Linguistic structures in social interaction

Abstract

In this introductory paper to the inaugural volume of the journal Interactional Linguistics, we raise the question of what a theory of language might look like once we factor time into explanations of regularities in linguistic phenomena. We first present a historical overview that contextualises interactional approaches within the broader field of linguistics, and then focus on temporality as a key dimension of language use in interaction. By doing so, we discuss issues of emergence and its consequences for constituency and dependency, and of projection and its relation to action formation within and across languages. Based on video-recorded conversational data from French and Garrwa (Australian), we seek to illustrate how the discipline of linguistics can be enriched by attending to the temporal deployment of patterns of language use, and how this may in turn modify what we understand to be language structure.

Word Order Affects Response Latency: Action Projection and the Timing of Responses to Question-word Questions

“…Heritage, 2012, inter alia) but create temporal opportunities for such action ascription (cf. Levinson, 2013) as well as for action projection (Auer, 2005;Mushin & Pekarek Doehler, 2021). Grammatical formats contribute to determining the recognition point of ongoing actions and of what these actions make relevant as nexts, and thereby engender differential temporal opportunities for the onset of responses.…”

“…The temporality of social interaction has attracted abundant research from a range of horizons. The temporal course of syntactic trajectories and their intersection with bodily conduct has been discussed in terms of projection as a basis for social coordination (Auer, 2005;Deppermann & Streeck, 2018;Mushin & Pekarek Doehler, 2021;Pekarek Doehler et al, 2015, 2020. Much attention has been paid to temporality in turn-taking (Sacks et al, 1974) and in particular to the timing of responsive actions as a key vector of the progressivity of talk (cf.…”

A satellite view of spatial points in conversation1

“…Although the fine details of interaction and matters such as temporal and sequential relations have traditionally been at the centre of conversation analytic research (e.g., Deppermann & Streeck, 2018;Mondada, 2016;Mushin & Doehler, 2021;Streeck et al, 2011), the relationship between locational gestures, the wider space, and geography has regularly been overlooked (however, see Auer et al, 2013). With some exceptions (e.g., Stukenbrock, 2014), conversation analytic studies have generally considered the immediate interactional context, describing the ways in which participants may orient to specific interactional affordances offered by the surrounding environment, artefacts, and other local referents.…”

Variation and change in the sociophonetic variable ing in format ties

“…2. There is, though, an emerging area of research into longitudinal changes in interactional structure (Deppermann & Pekarek Doehler 2021;Mushin & Pekarek Doehler 2021;Pekarek Doehler & Balaman 2021). 3. ing can also be realised as [-iŋk] on Tyneside, but this variant is very rare (see also discussion of the present data in Mechler et al (2022)) and does not occur in the format ties under analysis here.…”