Cover not available
Part of
Mobilizing Others: Grammar and lexis within larger activities
Edited by Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm, Emma Betz and Peter Golato
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 33] 2020
► pp. 253–278

Chapter 10
Doing more than expected

Thanking recognizes another’s agency in providing assistance

| Leibniz-Institute for the German Language
| University of California at Los Angeles
| University of Portsmouth

In informal interaction, speakers rarely thank a person who has complied with a request. Examining data from British English, German, Italian, Polish, and Telugu, we ask when speakers do thank after compliance. The results show that thanking treats the other’s assistance as going beyond what could be taken for granted in the circumstances. Coupled with the rareness of thanking after requests, this suggests that cooperation is to a great extent governed by expectations of helpfulness, which can be long-standing, or built over the course of a particular interaction. The higher frequency of thanking in some languages (such as English or Italian) suggests that cultures differ in the importance they place on recognizing the other’s agency in doing as requested.

Keywords: agency, cooperation, courses of action, cultural diversity, expectation, gratitude, offers, recruitment, requests, thanking
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Data
  • Thanking in response to volunteered action
  • Treating compliance with a request as not taken for granted
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations used in glossing
  • References
Published online: 13 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.33.10zin
References
Antaki, Charles
2002 ““Lovely”: Turn-Initial High-Grade Assessments in Telephone Closings.” Discourse Studies 4 (1): 5–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun
1985 “Gratitude as a Social Mode in South India.” Ethos 13 (3): 236–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Auer, Peter
2015 “The Temporality of Language in Interaction: Projection and Latency.” In Temporality in Interaction, ed. by Arnulf Deppermann, and Susanne Günthner, 27–56. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bangerter, Adrian, Herbert H. Clark, and Anna R. Katz
2004 “Navigating Joint Projects in Telephone Conversations.” Discourse Processes 37 (1): 1–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C.
(1987) Politeness. Some universals of language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven E., and John Heritage
2014 “Benefactors and Beneficiaries: Benefective Status and Stance in the Management of Offers and Requests.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 55–86. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Coulmas, Florian
1981 “Poison to Your Soul. Thanks and Apologies Contrastively Viewed.” In Conversational Routine: Explorations in Standardized Communication Situations and Prepatterned Speech, ed. by Florian Coulmas, 69–91. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth
2014 “What Does Grammar Tell Us About Action?” Pragmatics 24 (3): 623–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Curl, Traci S.
2006 “Offers of Assistance: Constraints on Syntactic Design.” Journal of Pragmatics 38 (8): 1257–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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): 129–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, S.
(1976) Is Sybil there?: The structure of some American English directives. Language in Society, 5, 25–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fasulo, Alessandra, Heather Loyd, and Vincenzo Padiglione
2007 “Children’s Socialization into Cleaning Practices: A Cross-Cultural Perspective.” Discourse and Society 18 (1): 11–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Floyd, Simeon, Giovanni Rossi, Julija Baranova, Joe Blythe, Mark Dingemanse, Kobin H. Kendrick, Jörg Zinken, and N. J. Enfield
2018 “Universals and Cultural Diversity in the Expression of Gratitude.” Royal Society Open Science 5 (5): 180–391. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Floyd, Simeon, Giovanni Rossi, and N. J. Enfield
eds. in press Getting Others to Do Things: A Pragmatic Typology of Recruitments Berlin Language Science Press
Gleason, Jean B., Rivka Y. Perlmann, and Esther B. Greif
1984 “What’s the Magic Word: Learning Language Through Politeness Routines∗.” Discourse Processes 7 (4): 493–502. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gleason, Jean B., and Sandra Weintraub
1976 “The Acquisition of Routines in Child Language.” Language in Society 5 (2): 129. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John
1984 Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Keller, Heidi, Monika Abels, Jörn Borke, Bettina Lamm, Wingshan Lo, Yanjie Su, and Yifang Wang
2007 “Socialization Environments of Chinese and Euro-American Middle-Class Babies. Parenting Behaviors, Verbal Discourse and Ethnotheories.” International Journal of Behavioral Development 31 (3): 210–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kendrick, Kobin H.
