Chapter published in:
Imperative Turns at Talk: The design of directives in action
Edited by Marja-Leena Sorjonen, Liisa Raevaara and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 30] 2017
► pp. 215–240

Chapter 7
In the face of resistance

A Finnish practice for insisting on imperatively formatted directives

In this paper we focus on one particular practice for dealing with resistance to an imperatively formatted directive, namely that of re-issuing the directive in a second-person declarative form as a subsequent version. In our data, from Finnish everyday adult interaction, this practice is used either after straightforward resistance or after lack of full commitment to the directive. In the former case, the subsequent version insists on the directive by disregarding the resistance and any accounts given for it. In the latter case, the subsequent version insists on the directive not by merely reiterating it but by dealing with possible obstacles that might prevent the recipient from committing to it. We argue that the second-person declarative form of the subsequent version is understood deontically because the prior imperative form has set up a directive context. Moreover, the declarative form makes explicit a “you – me” axis and treats the intended action, which the recipient is to carry out, as a fait accompli. Whereas imperative forms, lacking person marking, put a focus on the action, declarative forms, with person marking, foreground the participants’ relationship to one another when these forms follow resistance. The use of this practice confirms the earlier claim made about imperatives, namely that they expect immediate commitment, since if imperatively formatted directives are resisted, the imperative form is not repeated as such in the subsequent version.

