OKAY across Languages: Toward a comparative approach to its use in talk-in-interaction

450 Pages·2021·128.258 MB·

by  Emma Betz, Arnulf Deppermann, Lorenza Mondada, Marja-Leena Sorjonen

OKAY across Languages
Toward a comparative approach
to its use in talk-in-interaction
S
t
u
d
i
e
s Edited by

i
n
Emma Betz, Arnulf Deppermann,
L
a
n Lorenza Mondada
g
u
a and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
g
e

a
n
d

S
o
c
i
a
l

I
n
t
e
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
34
John Benjamins Publishing Company
OKAY across Languages
Studies in Language and Social Interaction (SLSI)
issn 1879-3983
Studies in Language and Social Interaction is a series which continues the tradition of
Studies in Discourse and Grammar, but with a new focus. It aims to provide a forum
for research on grammar, understood broadly, in its natural home environment,
spoken interaction. The assumption underlying the series is that the study of
language as it is actually used in social interaction provides the foundation for
understanding how the patterns and regularities we think of as grammar emerge
from everyday communicative needs. The editors welcome language-related research
from a range of different methodological traditions, including conversation analysis,
interactional linguistics, and discourse-functional linguistics.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
benjamins.com/catalog/slsi
Editors
Sandra A. Thompson Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA University of Helsinki, Finland
Editorial Board
Peter Auer Barbara A. Fox
University of Freiburg, Germany University of Colorado, USA
Galina Bolden Makoto Hayashi
Rutgers University, USA Nagoya University, Japan
Arnulf Deppermann Marja-Liisa Helasvuo
Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Germany University of Turku, Finland
Paul Drew K.K. Luke
University of York, UK Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Volume 34
OKAY across Languages
Toward a comparative approach to its use in talk-in-interaction
Edited by Emma Betz, Arnulf Deppermann, Lorenza Mondada
and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
OKAY across Languages
Toward a comparative approach to its use
in talk-in-interaction
Edited by
Emma Betz
University of Waterloo
Arnulf Deppermann
Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim
Lorenza Mondada
University of Basel
Marja-Leena Sorjonen
University of Helsinki
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/slsi.34
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2020048726 (print) / 2020048727 (e-book)
isbn 978 90 272 0815 6 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6028 4 (e-book)
© 2021 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com
Table of contents
Acknowledgements vii
Chapter 1
Introduction: OKAY emerging as a cross-linguistic object of study
in prior research 1
Emma Betz and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
Chapter 2
Data and methods used in the study of OKAY across languages 29
Arnulf Deppermann and Lorenza Mondada
Generic sequential uses of OKAY across languages
Chapter 3
OKAY in responding and claiming understanding 55
Emma Betz and Arnulf Deppermann
With contributions from Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, Elwys De Stefani, Katariina
Harjunpää, Kaoru Hayano, Henrike Helmer, Leelo Keevallik, Mary Shin Kim,
Stephanie Hyeri Kim, Aino Koivisto, Satomi Kuroshima, Seung-Hee Lee, Xiaoting
Li, Anna Lindström, Lorenza Mondada, Ana Cristina Ostermann, Søren Sandager
Sørensen, Marja-Leena Sorjonen, Jakob Steensig, and Matylda Weidner
Chapter 4
OKAY in closings and transitions 93
Lorenza Mondada and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
With contributions from Emma Betz, Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, Elwys De Stefani,
Arnulf Deppermann, Katariina Harjunpää, Kaoru Hayano, Henrike Helmer, Leelo
Keevallik, Mary Shin Kim, Stephanie Hyeri Kim, Aino Koivisto, Satomi Kuroshima,
Seung-Hee Lee, Xiaoting Li, Anna Lindström, Ana Cristina Ostermann, Søren
Sandager Sørensen, Jakob Steensig, and Matylda Weidner
vi OKAY across Languages
OKAY in specific languages
Chapter 5
The prosody and phonetics of OKAY in American English 131
Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
Chapter 6
Rising OKAY in third position in Danish talk-in-interaction 175
Søren Sandager Sørensen and Jakob Steensig
Chapter 7
OKAY as a response to informings in Finnish 205
Aino Koivisto and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
Chapter 8
When OKAY is repeated: Closing the talk so far in Korean
and Japanese conversations 235
Satomi Kuroshima, Stephanie Hyeri Kim, Kaoru Hayano,
Mary Shin Kim and Seung-Hee Lee
OKAY in specific activities and settings
Chapter 9
OKAY in health helpline calls in Brazil: Managing alignment
and progressivity 269
Ana Cristina Ostermann and Katariina Harjunpää
Chapter 10
A resource for action transition: OKAY and its embodied
and material habitat 301
Elwys De Stefani and Lorenza Mondada
Chapter 11
OKAY projecting embodied compliance to directives 337
Leelo Keevallik and Matylda Weidner
Chapter 12
Coordination of OKAY, nods, and gaze in claiming understanding
and closing topics 363
Henrike Helmer, Emma Betz and Arnulf Deppermann
Appendix: Transcription conventions and glossing symbols 395
Bibliography 401
Name index 433
Subject index 437
Acknowledgements
This book took shape during two inspiring workshops held in Mannheim and
Helsinki in 2017. We are grateful to the Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache in
Mannheim and the University of Helsinki’s Centre of Excellence in Research on
Intersubjectivity in Action for generously funding these workshops, and we thank
the researchers who accepted our invitation and quickly shared in our enthusiasm
for okay. Each contribution has been read and commented upon by several other
authors, and we thank everybody for their extraordinarily collegial efforts in thus
shaping the whole volume. Sandra Thompson carefully read and evaluated the
project at different stages, and we thank her for her insight and support. We are
most grateful to Kerttu Pihlajamaa for her efficient work and attention to detail
in formatting chapters, generating the bibliography, and assisting with indexes.
Our heartfelt thanks also goes to Isja Conen and Patricia Leplae, who guided the
volume patiently and competently through the publication process at Benjamins.
The research reported in this book rests on all of our participants’ availability and
willingness to be recorded and scrutinized. Above all, we are indebted to them.
Basel, Helsinki, Mannheim, and Waterloo, September 2020

