Agreement

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Agreement
Author(s):	Katariina Harjunpää (University of Helsinki, Finland) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4586-1563)
To cite:	Harjunpää, Katariina. (2023). Agreement. 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:

The term agreement is used in varying levels of detail to refer to the display and establishment of “being in accord” in social interaction. Most characteristically, agreement refers to a responsive action that endorses a prior speaker’s assessment or another type of assertion of a state of affairs. In the following example, L agrees with J’s assessment by delivering an agreeing token "yeh" and an upgraded second assessment.

[Pomerantz 1984: 65]

J:   T’s- tsuh beautiful day out isn’t it?
L:   Yeh it’s just gorgeous...

In early CA studies, the term agreement was used more broadly for responsive actions that are in accord with the implications, terms, propositions or preferences built in the initiating action, and thereby ‘agree’ or are ‘in agreement’ with that action (Sacks 1987 [1973]). Agreement concerned various action contexts, including polar questions (Sacks 1987), complaints (Schegloff 1984) and proposals (Houtkoop 1987). Nowadays, agreeing responses to these actions are mostly called affirmations/confirmations, acceptances, etc. Further properties of action that the early studies discussed as agreement are now understood in more specialized terms, including type-conformity, alignment, and affiliation.

The initial notion of agreement connects to the discovery of preference organization. In an influential paper, Sacks (1987, see also Heritage & Raymond 2021: 40–42) illustrated the ‘preference for agreement’ by showing how speakers and recipients build their actions to favor agreeing responses. Agreeing responses are generally produced straightforwardly and contiguous to the action responded to (even in partial overlap; Mori 1999; Vatanen 2018; Vatanen, Endo & Yokomori 2021), whereas disagreeing turns are produced with delay, prefaced with token agreements and hesitation markers that defer the actual disagreement until later in the turn, and accompanied by accounts (Levinson 1983: 333–334; Pomerantz 1984). If there are signs that agreement is not forthcoming (e.g., a long gap follows the first action), the first speaker may redo the action in a way that allows the recipient to agree with it. How participants manage (potential) disagreement shows reversely their orientation to the preference for agreement (Sacks 1987). In addition to assessing, the preference for the “agreeing” alternative operates in a variety of actions that have two main response options.

Assessments invite agreement as the preferred next action across a wide range of contexts (Pomerantz 1984) (although it has also been debated to what extent they make a response conditionally relevant). Speakers may claim agreement (Schegloff 1984: 38–39) with an assessment minimally by producing an agreeing token, such as the English yeah. In addition, speakers of various languages show agreement by second assessments that repeat elements of the first assessment (for a summary, see Couper-Kuhlen & Selting 2018: 295–300). Assessments can invite either a positively or a negatively formatted turn for showing agreement (Hakulinen & Sorjonen 2011; Heritage & Raymond 2021; Sacks 1987).

Agreeing second assessments amount to upgraded, downgraded or same-evaluations. Speakers have at their use various means to qualify or enforce the agreement and implement it as partial vs. full, and weak vs. strong (Mori 1999; Pomerantz 1978, 1984: 72). Sequential context as well as lexico-grammatical (Bolden 2016; Heritage 2002; Pomerantz 1984; Sorjonen & Hakulinen 2009), phonetic/prosodic (Ogden 2006) and embodied (Goodwin & Goodwin 1992: 166–169; Lindström & Mondada 2009) resources contribute to what kind of agreement is established.

The CA view on agreement has been further developed by findings on how participants negotiate the “terms of agreement”, the relative social positioning of the interactants and their epistemic access, rights and independence in making the claim (Heritage & Raymond 2005; see also Heritage 2002; Mondada 2009; Sorjonen & Hakulinen 2009; Thompson, Fox & Couper-Kuhlen 2015; on responses to assertions, see Stivers 2005; Vatanen 2018). Agreement is essentially a second-position action, which carries potential implications of the speaker’s secondary rights to evaluate the matter at hand. First and second speakers can adjust their turns to counter the implications of sequential position. For instance, the agreeing speaker can epistemically upgrade the assessment and claim superior knowledge or rights in relation to the prior, first-positioned assessment (Heritage & Raymond 2005).

Finally, the distinction between agreement and disagreement is not clear-cut. Speakers can agree or concede with some aspects of the prior action while disaligning with others (Couper-Kuhlen & Thompson 2000; Niemi 2014; Steensig & Asmuß 2005). Moreover, what counts as a favorable response varies according to the action type and local context. If an assessment involves criticism or compliments, the preference for agreement can enter in conflict with the constraint of avoiding self-praise or deprecation of oneself or the conversational partner (Pomerantz 1978). To deal with the conflicting constraints, recipients have been shown to partially disagree or, for example, agree but shift the target of evaluation away from themselves (Etelämäki, Haakana & Halonen 2013; Golato 2005). In the case of full and aggravated disagreement or argument, the preferences of the ongoing activity can switch altogether so that disagreement appears in a preferred turn format (Bilmes 1988: 175–176; Church 2004:122; Goodwin 1983; Kangasharju 2009; Kotthoff 1993). Because of the situational variation in preference structure (Schegloff 2007: 225–230), agreement and disagreement cannot be directly equated with preferred and dispreferred actions.

