Refine
Year of publication
- 2024 (2)
Document Type
- Article (2)
Language
- English (2)
Has Fulltext
- yes (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (2)
Keywords
- Interaktion (2)
- Semantik (2)
- semantics (2)
- Bedeutung (1)
- Definition (1)
- Deutsch (1)
- Interactional Linguistics (1)
- Interactional Semantics (1)
- Intersubjektivität (1)
- Konversationsanalyse (1)
Publicationstate
- Ahead of Print (2) (remove)
Reviewstate
- Peer-Review (2)
Publisher
- Benjamins (2)
Meaning in interaction
(2024)
This editorial to the Special Issue on “Meaning in Interaction” introduces to the approach of Interactional Semantics, which has been developed over the last years within the framework of Interactional Linguistics. It discusses how “meaning” is understood and approached in this framework and lays out that Interactional Semantics is interested in how participants clarify and negotiate the meanings of the expressions that they are using in social interaction. Commonalities and differences of this approach with other approaches to meaning are flagged, and the intellectual origins and precursors of Interactional Semantics are introduced. The contributions to the Special Issue are located in the larger field of research.
In social interaction, different kinds of word-meaning can become problematic for participants. This study analyzes two meta-semantic practices, definitions and specifications, which are used in response to clarification requests in German implemented by the format Was heißt X (‘What does X mean?’). In the data studied, definitions are used to convey generalizable lexical meanings of mostly technical terms. These terms are either unknown to requesters, or, in pedagogical contexts, requesters ask in order to check the addressee’s knowledge. Specifications, in contrast, clarify aspects of local speaker meanings of ordinary expressions (e.g., reference, participants in an event, standards applied to scalar expressions). Both definitions and specifications are recipient-designed with respect to the (presumed) knowledge of the addressee and tailored to the topical and practical relevancies of the current interaction. Both practices attest to the flexibility and situatedness of speakers’ semantic understandings and to the systematicity of using meta-semantic practices differentially for different kinds of semantic problems. Data are come from mundane and institutional interaction in German from the public corpus FOLK.