Difference between revisions of "Couper-Kuhlen2014a"

From emcawiki
Jump to: navigation, search
(Created page with "{{BibEntry |BibType=ARTICLE |Author(s)=Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen; |Title=What Does Grammar Tell Us About Action? |Tag(s)=EMCA; Action formation; Action recognition; Social act...")
(No difference)

Revision as of 04:40, 3 January 2018

Couper-Kuhlen2014a
BibType ARTICLE
Key Couper-Kuhlen2014a
Author(s) Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
Title What Does Grammar Tell Us About Action?
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Action formation, Action recognition, Social action format, Directive, Request, Offer, Proposal, Suggestion
Publisher
Year 2014
Language English
City
Month
Journal Pragmatics
Volume 24
Number 3
Pages 623-647
URL
DOI
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

Download BibTex

Abstract

Using cases of misalignment and realignment in the unfolding of interactional sequences in which future actions and events are being negotiated in everyday English conversation, this paper demonstrates that participants distinguish between the initiating actions of Proposal*, Offer*, Request*, and Suggestion*, if these labels are understood as technical terms for distinct constellations of answers to the questions (i) who will carry out the future action? and (ii) who will benefit from it?. The argument made is that these different action types are routinely associated with different sets of recurrent linguistic forms, or social action formats, and that it is through these that speakers can frame their turns as implementing one action type as opposed to another and that recipients can recognize these actions as such and respond to them accordingly. The fact that there is only a limited amount of ‘polysemy’, or overlap in the formats commonly used for Proposals*, Requests*, Offers*, and Suggestions* in English conversation, means that these formats deliver often distinctive cues to the type of action being implemented. When misalignments and realignments occur, they can often be traced to the fact that ‘polysemous’ linguistic formats have been used to implement the initiating action.

Notes