PART V - ASPECTS OF RESPONSE

Summary

The chapters in this part examine some features in the operation of various commonly used nonlexical responses (the particle “oh,” laughter, and applause) that recur across a range of interactional settings, but that have been relatively neglected as topics for detailed empirical research. That some conversation analysts have begun to study such phenomena is a result of the more general programmatic willingness to regard anything whatsoever that can be observed to occur or recur in the course of interaction as “anthropologically strange” (Garfinkel 1967), and hence also as sufficiently puzzling to be of potential analytic interest. Thus, insofar as these chapters show how such responses work in ways that are more subtle, systematic, and consequential than might initially seem on the basis of intuition, or in the light of existing research literatures, they provide further grounds for resisting attempts to impose a priori restrictions on what may or may not be subjected to detailed investigation.

Phenomena like the particle “oh,” laughter, and applause tend to be commonly regarded, and to be referred to in dictionaries, as “expressive” responses through which emotions, amusement, approval, and the like are displayed. Also implied in this is the idea that there is something spontaneous or instinctive about the way such responses are produced. If, however, spontaneous actions are held to be ones that are done in a more or less unconstrained or disorganized fashion, the following studies provide little support for such a view.