Tying Sequences Together with the [That’s + Wh-Clause] Format: On (Retro-)Sequential Junctures in Conversation

ABSTRACT

This article explores a sequence organizational phenomenon that results from the use of a loosely specifiable turn format (viz., That’s + wh-clause) for launching (next) sequences while at the same time connecting back to a prior turn. Using this practice creates a sequential juncture, i.e., a pivot-like nexus between one sequence and a next. In third position, such junctures serve to accomplish seamless sequential transitions from one sequence into a next by presenting the latter as locally occasioned. The practice may, however, also be deployed in second position to launch actions that have not been made relevant or provided for by the preceding action and exhibit response relevance themselves. The sequential junctures then become retro-sequential in character: They transform the projected trajectory of the sequence in progress and create interlocking sequential structures. These findings highlight that sequence is practice, while pointing to understudied interconnections between tying and sequentiality. Data are in English.

The question of “how successive turns [are] formed up to be ‘coherent’ with the prior turn (or some prior turn)” (Schegloff, 2007, p. xiv; see also, 2006, pp. 73–77) is one of the cornerstones of conversation analytic (CA) research and has considerably shaped the trajectory of its development as a discipline (see, e.g., Schegloff, 1968, 1972). For CA, the answer to this question is not (or not in the first place) to be found by looking at the topics addressed in successive turns-at-talking and the relationships that hold between them but by considering what actions participants carry out with their talk and how these actions relate to each other so as to constitute “coherent” sequences or courses of action (Schegloff, 1990, 1995, 2007, pp. 1–2; see also Heritage, 1984a, p. 139).

Prior research on sequence organization has shown (a) that actions typically establish prospective sequential relevancies (i.e., normative constraints or expectations) for next actions and (b) that participants hold each other mutually accountable for dealing with these sequential relevancies in subsequent talk (see Schegloff, 2007; Stivers, 2013). Occasionally, however, next speakers produce actions that more or less strongly disalign with the sequential relevancies established by a coparticipant’s prior talk and its action(s). And in some cases, this can transform the trajectory of the sequence in progress as projected by that prior action. As a first illustration of this phenomenon, consider Excerpt 1, taken from a telephone call between two women named Chloe and Claire. Both of them participate in a group of women who take turns at hosting joint events at which they play card games. Chloe is in the middle of complaining about an observable tendency among the hosts of the latest installments of these events to offer lavish catering and to have the attendees stop playing for its consumption. As part of that complaint, she formulates an alternative, and in her view preferable, approach to hosting and catering these events.

(1) Dessert (SBL:2:2:3:R:6, 07:53–08:14)

01  Chl:  °hh but I think–=

02       =if we just (.) BRING our sAndwich,=

03       =and thEn uhʔ

04       and (.) sOme (.) hOstess serves COffee.=

05       =and then you ↑SIT down;=

06       ='n'_Eat your SANDwich.=

07       =<<all, l> if you WANT it;>=

08       =and then about thrEe THIRty,

09       °hhh <<tense articulation> the hostess ↑JUMPS up;=

10       =and sE:rves some desSERT.>

11       (1.0)

12  Cla:  [WE:LL–]

13  Chl:  [↑RIGHT] while you're plAy:in'.

14 -> Cla:  °h well thAt's what I'M gonna dO;=

15       =i'm just going to: °hh

16       (0.6)

17  Chl:  <<h> ‘MEMb[er?>]=

18                 =[iʔ  iʔ]

19  Cla:        [<<f> i'm] [jUst ] gonna> have either

20       CHEE:Secla:ke,=

21       =uhʔ CHEE:Seca:ke,

22       =or a SUNdae:–

I will return to the details of this example later. For present purposes, suffice it to note that Claire responds to Chloe’s complaint-implicative talk (lines 01–10 and 13) with an announcement of her plans for hosting the next event (lines 14–15 and 19–22). With this announcement, which is launched from second position and exhibits response relevance itself, Claire strongly disaligns with (in fact, derails) the sequential trajectory as projected by Chloe’s preceding turn. Indeed, her response appears to alter the character of the ongoing sequence from this point forward, transforming what has so far shaped up as a nascent complaint sequence into more of an announcement sequence. Note further that the turn constructional unit (TCU) °h well thAt’s what I’M gonna dO in line 14 serves as the pivotal element in accomplishing this sequential transformation. In sequence organizational terms, it engenders what I will call a (retro-)sequential juncture: an articulated, or pivot-like, nexus between one sequence and a next.

It is such (retro-)sequential junctures and a practice used to effectuate them that this article seeks to explore. The article will proceed as follows: Following some further background (second section) and a brief outline of the data used for this study (third section), I will first carve out some central features of the practice by looking at how it is deployed to construct sequential junctures in third position (fourth section). In the fifth section, I will then illustrate how participants deploy this practice in second position to create retro-sequential junctures of the kind illustrated in Excerpt 1. The article will end by offering a summary and sketching some implications of these findings for the study of sequence structures.

Further background

One of the basic tenets of CA is that the relationship between turns/actions and their (local, sequential) context is reflexive and that communicative actions are thus doubly contextual (Heritage, 1984a, p. 242). On the one hand, the turn-by-turn organization of conversation attaches special significance to the adjacent positioning of turns (Sacks et al., 1974) and provides that “absent any provision to the contrary, any turn will be heard as addressed to the just prior, that is, the one it is next after” (Schegloff, 2006, p. 86). Consequently, adjacency as a structural relationship between turns “operates most powerfully backwards, each turn displaying its speaker’s understanding of the prior” (Schegloff, 2007, p. 16; see also Sacks et al., 1974, p. 728; Heritage, 1984a, pp. 260–264; Deppermann, 2015). At the same time, however, each and every turn also creates a relevant context for the next turn/action from a coparticipant. That is, adjacency also has a prospective dimension in that the action(s) done in a turn typically establish normatively constraining sequential relevancies or expectations for what should (and can legitimately or unproblematically) be done next. The strongest form of such a normatively constraining, prospective operation holds between the first pair-part (FPP) and the second pair-part (SPP) of an adjacency pair and is known as conditional relevance (Schegloff, 1968, p. 1083; see also, 2007, pp. 19–21). The special prospective force of FPPs in adjacency pairs is emphasized by Schegloff (2007), when he writes: “It [a first pair-part] makes relevant a limited set of possible second pair parts and thereby sets some of the terms by which a next turn will be understood [emphasis added]—as, for example, being responsive to the constraints of the first pair part or not” (p. 16).

