Part of
Requesting in Social InteractionEdited by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 26] 2014
► pp. 115–144
Edited by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 26] 2014
► pp. 115–144
On divisions of labor in request and offer environments
Dividing the labor for achieving a common goal is a routinized practice that is found in both request and offer environments in English and Finnish everyday conversations. There are specific linguistic resources deployed in the two languages for this practice. Divisions of labor are typically proposed with a bi-partite construction that consists schematically of a Request to Other to carry out some action X, and a Commitment by Self to carry out a complementary action Y. Where there is a possible chronological order for the actions X and Y, the request and commitment are ordered accordingly. Although in both languages there is a common schematic structure underlying the linguistic constructions used in proposing divisions of labor, the attested patterns vary in the degree of certainty that they express concerning the future actions. In addition, the patterns in Finnish vary in the explicitness with which the agents of the future actions are expressed. In neither of the languages are the variant patterns interchangeable. Instead, the patterns have distinct sequential home environments: the more certainty and explicitness the pattern expresses, the later in the sequence it occurs. Division-of labor proposals divide not only the labor, but also deontic primacy (the right to decide) and responsibility. By construing the venture as a joint one, they transform asymmetric actions such as offers and requests into more symmetric ones. This may explain why divisions of labor typically occur in request and offer sequences that are problematic and run the risk of miscarrying.
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Cited by
Cited by 5 other publications
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth
2015. What does grammar tell us about action?. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 623 ff. 
Harjunpää, Katariina
2021. Brokering co-participants’ volition in request and offer sequences. In Intersubjectivity in Action [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 326], ► pp. 135 ff.
Mondada, Lorenza
2021. How Early can Embodied Responses be? Issues in Time and Sequentiality. Discourse Processes 58:4 ► pp. 397 ff.
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Vatanen, Anna & Pentti Haddington
2023. Multiactivity in adult-child interaction: accounts resolving conflicting courses of action in request sequences. Text & Talk 43:2 ► pp. 263 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 november 2023. 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.