Abstract
AbstractThis study explores fuzzy boundaries, or weak cesuras, in the particle combination OH + OKAY as used in informing sequences in ordinary English talk-in-interaction. The focus is on the third position in such sequences, where OH + OKAY responds to information that has been solicited by the speaker in a prior turn. Based on a collection of approximately 45 instances of OH + OKAY in recent American English telephone and face-to-face interactions, this study adopts the methodology of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics to examine the prosody and phonetics of OH + OKAY as a feature of turn design. It asks: (i) when does the speaker use a combination of OH and OKAY in the third position rather than a simple OH or OKAY? and (ii) to what extent does the prosodic–phonetic delivery of OH + OKAY contribute to an interpretation of what the turn is doing? The study finds that (i) OH + OKAY is used when responding to a solicited informing that not only supplies information but also accomplishes another action with consequences for the recipient and (ii) if OH + OKAY is delivered with a strong cesura between its parts, its actions are distributed in separate turn-constructional units, creating a multi-unit turn that proposes sequence closure. If the cesura in OH + OKAY is weak, the component parts are fused into a compound particle that can preface more talk by the same speaker. Weak boundaries between OH and OKAY can be exploited by participants for the purposes of turn construction and epistemic positioning.
Highlights
In his seminal volume on sequence organization in conversation, Schegloff (2007) describes the particles OH and OKAY as devices for minimal sequence expansion
Do single-unit informings perhaps call for “fused” OH + OKAY to the exclusion of “separate” alternatives? In (8) “Moving”, for instance, we find a “fused” OH + OKAY being used to receipt an informing turn that consists of just one turn-constructional unit, delivering the information that Anita will not be moving for a year
We have seen that OH + OKAY is one way of responding in third position to an informing that has been solicited
Summary
In his seminal volume on sequence organization in conversation, Schegloff (2007) describes the particles OH and OKAY as devices for minimal sequence expansion Because they do not per se project more talk, he calls them “sequence-closing thirds”, OH being found primarily in informative sequences and OKAY in directive sequences (2007, 120). For the English part of the project, over 500 tokens of freestanding OKAY in everyday American English conversation were collected and analyzed in terms of sequential position, prosodic design, and action (Couper-Kuhlen 2021a, 2021b). It was in this collection that combinations of OH + OKAY were first observed. This is necessary to appreciate what a combination of the two particles accomplishes
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