Part of
Requesting in Social InteractionEdited by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 26] 2014
► pp. 1–34
Edited by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 26] 2014
► pp. 1–34
Requesting – from speech act to recruitment
In this introduction we outline some of the background to and evolution of the work on social action and requesting, then introduce some of the key analytic themes in investigating requesting in talk-in-interaction. This sets the scene for what is becoming a particularly significant perspective on requesting, which is that in face-to-face interaction requesting should be understood as one of the ways in which one person recruits another’s assistance in some matter. Seen in a fuller spatial and corporeal context, it is evident that recruitment of the other(s) assistance requires us to broaden our analysis, to understand how a fuller range of linguistic and semiotic resources are deployed and engaged – together with gesture, bodily movement, gaze and so forth, in a physical setting – to do what we have traditionally and colloquially termed requesting.
References
Austin, John Langshaw
1962 How to Do Things with Words. London: Oxford University Press.
Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua
1954 “Indexical Expressions.” Mind 63: 359–379. 
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana
1987 “Indirectness and Politeness in Requests: Same or Different?” Journal of Pragmatics 11: 131–146.
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson
1978 “Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena.” In Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction, ed. by Esther N. Goody, 56–311. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bruner, Jerome
1975 “The Ontogenesis of Speech Acts.” Journal of Child Language 2: 1–19.
Clark, Herbert H
1979 “Responding to Indirect Speech Acts.” Cognitive Psychology 11: 430–477.
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth
Craven, Alexandra, and Jonathan Potter
2010 “Directives: Entitlement and Contingency in Action.” Discourse Studies 12 (4): 419–442.
Curl, Traci S., and Paul Drew
2008 “Contingency and Action: A Comparison of Two Forms of Requesting.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 41 (2): 129–153.
Floyd, Simeon, Giovanni Rossi, and N.J. Enfield
Forthcoming. “Recruitments across Languages: An Introduction.”
Ervin-Tripp, Susan
1976a “‘Is Sybil There?’ The Structure of Some American English Directives.” Language in Society 5 (1): 25–66.
1976b “Speech Acts and Social Learning.” In Meaning in Anthropology, ed. by K.H. Basso, and H.A. Selby, 123–153. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
1981 “How to Make and Understand a Request.” In Possibilities and Limitations of Pragmatics, ed. by Herman Parret, Marina Sbisa, and Jef Verschueren, 195–209. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
1982 “Structures of Control.” In Communicating in the Classroom, ed. by Louise C. Wilkinson, 27–47. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.
Francik, Ellen P., and Herbert H. Clark
1985 “How to Make Requests That Overcome Obstacles to Compliance.” Journal of Memory and Language 24: 560–568.
Garfinkel, Harold
1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Garvey, Catherine
1975 “Requests and Responses in Children’s Speech.” Journal of Child Language 2: 41–63.
Goffman, Erving
1967 “On Face-work: The Corrective Process.” In Interaction Ritual, ed. by Erving Goffman, 19–35. New York: Academic Press.
1983 “Felicity’s Condition.” American Journal of Sociology 89: 1–53.
Goodwin, Charles
1987 “Forgetfulness as an Interactional Resource.” Social Psychology Quarterly 50: 115–130.
Hart, H.L.A
1961 The Concept of Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heinemann, Trine
2006 “‘Will You or Can't You?’: Displaying Entitlement in Interrogative Requests.” Journal of Pragmatics 38: 1081–1104.
Jefferson, Gail
2004 “Glossary of Transcript Symbols with an Introduction.” In Conversation Analysis. Studies from the First Generation, ed. by Gene H. Lerner, 13–31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Keisanen, Tiina, and Mirka Rauniomaa
2012 “The Organization of Participation and Contingency in Prebeginnings of Request Sequences.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (4): 323–351.
Labov, William, and David Fanshel
1977 Therapeutic Discourse: Psychotherapy as Conversation. New York: Academic Press.
Levinson, Stephen C
2013 “Action Formation and Ascription.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 103–130. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.
Lindström, Anna
1999 Language as Social Action: Grammar, Prosody and Interaction in Swedish Conversation. Uppsala: Institutionen för Nordiska Spräk vid Uppsala Universitet.
2005 “Language as Social Action: A Study of How Senior Citizens Request Assistance with Practical Tasks in the Swedish Home Help Service.” In Syntax and Lexis in Conversation, ed. by Auli Hakulinen, and Margret Selting, 209–230. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Maynard, Douglas W., Jeremy Freese, and Nora Cate Schaeffer
2010 “Calling for Participation: Requests, Blocking Moves, and Rational (Inter)action in Survey Introductions.” American Sociological Review 75 (5): 791–814.
