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Modulating action through minimization: Syntax in the service of offering and requesting
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 September 2020
Abstract
This study uses data from a shoe-repair shop, supplemented by data from medical and mundane contexts, to analyze three progressively minimal grammatical formats used to implement offers and requests in interaction (i.e. do you want…?, you want…?, and want…?). We argue that this cline of minimality reflects a cline of the action-initiator's stance, from relatively weak to strong (respectively), regarding their expectation that the action will be accepted or complied with. In doing so, we illustrate that, as part of the design of requests and offers, participants rely on more granular distinctions than a simple binary between interrogative and declarative morphosyntax. We conclude with a discussion of the interactional logic that undergirds the normative use of these grammatical formats, and of our findings’ implications for action formation and preference organization. (Conversation analysis, interactional linguistics, offer, request, stance, grammar, morphosyntax)*
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
The authors would like to thank the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado, Boulder for a small grant to collect and transcribe the shoe-shop data. Thanks especially to Patricia Davidson for her work on that endeavor. And many thanks to the owners of the shoe shop for allowing us to record their work. We are also indebted to an early term paper on this general topic by Lenae Everette.
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