OKAY in health helpline calls in Brazil

This chapter investigates phone calls to a health helpline in Brazilian Portuguese, focusing on how call-takers employ OKAY as a resource in managing the participants’ mutual alignment and the progression of activities during the calls. Call-takers make use of OKAY in transitioning between main and subsidiary actions and activities and in eliciting uptake from the recipient. In both contexts, the use of OKAY relates to the work of managing the institutional agenda and technical resources in relation to the situated concerns of the callers. The analysis thus contributes to the study of particles and institutional interaction by showing how OKAY is used in organizing the routinized, agenda-driven conversational structures of helpline interactions.

Published online: 17 March 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.34.09ost