It has been proposed, however, that conditional relevance is but a special, crystallized type of sequential implicativeness (see, e.g., Robinson, 2016, pp. 7–9; Stivers, 2013)—a term coined by Schegloff and Sacks (1973) to refer to the sequentially organized implications of an utterance for subsequent conduct more broadly, simply meaning “that an utterance projects for the sequentially following turn(s) the relevance of a determinate range of occurrences (be they utterance types, activities, speaker selections, etc.)” (p. 296, fn. 6). After a declining response to an invitation, for example, it is somewhat expectable that the inviting party will produce a next turn that deals with the declination in one way or another (e.g., accepting it, pursuing the invitation by proffering alternatives; see Couper-Kuhlen, 2012). To be sure, such sequential relevancies and expectations are slightly more contingent and certainly not as strong (or as normatively binding) as those that hold between FPPs and SPPs in adjacency pairs (so departures from them may be slightly less accountable), but they clearly matter for the organization of sequences of actions, especially beyond the two parts of an adjacency pair (see Heritage, 1984a, pp. 260–261).¹

In any case, it is an empirical fact that, even within adjacency pairs, next turns may not (or not fully) be responsive to the relevancies and constraints set up by a preceding turn (Schegloff, 2007, p. 16). Indeed, respondents have a host of practices available for disaligning with, sidestepping, or resisting the constraints established by a first-positioned action, where this typically serves to cue additional pragmatic or interactional meanings. Whether a response satisfies the design-based response preferences exhibited by a prior question, for example, may index the respondent’s stance toward (features of) the question, such as its “ask-ability” or the acceptability of its presuppositions (Fox & Thompson, 2010; Raymond, 2003). Similarly, respondents can also push back against the constraints set up by a question by responding with what Stivers and Hayashi (2010) have called “transformative answers.” These are answers that resist and retroactively adjust the terms of the question and/or transform its agenda (i.e., they answer a different question than the one that had been asked). Other practices appear to be capable of transforming the sequential trajectory as projected by the production of a first-positioned action altogether, and it is one of these practices that this article ultimately seeks to address.

The practice that forms the focus of this investigation is used to launch (next) sequences while at the same time connecting back to a prior turn, thereby engendering what I will call sequential junctures, i.e., a pivot-like nexus between one sequence and a next. Such sequential junctures are commonly constructed in third position, as a means to transition “naturally” from one sequence into a next. However, as we shall see, this practice can also be used in second position, to launch actions that have not been made relevant or provided for by the preceding first-positioned action and exhibit response relevance (i.e., “new firstness”) themselves. The sequential junctures then become retro-sequential in character and create interlocking sequential structures (see Schegloff, 2007, pp. 217–219, on retro-sequences). Inasmuch as these retro-sequential junctures emerge from respondents “launching business” from second position (a primarily responsive slot), they involve disalignment with the sequential relevancies and constraints set up by the immediately preceding turn. A closer look at the precise ways in which the focal practice effectuates such (retro-)sequential junctures² suggests that participants can mobilize (displays of) topical coherence as a resource for launching actions that may otherwise be seen to come out of left field or to be sequentially somewhat ill-fitted. In second position, this can even serve to legitimize (or camouflage) the aforementioned sequential disalignment.

Data and method

The present study draws on a large body of audio-recorded British and American English telephone calls as data. Some of the relevant excerpts come from “classic” CA corpora (e.g., SBL, Field), whereas others come from newer corpora such as the CallHome or the CallFriend corpus.³ The phenomenon was first noticed in a larger collection of 52 turn-initial [That’s + wh-clause]-formatted TCUs, a small subcollection of which formed the basis for an initial account of the practice as described here (Küttner, 2016). To further develop this account (i.e., to consolidate and, where necessary, modify or revise it), the existing subcollection was subsequently expanded with additional candidate instances of the practice. However, because the practice is not completely form-based (see the discussion in the sixth section), these additional candidates were collected opportunistically (e.g., when coming across a possible case in data sessions or during teaching preparations), rather than systematically (Hoey & Kendrick, 2018). All candidate instances have been (re-)transcribed according to the GAT 2 conventions for English (Couper-Kuhlen & Barth-Weingarten, 2011), so as to better capture relevant prosodic information, such as the placement of the main pitch accent(s) in the turns in question.⁴ Each case has then been subjected to detailed sequential analysis in order to (a) determine on sequential grounds whether it represents an instance of the target phenomenon or not (using various forms of participant orientation as a decisive criterion), and (b) to develop a fuller account of the practice. This procedure yielded a final collection of 15 instances of the practice as described here. As should become clear from the analysis, however, the overall low frequency of occurrence of the practice appears to reflect aspects of its deployment and testifies to its “exceptional character” in sequence organizational terms (Robinson, 2007).

Sequential junctures in third position

Some of the basic features of the focal practice can best be apprehended by first exploring how it is deployed not in second but in third position. Let us therefore begin by noting that the lexico-syntactic format that forms the turn constructional basis for this practice (That’s + wh-clause)⁵ can be used to launch new sequences from third position (i.e., in the sequential slot following a base adjacency pair). Consider Excerpt 2 as a first example. Here, two friends named Norman (Nor) and Joe are updating each other on the current whereabouts of mutual acquaintances. The excerpt begins with a next round of updating (note the and-preface in line 01, see Heritage & Sorjonen, 1994), initiated by Norman pondering over the workplace of a mutual friend called Akira. The target format occurs in line 07.

(2) Cathy Reid (CFEngn4175, 14:52–15:05)

01   Nor:  and did aKIra get a jOb someplAce in u::h;

02   Joe:  u::::[hm; ]

03   Nor:     [colo]RA:do?=or [sʔ]

04   Joe:                 [ c]olo↑RA:do;=

05        =yeh;=univErsity of coloRAdo.

06   Nor:  YEAH;=

07 ->      =that's where cAthy REI:D <<creaky> is:.>

08        <<p> uni[versity  of ]  [coloRAdo.>]

09   Joe:    [that's ^RIGHT;]=

10          =  [ˆYEA:H.]

11          <<p> that's ^RIGHT;>

Norman’s polar interrogative in line 01 ends in an u::h, which marks a search and invites Joe to collaboratively complete the question (and to answer it) by providing the projected place reference (Goodwin, 1987). When Joe signals problems in doing so by responding with a drawn out u::::hm himself (line 02), Norman offers the try-marked coloRA:do? = or sʔ (line 03) as a candidate answer or “best guess” (Pomerantz, 1988; see Sacks & Schegloff, 1979, on try-marking). Joe then immediately confirms Norman’s conjecture with a full repeat of the place-name he offered as a guess (line 04). His turn continuation in line 05 then uses the “now (jointly) recalled” information and reissues it as an answer to Norman’s initial query. Note, in this regard, the type-conforming yeh-token and the expanded place reference form univErsity of coloRAdo, which more accurately names Akira’s current employer and thus connects back to Norman’s query about Akira having gotten a jOb someplace. What we have then here in lines 01–05 is an adjacency pair (a question-answer sequence, with the FPP in line 01 and the SPP in line 05), which is overlaid with an incidental “search-guess-confirm” sequence in lines 01–04 whose business is “doing joint remembering” (see Schegloff, 2007, pp. 237–242, on incidental sequences).

Norman then minimally receipts Joe’s answer with an acknowledgment token (line 06) and immediately continues by latching a next TCU onto it. This next TCU consists of the focal lexico-syntactic format and delivers a noticing about another mutual acquaintance (Cathy Reid). As such, it initiates a next/new sequence and makes a response from Joe relevant next. One set of possibly relevant responses would differentially attend to the possible news-value of Norman’s noticing. Joe could, for instance, attend to Norman’s noticing much like an announcement or an informing, i.e., as having imparted news (e.g., with a news-receipt such as oh really? or is she? see Heritage, 1984b; Thompson et al., 2015). Alternatively, and as happens here, he can affirm and endorse its correctness (see lines 09–11), thereby indexing prior knowledge of this fact (Barnes, 2011; Küttner, 2016, 2018). At any rate, this shows that Norman’s noticing constitutes a new FPP and exerts response relevance.

