How We Manage Social Relationships Through Answers to Questions: The Case of Interjections

ABSTRACT

In this article I examine the range of possible answers to polar questions. The focus is on contrasting varieties of interjection answers with each other and with other answer types. I introduce three new types of interjections and discuss how each type functions relative to one another and relative to other classes of answer to propose what interactional and relational work question recipients accomplish through these answer types. Specifically, I argue that although interjections, as a class, accept the questioner’s primary question agenda and design as well as the questioner’s agency over the proposition of the question—aspects of the question that other answer classes challenge—marked interjection subclasses contrast with unmarked interjections in proposing that there is a problem with regard to asking the question, answering it, or with the action agenda and agency of the proposition. Each subtype of interjection has different implications for the questioner or question recipient and can be understood as subtly managing who they are to each other.

Acknowledgment

I thank Chase Raymond and Stefan Timmermans for comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

¹ Heritage and Raymond (2012) differentiate between “affirming” and “confirming,” arguing that repetitional answers confirm, whereas a yes merely affirms. However, when declarative or tag constructions are used, even an interjection is understood as confirming because the action of the question is to request confirmation. Given the relative frequency of requests for confirmation, I use “confirm” throughout.

² A similar argument has been made with respect to Wh- questions and clausal versus phrasal answers (Fox & Thompson, 2010).

³ On the concept of marked and unmarked forms in interaction, see Sacks and Schegloff (2007[1979]), Schegloff (1996b), and Stivers (2007) .

⁴ Stivers (2011) identified interjections such as of course, absolutely, and certainly as “marked interjections.” These are all marked interjections, but here I argue that these represent only one subtype of marked interjections—the upgraded variety—and thus I rely on “upgraded” as the term for those interjections.