Interactional Linguistics - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2021

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.

This paper demonstrates how the tools of Interactional Linguistics can be applied to the study of change in language use. It examines the particle OKAY as used in everyday American English interaction at two different points in time, the 1960s and the 1990s/early 2000s. The focus is on the remarkable increase of OKAY as a response in epistemically driven sequences. Three uses of epistemic OKAY are identified in the newer data, one of which is unattested in the older data: OKAY in response to information that has no implications for the recipient’s agenda or expressed beliefs. This novel use of OKAY appears in the newer data where OH would have occurred earlier, although OH is still attested with displays of affect such as surprise and empathy. The study concludes by arguing for an examination of ‘possibility spaces’, the set of options for filling a given sequential slot in conversational structure, at different points in time as a means for identifying changes in language use.

Anacrustic Coordination (AC) is a type of biclausal conjunction such that an initial clause or phrase sets up a state of affairs and is followed by and and a strongly focused second clause, for example three years it’s been sitting here and I haven’t done it. AC figures in a number of kinds of interaction. One is the topic/comment conditional, as in call it up and there’s something that actually says your number. It is a possibility for enhancing certain illocutionary acts such as threats and warnings: I’m gonna take that and I’m gonna dig it into you. It is a basis for syntactic mirativity, the coding of surprise and unexpectedness (DeLancey 1997): you turn your back and there’s somebody moving in. AC raises questions about the nature of constructions and of Construction Grammar.

Interactional linguists are interested in ways in which communicative resources emerge from interactional practice. This paper defines a place for the study of gesture within interactional linguistics, conceived as ‘linguistics of time’ (Hopper, 2015). It shows how hand gestures of a certain kind – conceptual gestures – emerge from ‘hands-on’ instrumental actions, are repeated and habitualized, and are taken to other communicative contexts where they enable displaced reference and conceptual representation of experiences.

The data for this study is a video-recording of one work-day of an auto-shop owner (Streeck, 2017). The corpus includes auto-repair sequences in which he spontaneously improvises new gestures in response to situated communication needs, and subsequent narrative sequences during which he re-enacts them as he explains his prior actions. He also makes numerous ‘pre-fabricated’ gestures, gestures that circulate in the society at large and that are acquired by copying other conversationalists. They are ready-made manual concepts. The paper explains the life-cycle of conceptual gestures from spontaneous invention to social sedimentation and thereby sheds light on the ongoing emergence of symbolic forms in corporeal practice and intercorporeal communication.

The action of proposing has been studied from various perspectives in research on talk-in-interaction, both in mundane as well as in institutional talk. Aiming to exemplify Interactional Linguistics as a drawing together of insights from Linguistics and Conversation Analysis, we explore the grammar of proposals and the stances displayed by participants in making proposals in the context of joint activities, where a future or hypothetical activity is being put forth as something the speaker and recipient(s) might do together. Close examination of interactions among American English-speaking adults reveals four recurrent grammatical formats for issuing proposals: Let’s, Why don’t we, Modal Declaratives, and Modal Interrogatives. We argue that these four formats for doing proposing within a joint activity are used in socially distinct environments, contributing to a growing understanding of the fit between entrenched linguistic patterns and the social work they have evolved to do.