The noticing itself trades on Norman’s realization of a presumed co-incumbency of both mentioned referents (Cathy Reid and Akira) in the class of mutual acquaintances who work at the University of Colorado (“presumed” because it ultimately turns out to have been mistaken; data not shown). That is, it proffers the “finding” that Cathy Reid and Akira are in the same place as a noticeable (Schegloff, 2007, pp. 86–87). This could arguably also have been done using other formats, such as Yeah, Cathy Reid’s there, too or Yeah, Cathy Reid is also there. The selected format that’s where cAthy REI:D ≪creaky> is:> differs from these conceivable alternatives in at least two major ways. First, it is “more announcing” in character than the other two formats, in that it foregrounds the possible news-value of Norman’s finding more strongly.⁶ Second, it enables Norman to explicitly refer back to Joe’s response in line 05 with the initial demonstrative pronoun that. This is remarkable because Norman’s next turn would be hearable as related to what immediately preceded it simply by virtue of its contiguous positioning (Sacks, 1987). So this early explicit anaphoric reference to the immediately preceding turn in what is, apart from the yeah-preface, essentially turn-initial position markedly reinforces the contiguity between these two turns. It can therefore be heard as a designed display of responsiveness that serves to present what follows as being contingent upon and as having been locally occasioned by what preceded it. In this respect, it can be observed that Norman’s noticing does not just refer back to but is in fact directly predicated onto Joe’s response in line 05, which strongly proposes that it has been incidentally occasioned by Joe’s answer to Norman’s initial query about Akira.

Now, rather than directly launching a next sequence in itself, the format can also be used as a springboard for one or more subsequent TCUs that accomplish this. This can be seen in Excerpt 3, taken from a phone call in which Susan has somewhat reluctantly delivered the bad news that she failed her driving test. Gordon had failed his own driving test earlier.

(3) Reapply (Field:SO88:1:5, 03:16–03:25)

01   Gor:  s:o you gonna reapPLY now;

02        (0.4)

03   Sus:  hm::;=I'll have to tAke it in BRI:GHton;=

04        =an' gEt to know BRI:GHton;=you kn[Ow,]

05   Gor:                         [tch] <<flat pitch> YEA::H;=

06 ->      =thAt's: what I:'M gonna dO:;=

07       =i'm gonna tAke it in NEWcAstle,=

08       =After i've had a cOuple of <<enunciated> L:[E:ssons.>> ]

09   Sus:                               [<<p> had leʔ]

10       YEAH;>

Following Gordon’s polar question as to whether she will reapply (line 01), Susan answers Gordon’s inquiry hesitantly (see the delay in line 02 as well as the initial hm:: in line 03) and nonstraightforwardly with a non-type-conforming response (Raymond, 2003), which reports factors and (pre)conditions that prevent an immediate retake (line 03–04). In third position of that sequence, Gordon first responds to her response-pursuing you knOw with a flat-pitched and drawn-out acknowledgment token (line 05) and then continues with a multi-unit turn in which he offers an announcement of his plans for a retake. Gordon’s turn as a whole therefore instantiates what Heritage (2015, pp. 98–100) has called a “my side” response. It offers a corroborative or supportive description that is lodged in the respondent’s (here, Gordon’s) epistemic or experiential domain and serves as a new point of departure for subsequent talk.⁷

The thAt’s what I:’M gonna dO: in line 06 plays a crucial role in accomplishing this outcome. With this TCU, Gordon invokes a congruence relation between what Susan has just reported and what he is planning to do (note the reference to future time in what I:’M gonna dO:), thereby issuing the claim that their plans are alike or at least resemble each other. Yet, it leaves the exact nature of the invoked congruence between their future plans momentarily un(der)specified, and therefore type-specifically prefigures an announcement of a future plan that elaborates the invoked congruency (see Goodwin, 1996).⁸ In addition, the marked primary pitch accent on I:’M foreshadows that the upcoming announcement will deal with Gordon’s plans and therefore already pre-indexes the subsequent “my side” shift. Moreover, with the initial demonstrative pronoun, this TCU ties back to the preceding response. By using (the substance of) Susan’s report as a point of departure for the subsequent announcement of his own plans, Gordon presents what follows as being contingent on, and as having been occasioned by, the preceding response. Reflexively, the response-occasionedness that is indexed by and put on display with the anaphoric demonstrative reference invokes a particular “topical fit” (viz., the putative congruence of their plans) as a local warrant for Gordon’s introduction of this somewhat self-attentive announcement then and there in the interaction (compare in this regard the effect that a more straightforward introduction of this announcement, for instance, with Yeah, I’m gonna take mine in Newcastle after I’ve had a couple of lessons, would have). Interestingly, as it turns out, their plans resemble each other only to the extent that Gordon plans to retake his driving test in another place than where he currently resides. Nevertheless, the adequacy of this comparison is not contested or challenged by Susan and thus works to accomplish the sequential transition from an other-attentive question-answer sequence to a self-attentive announcement sequence, where this is done in the service of moving out of troubles-talk. As we have seen, the target format is pivotal in creating this sequential juncture, in that it serves as a springboard for Gordon’s “my side” response. It does so by (1) (type-specifically) projecting turn continuation and securing the turn space for the subsequent announcement, (2) invoking a congruence of plans as the relevant basis for this announcement, and (3) tying back to the preceding response, which marks the projected announcement as response-occasioned and indexes its particular “fittedness” as a local warrant for its introduction.

Moving away from the thick particulars of the previous two cases, we can go on to note that participants can draw upon the affordances of the practice as an interactional resource. This is particularly evident in cases like Excerpt 4, where central features of the practice appear to be deployed in the service of launching a telling and bringing it off as having been sequentially occasioned. The excerpt follows a complaint from Maya (May) that her social life, apart from work, has deteriorated considerably, whereas her coparticipant Briar (Bri) reportedly has a lot of fun in her free time. Maya has just stated that all she does at the moment is to come home from work, then have dinner, and watch TV. In order to fully understand the development of the sequence, it is important to know that, roughly 9 minutes earlier in the call, Maya had already told Briar that a mutual acquaintance named Laury was over at her place that day and that they (along with some other guests) watched the latest episode of the TV sitcom Friends together.

(4) Friends (CFEngn5000, 11:03–11:09)

01    May:  did_you watch FRIE:NDS,

02  Bri:  u:h_YAH.

03 -> May:  °h yEah,=thA:t’s what WE did tonIght,=

04        =uh_ME:–=

05        =eh_i TOLD you that alrEady;=

06        =so i n’t want to rePEAT mysElf,

Again, the sequence begins with a polar question in line 01. This question departs from Maya’s preceding complaint but builds on the mentioning of “watching TV” in it. Upon its occurrence, this inquiry is potentially hearable as a pre-topic initiation of some sort, i.e., as checking on the epistemic preconditions for talking about the latest episode of Friends or perhaps about something potentially remarkable that happened in it (see Schegloff, 2007, pp. 37–44, 169–170). Indeed, the u:h YAH in line 02 can be seen to display Briar’s orientation to such a pre-sequence action hearing, as it delivers the preferred go-ahead response and is expectably minimal so as to allow for the projected base action to be introduced in next turn (Raymond, 2013, p. 180). However, what Maya produces next, in third position of that sequence, does not develop the proposed topic. Instead, her yeah-prefaced thA:t’s what WE did tonIght (line 03) projects a telling about an activity or event she and some unspecified others participated in. Note, in this regard, the contribution that Maya’s use of the locally subsequent pronominal reference form WE on a locally initial reference occasion makes to setting up this projection (see Schegloff, 1996). Indeed, Maya subsequently moves into the projected telling by starting to enumerate the participants in this activity/event in what is hearable as the beginning of a list (Jefferson, 1990; Selting, 2007). However, after the first list item (uh_ME:–, line 04), Maya abandons her telling (lines 05–06) by explicitly invoking the conversational norm not to retell what the other already knows (see Goodwin, 1979; Terasaki, 2004). This constitutes uncontroversial evidence that Maya used the target format as a springboard into her (now abandoned) telling.