Maynard, Douglas W., and Matthew M. Hollander
2014 “Asking to Speak to Another: A Skill for Soliciting Survey Participation.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 47 (1): 28–48.
Melden, Abraham I
1961 Free Action. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Nolan, Jason A., and Douglas W. Maynard
2013 “Formulating the Request for Survey Participation in Relation to the Interactional Environment.” Discourse Studies 15 (2): 205–227.
Ochs, Elinor, and Bambi Schieffelin
(eds) 1979 Developmental Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press.
1983 Acquiring Conversational Competence. London: Routledge.
Rossi, Giovanni
2012 “Bilateral and Unilateral Requests: The Use of Imperatives and mi x? Interrogatives in Italian.” Discourse Processes 49 (5): 426–458.
Forthcoming. The Request System in Italian Interaction. PhD MPI Nijmegen and Radboud Universiteit.
Schegloff, Emanuel A
2007 Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Searle, John R
1969 Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Searle, John
1975 “Indirect Speech Acts.” In Syntax and Semantics Volume 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole, and J.L. Morgan, 59–82. New York: Academic Press.
Stevanovic, Melisa
2011 “Participants' Deontic Rights and Action Formation: The Case of Declarative Requests for Action.” InLiSt, Interaction and Linguistic Structures 52 ([URL]).
Stevanovic, Melisa, and Anssi Peräkylä
2012 “Deontic Authority in Interaction. The Right to Announce, Propose, and Decide.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (3): 297–321.
Streeck, Jürgen, Charles Goodwin, and Curtis LeBaron
(eds) 2011 Embodied Interaction. Language and Body in the Material World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Trevarthen, Colwyn, and Kenneth J. Aitken
2001 “Infant Intersubjectivity: Research, Theory, and Clinical Application.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 42 (1): 3–48.
Upadhyay, Shiv R
2003 “Nepali Requestive Acts: Linguistic Indirectness and Politeness Reconsidered.” Journal of Pragmatics 35: 1651–1677.
Vinkhuyzen, Erik, and Margaret H. Szymanski
2005 “Would You Like to Do it Yourself? Service Requests and Their Non-granting Responses.” In Applying Conversation Analysis, ed. by Keith Richards, and Paul Seedhouse, 91–106. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Watts, Richard J
2003 Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wootton, Anthony J
1981a “Two Request Forms of Four Year Olds.” Journal of Pragmatics 5: 511–523.
1981b “The Management of Grantings and Rejections by Parents in Request Sequences.” Semiotica 37 (1/2): 59–89.
1984 “Some Aspects of Children’s Use of ‘Please’ in Request Sequences.” In Interpretative Sociolinguistics, ed. by Peter Auer, and Aldo di Luzio, 147–163. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
1997 Interaction and the Development of the Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2005 “Interactional and Sequential Features Informing Request Format Selection in Children's Speech.” In Syntax and Lexis in Conversation, ed. by Auli Hakulinen, and Margret Selting, 185–207. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Zinken, Jörg, and Eva Ogiermann
2011 “How to Propose an Action as Objectively Necessary: The Case of Polish Trzeba x ('One Needs to x').” Research on Language and Social Interaction 44 (3): 263–287.
Cited by
Cited by 66 other publications
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. Transcription Conventions. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 401 ff. 
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. Conjoint Co-constituting’s Implications. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 208 ff.
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. Conjoint Co-constituting, Constituting Face, and Future Research. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 392 ff.
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. Conjointly Co-constituting Relating. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 246 ff.
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. Researching Relating and Face in Everyday Interacting. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 361 ff.
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. What Is Individual in Communicating. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 113 ff.
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. What Is Social in Communicating. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 16 ff.
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. Communicating & Relating,
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. Two Projects. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 1 ff.
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. An Algorithm for Autonomous Co-constituting in Conjoint Co-constituting. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 409 ff.
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. Conjointly Co-constituting Relating and Face in Everyday Interacting. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 314 ff.
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. Face Constituting Theory. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 275 ff.
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. The Conjoint Co-constituting Model of Communicating. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 44 ff.
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. An Alternate Representation of Conjoint Co-constituting. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 403 ff.
Arundale, Robert B.
2020. Conjointly Co-constituting the Social and the Individual in Communicating. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 161 ff.
