Show concession

Charles Antaki (Loughborough University) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9473-4413)

To cite: Antaki, Charles. (2023). Show concession. 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:

In an argument, a concession to the other's position weakens one's own. With what Antaki and Wetherell (1999) call a "show" concession, however, the speaker makes a play of conceding something, but only to disarm a potential objection and bolster their own position. The practice has a three-part structure. Consider this example, simplified from Antaki and Wetherell (1999: 10):

1. "we [new Zealanders] aren't spoilt in the respect as I think Americans are" [claim]
2. "all right, there's always ... extremes, there are a few" [concession]
3. "but basically the average New Zealander is unspoilt." [reasserted claim]

Step two notes a trivial exception, marked with a concessive "all right" or a faux-explanatory "I mean". That clears the ground for a disjunctive "but" in step three to restate the main claim. The effect of the sequence is to admit and trivialise the objection before it is raised, thus bleaching it of its force.

Conceding to head off possible trouble is also a feature of Couper-Kuhlen and Thomson's (2005) "concessive repair". Here a speaker may concede a point in order to repair something exaggerated they have just said that requires toning down.

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Cited References:

Antaki, C., & Wetherell, M. (1999). Show concessions. Discourse Studies, 1(1), 7-27.

Couper-Kuhlen, E., & Thompson, S. A. (2005). A linguistic practice for retracting overstatements: “Concessive repair.” In A. Hakulinen & M. Selting (Eds.), Syntax and Lexis in Conversation: Studies on the Use of Linguistic Resources in Talk-in-interaction (pp. 257–288). John Benjamins.

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