Again, the format features a marked primary pitch accent on the subject of the wh-clause (WE), which serves to pre-index a “my side” shift, from talk about what Briar did to talk about what Maya and whoever else is included in the pronominal reference did this evening. Moreover, like in the previous cases, the anaphoric tie-back established by the initial demonstrative pronoun that is used to present the telling as putatively response-occasioned. However, it can be noted that this is really more of an interactional presentation, as the demonstrative pronoun cannot possibly refer back to Briar’s response in any strict referential sense. Instead, the reference of the pronoun is to be found in Maya’s own initial query. Although Briar’s type-conforming response can be understood to include the content of Maya’s question on sequential grounds, referentially (i.e., lexico-semantically) the demonstrative can only refer back to “watching Friends” and thus skip-connects over Briar’s response (Sacks, 1995b, p. 349). So one may wonder whether the question in line 01 was really just asked to prepare the ground for the introduction of the subsequent telling. If Maya’s question is equivocally hearable as a pre-topic initiation, then, if it gets heard that way, it makes a minimal affirmative go-ahead response relevant next and returns the floor right back to her (Sacks, 1995a, pp. 49–56). In this position, she can then launch her telling by using the target format to present it as having been response-occasioned and thus sequentially generated, which seems to be the “preferred procedure” for introducing mentionables (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973, p. 301). In any case, the target format is again used as a springboard for transitioning from one sequence (a question-answer sequence) into a next (a telling sequence).

By way of summary, we have seen that the target format can engender sequential junctures when it is used to launch or transition into next sequences in third position. In this position, the format is commonly yeah-prefaced, which can be seen to contribute to the transitional or shift-implicative character of this practice in various, context-specific ways (Jefferson, 1984b, 1993). The format itself can then either be used to initiate a next sequence directly or serve as a springboard for doing so. In the latter case, it is designed to (often type-specifically) project turn continuation, securing its speaker additional interactional space to accomplish the sequential transition. While third position is arguably a default position for (unmarked) next-sequence initiations, using the format works toward presenting these next sequences as “properly” response-occasioned. This is accomplished through the initial anaphoric demonstrative reference to the preceding response, upon which the subsequent talk is then predicated. By reinforcing the contiguity that holds between these turns anyway (Sacks, 1987), establishing this explicit referential connection is hearable as a designed display of responsiveness, as markedly proposing that what follows has been locally occasioned by what went on before. Reflexively, the format invokes a particular “(topical) fittedness” (such as co-class membership, similarity, resemblance, or congruence) between what has been addressed in the prior talk (e.g., persons, entities, states of affairs, plans, or events) and what will be addressed in the upcoming talk, where this serves as an implicit, local warrant for introducing it then and there in the interaction. In the next section, we will see how these selfsame devices can be mobilized in second position, where they can then engender retro-sequential junctures.

Retro-sequential junctures in second position

Having seen how the that’s + wh-clause format can create sequential junctures in third position and having explored some basic features of this practice, we are now in a better position to see how the same can also be done in second position. As has been pointed out, actions produced in second position generally operate under the constraints and sequential relevancies established by the preceding first-positioned action. So unlike third position, second position is not generally a place that provides for the initiation of a next sequence or for launching new business.⁹ In the following cases, speakers thus hearably and demonstrably disalign with the sequential trajectory of the sequence in progress (as projected by the first-positioned action), and the sequential junctures become retro-sequential in character. That is, these sequences are activated from second position, and they invoke a source/outcome relationship in that the first-positioned action is presented as the “triggering” source for the action(s) being done thereafter (see Schegloff, 2007, pp. 217–219). A first, very obvious case of this can be seen in Excerpt 5, which is taken from a British English phone call. Mum is going to visit Leslie soon, and Leslie’s husband is going to pick her up from a bus station. The call has dealt with the arrangements for Mum’s visit at some length.

(5) Small case (Holt:X:C:1:2:7:10, 07:46–08:01)

01   Mum:    <<all, l> bye BYE;=lOve,>

02   Les:    BYE;=

03         =((early)) ↑↑dOn’t BRI:NG too much.

04         (0.2)

05 -> Mum:    <<all, h> ↑^OH;=

06 ->       =thAt’s what i was gonna TELL you.>=

07         =i’m: (0.3) <<h> i’m ↑NOT bringing an

08         (.)

09         i’m not brIngin’ any big jUmp (.) big CA:Rdigans,>

10         (0.2)

11   Les:    NO:;=

12         =y[ou can]

13   Mum:     [or a  ] DRESSing gO::wn,=

14         =i uʔ (0.4) [ i ] uhʔ (0.3) [     i     ]

15   Les:           [yeh]

16  (Les:)                 [<<h, ff> y]ou can ↑bOrrow MI:NE.>

17   Mum:    yEah;=i thOught i’d brIng (in) the SMA:LL case;

18   Les:    YES;=

19         =DO:.

The excerpt starts with an exchange of terminal items (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973) in lines 01–02, which essentially closes the conversation. Leslie then uses an abrupt join (Local & Walker, 2004), a practice to construct a multi-unit, multi-action turn, to move out of closing and append another request to this terminal exchange (↑↑dOn’t BRI:NG too much, line 03). Deferred action requests like this one generally make some form of (commitment to) compliance with the requested future action or rejection/noncompliance relevant next actions (Thompson et al., 2015, p. 222). By virtue of its placement after the terminal exchange (i.e., by reference to the overall structural organization of conversation; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973, pp. 319–322) as well as its imperative formatting, which indexes both Leslie’s stance of being fully entitled to make the request (recall that her husband is going to pick Mum up) and her expectation of no contingencies that could obstruct compliance with it (Curl & Drew, 2008), this request can be heard to preferably make more or less minimal compliance relevant next (e.g., Ok, I won’t; see Thompson et al., 2015, pp. 238–242). Yet Mum responds with a prosodically marked change-of-state token ↑^OH (Heritage, 1984b; Local, 1996) and the meta-pragmatic claim thAt’s what i was gonna TELL you (lines 05–06). With both of these elements, Mum conveys that Leslie’s request has reminded her of a hitherto unmentioned (but claimed to have been “scheduled”) mentionable (note the reference to “future time in the past” in thAt’s what i was gonna TELL you, see Quirk et al., 1985, p. 218). Moreover, her meta-pragmatic claim serves to initiate a new course of action by type-specifically prefiguring an upcoming informing or announcement (Schegloff, 2007, pp. 28–29). By tying back to Leslie’s request with the demonstrative pronoun and by invoking a congruence relation between the substance of the request and what Mum was going to tell her, Mum indexes that her projected continuation will report something that has to do with how much luggage (or rather how many things) she will bring. In other words, she is marking the projected announcement or informing from the outset as being topically relevant to Leslie’s request. Interestingly, Mum’s subsequent TCUs then exclusively report things that she does not plan to bring along (lines 07, 09, 13). So with her informing, Mum may be seen to seek Leslie’s reassurance that her plans are in line with the request not to bring too much. This constitutes a possible interactional motivation for Mum to disalign with the sequential trajectory projected by the request in the first place, rather than simply minimally granting it. Indeed, when Mum eventually announces her plan (i thOught i’d brIng (in) the SMA:LL case, line 17), Leslie provides just such reassurance with her YES; = DO: (lines 18–19).

