Perception verbs are frequent in conversation across diverse languages and cultures. This chapter presents a case study of a recurrent but previously undocumented use of the perception verb see in everyday English conversation. Using conversation analysis, the chapter explicates the use of “See?” – the verb see produced with rising intonation as a possibly complete turn-constructional unit – as claim of evidential vindication. With “See?” a speaker claims a just prior turn, action, or event as support for a previous assertive action. The analysis demonstrates that the practice exploits two distinct forms of sequence organisation, adjacency pairs and retro-sequences, and reflects on the fit between the perception verb see and the action it implements within this practice.
Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2006). Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Aikhenvald, A. Y., & Storch, A. (2013). Linguistic expression of perception and cognition: A typological glimpse. In A. Y. Aikhenvald, & A. Storch (Eds.), Perception and cognition in language and culture (pp. 1–46). Leiden: Brill.
Couper-Kuhlen, E. (2012). Some truths and untruths about final intonation in conversational questions. In J. P. de Ruiter (Ed.), Questions: Formal, functional and interactional perspectives (pp. 123–145). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Curl, T. S. (2006). Offers of assistance: Constraints on syntactic design. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(8), 1257–1280.
Edwards, D. (2000). Extreme case formulations: Softeners, investment, and doing nonliteral. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 33(4), 347–373.
Evans, N., & Wilkins, D. (2000). In the mind’s ear: The semantic extensions of perception verbs in Australian languages. Language 76(3): 546–592.
Geluykens, R. (1988). On the myth of rising intonation in polar questions. Journal of Pragmatics, 12(4), 467–485.
Hepburn, A., & Bolden, G. B. (2017). Transcribing for social research. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Heritage, J. (2002). Oh-prefaced responses to assessments: A method of modifying agreement/disagreement. In C. E Ford, B. A. Fox, & S. A Thompson (Eds.), The language of turn and sequence (pp. 1–28). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heritage, J. (2013). Action formation and its epistemic (and other) backgrounds. Discourse Studies, 15(5), 551–578.
Heritage, J., & Raymond, G. (2005). The terms of agreement: Indexing epistemic authority and subordination in talk-in-interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly, 15–38.
Hoey, E. M., & Kendrick, K. H. (2017). Conversation analysis. In P. Hagoort & A. M. B. De Groot (Eds.), Research Methods in Psycholinguistics and the Neurobiology of Language. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Kendrick, K. H. (2006). Linguistic Form and Social Action: The Use of “See” in Conversational Interaction (Master’s thesis). University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Linguistics.
Kendrick, K. H., & Drew, P. (2016). Recruitment: Offers, requests, and the organization of assistance in interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 49(1), 1–19.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Levinson, S. C. (2013). Action formation and ascription. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 101–130). Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Levinson, S. C., & Majid, A. (2014). Differential ineffability and the senses. Mind & Language, 29(4), 407–427.
Pollner, M. (1987). Mundane reason: Reality in everyday life and sociological discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Pomerantz, A. (1980). Telling my side: “Limited access” as a “fishing” device. Sociological Inquiry, 50(3), 186–198.
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Giving a source or basis: the practice in conversation of telling “how I know”. Journal of Pragmatics, 8, 607–625.
Pomerantz, A. (1986). Extreme case formulations: A way of legitimizing claims. Human studies, 9(2), 219–229.
Pomerantz, A. (1989). Giving evidence as a conversational practice. In D. T. Helm, W. T. Anderson, A. J. Meehan & A. W. Rawls (Eds.), The interactional order: New directions in the study of social order (pp. 103–115). New York, NY: Irvington Publishers.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50(4), 696–735.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation. (G. Jefferson, Ed.) (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers.
San Roque, L., Kendrick, K. H., Norcliffe, E., Brown, P., Defina, R., Dingemanse, M., Dirksmeyer, T., Enfield, N. J., Floyd, S., Hammond, J., Rossi, G., Tufvesson, S., Van Putten, S., & Majid, A. (2015). Vision verbs dominate in conversation across cultures, but the ranking of non-visual verbs varies. Cognitive Linguistics, 26(1), 31–60.
San Roque, L., Kendrick, K. H., Norcliffe, E., & Majid, A. (2018). Universal meaning extensions of perception verbs are grounded in interaction. Cognitive Linguistics, 29(3), 371–406.
Schegloff, E. A. (1996). Confirming allusions: Toward an empirical account of action. American Journal of Sociology, 102(1), 161–216.
Schegloff, E. A. (2005). On complainability. Social Problems, 52(4), 449–476.
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schutz, A. (1962). Common-sense and scientific interpretation of human action. In M. Natanson (Ed.), Collected Papers I (pp. 3–47). Springer Netherlands.
Sidnell, J., & Stivers, T. (Eds.). (2013). The handbook of conversation analysis. Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Sidnell, J. (2007). ‘Look’-prefaced turns in first and second position: launching, interceding and redirecting action. Discourse Studies, 9(3), 387–408.
Stokes, D., & Biggs, S. (2014). The dominance of the visual. In D. Stokes, M. Matthen, & S. Biggs (Eds.), Perception and its modalities. Oxford Scholarship Online.
Sweetser, E. (1990). From etymology to pragmatics: Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vázquez Carranza, A. (2014). Sequential markers in Mexican Spanish talk: A conversation-analytic study (Ph.D. thesis). University of Essex.
Vázquez Carranza, A. (2015). Análisis de oye como marcador secuencial y de acción en la conversación. Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada, 61, 73–103.
Viberg, Å. (1983). The verbs of perception: A typological study. Linguistics, 21, 123–162.
Wierzbicka, Anna. (2010). Experience, evidence, and sense: The hidden cultural legacy of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2023.
Shared Knowledge as an Account for Disaffiliative Moves: Hebrew
ki
‘Because’-Clauses Accompanied by the Palm-Up Open-Hand Gesture
. Research on Language and Social Interaction 56:2 ► pp. 141 ff.
Hou, Lynn
2022. LOOKing for multi-word expressions in American Sign Language. Cognitive Linguistics 33:2 ► pp. 291 ff.
Siitonen, Pauliina, Mirka Rauniomaa & Tiina Keisanen
2021. Language and the Moving Body: Directive Actions With the Finnish kato “look” in Nature-Related Activities. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Stoenica, Ioana-Maria & Sophia Fiedler
2021. Multimodal Practice for Mobilizing Response: The Case of Turn-Final Tu Vois ‘You See’ in French Talk-in-Interaction. Frontiers in Psychology 12
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 january 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.