Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-f9nfp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-19T19:31:51.654Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Constituting and maintaining activities across sequences: And-prefacing as a feature of question design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2009

John Heritage  and
Marja-Leena Sorjonen
John Heritage
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1551
Marja-Leena Sorjonen
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1531
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The role of the connective and is here considered as a preface to questions in spoken interaction. Using data from informal medical encounters, it is argued that and-prefacing is used to link a question to a preceding question/answer pair or pairs. In such contexts, and-prefacing indicates that the questions it prefaces have a routine or agenda-based character. This in turn can be a resource which invokes and sustains an orientation to an activity or course of action that is implemented through a series of question/answer pairs, but transcends any individual pair. The general characteristics of and-prefaced questions are contrasted with “contingent” or “follow-up” questions, which are not normally and-prefaced. Some strategic uses of and-prefaced questions are described, and the role of the device within the more general sociolinguistic context of the data is discussed. (Connectives, conversation analysis, discourse, institutional interaction, medical encounters, turn design)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 1994 , pp. 1 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Atkinson, J. Maxwell, &Drew, Paul (1979). Order in court: The organization of verbal interaction in judicial settings. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atkinson, J. Maxwell, & Heritage, John (1984), eds. Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Auer, Peter, &Luzio, Aldo di (1992), eds. The contextuatization of language. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boden, Deirdre, & Zimmerman, Don H. (1991), eds. Talk and social structure. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight L. (1957). Interrogative structures of American English. University, AL: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Button, Graham, & Lee, John R. E. (1987), eds. Talk and social organization. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cethv, (1977). An investigation into the principles of health visiting. London: Council for the Education and Training of Health Visitors.Google Scholar
Dingwall, Robert (1977). The social organisation of health visitor training. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Donzelot, Jacques (1980). The policing of families. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Drew, Paul (1992). Contested evidence in a courtroom cross-examination: The case of a trial for rape. In Drew, P. & Heritage, J. (eds.), 470–520.Google Scholar
Drew, Paul, & Heritage, John (1992), eds. Talk at work. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Engeström, Yrjö (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit.Google Scholar
Garvey, Catherine (1977). The contingent query: A dependent action in conversation. In Lewis, Michael & Rosenblum, Leonard A. (eds.), Interaction, conversation and the development of language, 63– 93. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1961). Role distance. In his Encounters: Two studies in the sociology of interaction, 85–152. Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles (1986). Between and within: Alternative treatments of continuers and assessments. Human Studies 9:205–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Charles, & Goodwin, Marjorie Harness (1987). Concurrent operations on talk: Notes on the interactive organization of assessments. IPrA Papers in Pragmatics 1: 1–52.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles, Goodwin, Marjorie Harness (1992). Context, activity and participation. In Auer, & Luzio, (eds.), 77–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness (1980). Some processes of mutual monitoring implicated in the production of description sequences. Sociological Inquiry 50:303 –317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, John J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, John J(1992). Contextualization revisited. In Auer, & Luzio, (eds.), 39–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halkowski, Timothy (1990). Hearing talk: The social organization of a congressional inquiry. Santa Barbara: University of California dissertation.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K., & Hasan, Ruqaiya (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Heritage, John (1984). A change of state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In Atkinson, & Heritage, (eds.), 299–345.Google Scholar
Heritage, John, & Sefi, Sue (1992). Dilemmas of advice: Aspects of the delivery and reception of advice in interactions between health visitors and first time mothers. In Drew, & Heritage, (eds.), 358–417.Google Scholar
Hopper, Robert; Thomason, W. Ray; & Ward, Jo Ann (1993). Demographic questions in telephone calls to the Cancer Information Service. Southern Journal of Communication 58: 115–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1978). Sequential aspects of storytelling in conversation. In Schenkein, James (ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction, 219–48. New York: Academic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1981a). The abominable “ne?”: A working paper exploring the phenomenon of post-response pursuit of response. (Occasional papers, 6.) Manchester: University of Manchester.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail(1981b). “Caveat speaker”: A preliminary exploration of shift implicative recipiency in the articulation of topic. Final report to SSRC.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1984a). Notes on a systematic deployment of the acknowledgement tokens “yeah” and “mm hm”. Papers in Linguistics 17:197–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1984b). On stepwise transition from talk about a trouble to inappropriately next-positioned matters. In Atkinson, & Heritage, (eds.), 191–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1984c). On the organization of laughter in talk about troubles. In Atkinson, & Heritage, (eds.), 346–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1988). On the sequential organisation of troubles-talk in ordinary conversation. Social Problems 35:418–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William, & Fanshel, David (1977). Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Lave, Jean (1988). Cognition in practice. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. (1979). Activity types and language. Linguistics 17:365–99. [Reprinted in Drew & Heritage (eds.), 66–100.]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Elinor (1988). Culture and language development: Language acquisition and language socialization in a Samoan village. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita M. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of pre-ferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In Atkinson, & Heritage, (eds.), 57–101.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph; Greenbaum, Sidney; Leech, Geoffrey; & Svartvik, Jan (1972). A grammar of contemporary English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1987). On the preferences for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation. In Button, & Lee, (eds.), 54–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1982). Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of “uh huh” and other things that come between sentences. In Tannen, Deborah (ed.), Analyzing discourse (Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics, 1981), 71–93. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1984). On some questions and ambiguities in conversation. In Atkinson, & Heritage, (eds.), 28–52.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1987). Recycled turn beginnings: A precise repair mechanism in conversation's turntaking organization. In Button, & Lee, (eds.), 70–85.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1990). On the organization of sequences as a source of “coherence” in talk-in-interaction. In Dorval, Bruce (ed.), Conversational organization and its development (Advances in discourse processes, 38), 51–77. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A.; Jefferson, Gail; & Sacks, Harvey (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53:361–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah (1987). Discourse markers. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorjonen, Marja-Leena, & Heritage, John (1991). And-prefacing as a feature of question design. In Laitinen, Lea, Nuolijärvi, Pirkko, & Saari, Mirja (eds.), Leikkauspiste: Kirjoituksia kielestä ja ihmisestä, 59–74. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.Google Scholar
Stenström, Anna-Brita (1984). Questions and responses in English conversation. (Lund studies in English, 68.) Malmö, Sweden: Gleerup.Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A. (1979). Pragmatic connectives. Journal of Pragmatics 3:447–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wertsch, James V. (1981), ed. The concept of activity in Soviet psychology. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar