Raymond2017a

Raymond2017a
BibType	ARTICLE
Key	Raymond2017
Author(s)	Chase Wesley Raymond
Title	Indexing a contrast: The do-construction in English conversation
Editor(s)
Tag(s)	EMCA, Conversation analysis, Social interaction, Grammar, Morphosyntax, Emphasis, Agency
Publisher
Year	2017
Language
City
Month
Journal	Journal of Pragmatics
Volume	118
Number
Pages	22-37
URL	Link
DOI
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
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Abstract

This conversation-analytic paper reports on the structure and interactional use of what I termthe ‘do-construction’ in English-language conversation: Utterances such as The kids do eat cake (cf. The kids eat cake). The argument developed here is that, at its core, the do-construction is used to index a contrast with a prior understanding. As will be shown, this prior understanding can be overtly demonstrated or merely presumed or potential, and it may be the understanding of the speaker him/herself, or that of the recipient. Similarly, the do-construction can be seen in a variety of sequential positions, and in conjunction with a range of social actions. Nonetheless, what binds this diversity of cases together is the use of the do-construction to introduce content into the interaction in a way that actively orients to a contrastive understanding. After establishing the contrastive work that this resource accomplishes as a general feature of turn design, we then consider how the use of the do-construction can be seen to be relevant to specific sequences of action. I conclude with a discussion of the relationship between the grammatical construction analyzed here and other-correction, and comment on some related resources for indexing contrasts in English.

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