Conditional relevance
| Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Conditional relevance | |
|---|---|
| Author(s): | Jason Turowetz (University of California, Santa Barbara) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2724-764X) |
| To cite: | Turowetz, Jason. (2023). Conditional relevance. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/YF56T |
Conditional relevance refers to the property that obtains between an initiating action and its type-fitted responsive action whereby the producer of an initial action makes relevant the production of a type fitted response by its recipient. The conditional relevance of the responsive action, in other words, is conditional upon the production of a first initiating action. Conditional relevance is central to the organization of adjacency pairs, where the first action (first-pair part) has the property of “firstness” in relation to a second action (second-pair part) that normatively follows it (Schegloff 2007: 20), e.g., a question projects an answer as the conditionally relevant next action; an invitation/offer projects an acceptance/declination; a request projects a granting or refusal; etc. As such, conditional relevance plays a key role in action consummation (Enfield & Sidnell 2017: 516), sequence organization (Schegloff 2007; Stivers 2013), and progressivity, or “moving from some element to a hearably-next-one with nothing intervening” (Schegloff 2007: 15).
Schegloff (1968: 1068; see also Schegloff & Sacks 1973) observes that the property of conditional relevance grounds:
- the identification of two items in interaction as “a sequenced pair of items, rather than as two separate units”, and
- the claim that an item is “officially absent” (Schegloff 1968: 1083), i.e., missing after being made relevant by a prior item.
Producers of first-pair parts may orient to such absences by pursing a relevant response (Pomerantz 1984; Bolden, et al. 2012). For their part, recipients of a first-pair part may orient to the conditional relevance of a second-pair part by supplying the relevant next action or by not producing it but orienting to the relevance of its production. Thus, in response to a question (first-pair part), the recipient may provide an answer or mark the relevance of an answer they cannot produce, e.g., by responding “I don’t know” (Beach & Metzger 1997; Heritage 1984; Stivers & Robinson 2006). Consider the following example (from Heritage 1984: 250), where M orients to the relevance of an answer and produces an account for why she cannot supply one.
[W:PC:1:MJ(1):18] (Heritage 1984: 250) 01 J: But the trai:n goes. Does th’train 02 go o:n th’boa:t? 03 M: .h .h Ooh I’ve no idea:. She ha:sn’t sai:d.
While there is often more than one response that satisfies the conditional relevance constraints projected by an initial action, they are not all treated as equivalent. Analyzing responses to questions, Stivers and Robinson (2006: 369) show that answer responses and non-answer responses can be ranked in terms of a preference for progressivity, such that non-answer responses, e.g., “I don’t know,” or repair initiations are treated as dispreferred alternatives to answer responses that progress the sequence toward completion.
Finally, not all first actions make one specific type-fitted response conditionally relevant. For example, storytelling is organized in terms of stance, rather than adjacency pairs, with recipients generally displaying uptake throughout the telling and an evaluative stance upon completion (Stivers 2013). Likewise, not all first actions mobilize response to the same degree: non-responses to an assessment or noticing, for instance, are not generally treated as noticeably absent (Stivers & Rossano 2010).
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Cited References:
Beach, W. A., & Metzger, T. R. (1997). Claiming insufficient knowledge. Human Communication Research, 23(4), 562-588.
Bolden, G., Mandelbaum, J., & Wilkinson, S. (2012). Pursuing a response by repairing an indexical reference. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(2), 137–155.
Enfield, N., and Sidnell, J. (2017). On the concept of action in interaction. Discourse Studies, 19(5), 515-535.
Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Polity Press.
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Pursuing a response. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: studies in conversation analysis (pp. 152-164). Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, E. A. (1968). Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist, 70(6), 1075-1097.
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: a primer in conversation analysis (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, E. A., and Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 7, 289-327.
Stivers, T. (2013). Sequence organization. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.) Handbook of Conversation Analysis (pp. 191-209). Blackwell Publishing.
Stivers, T., & Robinson, J.D. (2006). A preference for progressivity in interaction. Language in Society, 35, 367-392.
Stivers, T., & Rossano, F. (2010). Mobilizing response. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 43(1), 3-31.
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