independence and position in the larger sequence
8 O N TURN - ONSET TIMING AND ACTIONS
This chapter explores both the overlapped and the overlapping turns from a more general perspective. An attempt is made to characterize the overlapped turns in terms of practices and actions and to situate them among other such entities. The overlapping turns are examined with a special focus on the motivation for their early onset from a general, practice-related perspective.
Let us begin with an analysis of the former, overlapped turns.
8.1 The overlapped turn: assertion turns as practices and social actions
Throughout the empirical analyses presented earlier in this work, the overlapped turns have been called assertion turns. Whether thisassertion is a practice used to implement certain social action(s) or whether it is an action itself requires further consideration. In this section, we will go into more detail about these turns and, exploring the features they share and how they relate to other turn types, aim at a general description of them. Let us first reconsider some of the examples that have already been analyzed in the preceding chapters and focus especially on the initiating, overlapped turn.
Only the target turns are provided here; for the larger context, the reader is advised to consult the chapter offering the complete analysis of the fragments.
(8.1) Väärää nappii / Wrong button (Finnish) (Part of example 4.1) Sg 398, 05:50
-> 16 Kati: siin ei tarvi ku painat yhtä DEM3.LOC NEG need CONJ push:2SG one:PAR
(it) needs only for you to push one
-> 17 [väärää °nappia ni°.]
wrong:PAR button:PAR PRT/CONJ
[wrong button so. ] [ ]
18 Tarja: [↑nii nii mä tie]dän se[n. =ja sit ei PRT PRT 1SG know:1SG DEM3:ACC and then NEG
[yeah yeah I kno]w tha[t. and then (you/one) cannot [
19 Kati: [°mm°, 20 Tarja: osaa painaa takasin
can push back
switch ((it)) back again
-(8.2) Laumaeläimiä / Gregarious animals (Finnish) (Part of example 5.3) Sg 377, 22:07
-> 09 A: et niil on aika tarkkaki COMP DEM3.PL:ADE be.3SG quite strict:CLI
that they nevertheless have a pretty strict
-> 10 sitte kuitenki semmonen then however DEM3.ADJ
such a
-> 11 sosi[aalinen järjeste]lmä(l) #niillä:#, social grouping DEM3.PL:ADE
soci[al groupi]ng they (have) [ ]
12 B: [on niillä; ] be.3SG DEM3.PL:ADE
[they do have ]
(8.3) Põhiprobleem / Basic problem (Estonian) (Part of example 5.4) TÄ2, 15:15
-> 11 Mari: seevastu eestis on põhiprobleem on instead NAME:INE be.3SG basic.problem be.3SG
instead in Estonia the basic problem is
-> 12 see-;=£kõ[ik >lihtsalt< is]tuvad ja midagi ei DEM1 all simply sit:3PL and anything NEG
that ever[yone simply si]ts and does [ ]
13 Eve: [see ongi. ] DEM1 be.3SG:CLI
[indeed / that’s right]
> 14 Mari: te[e; ja: ] ma do and 1SG
nothi[ng and ] I [ ]
15 Eve: [see ongi.]
DEM1 be.3SG:CLI
[indeed / that’s right]
(8.4) Nõiandus / Witchcraft (Estonian) (Part of example 6.4a) AN2, 14:52
-> 03 eestlane on ´kogu ´ae:g, (0.6)
(the) Estonian ((noun)) has all the time (0.6)
-> 04 huvitunud, (.) `teemadest mida ei saa
been interested (.) in themes that cannot be
-> 05 niiöelda `teaduslikult ´tõestada? .h
so to speak scientifically proved, .h
-> 06 mida ei saa mingi:: (0.3) keegi `öelda et what:PAR NEG can any anyone say:INF COMP
that cannot ((be V-ed by)) any (0.3) nobody can say that
-> 07 `nii [´just ´on:; ] so exactly be.3SG
it is [precisely like that]
[ ]
08 M: [sellepärast=et] see religi`oos ei ole because DEM1 religion NEG be
[because ] religion has not become
09 `juurdunud root:PPC
rooted
-(8.5) Vead / Faults (Estonian) (Part of example 6.9) AN3, 06:10
-> 04 K: >aga kui sa tuled< `tagasi oma `tavapärasesse but when 2SG come:2SG back own routine:ILL
but when you come back to your routine
-> 05 ellu ja t- oma `tavapäraseid `asju teed life:ILL and own routine:PL:PAR thing:PL:PAR do:2SG
life and d- your routine things you do
-> 06 oma tavapäraseid `as- .hh ja=ni=`edasi siis own routine:PL:PAR thi- and so forth then
your routine thi- .hh and so forth then
-> 07 [sa saad `aru kus need] `vead on;
2SG understand:2SG where DEM1.PL fault:PL be.3SG
[you understand where the ] faults are [ ]
08 M: [sis sa ei `näe seda, ] then 2SG NEG see DEM1:PAR
[then you can’t see the ]
We can observe from these fragments that the turns that precede the overlapping responses are rather similar. What are these overlapped turns doing? What are their characteristics? What affinities do they establish to differentactions?