Additional Related Entries:

• Preference
• Preferred
• Face
• Alignment
• Affiliation
• Sequence
• Progressivity

Cited References:

Bilmes, J. (1988). The concept of preference in conversation analysis. Language in Society 17, 161–181.

Bolden, G. (2016). A simple da?: Affirming responses to polar questions in Russian conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 100, 40–58.

Church, A. (2004). Preference revisited. RASK: International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 21, 111–129

Couper-Kuhlen, E. & Selting, M. (2018). Interactional Linguistics: Studying Language in Social Interaction. Cambridge University Press.

Couper-Kuhlen, E. & Thompson, S. (2000). Concessive patterns in conversation, In E. Couper-Kuhlen & B. Kortmann (Eds.), Cause, Condition, Concession, Contrast: Cognitive and Discourse Perspectives (pp. 381–410). De Gruyter.

Etelämäki, M., Haakana, M. & Halonen, Mia (2013). Keskustelukumppanin kehuminen suomalaisessa keskustelussa. Virittäjä 117(4), 460–493.

Golato, A. (2005). Compliments and compliment responses. Grammatical structure and sequential organization. John Benjamins.

Goodwin, C. & Goodwin, M. H. (1992). Assessments and the Construction of Context, In A. Durant &, C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon (pp. 147–190). Cambridge University Press.

Goodwin, M. H. (1983). Aggravated disaffiliation and disagreement in children’s conversations. Journal of Pragmatics 7, 657–677.

Hakulinen, A. & Sorjonen, M.-L. (2011). Ways of agreeing with negative stance taking, In T. Stivers, L. Mondada & J. Steensig (Eds.), The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation (pp. 235–256). Cambridge University Press.

Heritage, J. (2002). Oh-prefaced responses to assessments: A method of modifying agreement/disagreement. In C. Ford, B. Fox, & S. Thompson (Eds.), The language of turn and sequence (pp. 196–224). Oxford University Press.

Heritage, J. & Raymond, G. (2005). The terms of agreement: Indexing epistemic authority and subordination in talk-in-interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly 68(1), 15–38.

Heritage, J. & Raymond, C. W. (2021). Preference and Polarity: Epistemic Stance in Question Design. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 54(1), 39–59.

Houtkoop, H. (1978). Establishing agreement: An analysis of proposal-acceptance sequences. De Gruyter.

Kangasharju, H. (2009). Preference for disagreement? A comparison of three disputes, In M. Haakana, M. Laakso & J. Lindström (Eds.), Talk in Interaction: Comparative Dimensions (pp. 231–253). Finnish Literature Society.

Kotthoff, H. (1993). Disagreement and concession in disputes: On the context sensitivity of preference structures. Language in Society, 22(2), 193–216.

Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.

Lindström, A. & Mondada, L. (2009). Assessments in Social Interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 42(4), 299–399.

Niemi, J. (2014). Two ‘yeah but’ formats in Finnish. The prior action engaging nii mut and the disengaging joo mut utterances. Journal of Pragmatics 60, 54–74

Mori, J. (1999). Negotiating Agreement and Disagreement in Japanese: Connective Expressions and Turn Construction. John Benjamins.

Sacks, H. (1987). On the Preferences for Agreement and Contiguity in Sequences in Conversation. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and Social Organisation (pp. 54–69). Multilingual Matters.

Schegloff, E. A. (1984). On some questions and ambiguities in conversation, In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 28–52). Cambridge University Press.

Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence Organization in InteractionL A Primer in Conversation Analysis (vol. 1). Cambridge University Press

Sorjonen, M-L., & Hakulinen, A. (2009). Alternative responses to assessments. In J. Sidnell (Ed.), Conversation analysis: Comparative perspectives (pp. 280–300). Finnish Literature Society.

Steensig, J. & Asmuß B. (2005). Notes on disaligning ‘yes but’ initiated utterances in German and Danish conversations. Two construction types for dispreferred responses. In A. Hakulinen & M. Selting (Eds.), Syntax and Lexis in Conversation. Studies on the use on Linguistic Resources in Talk-in-interaction (pp. 349–373). John Benjamins.

Stivers, T. (2005). Modified repeats: one method for asserting primary rights from second position. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 38(2), 131–158.

Ogden, R. (2006). Phonetics and social action in agreements and disagreements. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(10), 1752–1775.

Pomerantz, A. M. (1984). Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 57–101). Cambridge University Press.

Pomerantz, A. (1978). Compliment responses: Notes on the cooperation of multiple constraints. In J. Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction (pp. 79–112). Academic Press.

Thompson, S. A., Fox, B. A. & Couper-Kuhlen, E., (2015). Grammar in Everyday Talk: Building Responsive Actions. Cambridge University Press

Vatanen, A. (2018). Responding in Early Overlap: Recognitional Onsets in Assertion Sequences. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 51(2), 107–126.

Vatanen, A., Endo, T. & Yokomori, D. (2021) Cross-Linguistic Investigation of Projection in Overlapping Agreements to Assertions: Stance-Taking as a Resource for Projection. Discourse Processes, 58(4), 308–327/

Additional References: