Request Sequences: The Intersection of Grammar, Interaction And Social Context (Studies in Discourse and Grammar, Volume 19)

137 Pages·2006·0.796 MB·English

by  Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm

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RequestSequences
Studies in Discourse and Grammar
StudiesinDiscourseandGrammarisamonographseriesprovidingaforumfor
research on grammar as it emerges from and is accounted for by discourse
contexts. The assumption underlying the series is that corpora reflecting
language as it is actually used are necessary, not only for the verification of
grammaticalanalyses,butalsoforunderstandinghowtheregularitieswethink
ofasgrammaremergefromcommunicativeneeds.
Researchindiscourseandgrammardrawsuponbothspokenandwritten
corpora,anditistypically,thoughnotnecessarily,quantitative.Monographsin
theseriesproposeexplanationsforgrammaticalregularitiesintermsofrecur-
rentdiscoursepatterns,whichreflectcommunicativeneeds,bothinformational
andsocio-cultural.
Editors
SandraA.Thompson PaulJ.Hopper
UniversityofCaliforniaatSantaBarbara CarnegieMellonUniversity
DepartmentofLinguistics DepartmentofEnglish
SantaBarbara,CA93106 Pittsburgh,PA15213
USA USA
Volume19
RequestSequences:Theintersectionofgrammar,
interactionandsocialcontext
byCarmenTaleghani-Nikazm
Request Sequences
The intersection of grammar,
interaction and social context
Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm
UniversityofKansas
JohnBenjaminsPublishingCompany
Amsterdam(cid:1)/(cid:1)Philadelphia
TM Thepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimumrequirements
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ofAmericanNationalStandardforInformationSciences–Permanence
ofPaperforPrintedLibraryMaterials,ansiz39.48-1984.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Taleghani-Nikazm,Carmen
RequestSequences:theintersectionofgrammar,interactionandsocial
context/ CarmenTaleghani-Nikazm.
p. cm.(StudiesinDiscourseandGrammar,issn0928–8929;v.19)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindexes.
1.Sociolinguistics. 2.Conversationalanalysis. 3.Socialinteraction.
I.Title. II.Series.
P40.T2574 2006
306.44--dc22 2006040656
isbn9027226296(Hb;alk.paper)
©2006–JohnBenjaminsB.V.
Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyform,byprint,photoprint,microfilm,or
anyothermeans,withoutwrittenpermissionfromthepublisher.
JohnBenjaminsPublishingCo.·P.O.Box36224·1020meAmsterdam·TheNetherlands
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Contents v
For Kamel and Nina
vi Contents
Contents vii
Table of contents
Acknowledgments ix

Chapter 1. Preliminaries 1
1.1. Introduction 1 1
1.2. Thestudyofrequestsintheirsequentialcontext 2
1.3. Preference organization and its relevance to social solidarity 4
1.4. Theinterpenetrationofgrammarandsocialinteraction 6
1.5. Overview of the book 8
Chapter 2. Overview of the methodology and corpus 11
2.1. Previous studies on requests in German 11
2.2. Requests in German as prescribed in reference and learner
grammar textbooks 13
2.3. Description of the corpus 14
Chapter 3. Pre-request and request sequences: Theirdesign,interactional
relationship and sequential placement 18
3.1. Introduction 18
3.2. Pre-request sequences 18
3.2.1 Pre-requests in the form of an inquiry 19
3.2.2 Pre-requests in the form of accounts 22
3.2.3 Pre-requests in some other possible turn-formats 27
3.3 Request turn designs in relation to their pre-requests and their
subsequent talk 29
3.3.1 Conditional if-clauses: TheirstructureandfunctioninEnglish
and German 29
3.3.2 Contingent request turn: Conditional wenn-clause in the initial
position 31
3.3.3 Contingent request turn: conditional wenn-clause in mid
position 37
3.4. Discussion 43
Chapter 4. Accounts in request turns: Theirplacementandinteractional
function 46
4.1. Introduction 46
4.2. Accounts in everyday conversation 47
4.3. Accounts in German request sequences 48
viii Contents
4.3.1 Accounts built into request turns 49
4.3.2 Accounts following a projected dispreferred response 54
4.3.3 Accounts subsequent to request acceptance 56
4.4. Accounts for requests: Theirgrammaticalstructure 62
4.5. Accounts for request turns marked by the coordinating conjunction
“denn” ‘because’ 71
4.6. Accounts provided for requests without being prefaced by a
conjunction 76
4.7. Discussion 78
Chapter 5. Initiating request sequences: Thedesignofrequestsequenceturn
beginnings 83
5.1. Introduction 83
5.2. On the sequential organization of topical talk 83
5.3. Projectability of actions 85
5.4. Thesequentialcontextinwhichrequestsoccur:Stepsspeakerstaketo
initiate their new activity of requesting 86
5.4.1 “Non-specific”prefatorycomponentstorequestutterances 88
5.4.2 “More specific”prefatorycomponents:Providingsome
information about the type of activity to come 92
5.4.3 “Specific”prefatorycomponentstorequestutterances:Providing
more information about the type of action projected 95
5.4.4 “Most-specific”prefatorycomponentstorequestutterances:
Providing the most information about the projected action 96
5.5. Discussion 98
Chapter 6. Conclusion 102
6.1. Summary of the main findings 102
6.2. Implications 107
6.3. Avenues for future research 108
References 111
Appendix 119
Name index 121
Subject index 123
Contents ix
Acknowledgements
Thisbookwouldhavenotbeenpossiblewithoutthesupportandencouragement
of many teachers, colleagues, and friends over the years. I firstwishtoexpressmy
sincerest thanks to Maria Egbert and Jürgen Streeck for introducing me to conver-
sation analysis, and for having been constant sources of invaluable advice and
continual support through my graduate career at the University of Texas at Austin
and beyond. I also wish to express my gratitude to Mark Louden for his guidance
and encouragement throughout my graduate studies. All three of them have
contributed immensely to my career as a researcher of language use and as a teacher;
all three of them have likewise served for me as examples of caring human beings.
I also would like to extend my thanks to Emanuel Schegloff,JohnHeritage,Gene
Lerner, and the participants of the 2002 Conversation Analysis Advanced Study
Institute at UCLA for their helpful comments and suggestions on early ideas for
this book. I am especially grateful to Emanuel Schegloffforkindlyprovidingme
with invaluable feedback on preliminary stages of this project.
I wish to express my deep indebtedness to Andrea Golato and Peter Golato,
my close friends and colleagues, who so generously made time to carefully read
various versions of this manuscript. Their constructive criticism and insightful
feedback at various stages of this project contributed immensely to fine tuning
my analyses. My thanks also go to Maria Egbert for her insightful comments and
suggestions on various parts of this manuscript.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to relatives, friends and graduate
students in the United States and Germany for their help and support during
the data collection phase of this work. This book would not have been possible
without their generosity and kind participation.
A part of chapter 5 has been published in Research on Language and Social
Interaction, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005). I am grateful to the anony-
mous reviewers for their insightful and stimulating commentaries.
This project was supported by funds from the University of Kansas and the
Fulbright Scholar Program. I am thankful for their support of various parts of this
project.
Finally, my special thanks goes to my husband Kamel Nikazm for his love
and unconditional support. Without his understanding, encouragement, and
enthusiasm I could not have completed this manuscript. I am also tremendously
grateful to our daughter Nina for her patience and good humor during some
stressful times, as the completion of this project would have been immeasurably
more difficultwithouthercooperation.ItistobothofthemthatI gratefullydedi-
cate this book.