First, we notice that linguistically, these turns are constructed as declarative statements (see ISK § 887). What seems to be common to all the turns in question is that the participants are primarily oriented to talking about something, which involves doing something in the present. Thus, these speakers make the words match the world, as was described within speech
act theory (Searle 1976).84 The other option (ibid.) is to make the world match the words, which is the case with utterance types that involve speakers talking in order to do or bring about something (concrete) in the future.
Within CA, these types of actions are usually called directive-commissive actions (or deontic actions, see Stevanovic & Peräkylä 2012), and they include actions such as offers, invitations, proposals, and requests. With these types of turns, the speakers attempt to bring about doings and activities of the future, which will be carried out either by the speaker, by the recipient or by both of them. (For examples, see Couper-Kuhlen 2011b, 2012b.) It is clear that the actions in the assertion turns under consideration here contrast in many ways with directive-commissive actions.
The majority of overlapped assertion turns are plain statements with no specific markers of certainty or doubt, like those in the fragments above.
Quoting Pomerantz (1984b: 609), “[w]hen speakers make such declarative assertions, they are proposing to represent actual states of affairs and are accountable for being right.” The most basic and simple utterance with no epistemic or evidential markers is the default, unmarked type of assertion.
This means that by not marking the statement as uncertain, and by not specifically stressing its certainty, the speaker is plainly asserting that the state of affairs remains as it is. In the turns where the speaker is referring to second-hand knowledge, the evidential particle et may occur (for instance, example 8.2; on the Estonian et, see Keevallik 2008b; on the Finnish et(tä), see Laury & Seppänen 2008). Nevertheless, these turns also contain information that is presented as being “plain,” as it is not specifically marked as certain or doubtful.
Quite frequently, the assertion turns in the current collection contain evaluative elements, such as evaluative adjectives and stance-implicating nouns. In the fragments above, we find aika tarkka, ‘pretty strict’ (example 8.2) andpõhiprobleem, ‘basic problem’ (example 8.3). This makes assertion turns similar toassessments that typically contain clearly valenced (positive or negative) evaluative elements (Goodwin & Goodwin 1992, Pomerantz 1984a). Another feature of assertion turns that makes them similar to assessments is that their speakers present the content of their turn as something they know. As Pomerantz (1984a: 57) observes, “with an assessment, a speaker claims knowledge of that which he or she is assessing.”
Thus, the speakers both indicate that they know the issue they are talking about and that they have a stance towards it. This interdependence of epistemic and emotional orientation (both in the first turn itself and in its response) and the evaluative elements in the assertion turns make them similar to assessments. Indeed, the turns often consider a matter that can/has to/is expected to be assessed, and/or there is a stance that can/has to/is expected to be adopted and agreed on. There is a specific issue under
84 From a CA perspective, these turns can of course also be thought of as constructing and shaping reality.
discussion, and the participants express their thoughts and opinions regarding it. In lay terminology, the utterances would often be considered as
“opinions” or “understandings.” The matters discussed in these data extracts are most often rather general issues, not primarily personal – but through the evaluative elements, the speakers display their personal take on these issues. General issues can also be used in the service of the personal (see Drew 1991).
Linguistically, some of the turns include the copular verb olla, ‘to be,’
usually in its third-person singular form on (for both Finnish and Estonian, see examples 8.2 and 8.3), and they are predicate complement clauses: the utterances make a claim or provide a description of something (for example, see ISK § 891, § 1212). Verbs other thanolla,‘to be’ used in the turns are also typically stative and describe states of affairs, such as the Finnish tarvita,
‘need,’ (example 8.1) as well as the Estonian huvituma, ‘be interested,’
(example 8.4) and aru saama, ‘understand,’ (example 8.5). The evaluative and affective components of the clauses suggest that the turns are somewhat affectivity-attracting in nature (on affectivity and emotions, see Peräkylä &
Sorjonen 2012). On the whole, these turns tend to be generic stative descriptions of states of affairs. The turns represent the speaker’s view or understanding of a specific matter in the world, often including an implicit or explicit attitude or stance (for example, see Englebretson 2007) towards the matter.
However, regardless of the somewhat evaluative nature of the assertion turns and the intertwined epistemic and emotional aspects in them, the target turns cannot be considered prototypical assessments because there is much more to their content apart from the assessing or evaluating. It is common for the evaluative nature of the assertion turns to be more overarching and not necessarily traceable to elements such as single adjectives. Furthermore, two typical loci for initial assessments are, according to Pomerantz (ibid.), participating in social activities and reporting on something that one has experienced, and our target turns are not specifically related to these types of activities.
When looking at how the overlapped and the overlapping turns relate to one another in the fragments above, we observe that the turns to some extent look alike: the second part of the pair is a “return” of the first one. This makes assertion turns similar to greetings (and farewells; see Auer 1990), because both the initiating and the responding turn can be seen to perform the
“same” action: in assertions, both speakers assert something, and in greeting sequences they greet (in this sense, assertions are similar with assessments as well). In these action types, the responding/second turn is therefore a
“return” of the first one – a return of an assertion, a return of a greeting – which is not the case with the family of directive actions, for instance. As first turns, assertions, assessments and greetings hence invite a response that is a type of return of itself (cf., for example, Pomerantz 1984a). Yet for assertions and assessments, this is admittedly only one of the options. Assertions seem