Rae2022a

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Rae2022a
BibType INCOLLECTION
Key Rae2022a
Author(s) John P. Rae
Title On Doing Things Through Topical Puns and Near-Synonyms in Conversation
Editor(s) Raymond F. Person Jr., Robin Wooffitt, John P. Rae
Tag(s) EMCA
Publisher Routledge
Year 2022
Language English
City New York
Month
Journal
Volume
Number
Pages 79–96
URL Link
DOI 10.4324/9780429328930-5
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title Bridging the Gap Between Conversation Analysis and Poetics: Studies in Talk-In-Interaction and Literature Twenty-Five Years after Jefferson
Chapter

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Abstract

In spontaneous talk, speakers occasionally use one expression where another one might be expected. For example, a caller to a radio talk-show, complaining about getting reliable travel information from a telephone helpline, outlines the complexity of their freelance work arrangements by saying that they do not have a ‘regular timetable’. Although this is unproblematic, an expression such as a ‘regular schedule’ might be expected. However, the word ‘timetable‘ is closely fitted to their overarching topic: rail travel, where we commonly speak of a train timetable. Although the speaker‘s choice of a near-synonym (‘timetable’ rather than ‘schedule’) involves a semantic connection between two related terms, it does more than this. Drawing on Jefferson’s (1996) analysis of the poetics of word-choices in conversation, this chapter proposes that near-synonyms can have an intimate relationship to a speaker’s course of action; they can foreshadow what the speaker is going to say, or do, and thereby can help to achieve understanding.

Notes