Table Of ContentRequesting in Social Interaction
Studies in Language and Social Interaction (SLSI)
Studies in Language and Social Interaction is a series which continues the tradition of
Studies in Discourse and Grammar, but with a new focus. It aims to provide a forum
for research on grammar, understood broadly, in its natural home environment,
spoken interaction. The assumption underlying the series is that the study of
language as it is actually used in social interaction provides the foundation for
understanding how the patterns and regularities we think of as grammar emerge
from everyday communicative needs. The editors welcome language-related research
from a range of different methodological traditions, including conversation analysis,
interactional linguistics, and discourse-functional linguistics.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/slsi
Editors
Sandra A. Thompson Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA University of Helsinki, Finland
Editorial Board
Peter Auer
University of Freiburg, Germany
Paul Drew
Loughborough University, UK
Cecilia E. Ford
University of Wisconsin, USA
Barbara A. Fox
University of Colorado, USA
Marja-Liisa Helasvuo
University of Turku, Finland
K.K. Luke
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Volume 26
Requesting in Social Interaction
Edited by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
Requesting in Social Interaction
Edited by
Paul Drew
Loughborough University
Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
University of Helsinki
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Requesting in Social Interaction / Edited by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen.
p. cm. (Studies in Language and Social Interaction, issn 1879-3983 ; v. 26)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Socialization. 2. Social skills. 3. Social interaction. 4. Sociolinguistics. 5. Language
and culture. I. Drew, Paul, editor. II. Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, editor.
P40.5.S57R47 2014
302’.14--dc23 2014030878
isbn 978 90 272 2636 5 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 6928 7 (Eb)
© 2014 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Acknowledgement vii
Glossary of transcription conventions ix
Requesting – from speech act to recruitment 1
Paul Drew & Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
Human agency and the infrastructure for requests 35
N. J. Enfield
Benefactors and beneficiaries: Benefactive status and stance
in the management of offers and requests 55
Steven E. Clayman & John Heritage
The putative preference for offers over requests 87
Kobin H. Kendrick & Paul Drew
On divisions of labor in request and offer environments 115
Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen & Marja Etelämäki
The social and moral work of modal constructions in granting remote requests 145
Jakob Steensig & Trine Heinemann
Two request forms of four year olds 171
Anthony J. Wootton
Orchestrating directive trajectories in communicative projects
in family interaction 185
Marjorie Harness Goodwin & Asta Cekaite
How to do things with requests: Request sequences at the family dinner table 215
Jenny Mandelbaum
On the grammatical form of requests at the convenience store:
Requesting as embodied action 243
Marja-Leena Sorjonen & Liisa Raevaara
Requesting immediate action in the surgical operating room:
Time, embodied resources and praxeological embeddedness 269
Lorenza Mondada
vi Requesting in Social Interaction
When do people not use language to make requests? 303
Giovanni Rossi
“Requests” and “offers” in orangutans and human infants 335
Federico Rossano & Katja Liebal
Subject Index 365
Name Index 369
Acknowledgement
The preparation of this collection has been made possible through the kind support of
the Center of Excellence for Research on Intersubjectivity in Interaction, at the Univer-
sity of Helsinki, Finland, during a period when one editor (EC-K) was on the faculty
staff and the other (PD) was a Visiting Fellow. The Centre provided other invaluable
technical and financial support. We are profoundly grateful to the directors of the Cen-
ter, especially Marja-Leena Sorjonen, for their support for this publication; and to all
the faculty and administrative staff of the Center for providing the stimulating and
congenial intellectual environment in which we could work on this project.
Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
June 2014
Glossary of transcription conventions
Authors have transcribed their data in considerable detail, according to the conven-
tions used in Conversation Analysis. These transcription symbols capture particularly
aspects of the timing of speech (e.g. overlapping speech, pauses within and between
speakers’ turns), and how things are said (including certain intonational and prosodic
features, emphasis, stretching of sounds and words). In some cases authors have used
other more specialised transcription symbols and conventions, to capture specialised
aspects of interactional conduct, such as non-vocal behavior and eye gaze; and to rep-
resent distinctive linguistic features of some of the languages included here, such as
case endings (e.g. in Finnish) and tones (e.g. in Lao). These more specialised conven-
tions and symbols are explained in the chapters concerned.
For the most part, these are the main transcription symbols that we use to repre-
sent speech in the chapters in this volume.
Temporal and sequential relationships
Overlapping or simultaneous talk is indicated by square brackets.
[ Separate left square brackets, one above the other on two successive lines with
[ utterances by different speakers, indicates a point of overlap onset, whether
at the start of an utterance or later.
] Separate right square brackets, one above the other on two successive lines
] with utterances by different speakers indicates a point at which two over-
lapping utterances both end, where one ends while the other continues, or
simultaneous moments in overlaps which continue.
= An equals mark links talk produced in close temporal proximity (latched
talk)
(0.6) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence, represented in tenths of a second.
Silences may be marked either within an utterance or between utterances.
(.) A dot (or stop) in parentheses indicates a micropause – an audible silence but
less than 0.2 of a second.
Aspects of speech delivery
° ° Encloses talk which is produced quietly
underline Underlining used to mark words or syllables which are given special
emphasis of some kind
