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Analyzing language in interaction: the practice of never mind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2004

ELIZABETH COUPER-KUHLEN
ELIZABETH COUPER-KUHLEN
Affiliation:
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, University of Potsdam, Postfach 601553, 14415 Potsdam, [email protected]
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Abstract

Based on micro-analysis of a set of British English telephone calls, seven different uses of the phrase never mind are distinguished in terms of (a) sequence type, (b) speaker role, (c) sequential position, and (d) prosodic configuration. It is argued that the methodology employed here is widely applicable not only for ready-made expressions but also for less idiomatic forms such as ‘lexicalized sentence stems’ and other prefabricated chunks of language. Through such a methodology analysts can lay bare what it is that speakers ‘do’ with language and thus come to understand what it is they ‘know’ about its procedural deployment in interaction.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , November 2004 , pp. 207 - 237
Copyright
Cambridge University Press 2004

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Footnotes

The research reported here was made possible in part through funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, TP 8 Form and function of prosodic stylization in communicative genres in the Sonderforschungsbereich 511 ‘Literature and Anthropology’ at the University of Konstanz (1999–2001). The paper is a revised and expanded version of presentations at the AAAL meeting in Vancouver, Canada, March 2000, and at the Symposium on Prosody and Interaction in Uppsala, Sweden, in November 2001. I am grateful to participants at both venues for stimulating discussion and feedback. The present version is particularly indebted to Sandra A. Thompson and Harrie Mazeland.