Drew2003a

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Drew2003a
BibType ARTICLE
Key Drew2003a
Author(s) Paul Drew
Title Precision and exaggeration in interaction
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Conversation Analysis, Exaggeration
Publisher
Year 2003
Language
City
Month
Journal American Sociological Review
Volume 68
Number 6
Pages 917–938
URL Link
DOI 10.2307/1519751
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

In medical consultations, court examination, and other such institutional interactions, claims, reports, and accounts may be questioned or challenged by showing that they are insufficiently precise. So too, in ordinary interaction participants may apply standards of relevant precision. In conversation, speakers commonly make extreme, hyperbolic, or exaggerated claims in the service of some local interactional task or contingency (e.g., to strengthen or dramatize a claim). Although there is considerable tolerance in conversation for extreme or hyperbolic claims (as in, "I have no money," "everybody has to lie"), some such claims are treated as having been overstated, and the speaker subsequently modifies them to be more precise, and to avoid misunderstanding. This paper examines how some claims are revealed as having been overstated, as exaggerations, and how they are repaired. The distinctive conversational practices identified here, through which exaggerations come to be revised, contribute to the sociological understanding of how the maintenance of intersubjectivity is a constant and central concern in social life.

Notes