Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-k8lnt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T10:13:19.077Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Oh-prefaced responses to inquiry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

John Heritage
John Heritage
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551, heritage@soc.ucla.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In responses to English questions, prefacing with the particle oh indicates that, from the viewpoint of the answerer, a question is problematic in terms of its relevance, presuppositions, or context. In addition, oh-prefacing is used to foreshadow reluctance to advance the conversational topic invoked by a question; it may also be part of a “trouble-premonitory” response to various types of How are you inquiries in conversational openings and elsewhere. (Conversation analysis, English, utterance design, particles.)

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , June 1998 , pp. 291 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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, & John, Heritage (1984), eds. Structures of social action. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, & Selting, Margret (1996a). Towards an interactional perspective on prosody and a prosodic perspective on interaction. In Couper-Kuhlen, & Selting, (eds.), 11–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, Selting, Margret (1996b), eds. Prosody in conversation. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drew, Paul (1997). “Open” class repair initiators in response to sequential sources of trouble in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 28:69–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drew, Paul, & Heritage, John (1992). Analyzing talk at work: An introduction. In Drew, P. & Heritage, J. (eds.), Talk at work, 3–65. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ford, Cecilia E., & Thompson, Sandra A. (1996). Interactional units in conversation: Syntactic, in-tonational and pragmatic resources for the management of turns. In Ochs, et al. (eds.), 134–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Charles (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist 96:606–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Charles, & Goodwin, Marjorie Harness (1987). Concurrent operations on talk: Notes on the interactive organization of assessments. IPrA Papers in Pragmatics 1:1.1–54.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness (1980). Processes of mutual monitoring implicated in the production of description sequences. Sociological Inquiry 50:303–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greatbatch, David (1988). A turn-taking system for British news interviews. Language in Society 17:401–30.CrossRefGoogle 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 (1985). Analyzing news interviews: Aspects of the production of talk for an overhearing audience. In Dijk, Teun A. (ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis, 3:95–119. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Heritage, John (1995). Conversation analysis: Methodological aspects. In Quasthoff, Uta M. (ed.), Aspects of oral communication, 391–418. Berlin: De Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John (1998). Oh-prefacing: A method of modifying agreement/disagreement. In Ford, Cecilia et al. (eds.), The language of turn and sequence, to appear. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heritage, John, & Roth, Andrew (1995). Grammar and institution: Questions and questioning in the broadcast news interview. Research on Language and Social Interaction 28:1.1–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Deborah (1972). Some aspects of the syntax and semantics of interjections. Chicago Linguistic Society 8:162–72.Google Scholar
James, Deborah (1974). Another look at, say, some grammatical constraints on, oh, interjections and hesitations. Chicago Linguistic Society 10:242–51.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1974). Error correction as an interactional resource. Language in Society 2:181–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1978). Sequential aspects of storytelling in conversation. In Schenkein, Jim (ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction, 219–48. New York: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1979). A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance/declination. In Psathas, George (ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology, 79–96. New York: Irvington.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1980). On “trouble-premonitory” response to inquiry. Sociological Inquiry 50:153–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1981). The abominable ‘ne?’: A working paper exploring the phenomenon of post-response pursuit of response. (Department of Sociology, Occasional paper no. 6.) Manchester, England: University of Manchester.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1984a). On stepwise transition from talk about a trouble to inappropriately next-positioned matters. In Atkinson, & Heritage, (eds.), 191–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1984b). On the organization of laughter in talk about troubles. In Atkinson, & Heritage, (eds.), 346–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1986). On the interactional unpackaging of a “gloss”. Language in Society 14:435–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1988). On the sequential organization of troubles-talk in ordinary conversation. Social Problems 35:418–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail, & Lee, John (1981). The rejection of advice: Managing the problematic convergence of a “troubles-telling” and a “service encounter”. Journal of Pragmatics 5:399–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William, & Fanshel, David (1977). Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Local, John (1996). Conversational phonetics: Some aspects of news receipts in everyday talk. In Couper-Kuhlen, & Selting, (eds.), 177–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Margolick, David (1995). Simpson friend testifies of events before killings. New York Times, 03 23, p. A8.Google Scholar
Maynard, Douglas W., & Schaeffer, Nora Cate (1997). Keeping the gate: Declinations of the request to participate in a telephone survey interview. Sociological Methods and Research 26:1.34–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Elinor; Thompson, Sandra; & Emanuel, Schegloff (eds.) (1996). Interaction and grammar. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/ dispreferred turn shapes. In Atkinson, & Heritage, (eds.), 57–101.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1975). Everyone has to lie. In Sanches, Mary and Blount, Ben G. (eds.), Sociocultural dimensions of language use, 57–80. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1992). Lectures on conversation, Vol. 2 (Fall 1968 – Spring 1972). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey; Schegloff, Emanuel A.; and Jefferson, Gail (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50:696–735.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1968). Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist 70:1075–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1979). The relevance of repair for syntax-for-conversation. In Givón, Talmy (ed.), Syntax and semantics 12: Discourse and syntax, 261–88. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1986). The routine as achievement. Human Studies 9:111–51.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1987a). Recycled turn beginnings: A precise repair mechanism in conversation's turn-taking organisation. In Button, Graham & Lee, John R. E. (eds.), Talk and social organisation, 70–85. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1987b). Analyzing single episodes of interaction: An exercise in conversation analysis. Social Psychology Quarterly 50:2.101–14.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1990). On the organization of sequences as a source of “coherence” in talk-in-interaction. In Dorval, Bruce (ed.), Conversational organization and its development, 51–77. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1992). Repair after next turn: The last structurally provided for place for the defense of intersubjectivity in conversation. American Journal of Sociology 95:1295–345.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1993). Reflections on quantification in the study of conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 26:99–128.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1995a). Sequence organization. Los Angeles: Department of Sociology, UCLA (MS).Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1995b). Reflections on studying intonation in talk-in-interaction. American Association for Applied Linguistics, Long Beach, CA, 03.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1996a). Confirming allusions: Toward an empirical account of action. American Journal of Sociology 104:161–216.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1996b). Turn organization: One intersection of grammar and interaction. In Ochs, et al. (eds.), 52–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, & Sacks, Harvey (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica 8:289–327.Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah (1987). Discourse markers. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terasaki, Alene (1976). Pre-announcement sequences in conversation. To appear in Lerner, Gene (ed.) Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation. Washington, DC: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Wootton, Anthony (1989). Remarks on the methodology of conversation analysis. In Bull, Peter & Roger, Derek (eds.), Conversation: An interdisciplinary approach, 238–58. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Wu, Ruey-Jiuan (1997). Import and functions of discourse particles in Mandarin Chinese conversation. Dissertation proposal, Department of TESL and Applied Linguistics, UCLA.Google Scholar