When one question is not enough: the import of a second question in information seeking
Issue: Vol 5 No. 3 (2020)
Journal: East Asian Pragmatics
Subject Areas:
DOI: 10.1558/eap.40997
Abstract:
Information seeking is pervasive in ordinary conversation as well as in institutional interaction. When seeking information from co-participants, interactants mobilize a variety of practices that are deemed as appropriate or effective under each circumstance. Initiating repair, viz. affixing another question to the first one in the present study, is one of those frequently used practices. With this practice, the speaker can correct a factual error, i.e. an error that is opposite to the fact, in his/her talk. In most cases in our data, however, the interactant initiates a repair just to “fine-tune” his/her question which seems to be unproblematic. Based on a corpus of 74 cases in Mandarin daily conversation, we, from a conversation analysis perspective, analyze 5 kinds of situations in which one question is added to another in the same turn. By appending another question to the prior one, the speaker can tacitly seek the particularly required information, and hence promote intersubjectivity and affiliation between interactants and maintain the social solidarity as a whole.
Author: Zhen Li, Feng Li
References :
Brown, P. & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clift, R. (2016). Conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dictionary Editing Office, Institute of Language, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Eds.). (2016). Xiandai hanyu cidian (Modern Chinese dictionary) (7th edition). Beijing: Commercial Press.
Drew, P. (2005). Conversation analysis. In K. L. Fitch & R. E. Sanders (Eds.), Handbook of language and social interaction (pp. 71–102). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Drew, P. (2013). Turn design. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 131–149). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Drew, P. (2018). Epistemics in social interaction. Discourse Studies, 20(1), 163–187. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445617734347
Drew, P., Walker, T. & Ogden, R. (2013). Self-repair and action construction. In M. Hayashi, G. Raymond & J. Sidnell (Eds.), Conversational repair and human understanding (pp. 71–94). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fox, B. A., Hayashi, M. & Jasperson, R. (1996). Resources and repair: A cross-linguistic study of syntax and repair. In E. Ochs, E. A. Schegloff & S. A. Thompson, (Eds.) Interaction and Grammar, (pp. 185–237). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fox, B. A., Maschler, Y., & Uhmann, S. (2009). Morpho-syntactic resources for the organization of same-turn self-repair: Cross-linguistic variation in English, German and Hebrew. Gesprächsforschung, 10, 245–291.
Hayano, K. (2013). Question design in conversation. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 395–414). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Heritage, J. (1988). Explanations as accounts: a conversation analytic perspective. In Charles Antaki (Eds.), Analyzing everyday explanation: a casebook of methods (pp. 127–144). London: SAGE.
Heritage, J. (2012). Epistemics in action: action formation and territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(1), 1–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2012. 646684
Heritage, J. (2013), Epistemics in conversation. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 370–394). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Heritage, J. & Clayman, S. (2010). Talk in action: interactions, identities, and institutions. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Heritage, J. & Raymond, G. (2005). The terms of agreement: indexing epistemic authority and subordination in assessment sequences. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68(1), 15–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/019027250506800103
Heritage, J. & Raymond, G. (2012). Navigating epistemic landscapes: acquiescence, agency and resistance in responses to polar questions. In Jan P. de Ruiter (Eds.), Questions: formal, functional and interactional perspectives (pp. 179–192). Cambridge University Press.
Heritage, J. & Raymond, G. (2013). One question after another: same-turn repair in the formation of yes/no type initiating actions. In M. Hayashi, G. Raymond & J. Sidnell (Eds.), Conversational repair and human understanding (pp. 1–40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hoey, E. M. & Kendrick, K. H. (2017). Conversation analysis. In A. M. B. de Groot & P. Hagoort (Eds.), Research methods in psycholinguistics: A practical guide. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Jefferson, G. (1974). Error correction as an interactional resource. Language in Society, 3(2), 181–199. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404500004334
Jefferson, G. (1984). Transcript notation. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structure of social action: studies in conversation analysis (pp. ix). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kitzinger, C. (2013), Repair. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 229–256). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Labov, W. & Fanshel, D. (1977). Therapeutic discourse: psychotherapy as conversation. New York: Academic Press.
Lerner, G. H., & Kitzinger, C. (2007). Extraction and aggregation in the repair of individual and collective self-reference. Discourse Studies, 9(4), 526–557. https://doi.org/10.1177/146144560 7079165
Levinson, S. (2012). “Interrogative intimations: on a possible social economics of interrogatives”. In J. P. de Ruiter (Eds.), Qestions: formal, functional and interactional perspectives (pp.11–32). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pomerantz, A. (1980). Telling my side: ‘Limited access’ as a ‘fishing’ device. Sociological Inquiry, 50, 186–198. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682x.1980.tb00020.x
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 57–101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pomerantz, A. (1988). Offering a candidate answer: An information seeking strategy. Communication Monographs, 55(4), 360–373. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758809376177
Pomerantz, A. (2012). Candidate Answer Queries, Actions, and the Moral Order. In R. Ayass & C. Meyer (Eds.), Sociality in Slow Motion: Festschrift for Jorg Bergmann (pp. 333–352). Frankfurt: Velbrueck.
Pomerantz, A. & Heritage, J. (2013). Preference. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 210–228). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Raymond, G. (2003). Grammar and social organization: yes/no interrogatives and the structure of responding. American Sociological Review, 68(6), 939–967. https://doi.org/10.2307/1519752
Raymond, G. & Heritage, J. (2006). The epistemics of social relations: owning grandchildren. Language in Society, 35, 677–670. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404506060325
Raymond, G. & Heritage, J. (2013). One question after another: same-turn repair in the formation of yes/no type initiating actions. In M. Hayashi, G. Raymond & J. Sidnell (Eds.), Conversational repair and human understanding (pp. 135–171). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Romaniuk, T. & Ehrlich, S. (2013). On the interactional import of self-repair in the courtroom. In M. Hayashi, G. Raymond & J. Sidnell (Eds.), Conversational repair and human understanding (pp. 172–197). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sacks, H. (1987). On the preferences for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organisation (pp. 54–69). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sacks, H. & Schegloff, E. A. (1979). Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons in conversation and their interaction. In G. Psathas (Eds.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 15–21). New York: Irvington Publishers.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A. & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language. 50(4): 696–735. https://doi.org/10.17323/1728-192X-2015-1-142-202
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, E. A. (2013). Ten operations in self-initiated, same-turn repair. In M. Hayashi, G. Raymond & J. Sidnell (Eds.), Conversational repair and human understanding (pp. 41–70). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G, & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-correction in organization of repair in conversation. Language. 53(2): 361–382. https://doi.org/10.2307/413107
Sharrock, W. (1974). On owning knowledge. In R. Turner (Eds.), Ethnomethodology (pp. 45–53). U.K., Penguin Harmondsworth.
Stivers, T., Mondada, L. & Steensig, J. (2011). Knowledge, morality and affiliation in social interaction. In T. Stivers, L. Mondada & J. Steensig (Eds.), The morality of knowledge in conversation (pp. 3–26). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.