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Part of
New Perspectives in Interactional Linguistic Research
Edited by Margret Selting and Dagmar Barth-Weingarten
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 36] 2024
► pp. 49–72

Ordering a series of turn-initial particles

An extreme case analysis

The paper is an attempt to describe the principles behind the ordering of a series of four different particles – hee ‘hey’, ja ‘yes’, eh ‘eh’, and nou ‘now’/’well’ – in the beginning of a sequence-initiating turn in which the speaker launches a new activity framework. A surprising result of the analysis is that it shows that the speaker lays the groundwork for a new activity framework in a turn-initial trajectory that indexes the turn’s position within the overall-structural organization of the talk both at the local level of the organization of subsequent sequences and at the global level of the organization of activities. The positioning of each particle in the series locates the order of organization by reference to which it operates. The study’s methodology – using multiple collection studies to establish the orientations that are at work – is an attempt to find an appropriate heuristic for developing an empirically plausible analysis of a complex configuration of single-case phenomena.

Keywords: turn-initial particle, particle series, turn-initial trajectory, activity framework, overall structural organization, non-responsive ja ‘yes’, topic-initial hitch, collection study, extreme-case analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A few remarks on earlier research, concepts, and method
    • 2.1Some theoretical background
    • 2.2Turn-initial position and turn-constructional units
    • 2.3Topic, activity framework, and overall structural organization
    • 2.4Data and method
  • 3.The four particles
    • 3.1The first particle in the series: hee ‘hey’
    • 3.2The last particle in the series: nou ‘now’
    • 3.3The second particle in the series: ja ‘yes’
    • 3.4The third particle in the series: eh ‘uh’
  • 4.To conclude
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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