Post-pre
| Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Post-pre | |
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| Author(s): | Nathalie Bauer (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8501-8079) |
| To cite: | Bauer, Nathalie. (2023). Post-pre. 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: |
A post-pre is a device by which speakers indicate that they recognized the preceding talk as a pre-sequence, i.e. as preliminary to something else (Sacks 1992: 689; Schegloff 1980: 114; Schegloff 2007: 31). In interaction, speakers use post-pre’s to promote the sequential progression, for instance, by asking for the reason of a certain preliminary request by their counterpart. As in the following example from Schegloff (2007: 34-35), post-pre’s often take the form of “why”-questions:
(Schegloff 2007: 34–5) 01 Mar: ...lo:, °hhuh° 02 Emm: How’r you:.= 03 Mar: =Well wuhdiyuh doin. ˙hh hnh 04 (0.5) 05 Emm: .hhh (hhOh:) Margy?= 06 Mar: =eeYeehuh.[a- 07 Emm: [Oh: I’m jis sittin here with Bill’n Gladys’n 08 haa:eh fixin’m a drink they’re goin out tih ↓dinner:. 09 (.) 10 Emm: H[e’s- 11 Mar: [Oh::::. Oh. 12 Emm: -> Why: whiddiyih waant. 13 (1.0) 14 Mar: hhuhh Well?h I wunnid um come down en I wannidju 15 tuh call some numbers back tome <b’t it’s 16 no[t im[port’n 17 Emm: [.hhh[Oh:::: honey I:’ll do it a:fterwards uh::: 18 (.) Yeah ther- ther gonna(r)
With her question (line 12) about Margie’s motives for the inquiry, Emma shows that she did not understand the preceding sequence as a mere request for information but rather as a preparation for some other action (Schegloff 1980: 114, 2007: 34). By this post-pre, she makes accountable that she recognized the preceding pre-sequence as such and makes interactionally relevant what Margie was originally getting at (Schegloff 2007: 31).
Additional Related Entries:
Cited References:
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on Conversation. Blackwell Publishers.
Schegloff, E. A. (1980). Preliminaries to Preliminaries: ‘Can I Ask You a Question?’. Sociological Inquiry, 50, 104–52.
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence Organization: A Primer in Conversation Analysis (Volume 1). Cambridge University Press.
Additional References:
