Subversive Completions: Turn-Taking Resources for Commandeering the Recipient’s Action in Progress

ABSTRACT

This article explores the practice of “subversive completions,” whereby one speaker produces a grammatically fitted completion of another speaker’s unfolding turn so as to subvert the action of the unfolding turn and the ongoing sequence. We show that subversive completions may derail or exaggerate the action in progress, typically for comedic or teasing effect. We also introduce three related turn-taking practices that can be used to accomplish subversion and discuss the implications of these practices for our understanding of intersubjectivity. Data are in American English, British English, and Russian.

Notes

¹ Anticipatory completions have been documented in a variety of languages (Hayashi, 1999, 2003a, 2003b; Helasvuo, 2004; Iwasaki, 2011, 2013; Kim, 1999; Lerner & Takagi, 1999; Szczepek, 2000a, 2000b) and contexts (Bloch, 2011; Bolden, 2003; Koshik, 2002; Reddington & Waring, 2015).

² For a discussion of embodied and material resources in the production of collaborative completions, see Bolden (2003).

³ We are grateful to one of the reviewers for this observation.

⁴ Given the quiet production of the last “ºpatom” (line 5), Luba might also be heard as abandoning her turn with a trail-off.