in press. “Recruitment in English: A Quantitative Study.” In Getting Others to Do Things: A Pragmatic Typology of Recruitments ed. by Simeon Floyd, Giovanni Rossi, and N. J. Enfield Berlin Language Science Press
Kendrick, Kobin H., and Paul Drew
2016 “Recruitments: Offers, Requests, and the Organizationof Assistance in Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (1): 1–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C.
2013 “Action Formation and Ascription.” In the Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Tanya Stivers, and Jack Sidnell, 103–30. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor, and Carolina Izquierdo
2009 “Responsibility in Childhood: Three Developmental Trajectories.” Ethos 37 (4): 391–413. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reddy, Vasudevi
2012 “Moving Others Matters.” In Moving Ourselves, Moving Others, ed. by Ad Foolen, Ulrike M. Lüdtke, Timothy P. Racine, and Jordan Zlatev, 139–164. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rossi, Giovanni
in press. “The Recruitment System in Italian.” In Getting Others to Do Things: A Pragmatic Typology of Recruitments ed. by Simeon Floyd, Giovanni Rossi, and N. J. Enfield Berlin Language Science Press
2012 “Bilateral and Unilateral Requests: The Use of Imperatives and Mi X? Interrogatives in Italian.” Discourse Processes 49: 426–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 The Request System in Italian Interaction. Doctoral Dissertation. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.Google Scholar
Rossi, Giovanni, Lorenza Mondada, Marja-Leena Sorjonen, Matylda Weidner, and Jörg Zinken
2018 “PECII: A Parallel Corpus for Comparative Research.” Panel at the 5th International Conference on Conversation Analysis , Loughborough, UK, July 2018.
Schegloff, E. A.
(2007) Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Searle, J.
(1975) Indirect speech acts. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics. Part 3: Speech acts (pp. 59–82). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Selting, Margret, Peter Auer, Dagmar Barth-Weingarten, Jörg Bergmann, Pia Bergmann, Karin Birkner, Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
2011 “A System for Transcribing Talk-in-Interaction: GAT 2.” Gesprächsforschung 12: 1–51.Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya
2004 ““No No No” And Other Types of Multiple Sayings in Social Interaction.” Human Communication Research 30 (2): 260–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, and Frederico Rossano
2010 “Mobilizing Response.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 43 (1): 3–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles
1989 Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael
2008 Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wootton, Anthony J.
1997 Interaction and the Development of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zhan, Kaicheng, Wan Wei, Darcey Searles, Jonathan Potter, Song Hee Park, Lisa Mikesell, Jenny Mandelbaum, Alexa Hepburn, and Galina Bolden
2018 “Gratitude in Recruitment Sequences.” Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Conversation Analysis , Loughborough, UK, July 2018.
Zinken, Jörg
in press. “Recruitments in Polish.” In Getting Others to Do Things: A Pragmatic Typology of Recruitments ed. by Simeon Floyd, Giovanni Rossi, and N. J. Enfield Berlin Language Science Press
2016 Requesting Responsibility: The Morality of Grammar in Polish and English Family Interaction. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zinken, Jörg, and Arnulf Deppermann
2017 “A Cline of Visible Commitment in the Design of Imperative Turns: Evidence from German and Polish.” In Imperative Turns at Talk: The Design of Directives in Action, ed. by Marja-Lena Sorjonen, Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, and Liisa Raevaara. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zinken, Jörg, and Eva Ogiermann
2013 “Responsibility and Action: Object Requests in English and Polish Everyday Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 46 (3): 256–76. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zinken, Jörg, and Giovanni Rossi
2016 “Assistance and Other Forms of Cooperative Engagement.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (1): 20–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Clayman, Steven E & Heidi Kevoe-Feldman
2023. Dispatching First Responders: Language Practices and the Dispatcher’s Operational Role in Radio Encounters With Police Officers. Discourse & Society 34:5 ► pp. 547 ff. DOI logo
Küttner, Uwe-A., Anna Vatanen & Jörg Zinken
2022. Invoking Rules in Everyday Family Interactions: A Method for Appealing to Practical Reason. Human Studies 45:4 ► pp. 793 ff. DOI logo
Weidner, Matylda
2023. Chapter 4. Responses to polar questions in Polish. In Responding to Polar Questions across Languages and Contexts [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 35], ► pp. 109 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 march 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.