Chapter 1
Introduction
OKAY emerging as a cross-linguistic object
of study in prior research
Emma Betz and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
University of Waterloo / University of Helsinki
This chapter sets the context for the articles in the volume – explorations in the
use of OKAY in a diverse set of languages, including American English, Brazilian
Portuguese, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese,
Korean, Mandarin, Polish, and Swedish. We first outline the origins of OKAY
in American English and its spread to other languages as a loanword, motivat-
ing this study of OKAY. We then review the state of the art in research on OKAY
in spoken interaction in a variety of settings. Since this volume makes a case for
investigating OKAY empirically as it is actually used in particular occasions of
spoken and embodied interaction, the review of existing work on OKAY will
be connected to relevant developments in Conversation Analysis (Sidnell 2010;
Clift 2016) and Interactional Linguistics (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 2018). We
close with a discussion of overarching themes and promising new research di-
rections that emerge from existing work.
1. Origin and early spread of OKAY1
O.K.2 has been called a “spectacular expression” (Read 1963b, 83) and “America’s
greatest invention” (Metcalf 2010, 26). This section provides a summary of what
we know about its origins and spread. The origin of the word can be traced back
to newspaper language use in Boston in 1830s, more specifically to page 2 of the
1. We use all-capitals spelling (OKAY) in general references to the particle. When referring to
the use of the particle in a specific language or quoting from a particular study, we display the
particle in italics (okay, okei, occhei, etc.).
2. The spelling as okay is a later development, so we use “O.K.” (as well as the spelling variants
O. K., o.k., o. k., OK, and O K, depending on the quoted source) in describing earlier stages in the
word’s development. Spellings with and without periods existed from the beginning, although
O.K. was more common.
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.34.01bet
© 2021 John Benjamins Publishing Company