Chapter published in:
OKAY across Languages: Toward a comparative approach to its use in talk-in-interaction
Edited by Emma Betz, Arnulf Deppermann, Lorenza Mondada and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 34] 2021
► pp. 236–265

Chapter 8
When OKAY is repeated

Closing the talk so far in Korean and Japanese conversations

| Tamagawa University
| California State University , Northridge
| Japan Women’s University
| University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
| Yonsei University
This chapter explores the use of the repetition of OKAY in a third position and in a transitional phase between activities in Korean and Japanese conversations. We have identified that (1) the duplicated OKAY, by being placed either in the middle of the other speaker’s turn or after a gap, is employed to accept the second position turn as sufficient and thereby propose to close the protracted sequence, and (2) it is deployed to serve as a boundary marker between two activities. These actions are commonly observed as an achievement of multiple actors displaying their orientation toward the activity through various resources, including the duplicated OKAY.
Keywords: duplicated OKAY, curtailing, sequence-closing third, expanded sequence, transitional phase, proposal to close, gap, lapse, sufficient, perseverance
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1OKAY in English, Korean, and Japanese
    • 2.2Multiple sayings in interaction
  • 3.Data
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1“That’s more than sufficient”: Curtailing an expanded sequence with a duplicated OKAY
    • 4.2Confirming no more expansion with a duplicated OKAY
    • 4.3Proposing to move on to a next relevant course of action: Transitional work
  • 5.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
Published online: 17 March 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.34.08kur