Baranova, Julija & Mark Dingemanse
2016. Reasons for requests. Discourse Studies 18:6 ► pp. 641 ff.
Bolden, Galina B., Beth Angell & Alexa Hepburn
2019. How clients solicit medication changes in psychiatry. Sociology of Health & Illness 41:2 ► pp. 411 ff.
Colla, Vittoria
2023. ‘Teacher Martina wants you to write in cursive’. Research on Children and Social Interaction 7:1
De Stefani, Elwys
2018. Formulating direction: Navigational instructions in driving lessons. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 28:2 ► pp. 283 ff.
Deppermann, Arnulf
2018. Instruction practices in German driving lessons: Differential uses of declaratives and imperatives. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 28:2 ► pp. 265 ff.
Eilola, Laura
2023. The design of requests by adult L2 users with emergent literacy. Classroom Discourse 14:2 ► pp. 167 ff.
Fox, Barbara A. & Trine Heinemann
2015. The Alignment of Manual and Verbal Displays in Requests for the Repair of an Object. Research on Language and Social Interaction 48:3 ► pp. 342 ff.
Gagne, Christophe
2018. Indirectness and entitlement in product requests in British service encounters. Journal of Pragmatics 133 ► pp. 1 ff.
Gaskins, Dorota & Maria Frick
2023. Embodiment in directive sequences: The case of triadic interactions in a Polish-English bilingual family. International Journal of Bilingualism 27:1 ► pp. 122 ff.
HALL, JOAN KELLY
2019. The Contributions of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics to a Usage‐Based Understanding of Language: Expanding the Transdisciplinary Framework. The Modern Language Journal 103:S1 ► pp. 80 ff.
Hansen, Jessica Pedersen Belisle
2022. Recruiting repair: Making sense of interpreters’ embodied actions in a video-mediated environment. Discourse Studies 24:6 ► pp. 719 ff.
Hiramoto, Takeshi
2024. Framing offer-related actions as assistance at jewelry stores in Japan. Discourse Studies
Holttinen, Tuuli, C. Granget, M.-A. Dat, D. Guedat-Bittighoffer & C. Cuet
2017. « Passe-moi le sel » vs « Pourriez-vous me passer le sel, s’il vous plaît ? » ‒ Le développement des stratégies de requête chez les apprenants finnophones de FLE. SHS Web of Conferences 38 ► pp. 00004 ff.
Holttinen, Tuuli, F. Neveu, G. Bergounioux, M.-H. Côté, J.-M. Fournier, L. Hriba & S. Prévost
2016. Stratégies de requête dans un bureau de tabac et dans son équivalent finlandaisR-kioski. SHS Web of Conferences 27 ► pp. 02007 ff.
Isosävi, Johanna
2023. Finnish and French public signs from commercial premises during the
Covid-19 pandemic. Pragmatics and Society 14:2 ► pp. 306 ff.
Jansson, Gunilla, Charlotta Plejert & Camilla Lindholm
2019. The social organization of assistance in multilingual interaction in Swedish residential care. Discourse Studies 21:1 ► pp. 67 ff.
Kendrick, Kobin H. & Paul Drew
2016. The Boundary of Recruitment: A Response. Research on Language and Social Interaction 49:1 ► pp. 32 ff.
Kendrick, Kobin H. & Paul Drew
2016. Recruitment: Offers, Requests, and the Organization of Assistance in Interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 49:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Kent, Alexandra & Kobin H. Kendrick
2016. Imperative Directives: Orientations to Accountability. Research on Language and Social Interaction 49:3 ► pp. 272 ff.
Kim, Mary Shin
2023. Korean imperatives at two different speech levels. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 33:4 ► pp. 559 ff.
Kraft, Kamilla
2022. Review of Taleghani-Nikazm, Betz & Golato (2020): Mobilizing Others: Grammar and lexis within larger activities. Pragmatics and Society 13:1 ► pp. 157 ff.
Laakso, Minna
2021. Learning to request in interaction. In Intersubjectivity in Action [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 326], ► pp. 349 ff.
Lester, Jessica Nina, Michelle O’Reilly, Olga Smoliak, Peter Muntigl & Eleftheria Tseliou
2023. Soliciting children’s views on other-perspectives in child mental health assessments. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry 28:2 ► pp. 554 ff.