Admittedly, this case is exceptional in that Mum uses the [That’s + wh-clause]-formatted TCU to deliver an explicit meta-pragmatic (pre-)announcement of her retro-sequential initiation of an informing sequence. Typically, all of this is accomplished much more implicitly, by drawing on some of the turn constructional resources laid out in the preceding section. To see this, let us return to the excerpt shown in the introduction of this article. Before doing so, however, providing further context is in order. The cited fragment comes from an extended spate of talk in which Chloe and Claire are co-complaining about a recent tendency among the hosts of their bridge gatherings to serve big amounts of food, or even entire meals, on these occasions; a hosting practice that gradually seems to be taking on a life of its own and is in danger of “getting out of hand again” (Chloe’s words). Just prior to the cited fragment, Chloe and Claire have unanimously criticized the previous host (Teresa) for having served too much food at the last event. However, they have offered slightly different accounts for their disapproval of Teresa’s food supply: Chloe disapproves of it for interrupting the game and (quite literally) “eating away” at their playing time, which is why the bridge group as a whole previously decided to “quit the luncheon bit” (Chloe’s words again). By contrast, Claire, apparently with an eye to her turn in hosting one of the next events, has invoked practical reasons for her disinclination to serve a meal that is comparable to the one Teresa provided. Among other things, she has accounted for her disinclination to serve so much food by stating that, unlike Teresa and other members of the group, she does not have a big family to use the potential leftovers with, so that they would “get stale” (her description). However, despite having good practical reasons for serving a small dessert rather than a big meal, Claire’s concerns for potentially being perceived by other members of the group as not being able to live up to the hosting standards established by the recent hosts have transpired throughout the preceding complaints. With this in mind, let us return to a slightly longer version of the sequence we are interested in. The sequence begins with an extended turn from Chloe that is formatted as the preliminary component of an if-then compound clause format (Lerner, 1991, 1996) and in which she lists a number of actions that constitute what she would consider a more appropriate form of hosting (Jefferson, 1990).

(6) Dessert (SBL:2:2:3:R:6, 07:53–08:21)

01   Chl: °hh but I think–=

02      =if we just (.) BRING our sAndwich,=

03      =and thEn uhʔ

04      and (.) sOme (.) hOstess serves COffee.=

05      =and then you ↑SIT down;=

06      ='n'_Eat your SANDwich.=

07      =<<all, l> if you WANT it;>=

08      =and then about thrEe THIRty,

09      °hhh <<tense articulation> the hostess ↑JUMPS up;=

10      =and sE:rves some desSERT.>

11      (1.0)

12   Cla: [WE:LL–]

13   Chl: [↑RIGHT] while you're plAy:in'.

14 -> Cla: °h well thAt's what I'M gonna dO;=

15      =i'm just going to: °hh (0.6)

16   Chl: <<h> 'MEMb[er?>]=

17                 =  [iʔ  iʔ]

18   Cla:        [<<f> i'm] [jUst ] gonna> have either

19      CHEE:Secla:ke,=

20      =uhʔ CHEE:Seca:ke,

21      =or a SUNdae:–

22      =[<<l> or>]

23   Chl: =[   ↑thA]t's [↓IT.]

24   Cla:           [ °h]h YEA[H;]

25   Chl:                  [m_]HM,=

26      =and then (.) Eat while we're PLAYing.

27   Cla: °h[hh       ]

28   Chl:   [and then we'll] (.) <<all> we'll be Able to play> the

29      Ei:ght_u:h (1.0) uh teʔ DEA:LS.

Within the larger activity of complaining and in light of what went on before, this conditionally framed description of a much more low-keyed form of catering is clearly hearable as proposing a favorable alternative. Although Chloe doesn’t go on to produce the continuation the if-then format had projected, the upshot that following through with her proposal would have beneficial consequences for their playing time is highly projectable at this point. Prosodically, her turn is also designed as possibly complete at this point with a final pitch movement falling to low. Moreover, the last items on her list are done with prosodic cues that signal heightened emotive involvement on Chloe’s part (Selting, 1994). All of these features suggest that Chloe’s turn is possibly complete and ripe for a response at line 11. As a complaint-embedded proposal, her turn projects some sort of (dis)affiliative response, with some form of agreement or endorsement being the preferred option (Drew, 1998; Schegloff, 1988, p. 122). This is noticeably absent during the remarkably long silence of one second in line 11 (Jefferson, 1988), after which Chloe pursues a response by recompleting her turn with an incremental addition concerning the temporal organization of the proposed actions ([↑RIGHT] while you’re plAy:in’, line 13; Pomerantz, 1984). This increment overlaps with Claire’s turn-initial WE:LL– (line 12), which she—remarkably—redoes as a preface to her response in line 14.¹⁰

Rather than furnishing the sequentially relevant next action, the TCU in line 14 (well thAt’s what I’M gonna dO) instantiates a “my side” shift and serves Claire as a springboard for launching an extended announcement of what she plans to serve during her turn at hosting (the parallels to Gordon’s use of the very same format for launching an announcement of his plans regarding the retake of his driving test in Excerpt 3should be readily transparent). With the introduction of this self-attentive announcement, Claire virtually disattends Chloe’s complaint (Mandelbaum, 1990/1991) and strongly disaligns as a complaint recipient. Of course, there is a remotely complaint-affiliative side to Claire’s announcement, in that the announcement the TCU in line 14 prefigures is claimed to be congruent (or at least compatible) with Chloe’s complaint-embedded proposal (this is again accomplished by tying the pre-announcing TCU back to the proposal with the demonstrative pronoun that). Nevertheless, the introduction of this announcement, which exhibits response relevance itself, appears to derail the sequential trajectory as projected by Chloe’s prior turn. It transforms the character of the sequence in progress from a nascent complaint sequence into more of an announcement sequence, thereby creating a retro-sequential juncture. And Chloe treats it that way. When Claire encounters minor trouble in unpacking and formulating her announcement (embodied by the sound stretch, the inbreath, and the 0.6 seconds of a pause in line 15), Chloe attempts to resume her complaint, arguably seeking to exemplify the better times back in the day with <<h> ‘MEMber?≥iʔ iʔ (lines 16–17).¹¹ At this point, however, Claire treats this as an illegitimate incoming by continuing her announcement in higher volume (French & Local, 1983), suggesting that she takes herself to be the legitimate turn holder at this point. After having successfully defended the turn, Claire continues her announcement with a list of possible desserts she has considered as appropriate servings for her turn at hosting (lines 18–21).

