Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Part of a Book (13)
- Article (6)
Language
- English (19)
Has Fulltext
- yes (19)
Keywords
- Deutsch (9)
- Konversationsanalyse (9)
- Interaktion (8)
- German (3)
- Kontrastive Linguistik (3)
- O.K. (3)
- Pragmatik (3)
- Semantik (3)
- Gesprochene Sprache (2)
- Interactional Linguistics (2)
Publicationstate
- Postprint (15)
- Zweitveröffentlichung (7)
- Ahead of Print (2)
- Veröffentlichungsversion (2)
Reviewstate
- Peer-Review (9)
- (Verlags)-Lektorat (7)
- Verlags-Lektorat (1)
Publisher
- Benjamins (19) (remove)
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.
Schegloff (1996) has argued that grammars are “positionally-sensitive”, implying that the situated use and understanding of linguistic formats depends on their sequential position. Analyzing the German format Kannst du X? (corresponding to English Can you X?) based on 82 instances from a large corpus of talk-in-interaction (FOLK), this paper shows how different action-ascriptions to turns using the same format depend on various orders of context. We show that not only sequential position, but also epistemic status, interactional histories, multimodal conduct, and linguistic devices co-occurring in the same turn are decisive for the action implemented by the format. The range of actions performed with Kannst du X? and their close interpretive interrelationship suggest that they should not be viewed as a fixed inventory of context-dependent interpretations of the format. Rather, the format provides for a root-interpretation that can be adapted to local contextual contingencies, yielding situated action-ascriptions that depend on constraints created by contexts of use.
Our paper examines how bodily behavior contributes to the local meaning of OKAY. We explore the interplay between OKAY as response to informings and narratives and accompanying multimodal resources in German multi-party interaction. Based on informal and institutional conversations, we describe three different uses of OKAY with falling intonation and the recurrent multimodal patterns that are associated with them and that can be characterized as ‘multimodal gestalts’. We show that: 1. OKAY as a claim to sufficient understanding is typically accompanied by upward nodding; 2. OKAY after change-of-state tokens exhibits a recurrent pattern of up- and downward nodding with distinctive timing; and 3. OKAY closing larger activities is associated with gaze-aversion from the prior speaker.
OKAY originates from English, but it is increasingly used across languages. This chapter presents data from 13 languages, illustrating the spectrum of possible uses of OKAY in responding and claiming understanding in contexts of informings. Drawing on a wide range of interaction types from both informal and institutional contexts, including those crucially involving embodied practices, we show how OKAY can be used to (i) claim sufficient understanding, (ii) mark understanding of the prior informing as preliminary or not complete, and (iii) index discrepancy of expectation.
In this chapter, we overview the specificity of comparisons made within the perspective of Conversation Analysis (CA), and we position them in relation to other fields. We introduce the analytical mentality, methodology, and procedures of CA, and we show how we used it for the analysis of OKAY in this volume.
This paper studies practices of indexing discrepant assumptions accomplished by turn-constructional units with ich dachte ('I thought') in German talk-in-interaction. Building on the analysis of 141 instances from the corpus FOLK, we identify three sequential environments in which ich dachte is used to index that an assumption which a speaker (has) held contrasts with some other, contextually salient assumption. We show that practices which have been studied for English I thought are also routinely used in German: ich dachte is a means to manage epistemic incongruencies and to contrast an incorrect with a correct assumption in narratives. In addition, ich dachte is also used to account for the speaker's own prior actions which may have looked problematic because they built on misunderstandings which the speaker only discovered later. Moreover, ich dachte-practices may also be used to create comic effects by reporting an earlier, absurd assumption. The practices are discussed with regard to their role in regaining common ground, in managing relationships, in maintaining the identity of a rational actor, and in terms of their exploitation for other conversational interests. Special attention is paid to how co-occurring linguistic features, and sequential and pragmatic factors, account for local interpretations of ich dachte.
This contribution deals with right-dislocated complement clauses with the subordinating conjunction dass (‘that’) in German talk-in-interaction. The bi-clausal construction we analyze is as follows: The first clause, in which one argument is realized by the demonstrative pronoun das (‘this/that’), is syntactically and semantically complete; the reference of the pronoun is (re-)specified by adding a dass-complement clause after a point of possible completion (e.g., aber das hab ich nich MITbekommen. (0.32) dass es da so YOUtubevideos gab. (‘But I wasn’t aware of that. That there were videos about that on YouTube.’). The first clause always performs a backward-oriented action (e.g., an assessment) and the second clause (re-)specifies the propositional reference of the demonstrative, allowing for a (strategic) perspective shift. Based on a collection of 93 cases from everyday conversations and institutional interactions, we found that the construction is used close to the turn-beginning for referring to and (re-)specifying (parts of) another speaker’s prior turn; turn-internal uses tie together parts of a speaker’s multi-unit turn. The construction thus facilitates an incremental constitution of meaning and reference.
This paper studies how the turn-design of a highly recurrent type of action changes over time. Based on a corpus of video-recordings of German driving lessons, we consider one type of instructions and analyze how the same instructional action is produced by the same speaker (the instructor) for the same addressee (the student) in consecutive trials of a learning task. We found that instructions become increasingly shorter, indexical and syntactically less complex; interactional sequences become more condensed and activities designed to secure mutual understanding become rarer. This study shows how larger temporal frameworks of interpersonal interactional histories which range beyond the interactional sequence impinge on the recipient-design of turns and the deployment of multimodal resources in situ.