Li, Li & Wen Ma
2016. Request sequence in Chinese public service calls. Discourse Studies 18:3 ► pp. 269 ff.
Mlynář, Jakub
2023. Lifting the pen and the gaze: embodied recruitment in collaborative writing. Text & Talk 43:1 ► pp. 69 ff.
Muntigl, Peter, Adam O. Horvath, Lynda Chubak & Lynne Angus
2020. Getting to “Yes”: Overcoming Client Reluctance to Engage in Chair Work. Frontiers in Psychology 11
Okada, Misao
2018. Imperative Actions in Boxing Sparring Sessions. Research on Language and Social Interaction 51:1 ► pp. 67 ff.
Oloff, Florence
2023. « Maintenant tout a disparu » : les requêtes indirectes déclaratives dans la formation numérique pour adultes. Langage et société N° 179:2 ► pp. 83 ff.
Paramasivam, Shamala & Shabina Kumari Subramaniam
2018. Superior – Subordinate Request Email in Workplace Communication of a Malaysian Organisation. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 47:3 ► pp. 161 ff.
Pavlidou, Theodossia-Soula & Angeliki Alvanoudi
2023. Polar answers. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
Pekarek Doehler, Simona & Anne-Sylvie Horlacher
2023. La requête dans les interactions institutionnelles : une introduction. Langage et société N° 179:2 ► pp. 9 ff.
Piccoli, Vanessa
2022. Plurilingualism, multimodality and machine translation in medical consultations. Translation and Interpreting Studies 17:1 ► pp. 42 ff.
Pichonnaz, David, Liliane Staffoni, Camille Greppin-Bécherraz, Isabelle Menia-Knutti & Veronika Schoeb
2021. “You Should Maybe Work Together a Little Bit”: Formulating Requests in Interprofessional Interactions. Qualitative Health Research 31:6 ► pp. 1094 ff.
Rae, John P. & Monica Ramey
2020. Correction and repair: a comparative analysis of a boy with ASD interacting with a parent and with an ABA trainer. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 34:10-11 ► pp. 1018 ff.
Risberg, Jonas & Gustav Lymer
2020. Requests and know-how questions: Initiating instruction in workplace interaction. Discourse Studies 22:6 ► pp. 753 ff.
Roever, Carsten & Gabriele Kasper
2018. Speaking in turns and sequences: Interactional competence as a target construct in testing speaking. Language Testing 35:3 ► pp. 331 ff.
Rossi, Giovanni
2015. Responding to pre-requests: The organisation of hai x ‘do you have x’ sequences in Italian. Journal of Pragmatics 82 ► pp. 5 ff.
Rossi, Giovanni
2018. Composite Social Actions: The Case of Factual Declaratives in Everyday Interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 51:4 ► pp. 379 ff.
Råman, Joonas
2022. Multimodal Negotiation for the Right to Access Digital Devices Among Elderly Users and Teachers. In Shaping the North Through Multimodal and Intermedial Interaction [Arctic Encounters, ], ► pp. 67 ff.
Simone, Monica & Renata Galatolo
2023. Du « faire agir autrui » au « faire ensemble » : les instructions comme moyen de soutien du mouvement corporel lors d’entraînements d’escalade avec des athlètes malvoyant.es. Langage et société N° 179:2 ► pp. 141 ff.
SYDORENKO, TETYANA, STEVEN L. THORNE, JOHN HELLERMANN, AMBER SANCHEZ & VANESSA HOWE
2021. Localized Globalization: Directives in Augmented Reality Game Interaction. The Modern Language Journal 105:3 ► pp. 720 ff.
Tsuchiya, Keiko, Frank Coffey, Andrew Mackenzie, Sarah Atkins, Malgorzata Chalupnik, Stephen Timmons, Alison Whitfield, Mike Vernon & David Crundall
2021. Framing trauma leaders’ request in emergency care interactions. Communication and Medicine 17:1
Urbanik, Paweł
2020. Getting others to share goods in Polish and Norwegian: Material and moral anchors for request conventions. Intercultural Pragmatics 17:2 ► pp. 177 ff.
Virtanen, Mikko T & Riikka Nissi
2024. Negotiating joint commitment in collaborative work project: Focus on text-based requests and news deliveries in atypical work. Discourse Studies
Youn, Soo Jung
2023. Grammar as validity evidence for assessing L2 interactional competence. Applied Pragmatics 5:2 ► pp. 174 ff.
Åberg, Mikaela
2017. Talk, Text, and Tasks in Student-Initiated Instructional Interaction. Discourse Processes 54:8 ► pp. 618 ff.
[no author supplied]
2020. Note on Sources. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. 453 ff.
[no author supplied]
2020. Series Editor Preface. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. xi ff.
[no author supplied]
2020. Introduction. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. xvii ff.
[no author supplied]
2020. Copyright Page. In Communicating & Relating, ► pp. iv ff.
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 april 2024. 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.