Surprise As an Interactional Achievement: Reaction Tokens in Conversation

Abstract

The expression of surprise—at something unexpected—is a key form of emotional display. Focusing on displays of surprise performed by means of reaction tokens (akin to Goffman's “response cries”), such as wow, gosh, oh my god, ooh!, phew, we use an ethnomethodological, conversation-analytic approach to analyze surprise in talk-in-interaction. Our key contribution is to detach the psychology of surprise from its social expression by showing how co-conversationalists collaborate to bring off an interactionally achieved performance of surprise. Far from being a visceral eruption of emotion, the production of a surprise token is often prepared for several turns in advance. We also show how surprise can be recycled on an occasion subsequent to its initial production, and how surprise displays may be delayed by silence, ritualized disbelief, and other repair initiations. Finally, we consider some of the uses of surprise as an interactional resource, including its role in the reflection and reproduction of culture.

A Coding Scheme for Other-initiated Repair Across Languages

“…The data session principle is particularly important as it helps establish a common standard of rigor and reminds analysts that aggregating and classifying cases is always rooted in a firm qualitative understanding. Other-initiations of repair can perform ancillary actions: they may perform a display of surprise or disbelief (Selting 1987;Wilkinson and Kitzinger 2006), disaligning actions, such as disagreements, challenges, rejections, or preliminaries thereto (Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks 1977;Drew 1995;Schegloff 1997;, non-serious actions like jokes, puns, or teases (Kendrick 2015a;Gisladottir 2015), or other actions. An other-initiation of repair may occur on its own or as part of a more extended (non-minimal) repair sequence, in which case it may be the first, the n-th (other), or the last in the extended sequence (Enfield, Drew, and Baranova forthcoming).…”

Beyond Answering: Repeat-Prefaced Responses in Conversation

“…First pair part informings (such as, announcements, or tellings) were excluded from the investigation as they implicate different kinds of constraints on the responsive actions, some of which are prototypically accomplished by questioning repeats or prorepeats that demonstrate ''ritualized disbelief,'' ''surprise,'' or ''newsworthiness'' of the prior talk (Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 2006). Additionally, so far I have been unable to find nonquestioning repeats after first position informings in my data set.…”

Memory in Interaction: An Analysis of Repeat Calls to a Home Birth Helpline

“…If she had remembered Belinda's situation from the prior call (as she claimed to), she would already have known that the hoist was for home use; and it is because she claimed already to remember that the caller presupposes her knowledge of the use of the hoist and does not tell her overtly what she ought now to assume her already to know. In treating home use of the hoist as unexpected-through other-initiated repair (Schegloff, 2007), a negative interrogative question design (Heritage 2002), and her surprise reaction token ("oh my god," line 20; Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 2006)-she makes manifest her own failure to remember. Also, the caller hears it that way and reports again (lines 21-25) the information she had explained in her first call and had offered to convey again at the beginning of this repeat call but that the call taker had refused, claiming adequate remembering.…”