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Other-repetition in conversation across languages: Bringing prosody into pragmatic typology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2020

Giovanni Rossi
Giovanni Rossi*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles, USA University of Helsinki, Finland
*
Address for correspondence: Giovanni Rossi, Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, 375 Portola Plaza, 264 Haines Hall, Los Angeles, CA90095-1551, USArossi@soc.ucla.edu
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Abstract

In this article, I introduce the aims and scope of a project examining other-repetition in natural conversation. This introduction provides the conceptual and methodological background for the five language-specific studies contained in this special issue, focussing on other-repetition in English, Finnish, French, Italian, and Swedish. Other-repetition is a recurrent conversational phenomenon in which a speaker repeats all or part of what another speaker has just said, typically in the next turn. Our project focusses particularly on other-repetitions that problematise what is being repeated and typically solicit a response. Previous research has shown that such repetitions can accomplish a range of conversational actions. But how do speakers of different languages distinguish these actions? In addressing this question, we put at centre stage the resources of prosody—the nonlexical acoustic-auditory features of speech—and bring its systematic analysis into the growing field of pragmatic typology—the comparative study of language use and conversational structure. (Repetition, conversation, prosody, pragmatics, typology)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 49 , Special Issue 4: Other-Repetition in Conversation across Languages , September 2020 , pp. 495 - 520
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank all the founding members of the project reported on in this special issue for their input and comments on this introduction: Betty Couper-Kuhlen, Auli Hakulinen, Martina Huhtamäki, Jan Lindström, Ami Londen, Rasmus Persson, Melisa Stevanovic, and Anna Vatanen. I am also grateful to Jack Sidnell for his advice and patience through the gestation of the special issue. In the early stages of the project, we benefitted from conversations with Emma Betz, who generously shared literature on other-repetition, and with Mietta Lennes, Richard Ogden, and Francisco Torreira, who participated in project workshops at the University of Helsinki. The project was hosted and funded by the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Research on Intersubjectivity in Interaction (Academy of Finland grant # 284595). We owe a particular debt of gratitude to the director of the centre, Marja-Leena Sorjonen, for making this project possible and for her continued support and encouragement.

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