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Affiliative and disaffiliative uses of you say x questions

UNIVERSITY OF AARHUS, linjs{at}hum.au.dk

Tine Larsen

UNIVERSITY OF AARHUS, tine.larsen{at}hum.au.dk

This article explores a question format consisting of `you say' plus a version of what the co-participant has said, which is used to ask for confirmation of something said in an earlier sequence. Questions using this you say x format often request not only confirmation but also accounts and can, on occasions, be taken as challenging the interactional balance, that is, be treated as disaffiliative. The article investigates the sequential, prosodic and grammatical conditions for affiliative and disaffiliative uses of you say x questions and discusses the potential institution specificity of the phenomenon. It is found that the clearly disaffiliative you say x questions are parts of dispreferred and disaligning moves, that they have `marked' prosody, that they raise problems, and that they are most often prefaced by `objecting' particles. Affiliative you say x questions are aligning next sequences in environments where the focus is on information delivery. They have `unmarked' prosody and they contribute to getting information on record. You say x questions which call for accounts without being clearly disaffiliative, are also examined. Even though they often raise problematic issues, they are not sequentially disaligning and have less `marked' prosody than the disaffiliative cases.

Key Words: affiliation • alignment • conversation analysis • Danish • declarative questions • questions

Discourse Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, 113-133 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1461445607085593


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