Beyond Answering: Repeat-Prefaced Responses in Conversation

Abstract

The article presents a conversation analytic investigation of one technique for responding to questions in naturally occurring social interactions: repeating the question verbatim in part or as a whole before providing a required response. A close examination of production features of repeat prefacing in Russian demonstrates that it is used by conversationalists to resist agendas and presuppositions generated by questions and other sequence initiating actions. The study shows that some repeat prefaces characterize questions as problematic by contesting or outright rejecting its presuppositions or implications. Depending on how precisely repeat prefaces are articulated, they may also display the speaker's difficulty in retrieving requested information. The study extends our understanding of devices conversationalists can deploy to resist, sidestep, or curtail the constraints imposed by questioners’ interactional agendas, thereby providing an insight into how communicative goals are discerned, responded to, and negotiated in social interaction.

Keywords:

• Questions and Answers
• Conversation Analysis
• Russian Language
• Intonation

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jeffrey Robinson and Jenny Mandelbaum for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Notes

1. First pair part informings (such as, announcements, or tellings) were excluded from the investigation as they implicate different kinds of constraints on the responsive actions, some of which are prototypically accomplished by questioning repeats or prorepeats that demonstrate “ritualized disbelief,” “surprise,” or “newsworthiness” of the prior talk (Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 2006). Additionally, so far I have been unable to find nonquestioning repeats after first position informings in my data set.

2. This investigation is limited to Russian, but preliminary work suggests that repeat prefacing may operate somewhat similarly in English (and perhaps other languages).

3. Russian transcription conventions are described in Bolden (2008).

4. This software can be accessed at www.praat.org. For space considerations, pitch contour graphs are not included but are available at www.scils.rutgers.edu/directory/gbolden/index.html

5. This is apparently different from English repeat prefaced responses. According to Schegloff (1997), English repeat prefaced responses may be produced with rising intonation and yet still not be treated as repair. I haven't found any such instances in Russian.

6. In the transcription conventions used here, a comma and a question mark are placed after the syllable carrying the distinct intonation contour that will be actualized at the unit boundary. A slash (/) marks the unit boundary. When not preceded by other intonation marks, the slash shows default, somewhat falling pitch contour. A period followed by a slash (./) indicates a final pitch fall that is larger than the default one. For more information on transcription conventions, see Bolden (2008).

7. Given the silence at line 4, an argument might be made that Misha's “why” (line 3) was designed as a complete turn rather than a preface. However, the repeat does not provide a conditionally relevant response to Natasha's action (as either a request for an explanation or as a complaint), and given its articulation, does not invite further talk from the recipient.

8. On some occasions, the status of the repeat preface as “marking a problem with the question” versus “marking information search” changes on a moment-by-moment basis as the turn unfolds. In other words, some repeats are, from the outset, hearable as initiating a search, whereas others may initially sound very similar to the repeat prefaces that problematize the first pair part. However, the latter may be immediately followed by other search indicators (uhms, overt search formulations, etc.). So, what is initially presented as a disaligning response may a moment later be recharacterized as a search. Such cases highlight the flexibility of this practice.

9. This does not seem to be the case for other languages (such as English or Mandarin) where repeat-formatted repair is used for a variety of different interactional jobs (see, e.g., Schegloff, 1997; Wu, 2006). The difference might be attributable to a wider usage of repeat prefacing in Russian.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Galina B. Bolden

Galina B. Bolden (PhD, University of California-Los Angeles) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication, Rutgers University. Her research focuses on studying everyday talk-in-interaction in English and Russian languages, both in ordinary and institutional settings