Response Cries Inviting an Alignment: Finnish huh huh

Abstract

This study looks at the use of the Finnish response cry huh huh as a device to invite an alignment and to assess joint physical experience. Response cries establish a speaker's orientation to the world but they also give cues for the recipient on how to respond to the responsive actions appropriately.While the meaning of huh huh is unproblematic for the recipients, both speakers and recipients orient to the vagueness of huh huh through their turn-design and turn-formulation. Of particular interest are those rare huh huh turns that are repeated by the receiver with prosodic upgrading or downgrading compared to the initial ones. Initiating a sequence with a response cry and repeating it in the second position prove to be effective devices for the participants to maintain social solidarity in physiologically or emotionally dense moments. The data is in Finnish with English translations.

Interjections (Oxford Handbook of Word Classes)

“…For instance, while it is possible to think of the strain grunt as merely a symptom of physical exertion, in fact it often has an interactional function, alerting others or serving in the temporal coordination of joint efforts. In stylized form, a strain grunt can serve as a marker of a transition from a joint activitity to an assessment of that activity, as Pehkonen (2020) showed for Finnish [ ɦ uh w ɦ uh w ] following the physical exertion of a climb with others. It is worth noting that this is another case that is not easily observed in monologic textual materials: Pehkonen observed it in video recordings of forest hikes for berry foraging.…”

Parental lip-smacks during infant mealtimes

“…Our focus was on the repetitiveness and rhythmicality of the lip-smacks and the relevance of LS chains for creating mutual engagement with an embodied practice such as eating. Similar to the Finnish sound huh huh, LS particles are reflective of individual bodily experiences but can be treated as initiating actions to be responded to by others invested in the same activity (Pehkonen, 2020). These engagements reflect early patterns of sociality in an infant's life.…”

Conversation and Culture

“…Contemporary single-language studies beyond English cover mainly Northern European national languages, and, as expected, research on Finnish conversation continues to stand out. Topics studied in recent years among speakers of Finnish include invitations over telephone calls (Routarinne & Tainio 2018); uptake in repair sequences (Koivisto 2019); reformulation of a prior turn (Sorjonen 2018); the interactional usages of second person (Suomalainen & Varjo 2020); conversational usages of "think" and "know" verbs (Laury & Helasvuo 2020); syntactically insubordinate recruitment formats (Lindström et al 2019); "response cries" and alignment (Pehkonen 2020); functions of other-repetition (Stevanovic et al 2020a); conversation in a mental health treatment setting (Stevanovic et al 2020b); and openings and closings in technologically mediated encounters (Ilomäki & Ruusuvuori 2020), an increasingly relevant area in current times when virtual conversations are taking the place of face-to-face meetings.…”