Would You Like to Do it Yourself? Service Requests and Their Non-granting Responses

Vinkhuyzen, Erik; Szymanski, Margaret H.

doi:10.1057/9780230287853_6

Cited by 59 publications

(51 citation statements)

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“…In conversation analysis, speakers' choices in requesting behaviors have been investigated on the basis of recordings of naturally occurring interactions (Craven & Potter, 2010;Galeano & Fasulo, 2009;Goodwin, 1990;Heinemann, 2006;Lindström, 2005;Raymond, 2011;Schegloff, 1979;Taleghani-Nikazm, 2006;Vinkhuyzen & Szymanski, 2005;Wingard, 2006;Zinken & Ogiermann, 2011). Studies adopting this approach, like Curl and Drew (2008) and Wootton (1981Wootton ( , 1997Wootton ( , 2005, have shown that patterns of use in the selection of forms cannot be accounted for solely by reference to variables such as the age or status of the recipient or by the burden placed on the requestee (cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bilateral and Unilateral Requests: The Use of Imperatives andMi X?Interrogatives in Italian

Rossi

2012

Discourse Processes

170

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bilateral and Unilateral Requests: The Use of Imperatives andMi X?Interrogatives in Italian

Rossi

2012

Discourse Processes

170

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“…This versatility derives from the grammatical makeup of the statement: while its deontic meaning makes relevant the doing of a task, its impersonality does not constrain participation in the task, and its declarative form affords an open response space (cf. Vinkhuyzen & Szymanski 2005). These features give impersonal deontic declaratives a particular status in the grammatical system of Italian and Polish, placing them in opposition to forms that restrict the response space to one or two alternatives (imperatives and interrogatives) and/or that restrict the animatorship of an act to a single individual (e.g.…”

Section: Not Respondingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grammar and social agency: The pragmatics of impersonal deontic statements

Rossi¹,

Zinken²

2016

Language

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Sentence and construction types generally have more than one pragmatic function. Impersonal deontic declaratives such as 'it is necessary to X' assert the existence of an obligation or necessity without tying it to any particular individual. This family of statements can accomplish a range of functions, including getting another person to act, explaining or justifying the speaker's own behavior as he or she undertakes to do something, or even justifying the speaker's behavior while simultaneously getting another person to help. How is an impersonal deontic declarative fit for these different functions? And how do people know which function it has in a given context? We address these questions using video recordings of everyday interactions among speakers of Italian and Polish. Our analysis results in two findings. The first is that the pragmatics of impersonal deontic declaratives is systematically shaped by (i) the relative responsibility of participants for the necessary task and (ii) the speaker's nonverbal conduct at the time of the statement. These two factors influence whether the task in question will be dealt with by another person or by the speaker, often giving the statement the force of a request or, alternatively, of an account of the speaker's behavior. The second finding is that, although these factors systematically influence their function, impersonal deontic declaratives maintain the potential to generate more complex interactions that go beyond a simple opposition between requests and accounts, where participation in the necessary task may be shared, negotiated, or avoided. This versatility of impersonal deontic declaratives derives from their grammatical makeup: by being deontic and impersonal, they can both mobilize or legitimize an act by different participants in the speech event, while their declarative form does not constrain how they should be responded to. These features make impersonal deontic declaratives a special tool for the management of social agency.*

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“…For instance, in a study of requests in a copy centre Vinkhuyzen & Szymanski (2005) show that requests in the form of a statement of need or desire (such as "I"d like to make three copies of this") allow the interlocutor to treat the request as a request for advice and thereby to reject the request in a preferred format by suggesting that they go to the "do-it-yourself-area".…”

Section: Rejections As Social Actionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Turning the negative response into a piece of advice mitigates the negative character of the response by formatting it as a partly positive one and thereby avoiding a dispreferred action, cf. Vinkhuyzen & Szymanski (2005).…”

Section: Rejections In Dispreferred Formatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Declining to help: Rejections in service requests to the police

Rønneberg

Svennevig

2010

Discourse & Communication

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A major part of police work consists in providing services and information to the general public.A stated goal of such police work is to be service-minded and contribute to a positive encounter.This article analyses service requests in calls to the duty desk of a large police station and focuses on how officers deal with requests that have to be rejected. It reveals a general pattern in which officers produce the rejection in a dispreferred format and include displays of empathy, accounts for the rejection and suggestions for alternative solutions. However, in certain types of requests the rejections are not infrequently produced in a direct and unmitigated fashion, without accounts or explanations. This is especially notable in requests that touch upon institutional constraints, such as professional secrecy. And in certain cases the rejections are even delivered in an aggravated form, involving an explicit or implicit challenge to the legitimacy of the request.These rejections cast the caller in an oppositional role, infringing the professional constraints of the police. However, the constraints in question may not be accessible to the callers. The officers will consequently be experienced as hostile and will subvert their own objectives of showing service-mindedness.

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Would You Like to Do it Yourself? Service Requests and Their Non-granting Responses

Cited by 59 publications

References 0 publications

Bilateral and Unilateral Requests: The Use of Imperatives andMi X?Interrogatives in Italian

Bilateral and Unilateral Requests: The Use of Imperatives andMi X?Interrogatives in Italian

Grammar and social agency: The pragmatics of impersonal deontic statements

Declining to help: Rejections in service requests to the police

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