First pair part

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Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: First pair part
Author(s): Tiina Eilittä (University of Oulu, Finland) (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1655-7535) & Anna Vatanen (University of Helsinki, Finland) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8236-657X)
To cite: Eilittä, Tiina & Vatanen, Anna. (2025). First pair part. 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: [ ]


A first pair part refers to an action in interaction that calls for a response from another participant. A first pair part (FPP) is the sequentially first component in an adjacency pair. A first pair part is a turn that makes another, a particular type of a turn—i.e., a second pair part (or SPP)—expected and relevant next (Schegloff, 2007). Examples of first pair parts include requests for information, requests for action, offers, summonses, and announcements.

Depending on the action produced by the FPP, certain kind(s) of second pair parts become conditionally relevant. In other words, an FPP puts certain constraints and affordances on how the recipient can or should respond (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973; Schegloff, 2007). The normatively expected response to a first pair part is a type-fitted second pair part. For example, a type-fitted response to an offer is either an acceptance or declination, and a type-fitted response to a request for information is an answer providing that information. A non-type-fitted response to such a request might be, for example, I don’t know (Stivers & Robinson 2006; on the interactional work of I don’t know and its counterparts in other languages, see also, e.g., Beach & Metzger 1997, Keevallik 2011, Pekarek Doehler 2016).

First pair parts may be produced verbally, multimodally or in a bodily manner. A verbal FPP is presented below in Excerpt 1 where Don offers a knife to his wife Beth (line 07), and in Excerpt 2 where E requests information about the availability of someone (line 01).

(1) (Schegloff, 2007: 51)

07  Don:  Dju wa[nt a knife?                                                                 
08  Bet:        [Oh yea:h.=
09  Ann:  =[Nyeh,
(2) (Hakulinen, 2001: 3) [telephone conversation]

01  E:  On-ks toi  äiti   kotona. 
        is-Q  that mother home-at                                                            
        Is your mummy there.

02  S:  O:n
        is 
        Yes

There are also multimodal first pair parts, produced in a combination of different modalities (e.g., Siitonen et al., 2022). An example of this can be seen below in Excerpt 3, where Ulla greets Matthew verbally while also waving at him.

(3) (Siitonen et al., 2022: 94)                                 

23  ULLA:    -> *↑hey Matthew↑,
    ulla     -> *waves
24              (0.4)
25  MATTHEW:    >hi there<.

First pair parts may also be produced solely in a bodily manner (e.g., Kärkkäinen and Keisanen, 2012; Rossi, 2014; Siitonen et al., 2022). This can be seen, for example, in Excerpt 4, in which Noora greets Linnea, who has just arrived in their joint virtual space, with a wave without a verbal greeting.

(4) (Siitonen et al., 2022: 96, simplified)                   

05 SAIJA:      .hhh +heh during the day,
   noora   ->       +waves                                                  
06 SAIJA:      .hh*hhh [so  ] it’s all quite,
07 SYLVIA:             [°mm°]
   linnea  ->     *waves 

How the FPP is designed—i.e., its turn design (see, e.g., Drew 2013)—plays a key role in constraining or enabling what may or should come in response. The grammatical construction of first pair parts concerns, for example, different types of information-seeking questions. For example, questions beginning with different question words make very specific types of responses relevant: questions beginning with “who” make a person reference as the relevant answer, whereas “where”-interrogatives make relevant a reference to a place (Schegloff, 2007). Similarly, polar questions (the so-called “yes/no interrogatives”) make relevant answers that either confirm or deny the information included in the question (Raymond, 2003; Schegloff, 2007; on polar questions and their answers in different languages, see, e.g., Bolden, Heritage & Sorjonen, eds., 2023, and references therein).

Some first pair parts can make a response particularly strongly expected and relevant, such as with greetings or invitations. However, not all initiating actions are like that. Certain FPPs, such as noticings and announcements, make a response less strongly expected (Stivers & Rossano 2010). A silence (a gap) after these types of actions may be less problematic, such as in the following exchange from a situation where a group of people is shoveling dung in a sheep stable when Toomas makes a comment, shown on line 04 below, and no-one responds (Keevallik 2018).

(5) (Keevallik 2018: 320, slightly modified)

03          (3.0)

04 Toomas:  Kurat see on nagu põhjatu sin. hh
            Damned it’s like bottomless here.

05          (0.5)*(27.0)*(9.3)
                 *Veiko and Piia possibly looking at Toomas.
                        *Renee grabs wheelbarrow handles to pull it out.                      

06 Piia:    aa,


It is, however, not only the social action that makes the difference here. By designing their initiating turns in different ways – verbally, prosodically and in terms of embodiment – participants can hold the recipient more (or less) accountable for responding to their turn. (E.g., Keevallik 2018, Stivers & Rossano 2010). In the above example, Toomas’s comment is uttered softly, his head and gaze are directed downwards, his body is half-turned away, his coparticipants are not oriented to him, and the turn is produced in the middle of the ongoing activity, not at an activity junction. All of this contributes to the turn being heard as self-talk, not making responses obligatory (Keevallik 2018: 319-321).