Again, the question is “why that now [emphasis added]” (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973, p. 299). Given Claire’s aforementioned concerns for potentially being perceived by other members of the group as not being able to live up to the hosting standards established by the previous hosts, her announcement as a whole may be seen to be produced specifically to seek reassurance from Chloe that what she (Claire) plans to serve is in fact sufficient. As part of a larger interactional project of seeking reassurance for her hosting plans, this announcement may well be seen to have been on her “agenda” as an unmentioned mentionable (Levinson, 2013; Schegloff, 2007, pp. 244–248). Moreover, as Schegloff and Sacks (1973) have noted:

[a] further feature of the organization of topic talk seems to involve “fitting” as a preferred procedure. That is, it appears that a preferred way of getting mentionables mentioned is to employ the resources of the local organization of utterances in the course of the conversation. That involves holding off the mention of a mentionable until it can occur “naturally,” that is, until it can be fitted to another conversationalist’s prior utterance, allowing [t]his utterance to serve as a sufficient source for the mentioning of a mentionable. (p. 301)

In this light, Chloe’s complaint-embedded proposal, and especially her mentioning of desSERT in line 10, can in retrospect be seen to have provided for the occasioned introduction of Claire’s reassurance-seeking announcement of her plans (Adato, 1980; Sacks, 1995a, pp. 535–540, 1995b, p. 566). That is, Claire finds a basis therein for offering her plans for reassurance in a topically fitted way by claiming that they are compatible with Chloe’s proposal. This constitutes a possible interactional motivation as well as a local warrant for Claire to introduce her announcement then and there, which in a sense necessitates the formation of a retro-sequential juncture, since she was momentarily in the position of being a complaint recipient. Interestingly, Chloe treats Claire’s announcement as being implicated in seeking reassurance. She cuts Claire’s “dessert list” short by affirming her possible choices as being maximally sufficient with ↑thAt’s ↓IT (line 23) after two alternatives have been mentioned, in effect preventing the mentioning of a possible third or fourth option (note the overlap of Chloe’s affirmation with the <<l> or> that follows Claire’s second list item or a SUNdae:–, whose prosodic design does not provide for hearing this as a last item on her list; see Selting, 2007). Chloe then returns to her earlier proposal by adding and then (.) Eat while we’re PLAYing (line 26), which is hearable as both responsive to Claire’s announcement (through the additive and then) as well as resuming her earlier proposal by skip-connecting back to the incrementally added temporal specification in line 13 (through the re-use of while … PLAYing). Moreover, she then continues with an explication of the hitherto unstated beneficial consequence of following through with her proposal (lines 28–29). With this resumption, Chloe treats Claire’s announcement as having derailed the sequential trajectory that was projected by Chloe’s complaint-embedded proposal in lines 01–10. So this treatment indirectly testifies to Chloe’s orientation toward the fact that Claire’s turn (accountably) disaligned with this projected sequential trajectory.

Even clearer participant orientation toward the sequentially disaligning features of the practice can be gathered from Excerpt 7. Here, Debbie and Sarah are talking about Debbie’s current job situation. Kelly, Manpower, and Protocol are temporary employment agencies.

(7) Linda (CFEngn6239, 27:09–27:30)

01  Sar:  wha:t's: your A:gency;

02       (0.5)

03  Deb:  KElly.

04  Sar:  <<creaky> KElly.>

05       (0.3)

06  Sar:  °h i guess ↑kElly and mA:npower have <<len> jus' like [gO:ne ]

07  Deb:                                [YEA:H;]

08  Sar:  [!^N:U:TS!;>  ]

09  Deb:  [kElly and mAnpo]wer are theʔ

10       well ↑I don't (.) go to mA:npower;=

11       =but (.) uhʔ thIs (0.3) this cOmpany Uses kelly and mAnpower;=

12       =°hh i have anOther:^ʔ (.) ^ʔo:ne (.) °hh called_u:hm (0.5)

13       ((click)) (0.5)

14 -> Sar:  °h thAt's how linda got HER jo:b in

15 ->     [     puerto rIco;     ]

16  Deb:  [<<tense articulation> PROtoc]o::l;>=

17       =and then i have aNOther <<compressed> One->=

18       =<<h> well SEE,=

19       =↑I could tEmp to PE:RM;>=

Following a clarification of which agencies Debbie herself uses, as compared to the ones the company she is currently working for uses (lines 10–11), Debbie begins an informing turn about her using yet another agency (°hh i have anOther:^ʔ (.) ^ʔo:ne (.) °hh called_u:hm, line 12). The tremendous amount of perturbations and hitches in her production of this informing suggests that she has trouble in retrieving the name of the agency. After roughly one second of silence, interrupted only by a dental click sound from Debbie, Sarah eventually launches a turn herself (lines 14–15). The TCU she uses to launch her turn putatively builds on Debbie’s prior turn and implements an informing about a mutual acquaintance named Linda (note the marked pitch accent on the possessive pronoun HER in this TCU, which pre-indexes a shift to talk about matters pertaining to this third party). Inasmuch as the relevant connection (similarity, equivalence, etc.) that Sarah invokes as a local warrant for her initiation of an informing sequence at this point remains somewhat opaque upon the completion of this first unit, it can be seen to project an elaborative telling that specifies this further.¹²

In any case, since Debbie’s dental click indexes her continued search for the name of the agency (Wright, 2005, pp. 176–228), Sarah rather strongly disaligns with the projected trajectory of the sequence with this move. That is, in light of Debbie’s index of a continued word search, Sarah essentially intrudes into Debbie’s turn space.¹³ As it happens, Debbie is ultimately successful in retrieving the name of her third agency before Sarah’s first TCU has come to possible completion. By providing it as a seamless continuation of her preceding talk and by outlasting Sarah in the resultant overlap with the sound stretch on the final unstressed syllable in PROtoco::l (line 16), Debbie treats Sarah’s incoming as an illegitimate intrusion into her turn space. In addition, the tense articulatory setting with which Debbie produces this continuation may be seen to index at least slight annoyance at Sarah’s attempt at hijacking her turn and shifting the current topic and activity. Moreover, Debbie then overrides Sarah’s attempt at constructing a retro-sequential juncture completely by sequentially deleting it (Jefferson, 1972, p. 319) and continuing with her line of talk in lines 17–19. All of this provides clear evidence for participants’ orientation to the transformative potential of this practice in sequence organizational terms.

Summary and conclusions

If we return to the question with which the article began, the question of “how successive turns [are] formed up to be ‘coherent’ with the prior turn (or some prior turn)” (Schegloff, 2007, p. xiv; see also, 2006, pp. 73–77), it should be readily transparent that we have been considering a practice that—inasmuch as participants use it for dealing with this problem as a practical concern—seems to be addressed to just this issue. As we have seen, the construction of a sequential juncture in third position can be implicated in transitioning from one sequence into a next. Although third position is a default position for (unmarked) next-sequence initiations, using the format considered here to engender a sequential juncture works toward presenting these next sequences as contingent on the prior and as properly response-occasioned. This is accomplished through the initial demonstrative reference that creates a referential connection to the prior talk, upon which the subsequent talk is then predicated. The particular fittedness (e.g., coclass membership, similarity, resemblance, or congruence) that is invoked in this way between what has been addressed in the prior talk and what will be addressed in the upcoming talk serves as a means to index and propose coherence across sequences. So in these cases, referential tying serves as a resource to provide for hearing separate sequences as recognizably connected.

In a way, this brings us back to Sacks’s “first take” on what may stand as a (or one) solution to the problem of what provides for the recognizable coherence of successive turns, viz., tying procedures (see Sacks, 1995a, pp. 150–159, 372–381, 535–542, 716–721, 1995b, pp. 554–560, passim). Clearly, Sacks’s interest in formal tying procedures dwindled, the more he began to see that and how the sequential organization of talk, and especially the sequential positioning of utterances relative to each other, furnishes a major resource for understanding how successive turns relate to each other and perhaps a more important one than referential or other linguistic connections between them. Nevertheless, tying procedures and sequential positioning, or sequence structure, may well complement each other in rendering spates of talk recognizably coherent (and thus intelligible). For example, when larger, complex activities are constructed out of several sequences, yielding a sequence of sequences, formal tying procedures can be useful in marking whether a next sequence is still supposed to be understood as being part of that larger activity or not (e.g., Heritage & Sorjonen, 1994; see also Schegloff, 2007, pp. 207–213, on action-type sequence series that are often recognizable as such through the use of repetitions, format tying, or other connective means). Inasmuch as the practice considered here can be used in third position to transition from one sequence into a next, where this is involves a designed invocation of the response-occasionedness of that next (i.e., transitioned-to) sequence, and thus markedly indexes and proposes coherence across sequences, it illustrates just that complementary interplay between sequential positioning and tying procedures (and by extension perhaps also between topicality and sequentiality more generally; see Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 2018, pp. 312–314).

