Practices of indexing discrepant assumptions with German ich dachte (‘I thought’) in talk-in-interaction
Arnulf Deppermann | Leibniz Institute for the German Language, Mannheim
Silke Reineke | Leibniz Institute for the German Language, Mannheim
This paper studies practices of indexing discrepant assumptions accomplished by turn-constructional units with ich
dachte (‘I thought’) in German talk-in-interaction. Building on the analysis of 141 instances from the corpus FOLK, we identify
three sequential environments in which ich dachte is used to index that an assumption which a speaker (has) held contrasts
with some other, contextually salient assumption. We show that practices which have been studied for English I thought are
also routinely used in German: ich dachte is a means to manage epistemic incongruencies and to contrast an incorrect with a
correct assumption in narratives. In addition, ich dachte is also used to account for the speaker’s own prior actions which
may have looked problematic because they built on misunderstandings which the speaker only discovered later. Moreover, ich
dachte-practices may also be used to create comic effects by reporting an earlier, absurd assumption. The practices are discussed
with regard to their role in regaining common ground, in managing relationships, in maintaining the identity of a rational actor, and in
terms of their exploitation for other conversational interests. Special attention is paid to how co-occurring linguistic features, and
sequential and pragmatic factors, account for local interpretations of ich dachte.
Article outline
1.Introduction
2.Overview the of data and grammatical and functional variants
3.Stating a discrepant assumption
3.1Patterns of sequential organization and interactive functions
3.1.1Making a discrepant assumption public
3.1.2Accounting for an inadequate action with a discrepant assumption
3.1.3Contrasting an invalidated assumption with a corrected assumption within a narrative context
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