First pair parts are normatively responded to with their type-fitted second pair parts, according to the social action that the FPP performs. For example, the type-fitted SPP to a FPP that seeks information is an answer that provides the sought after information. For some FPPs, however, there are several alternative SPPs from which the recipient needs to choose. For example, when the FPP is an invitation, its recipient may either accept or decline it in the second pair part (e.g., Margutti et al. 2018). Similarly, a request may be either granted or rejected in the second pair part (e.g., Drew & Couper-Kuhlen 2014). Typically, one of the two alternatives is the structurally preferred one (e.g., acceptance or granting) while the other is the dispreferred one (e.g., declining or rejection) (see more on preference).

First pair parts are core elements in the organization of sequences. They initiate or launch sequences and are recognizable as the start of a sequence of action. They may be either preceded or followed by different types of sequence expansions, such as pre-expansions or post-first insert expansions. Pre-expansions are adjacency pair sequences that occur before the actual “base sequences” (Sacks, 1995; Schegloff, 2007) and are oriented to probing for or establishing a relevant sequential environment for a projected FPP. Pre-expansions can be either generic or type-specific. Examples of generic pre-expansions are summons-answer pairs, whereas type-specific pre-expansions create expectations of particular types of subsequent actions (i.e., first pair parts), such as offers or announcements (Schegloff, 1990). Post-first insert expansions, on the other hand, are produced by the recipient of a FPP and treat the FPP as in some way inadequate or problematic (Schegloff, 2007; Kendrick et al., 2020). Post-first insert expansions may, for example, come in the form of a repair sequence, positioned between the base sequence’s first and second pair parts, as seen in Excerpt 6 below.

(6) (Schegloff et al. 1977: 368; Schegloff, 2007: 217)

01  Beth:    was last night the first time you met misses Kelly
02  Mary: -> met whom?
03  Beth: -> misses Kelly
04  Mary:    yes

In line 1 of Excerpt 6, Beth produces the first pair part of the base sequence. In line 2, Mary initiates post-first insert expansion by producing an other-initiated repair (i.e., the first pair part of the expansion sequence). Beth produces a second pair part to the expansion sequence (line 3), after which Mary produces the second pair part of the base sequence in line 4.


Additional Related Entries:


Cited References:

Beach, W. & Metzger, T. (1997). Claiming insufficient knowledge. Human Communication Research, 23(4), 562–588.

Drew, P. & Couper-Kuhlen, E. (2014). Requesting – from speech act to recruitment. In Drew, Paul & Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth (Eds.), Requesting in Social Interaction (pp. 1–34). John Benjamins.

Hakulinen, A. (2001). Minimal and non-minimal answers to yes-no questions. Pragmatics, 11(1), 1–15.

Keevallik, L. (2011). The terms of not knowing. In T. Stivers, L. Mondada, & J. Steensig (Eds.), The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation (pp. 184-206). Cambridge University Press.

Keevallik, L. (2018). Sequence Initiation or Self-Talk? Commenting on the Surroundings While Mucking out a Sheep Stable. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 51(3), 313-328.

Kendrick, K. H., Brown, P., Dingemanse, M., Floyd, S., Gipper, S., Hayano, K., Hoey, E. M., Hoymann, G., Manrique, E., Rossi, G., and Levinson, S. C. (2020). Sequence organization: A universal infrastructure for social action. Journal of Pragmatics, 168, 119–138.

Kärkkäinen, E., & Keisanen, T. (2012). Linguistic and embodied formats for making (concrete) offers. Discourse Studies, 14(5), 587–611.

Margutti, P., Tainio, L., Drew, P., & Traverso, V. (2018). Invitations and responses across different languages: Observations on the feasibility and relevance of a cross-linguistic comparative perspective on the study of actions. Journal of Pragmatics, 125, 52–61.

Pekarek Doehler, S. (2016). More than an epistemic hedge: French je sais pas ‘I don’t know’ as a resource for the sequential organization of turns and actions. Journal of Pragmatics, 106, 148-162.

Raymond, G. (2003). Grammar and social organization: yes/no interrogatives and the structure of responding. American Sociological Review, 68, 939–967.

Rossi, G. (2014). When do people not use language to make requests? In P. Drew & E. Couper-Kuhlen (Eds.), Requesting in Social Interaction (pp. 303–334). Benjamins.

Sacks, H. (1995). Lectures on conversation: Volumes I & II. Basil Blackwell.

Schegloff, E. A. (1990). On the organization of sequences as a source of “coherence” in talk-in-interaction. In B. Dorval (Ed.), Conversational Organization and its Development (51–77). Praeger.

Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge University Press.

Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 7, 361–382.

Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G., and Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language, 53(2), 361–382.

Siitonen, P., Helisten, M., Siromaa, M., Rauniomaa, M., & Holmström, M. (2022). Managing co-presence with a wave of the hand: Waving as an interactional resource in openings and closings of video-mediated breaks from work. Gesture, 21(1), 82–114.

Stivers, T., & Robinson, J. D. (2006). A preference for progressivity in interaction. Language in Society, 35(3), 367-392.

Stivers, T., & Rossano, F. (2010). Mobilizing response. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 43(1), 3–31.


Additional References:


EMCA Wiki Bibliography items tagged with 'first pair part'