Mobilizing response

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Mobilizing response
Author(s):	Jason Turowetz (University of California, Santa Barbara) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2724-764X)
To cite:	Turowetz, Jason. (2023). Mobilizing response. 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/Y7P49

Mobilizing response refers to how a speaker elicits a (relevant) response from a recipient in social interaction, and specifically to properties of turn design through which speakers increase or decrease response relevance and pressure on recipients to respond. Stivers and Rossano (2010a) identify three features that affect response relevance:

1. The action being performed. “Canonical” social actions by a speaker, such as requests, offers, and invitations, project specific, conditionally relevant (Schegloff 1968; Schegloff & Sacks 1973) responses by the recipient, which, if not performed, are treated as noticeably absent/missing. In comparison, “noncanonical” actions, such as noticings and assessments, project weaker relevance constraints, as evidenced by the fact that speakers usually do not treat non-responses as noticeably absent/missing.
2. The sequential position of the action. Sequence initial actions elicit recipient responses that facilitate sequence completion. Together, (1) and (2) project the conditional relevance of a specific type of response, such as an answer to a question, and make that response relevant as the sequentially next turn.
3. Turn design. Stivers and Rossano (2010a) identify four features of turn design that incrementally increase pressure on the recipient of an action to produce a conditionally relevant response:

• • • Interrogative lexical and morpho-syntax: many languages have specific lexical and morpho-syntactic resources for marking an action as doing questioning.
    • Interrogative prosody: an upward pitch-contour can mark the action as an interrogative in some languages (Stivers and Rossano focus on English and Italian).
    • Epistemicity: turns tilted toward the epistemic domain of the recipient, by orienting to the recipient’s knowledge and the speaker’s corresponding lack of knowledge about a particular item, can encourage recipient response (see also Heritage 2012a, 2012b). Alternatively, the speaker may produce a turn tilted toward their own epistemic domain, such as a “my side telling” (Pomerantz, 1980) to indirectly encourage the recipient to provide information to which the speaker lacks epistemic access (see fishing for information).
    • Gaze: speakers in many cultures can use gaze to secure mutual attention or access to relevant referents and/or to encourage the recipient to produce a relevant response.

Consider the following example, taken from Stivers and Rossano (2010a: 12; see also Pomerantz 1984: 60; Heritage & Raymond 2005: 22), where Emma’s turn at line 9 illustrates three distinct features of response mobilizing turn design features: (1) interrogative syntax (“isn’t she”), (2) an upward pitch contour, and (3) a tilt toward the recipient’s epistemic domain (Note: Pat is Marjorie’s friend).

(1) (Stivers & Rossano 2010a: 12)

01  Emm:     =Oh honey that was a lovely luncheon I shoulda 
02           ca:lled you s:soo[:ner but I:l]: [lo:ved it. Ih wz= 
03  Mar:                      [((f))  Oh:::]  [°(        )
04  Emm:     =just deli:ghtfu[:l. ]
05  Mar:                     [Well] I wz gla[d you     ]  (came)]
06  Emm:                                    [‘nd yer f:] friends] ‘r
07           so da:rli:ng.=
08  Mar:     Oh:::[: it wz:]
09  Emm: ->       [e-that P]a:t isn’ she a do:[:ll?
10  Mar:                                      [Yeh isn’t she pretty, 
11           (.)
12  Emm:     Oh: she’s a beautiful girl.=

Stivers and Rossano (2010a) argue that response relevance is not binary (a position they attribute to Schegloff & Sacks 1973), i.e., either a sequence initial turn makes a response relevant or not, but that it varies as on a cline, such that speakers can incrementally add elements to their turns that increase or decrease recipient accountability for responding. For example, speakers may decrease pressure on recipients to respond to actions, such as requests, which threaten the recipient’s negative face (Brown & Levinson 1987).

In a reply to Stivers and Rossano, Schegloff (2010) challenges the claim that elements of action and turn design pressure recipients to respond independently of the local context of any given interaction. Couper-Kuhlen (2010) advances a similar critique regarding interactional context: following Goffman (1963), she distinguishes focused encounters, where copresent parties are directly engaged with one another, from unfocused gatherings, where they are not so engaged, and conditional relevance is therefore not operative. She observes that most of the data on which Stivers and Rossano base their argument that conditional relevance is a cline, with some actions projecting weaker relevance constraints than others, comes from unfocused gatherings where conditional relevance does not hold. In these cases, she suggests, “… the pursuits of response that Stivers and Rossano find following actions that lack responses could well be attempts to render the status of an encounter focused in situations where copresent parties are treating it as unfocused” (Couper-Kuhlen 2010: 35, original emphasis; see also Stivers & Rossano’s [2010b] reply to Schegloff and Couper-Kuhlen).

Additional Related Entries:

• Preference
• Adjacency pair
• Non-answer response
• Progressivity
• Sequence organization
• Storytelling

Cited References:

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: some universals in language use. Cambridge University Press.

Cooper-Kuhlen, E. (2010). Commentary on Stivers and Rossano: “mobilizing response.” Research on Language & Social Interaction, 43(1), 32-37.

Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in public places. The Free Press.

Heritage, J. (2012a). The epistemic engine: sequence organization and territories of knowledge. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 45(1), 30-52.

Heritage, J. (2012b). Epistemics in action: action formation and territories of knowledge. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 45(1), 1-29.

Heritage, J., and Raymond, G. (2012). The terms of agreement: indexing epistemic authority and subordination in talk-in- interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68(1), 15-38.

Pomerantz, A. M. (1980). Telling my side: “limited access” as a “fishing” device. Sociological Inquiry, 50(3-4), 186-198.

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.

Schegloff, E. A. (2010). Commentary on Stivers and Rossano: “mobilizing response.” Research on Language and Social Interaction, 43(1), 38-48.

Schegloff, E. A. (1968). Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist, 70(6), 1075-1097.

Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 7, 289-327.

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

Stivers, T., & Rossano, F. (2010b). A scalar view of response relevance. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 43(1), 49-56.

Additional References: