Pursuit

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Pursuit
Author(s):	Rein Ove Sikveland (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6322-5800)
To cite:	Sikveland, Rein Ove. (2023). Pursuit. 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/4D76R

A pursuit (for response) is a post-first social action that treats the absence of a response (so far) as absent or inadequate. A pursuit may occur after silences or other non-responses, or inadequate responses. The pursuit renews the relevance for an adequate response.

A pursuit for response can be found in line 3 of the following extract from Bolden, Mandelbaum and Wilkinson (2012):

[SW:FM:D003] (Bolden, Mandelbaum & Wilkinson 2012: 141)

01  CLT:    Oka:y. A:nd how did you hear about us:.
02          (.)
03  CLT: -> Thee (.) helpline. 			      
04  CLR:    Uh:::m (.) hhh I’m just tryin’ to thi-
05          <oh well I think it was throu:gh uh:m
06          (.) uh: Christine Craggs-Hinton:’s book.			

While pursuits treat an adequate response as relevantly absent, and thereby as indicative of some problem, who or what is accountable for the absent response is not necessarily marked through the pursuit’s design (see also Pomerantz 1984, on how the formatting of pursuits is associated with what is being pursued). A pursuit may or may not be issued through the technologies of repair. In the extract above, the response pursuit “Thee (.) helpline.” (line 3) is also a self-initiated self-repair, designed to disambiguate a possible problem of reference “us:” (line 1).

A pursuit’s design can reveal where the problem lies. In addition to dealing with problems of reference, a pursuit for response may deal with problems in understanding or knowledge, or with upcoming disagreement (Pomerantz 1984).

The pursuit’s design takes different forms, including:

• response solicitation (e.g., “right?”) (Jefferson 1981), or mobilizing response, for example using gaze when a response is absent (Stivers & Rossano 2010).
• reformulations, for example to back down from an expectation of agreement (Pomerantz 1984).
• increments and turn extensions to recomplete or reassert the action or position already presented (Bolden, et al. 2012).
• stand-alone prompts (Lerner 2004), and designedly incomplete utterances (Koshik 2002), to target a part missing in an already initiated (but inadequate) response to a question, for example.
• repetition of the first action.

The pursuit can be marked overtly, for example exposing an absent type-conforming response to a yes/no question with “answer me yes or no”, or in other ways sanction a co-participant for an inadequate response (Hoey, et al. 2021). The pursuit can also be done covertly, for example by recompleting the first action with an increment, purporting to fix a problem in the construction of the initial turn (as in the example above; Bolden, et al. 2012).

A pursuit (for response) occurs following one (or more) transition-relevance place(s). A participant may pursue a response when there is no immediate response. However, the time allowed for a response to be produced varies, and may follow a long or short silence (or gap). A pursuit for response may also follow a non-silent response such as an attempted answer to a question, thus treating the response (so far) as inadequate. Such examples include attempts to “counter, override, interrupt, an unfavorable response-in-progress" (Jefferson 1981: 58).

Additional Related Entries:

• Delay
• Gap
• Lapse
• Non-response
• Response
• Second-pair part
• Sequence
• Silence

Cited References:

Bolden, G. B., Mandelbaum, J., & Wilkinson, S. (2012). Pursuing a response by repairing an indexical reference. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 45(2), 137-155.

Hoey, E. M., Hömke, P., Löfgren, E., Neumann, T., Schuerman, W. L., & Kendrick, K. H. (2021). Using expletive insertion to pursue and sanction in interaction. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 25(1), 3-25.

Jefferson, G. (1981). The abominable ne? An exploration of post-response pursuit of response. In P. Shroder (Ed.), Sprache der gegenwaart [Contemporary Speech] (pp. 53–88). Pedagogischer Verlag Schwann.

Koshik, I. (2002). Designedly incomplete utterances: A pedagogical practice for eliciting knowledge displays in error correction sequences. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 35(3), 277-309.

Lerner, G. H. (2004). On the place of linguistic resources in the organization of talk-in-interaction: Grammar as action in prompting a speaker to elaborate. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 37, 154–184.

Pomerantz, A. (1984). Pursuing a response. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action (pp. 152–164). Cambridge University Press.

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

Additional References:

Filipi, A. (2013). Withholding and pursuit in the development of skills in interaction and language. Interaction Studies, 14(2), 139-159.

Svennevig, J. (2013). Reformulation of questions with candidate answers. International Journal of Bilingualism, 17(2), 189-204.