Beginning an Action in English and Korean: Turn Design and Action Projection.

摘要

This dissertation examines three different ways speakers begin an action in English and Korean, using Conversation Analysis. It is now a well-established fact that significant interactional work is accomplished in the beginnings of a turn in talk-in-interaction. Turn-beginnings are a prime location at which parties in an interaction begin to reveal their understanding of the prior turn as well as reveal the type and shape of the forthcoming turn. It is also a place at which speakers can manipulate various constraints set upon them by the prior turn. The dissertation shows that speakers of typologically different languages organize their actions in a strikingly similar way by using the linguistic resources available in the language. This is demonstrated by the analyses of two Korean turn prefaces kulenikka and ani and one English turn preface well, as they occur in second and third position turns. The study shows that the practice of kulenikka-prefacing in response to questions re-sets the question's terms, allowing the speakers to respond to the question within newly set terms, while the practice of ani-prefacing in the same position resists the question as inadequate, blocking its action agenda. Then, in third position turns following a question and a response, the practices of both ani-prefacing and well-prefacing are illustrated as retroactively indexing the speaker's prior question as a preliminary action. Yet, a deployment of ani is for resisting, and lowering the significance of, an inference the question may have exhibited, whereas that of well is for marking the impending turn as having been prepared for. Thus, while both ani and well operate on the speaker's own prior turn (i.e. two turns prior to the current turn), what is oriented to by each is quite distinct. Overall, the analyses illustrate that the local interactional work of some token is by reference to the sequential position in which the token occurs, but also that its global interactional work transcends particularities of contexts.;This investigation of the typologically different languages shows how speakers of each language have distinctive ways of managing turn-beginnings as an important resource for responding to the other party's prior action and retroactively operating on the speaker's prior action. The study further demonstrates some ways in which a language's typology or grammar provides resources for speakers to solve interactional problems in their own particular ways. More broadly, the dissertation shows that a detailed study of seemingly small phenomena can give insights into how humans construct social actions in interaction.