Parenthesis as a resource in the grammar of conversation

Abstract

This article investigates how speakers in talk-in-interaction utilize parenthesis in order to organize information in turns, as well as to manage local interactive tasks and shape the participant framework. By parenthesis we mean constructions which temporarily suspend the progression of another syntactic construction or wider action sequence. Parentheses provide interesting challenges for practitioners of interactional linguistics. In conversation, using parentheses enables participants to embed several turn constructional units and even speaker change within a single syntactic unit. This paper focuses on interfaces between the frame construction and parenthesis. We first discuss syntactic, prosodic and sequential/textual projection as means of indicating non-completion and suspension of the current turn constructional unit. We also investigate how parentheses relate to the trajectory of the main line of conversation. The aim is to show that parentheses are an important resource contributing to the coherence of the conversation's contents and actions. The paper combines two approaches, conversation analysis and a syntactic approach to spoken language. This double perspective allows us to articulate differences between parentheses and self repairs which also interrupt evolving turn constructional unit. The analyses are based on Finnish conversational data.