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In their analysis of methods that participants use to manage the realization of practical courses of action, Kendrick and Drew (2016/this issue) focus on cases of assistance, where the need to be addressed is Self’s, and Other lends a helping hand. In our commentary, we point to other forms of cooperative engagement that are ubiquitously recruited in interaction. Imperative requests characteristically expect compliance on the grounds of Other’s already established commitment to a wider and shared course of actions. Established commitments can also provide the engine behind recruitment sequences that proceed nonverbally. And forms of cooperative engagement that are well glossed as assistance can nevertheless be demonstrably oriented to established commitments. In sum, we find commitment to shared courses of action to be an important element in the design and progression of certain recruitment sequences, where the involvement of Other is best defined as contribution. The commentary highlights the importance of interdependent orientations in the organization of cooperation. Data are in German, Italian, and Polish.
Sentence and construction types generally have more than one pragmatic function. Impersonal deontic declaratives such as ‘it is necessary to X’ assert the existence of an obligation or necessity without tying it to any particular individual. This family of statements can accomplish a range of functions, including getting another person to act, explaining or justifying the speaker’s own behavior as he or she undertakes to do something, or even justifying the speaker’s behavior while simultaneously getting another person to help. How is an impersonal deontic declarative fit for these different functions? And how do people know which function it has in a given context? The authors address these questions using video recordings of everyday interactions among speakers of Italian and Polish.