This interplay becomes even more important when the practice is used in second position. Just as there are practices for reducing the responsiveness of second-positioned actions (Clayman, 2013; Heritage, 2002), there appear to be techniques for increasing their responsiveness to the prior or at least for putting it on display (Clayman, 2001). Establishing an early anaphoric reference to the immediately preceding turn, where this markedly reinforces the relationship that holds between these turns by virtue of their contiguous positioning (Sacks, 1987), can be considered such a technique (Küttner, 2016; Clayman, 2001, pp. 410–411). With the practice considered here, the designed display of responsiveness that is achieved with these tying techniques is used to propose a relevant topical connection between the first- and the second-positioned action. And this topical connection serves the speaker of the second-positioned action as an implicit local warrant for sidestepping and disaligning with the sequential constraints and relevancies established by the preceding first-positioned action. This device of mobilizing a surface display of responsiveness to legitimize (or camouflage) maneuvers that essentially undercut or sidestep the sequential relevancies of the preceding action is well known from the context of broadcasted news interviews (Clayman, 1993, 2001), where interviewees can sometimes be shown to use practices that display responsiveness on the linguistic surface, such as word repeats and anaphoric pronouns, subversively to make it look as if they are talking to the interviewer’s question when in fact they depart from, evade, or sidestep its agenda (see especially Clayman, 2001, pp. 425–428).

These observations also resonate with Sacks’s more general proposal that recognizably talking to a topic, where this is displayed in speakers’ use of tying techniques, can provide hearers with an answer to the pervasive “why that now” question. Sacks argues that, insofar as whatever a speaker has said can be seen (by recipients) to have been placed topically (i.e., with an orientation to the topic at hand), this automatically answers the question “how come this has been said now?”; and this may render the specifics of what that is quite irrelevant (see Sacks, 1995a, pp. 538–542). The practice considered here rests on just this kind of operation of mobilizing topical coherence to legitimize, compensate for, and possibly mask a lack of sequential coherence. For, viewed sequentially, the practice is used to activate and launch a sequence from second position that has not been provided for by the prior first-positioned action. Since this transforms the sequential trajectory of the sequence in progress as projected by that first-positioned action, the sequential junctures it engenders become retro-sequential in character and create interlocking sequential structures (Schegloff, 2007, pp. 217–219; see also Turner, 1976, pp. 244–245).

Arguably, it is precisely these features that distinguish the practice considered here from other turn constructional practices that could be employed to a similar effect (i.e., to move into a new sequence from a primarily responsive sequential slot). One alternative practice that comes to mind is that of using an abrupt join to construct a multi-unit, multi-action turn (Local & Walker, 2004). This practice would enable a speaker to conjoin two TCUs in a responsive sequential slot, without allowing an intervening transition-relevance place (TRP) to occur. The pre-join talk could then be used to respond to the prior turn’s action, whereas the post-join talk could then be used to launch the new business. However, the virtue of the practice considered here is that it blends the jobs of “marking responsiveness” and “launching something new” by enabling its speaker to predicate whatever is being launched directly onto the prior turn and to thereby mark responsiveness. Because these two jobs would be distributed across two TCUs in the speaker’s turn when using an abrupt join, it is conceivable that such transitions would be more disjunctive in character and potentially come off as brushing off the coparticipant’s prior talk and its action.

Another crucial feature of using the practice in second position (more so than in third position) appears to be that the [That’s + wh-clause] formatted TCU is locally recognizable as projecting turn continuation. (In those cases, the format is used to initiate the sequential transformation, rather than to fully effectuate it, to create the interactional space that is required to get out from under the sequential relevancies established by the prior turn.) As we have seen, a broad array of turn constructional resources and contextually specific devices may be deployed to accomplish this. Apart from the rather rare case in which the format is used to make explicit meta-pragmatic announcements to this end (e.g., thAt’s what i was gonna TELL you), we recurrently find marked primary pitch accents that pre-index referential (especially “my side”) shifts in conjunction with highly indexical and locally indeterminate formulations of the invoked congruency or similarity (that’s what I’M gonna dO:, thAt’s how linda got HER jo:b in puerto rIco).

Yet it is important to realize that the [That’s + wh-clause] format may be used in other ways, even if it exhibits some of the abovementioned formal features. It may, for example, be used to do agreement but nothing beyond that (e.g., that’s what WE thought). So we are not dealing with a form-based practice (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 2018, p. 216). Consequently, not every instance of the format is an instance of the practice described here. The format merely serves as the turn constructional basis for the practice and may thus only be used to identify candidate instances of the practice. The practice itself, however, resists further formal specification. On the one hand, this has to do with the fact that the accomplishment of the projection of turn continuation is a very local and highly context-sensitive affair. Moreover, as we have seen, the practice itself does not appear to be action-type specific. That is, it can be used in a broad variety of action environments (e.g., after requests, after complaint-embedded proposals, after informings) to whose local particulars it is then adapted in highly context-sensitive ways. While some recurrent turn-design features can be identified, none of these appear to be obligatory. In a way, then, the format serves as a context-free turn constructional resource that is context-sensitively adapted when deployed as the practice. Conversely, there appear to be other practices that can yield very similar sequence structures. A very obvious case in point are counters (Schegloff, 2007, pp. 16–19), which also transform the sequential trajectory projected by a first-positioned action but do so in a very specific way, by reversing the direction of the sequence and its constraint (rather than by altering its action trajectory). To date, very little is known about such practices and much remains to be explored about the sequence structures they may yield.

In this regard, grant me a final observation that will allow me to end on a much more general note. As Excerpt 7 has shown, attempts at constructing retro-sequential junctures can be actively resisted (e.g., if they are recognizable as such and/or inappropriately timed). If they are successful, however, the sequential transformations they engender tend to be rather short-lived. In the examples considered, it could be seen that coparticipants try to figure out what the talk that was done in place of the sequentially relevant next action is occupied with. So they try to work out the purpose (the “why that now”) of the retro-sequential juncture and the associated sequential disalignment (Pomerantz, 2017; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973). In Excerpts 5 and 6, a basis for the speakers’ disalignment with the sequential relevancies of the preceding talk can be found in their seeking reassurance for the acceptability of their plans (of what to bring along for a visit, of what catering to provide during one’s turn in hosting a next installment of a regular event). Once this issue has been identified and dealt with, the previously projected but subsequently derailed course of action is quickly resumed (closing the conversation in Excerpt 5 (data not shown), forwarding a complaint-embedded proposal in Excerpt 6). In this sense, participants treat these retro-sequential junctures as accountable phenomena, as instantiating noticeable departures from the “expectably normal” trajectory of the sequence in progress and as doing something other than what would have been sequentially relevant next.

