Reanimating responsibility

This study analyses the use of the Polish weź-V2 (take-V2) double imperative to request here-and-now actions. The analysis is based on a collection of approximately 40 take-V2 double imperatives, which was built from a corpus of 10 hours of video recordings of everyday interactions (preparing and having meals, playing with children, etc.) taking place in the homes of Polish families. A sequential analysis of these data shows that the take-V2 construction is commonly selected in situations where the request recipient could be expected to already be attending to the relevant business (e.g., because they committed to this earlier in the interaction), but isn’t. By selecting the take-V2 format, the request speaker reanimates the recipient’s responsibility for the matter at hand.