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Grammar in Action: Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction
Edited by Jakob Steensig, Maria Jørgensen, Jan K. Lindström, Nicholas Mikkelsen, Karita Suomalainen and Søren Sandager Sørensen
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 37] 2025
► pp. 368–393

Chapter 12
Action formation, projection, and participation framework

Pseudoclefts in Swedish talk-in-interaction

 | University of Helsinki
 | University of Helsinki
This chapter discusses the structural, interactional and situational specifics of the pseudo-cleft construction in Swedish talk-in-interaction, specifying its use as a resource for turn and action formation but also as a means to regulate discursive trajectories and the participation framework. An analysis of nearly 100 instances of pseudoclefts collected from casual conversations and institutional interactions revealed that this format is a recognizable and conventionally available building block of interaction exhibiting a regular grammatical pattern which can be characterized as a compound turn constructional unit. The pseudocleft is used for discourse organization in marking transitions in the pragmatic course of an interaction. This gives the construction a projecting force on the level of sequence organization. Our analysis illustrates that pseudoclefts are not dedicated to accomplishing one single kind of action but typically contribute to the formation of directive-commissive and evaluative actions. The pseudoclefts in our datasets were often used by participants to claim an expert position. This implies a rather strong link between the grammatical format and the participation framework in which the format casts one of the participants as possibly more knowledgeable and as the one who controls the agenda, has the right to direct others, and to make assessments.
Keywords: action formation, discourse organization, grammar-in-action, participation framework, projection, pseudocleft, Swedish, talk-in-interaction, turn design
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Turn design
    • 2.1Grammatical structure
      • 2.1.1Standard structure
      • 2.1.2Structural variation
    • 2.2Information structure and projection
  • 3.Sequence and action formation
    • 3.1Accomplishing directive-commissive and evaluative social actions
    • 3.2Initiating discursive transitions
  • 4.Participation framework and epistemic positioning
  • 5.Conclusion and outlook
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
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