On digressing with a stance and not seeking a recipient response
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Elise Kärkkäinen is University Lecturer in English Philology, based at the University of Oulu. Her research has dealt with different aspects of conversational English, especially modality, preferred argument structure, stance taking, and multimodal analysis of recurrent conversational action formats. In addition to several articles on stance, she is the author of
Epistemic Stance in English Conversation. A Description of Its Interactional Functions, with a Focus on I think (Benjamins, 2003) and has conducted a research project entitled Interactional Practices and Linguistic Resources of Stance-Taking in Spoken English (http://www.ekl.oulu.fi/stance/). Address for correspondence: English Philology, Faculty of Humanities, Box 1000, 90014 University of Oulu, Finland 〈elise.karkkainen@oulu.fi〉.
Abstract
This paper argues that stanced digressions, or inserts, produced by speakers in the midst of extended (multi-unit) turns, are not primarily designed to get a response from the recipient(s). The paper shows that speakers employ various linguistic, prosodic, and embodied resources that make the digression recognizable as such, i.e., of subsidiary status in the talk, and therefore as not in need of a response. A lack of response is treated as unproblematic by both the digression speaker and by the recipients, as both parties primarily orient to the turn as a multi-unit turn still in progress. The paper first examines audio data and keeps the linguistic format relatively constant, by focusing on inserts prefaced by I guess and consisting of explicitly evaluative or epistemic material. It subsequently opens up the analysis to video data and also to other kinds of stanced digressions.
About the author
Elise Kärkkäinen is University Lecturer in English Philology, based at the University of Oulu. Her research has dealt with different aspects of conversational English, especially modality, preferred argument structure, stance taking, and multimodal analysis of recurrent conversational action formats. In addition to several articles on stance, she is the author of Epistemic Stance in English Conversation. A Description of Its Interactional Functions, with a Focus on I think (Benjamins, 2003) and has conducted a research project entitled Interactional Practices and Linguistic Resources of Stance-Taking in Spoken English (http://www.ekl.oulu.fi/stance/). Address for correspondence: English Philology, Faculty of Humanities, Box 1000, 90014 University of Oulu, Finland 〈elise.karkkainen@oulu.fi〉.
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Taking a stance on emotion: affect, sequence, and intersubjectivity in dialogic interaction
- On affectivity and preference in responses to rejection
- On digressing with a stance and not seeking a recipient response
- Taking a stance and getting on with it: the form and function of the Finnish finite clausal extraposition construction
- Resonance in conversational second stories: a dialogic resource for stance taking
- Prosodic imitation as a means of receiving and displaying a critical stance in classroom interaction
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Taking a stance on emotion: affect, sequence, and intersubjectivity in dialogic interaction
- On affectivity and preference in responses to rejection
- On digressing with a stance and not seeking a recipient response
- Taking a stance and getting on with it: the form and function of the Finnish finite clausal extraposition construction
- Resonance in conversational second stories: a dialogic resource for stance taking
- Prosodic imitation as a means of receiving and displaying a critical stance in classroom interaction