Keywords: subsequent version, second-person declarative, resistance, deonticity, person, agency, participation, adult interaction, Finnish, English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The phenomenon
  • 3.Research questions
  • 4.Finnish declarative and imperative sentence types
  • 5.From imperatively formatted directives to subsequent versions: Two trajectories
    • 5.1Straightforward resistance to an imperatively formatted directive
    • 5.2Lack of full commitment to an imperatively formatted directive
  • 6.Answers to the research questions
  • 7.Discussion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 August 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.30.07ete
References
Clift, Rebecca
2001 “Meaning in Interaction: The Case of ‘Actually’.” Language 77 (2): 245–291. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Craven, Alexandra, and Jonathan Potter
2010 “Directives: Entitlement and Contingency in Action.” Discourse Studies 12 (4): 419–442. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, and Marja Etelämäki
2014 “On Divisions of Labor in Request and Offer Environments.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 115–144. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
2015 “Nominated Actions and Their Targeted Agents in Finnish Conversational Directives.” Journal of Pragmatics 78: 7–24. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Judy
1984 “Subsequent Versions of Invitations, Offers, Requests, and Proposals Dealing with Potential or Actual Rejection.” In Structures of Social Action. Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 102–127. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Drew, Paul
1984 “Speakers’ Reportings in Invitation Sequences.” In Structures of Social Action. Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 129–151. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Duvallon, Outi
2006 “Milloin pronominiubjekti jää pois puhutussa suomessa? [When is the pronominal subject left out in spoken Finnish?].” In XXXII Kielitieteen päivät Tampereella 19.–20.5.2005, ed. by Anneli Pajunen, and Hannu Tommola, 203–217. Tampere: Tampere University Press.Google Scholar
Edwards, Derek
2000 “Extreme Case Formulations: Softeners, Investment, and Doing Nonliteral.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 33 (4): 347–373. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie H.
2006 “Participation, Affect, and Trajectory in Family Directive/Response Sequences.” Text & Talk 26 (4–5): 513–541.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie H., and Asta Cekaite
2013 “Calibration in Directive/Response Sequences in Family Interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 46: 122–138. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2014 “Orchestrating Directive Trajectories in Communicative Projects in Family Interaction.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 185–214. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Haakana, Markku, and Laura Visapää
2014 “Eiku – korjauksen partikkeli? [Eiku – Particle for repair?].” Virittäjä 1/2014: 41–71.Google Scholar
Hakulinen, Auli, and Mirja Saari
1998 “Var finns månne Anja sen då? Om se(da)n och då som motsvarigheter till finskans sit(ten) i helsingforssvenska samtal. [‘Se(da)n’ and ‘då’ as equivalents to Finnish ‘sit(ten)’ in Finnish-Swedish conversation in Helsinki].” In Samtalsstudier, ed. by Hanna Lehti-Eklund, 81–96. Helsinki: Institutionen för nordiska språk och nordisk litteratur.Google Scholar
Hakulinen, Auli, Maria Vilkuna, Riitta Korhonen, Vesa Koivisto, Tarja Riitta Heinonen, and Irja Alho
2004 Iso suomen kielioppi [The Comprehensive Grammar of Finnish]. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.Google Scholar
Helasvuo, Marja-Liisa
2014 “Searching for Motivations for Grammatical Patternings.” Pragmatics 24 (3): 453–476. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John
2012 “Epistemics in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (1): 1–29. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Keevallik, Leelo
2010 “Social Action of Syntactic Reduplication.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (3): 800–824. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kent, Alexandra
2012 “Compliance, Resistance and Incipient Compliance When Responding to Directives.” Discourse Studies 14 (6): 711–730. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lauranto, Yrjö
2014 Imperatiivi, käsky, direktiivi. Arkikeskustelun vaihtokauppakielioppia [Imperative, order, directive: Exchange grammar of everyday conversation]. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.Google Scholar
Lyons, John
1977 Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mondada, Lorenza
2011 “The Situated Organization of Directives in French: Imperatives and Action Coordination in Video Games.” Nottingham French Studies 50 (2): 19–50. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita
1986 “Extreme Case Formulations. A Way of Legitimizing Claims.” Human Studies 9: 219–229. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Raevaara, Liisa
2015 “Hyvä päivä olla minä, mä ja meitsi: Minän vaihtelevat asemat ja identiteetit helsinkiläisnuorten puheessa [Varied positions and identities of ‘minä’ (1SG) in the talk of youth living in Helsinki].” In Helsingissä puhuttavat suomet: Kielen indeksisyys ja sosiaaliset identiteetit, ed. by Marja-Leena Sorjonen, Anu Rouhikoski, and Heini Lehtonen, 174–213. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.Google Scholar
Rossi, Giovanni
2012 “Bilateral and Unilateral Requests: The Use of Imperatives and Mi X? Interrogatives in Italian.” Discourse Processes 49 (5): 426–458. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2015 “The Request System in Italian Interaction.” Ph.D. dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Searle, John
1979 Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel
2001 “Getting Serious. Joke → Serious ‘no’.” Journal of Pragmatics 33: 1947–1955. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2007 Sequence Organization in Interaction. A Primer in Conversation Analysis I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sorjonen, Marja-Leena
2001 Responding in Conversation. A Study of Response Particles in Finnish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stevanovic, Melisa
2013 “Deontic Rights in Interaction: A Conversation Analytic Study on Authority and Cooperation.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
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. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stevanovic, Melisa, and Jan Svennevig
2015 “Epistemics and Deontics in Conversational Directives.” Journal of Pragmatics 78: 1–6. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wootton, Anthony J.
1981 “Two Request Forms for Four Year Olds.” Journal of Pragmatics 5: 511–523. Reprinted in Requesting in Social Interaction 2015, ed. by Paul Drew, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 171–183. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Zinken, Jörg, and Eva Ogiermann
2013 “Responsibility and Action: Invariants and Diversity in Requests for Objects in British English and Polish Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 46 (3): 256–276. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, Marja Etelämäki & Marja-Leena Sorjonen
2021.  In Intersubjectivity in Action [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 326], ► pp. 61 ff. Crossref logo
Pekarek Doehler, Simona
2018. Elaborations on L2 interactional competence: the development of L2 grammar-for-interaction. Classroom Discourse 9:1 ► pp. 3 ff. Crossref logo
Stevanovic, Melisa
2020.  In Mobilizing Others [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 33], ► pp. 115 ff. Crossref logo
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. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 01 december 2022. 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.