Participants’ treatment of these retro-sequential junctures as accountable departures points yet again to the normativity that undergirds the organization of sequence structures. At the same time, however, the very availability of a practice that engenders them highlights the fact that sequence is practice (Schegloff, 2007, pp. 231–250). It must be remembered that the sequence structures CA describes are not immutable, transcendental forms, completely devoid of human agency, which simply happen to materialize in miraculous, instantaneous acts of interactional incarnation. Inasmuch as they reflect members’ normative expectations about how the doing of some action routinely brings about, engenders, or even conditions the doing of some next action (or a range of possible next actions), they do provide a relatively stable and trans-situational framework for the accomplishment and intelligibility of concerted social action and furnish members a resource for making sense of each other’s conduct. Still, they have to be talked into existence on any particular occasion, and this necessarily involves human agency (Clayman, 2013; Enfield, 2011, 2013). The fact that the practice considered here can be used to transform the projected sequential trajectory of a sequence in progress, enabling participants to proactively manage the normativities that undergird conversational structure, both urges and reminds us to analytically view sequence as practice and to always treat concrete, observable sequence structures—even “simple” adjacency pairs—as fundamentally practical and interactional accomplishments. Our job remains to study just how they are accomplished.

Notes

¹ Moreover, Stivers and Rossano (2010) have argued that, even in first position, some action types exhibit less response relevance than others and that practices of turn design can be used to modulate the sequential implicativeness of such actions (but see Schegloff, 2010, for a critique). All of this suggests that the force of the prospective relevancies of a turn’s action and the sequential constraints it establishes for a next can vary and that sequential implicativeness is therefore perhaps better understood as a gradual rather than a binary matter (Robinson, 2016, pp. 7–9). I will thus more loosely refer to actions that primarily exhibit response relevance as “first-positioned” actions and those that follow first-positioned actions and are primarily responsive in character (i.e., those that are primarily addressed to the response relevance exerted by a prior turn) as “second-positioned” actions respectively. In the understanding adopted here, first-positioned actions create a sequential slot in which a primarily responsive (i.e., second-positioned) action is relevant, due or expectable next, regardless of the degree or force of the prospective relevance established by the first-positioned action.

² From this point forward, the term (retro-)sequential junctures—with parentheses—will be used to refer to the phenomenon generically, i.e., in second and/or third position. By contrast, the term retro-sequential junctures—with parentheses—will be used to exclusively refer to instances in second position. Unless stated otherwise, the term sequential juncture—without any qualification—will refer to occurrences in third position.

³ These two corpora have been assembled by the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC) and are available online at http://talkbank.org/access/CABank/ (accessed November 22, 2018). They have been used with friendly permission from representatives of the TalkBank Project (MacWhinney, 2007).

⁴ For editorial reasons, the GAT 2 conventions for line numbering have been adjusted slightly. By and large, line numbers in this article (still) designate intonation phrases (IPs). However, whenever the verbal material in a single IP exceeded the character limit for a line, its continuation on the next line has also been given line number, so as to preserve continuous line numbering.

⁵ In the linguistic literature, this format has typically been analyzed as a kind of cleft sentence (e.g., Collins, 1991; Lambrecht, 2001) and sometimes even as a distinct cleft-type (see, e.g., Biber et al., 1999, p. 961; Calude, 2007, who refer to this format as demonstrative wh-clefts). Because this terminology implies that certain structural (or even transformational) relationships hold between this lexico-syntactic structure and others (e.g., simple declarative clauses, relative clause constructions), I will not adopt it here (see Küttner, 2016, pp. 176–182, for a discussion).

⁶ The basis for this feature could be explicated in more detail, either by drawing on concepts and insights from linguistic and discourse-pragmatic theories of information structure, such as the background-focus and the topic-comment distinction (Lambrecht, 2001), or by falling back on the systemic functional linguistic notion of theme-rheme organization in utterances (Halliday, 1967).

⁷ As Heritage (2015) points out, such “‘my side’ responses can serve as an avenue into topic shifts that take the respondent’s experience as the foundational basis for the next sequence” (p. 100). They are therefore an apt device for doing stepwise topic transition (Sacks, 1995b, p. 566). As Jefferson (1984a) has shown, accomplishing such stepwise topic transition is particularly relevant in the environment of troubles-talk. Inasmuch as the talk preceding the sequence shown in the transcript has been dealing substantially with Susan’s bad news of having failed her driving test, the cited fragment may be seen to represent such an environment. Accordingly, the sequence can also be analyzed in terms of the practices Jefferson (1984a) has identified for moving out of troubles-tellings in a stepwise fashion. Gordon’s inquiry in line 01, for example, can be seen to inquire into related but ancillary matters, as it marks a shift from talk about the events that led to the failing to talk about how to deal with the failure and how to move on from there. Similarly, the third-positioned turn instantiating the “my side” shift can be seen to solidify these ancillary matters topically and thus to act as what Jefferson (1984a) has called an ancillary stabilizer (pp. 202–203). Besides contributing converging or corroborating evidence for the analysis provided in the text, these remarks should act as a reminder that, while the focal practice is considered in very local terms here, it is embedded in a larger sequential context which provides for (the relevance of) its occurrence in the first place.

⁸ I am drawing on Goodwin’s (1996) notion of prospective indexicals (pp. 384–385) here, which, due to their local referential indeterminateness, project a subsequent continuation that elaborates their sense. The local indeterminateness of the exact nature of the congruence between Susan’s report and Gordon’s future plans that is invoked by thAt’s what I:’M gonna dO: appears to work much to this effect. Further evidence for the projective force of the TCU in line 06 can be adduced by considering the rhythmic structure of the talk in question (see Küttner, 2014).

⁹ Side and insert sequences are of course excepted from this claim (Schegloff, 1972, 2007; Jefferson, 1972). However, these sequence types hearably work to only momentarily suspend the relevance of the second pair-part, which is often produced after the side or insert sequence has come to completion. As we will see, this is different with the cases considered here, in which what is done does not suspend the production of the sequentially relevant next action but more or less replaces it.

¹⁰ The redoing of the well-preface is remarkable inasmuch as such turn-prefaces are potentially dispensable when turn-beginnings are recycled due to initial overlap (Schegloff, 2004). By recycling it, Claire can thus be seen to reflexively reinvoke the sequential environment prior to Chloe’s incremental addition as the relevant context for her upcoming turn (Schegloff, 2004, pp. 141–143). The well-preface itself can be seen (a) to reindex that her upcoming turn is going to disalign with the sequential trajectory projected by Chloe’s complaint-embedded proposal, (b) to index an upcoming multi-unit turn, and/or (c) to mark that the upcoming response will privilege her own perspective on the matter at hand (Heritage, 2015).

¹¹ This resurfaces a bit later in the conversation, when Chloe redoes this recollection appeal to describe how focused on playing everyone was when it was her turn at hosting.

¹² In absence of the projected elaborative telling, whether Linda used Kelly or Manpower or whether she used none of them and the basis for Sarah’s claim is just the general fact that Linda also used an agency to get her job in Puerto Rico, remains unclear.

¹³ Interestingly, Sarah’s intrusion into Debbie’s turn space is morally ambiguous in this environment. That is, it may be characterized benevolently (e.g., as an attempt to help Debbie get out of the trouble of an up to now unsuccessful word search and to restore sequential progressivity; see Heritage, 2007), but it may also be characterized in more Machiavellian terms (e.g., as an attempt at hijacking Debbie’s turn to shift the topic back to her recent trip to Puerto Rico, which she had been broaching as a topic on a number of earlier occasions in this conversation already). On this account, Debbie’s word search creates a context in which this topic can subtly be reintroduced, much like the proverbial “open door that tempts the saint.”