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We examine moments in social interaction in which a person formulates what another thinks or believes. Such formulations of belief constitute a practice with specifiable contexts and consequences. Belief formulations treat aspects of the other person's prior conduct as accountable on the basis that it provided a new angle on a topic, or otherwise made a surprising contribution within an ongoing course of actions. The practice of belief formulations subjectivizes the content that the other articulated and thereby topicalizes it, mobilizing commitment to that position, an account, or further elaboration. We describe how the practice can be put to work in different activity contexts: sometimes it is designed to undermine the other's position as a subjective 'mere belief', at other times it serves to mobilize further topic talk. Throughout, belief formulations show themselves to be a method by which we get to know ourselves and each other as mental agents.
This paper argues that conversation analysis has largely neglected the fact that meaning in interaction relies on inferences to a high degree. Participants treat each other as cognitive agents, who imply and infer meanings, which are often consequential for interactional progression. Based on the study of audio- and video-recordings from German talk-in-interaction, the paper argues that inferences matter to social interaction in at least three ways. They can be explicitly formulated; they can be (conventionally) indexed, but not formulated; or they may be neither indexed nor formulated yet would be needed for the correct understanding of a turn. The last variety of inferences usually remain tacit, but are needed for smooth interactional progression. Inferences in this case become an observable discursive phenomenon if misunderstandings are treated by the explication of correct (accepted) and wrong (unaccepted) inferences. The understanding of referential terms, analepsis, and ellipsis regularly rely on inferences. Formulations, third-position repairs, and fourth-position explications of erroneous inferences are practices of explicating inferences. There are conventional linguistic means like discourse markers, connectives, and response particles that index specific kinds of inferences. These practices belong to a larger class of inferential practices, which play an important role for indexing and accomplishing intersubjectivity in talk in interaction.
The paper studies how the German connectives "also" and "dann" are used as displays of understanding in talk-in-interaction. It is shown that the use of also at turn-beginnings in pre-front-field position is a routine practice to explicate implicit meanings of the prior turn of the partner, which is presented for confirmation. Also thus indexes that explicated meanings are taken to be intersubjective, i.e. part of the interlocutors’ common ground. Turn-initial dann(in front-field position), in contrast, is routinely used to (a) index the formulation of a unilateral inference from the partner’s prior turn which is not claimed to have already been communicated by the partner, and is (b) used to preface different kinds of next actions which are framed as being a consequence from the preceding action of the partner. Drawing on data from four genres of talkin- interaction (conversation, psychotherapy, doctor-patient interaction, broadcasted talk shows), the paper discusses how functions of also and dann are related to their positions concerning turn-construction and topological fields, prosodic design, collocations, sequential structures and participation frameworks of the interaction.