenesses” of the intersecting courses of action, displaying orientation to progress initiated activities. Accounts that display partial or no commitment frame the prioritisation of an activity in terms of “incapability” or “unwillingness” to progress the request sequence and thereby construct the “limits of multiactivity” in situ.

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