Misplacement marker

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Misplacement marker
Author(s):	Isabella Buck (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany) (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4222-0426)
To cite:	Buck, Isabella. (2024). Misplacement marker. 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/7M94Q

A misplacement marker is a device used by speakers to indicate that their upcoming turn is out of place and does not follow from what has been said before but rather from some individual conversational agenda (Schegloff & Sacks 1973: 319). Misplacement markers usually occur at the beginning of a turn when the speaker anticipates that his or her co-participants expect something different from what is to come (Schegloff 1987: 72). Thus, speakers show that although they know what actually is relevant next, they nevertheless are going to say something else or perform some different action (Schegloff 1984: 37f.). They make clear to the recipient that they understood what the prior utterance did, i.e. they signal an understanding of the preceding first pair part despite the following topically non-coherent utterance. By signaling the disruption of coherence, speakers prevent the recipient from falsely connecting the following turn to the previous ongoing interactional activity (Bolden 2015: 2).

Speakers avoid being perceived as uncooperative by initiating an unprojectable line of action, i.e., their seemingly ‘misplaced’ turn, by misplacement markers such as ‘by the way’ (Schegloff 1996: 79), listen (Jefferson 1972: 319), oh (Bolden 2006, Schegloff 1987: 72) or so (Bolden 2009). Examples from languages apart from English are übrigens (German) (Egbert 2003), à propos (French) or förresten (Swedish). As those examples show, misplacement markers can also come as more complex phrases. Another example is speaking of X as in the following example taken from Howe (1991: 11):

(1) (Howe 1991: 11)

1230  T:    I'll talk to my wife and see what she has to
1231        say=
1232  M:    =all right=
1233  R: -> =speaking of your wife?
1234  T:    yes?
1235  R:    you know what time it is.
1236  T:    yes i do
1237  R:    it's time that we be throwin a fish in the oven
1238        for - so we can feed her.

By using a misplacement marker, R suspends the expectation that what follows (i.e., the prompt to ‘throw a fish in the oven’) should be understood according to what has been said before; thus, R signals that the turn is not coherently related to the previous topic (see also Heritage 2013: 333). Therefore, in addition to marking the break in contiguity, misplacement markers can also indicate what Sacks (1996: 69) refers to as “backlinking”: a shifting back to a topic that was covered earlier in the respective conversation or to a prior conversational activity (Local 2004).

Taken as a whole, misplacement markers support the idea that topic transitions are normally done in a ‘smooth’ manner, i.e., that participants gradually move from one topic to another (this is what Jefferson 1984 calls ‘stepwise topic transition’).

Additional Related Entries:

• Adjacency pair
• Sequence

Cited References:

Bolden, G. B. (2015). Discourse Markers. In K. Tracy (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. John Wiley & Sons.

Bolden, G. B. (2006). Little Words That Matter: Discourse Markers “So”’ and “Oh” and the Doing of Other-Attentiveness in Social Interaction. Journal of Communication, 56, 661–688.

Bolden, G. B. (2009). Implementing incipient actions: The discourse marker ‘so’ in English conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 974–998.

Egbert, M. (2003). Die interaktionelle Relevanz einer gemeinsamen Vorgeschichte: Zur Bedeutung und Funktion von ‚übrigens‘ in deutschen Alltagsgesprächen. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 22(2), 189–212.

Heritage, J. (2013). Turn-initial position and some of its occupants. Journal of Pragmatics, 57, 331–337.

Howe, M. (1991). Collaboration on topic change in conversation. Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics, 16.

Jefferson, G. (1972). Side sequences. In D. N. Sudnow (Ed.), Studies in social interaction (pp. 294–333). Free Press.

Jefferson, G. (1984). On Stepwise Transition from Talk about a Trouble to Inappropriately Next-Positioned Matters. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 191–222). Cambridge University Press.

Local, J. (2004). Getting back to prior talk. ‘and-uh(m)’ as a back-connecting device in British and American English. In E. Couper-Kuhlen & C. E. Ford (Eds.), Sound patterns in interaction. Cross-linguistic studies from conversation (pp. 377–401). John Benjamins Company.

Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Recycled turn beginnings: A precise repair mechanism in conversation’s turn-taking organisation. In G. Button, & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organization (pp. 70–85). 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. (1996). Turn organization: one intersection of grammar and interaction. In E. Ochs, E. A. Schegloff, & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Interaction and Grammar (pp. 51–133). Cambridge University Press.

Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up Closings. Semiotica, 8(4), 289–327.

Additional References: