Beginning to Respond: Well-Prefaced Responses to Wh-Questions

Abstract

This article reports on the occurrence of well within an analytically delimited sequential environment: turn-initial position in the second pair-part position of adjacency pair sequences launched by a wh-question. We show that these well-prefaces operate as general alerts that indicate nonstraightforwardness in responding, and we compare this form of alert to others that operate in talk-in-interaction. We conclude by addressing the relationship of answering to responding, and by considering the relationship of well-prefacing to preference organization.