Cover not available

In:Enabling Human Conduct: Studies of talk-in-interaction in honor of Emanuel A. Schegloff
Edited by Geoffrey Raymond, Gene H. Lerner and John Heritage
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 273] 2017
► pp. 273–297

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Particles and epistemics

Convergences and divergences between English and Mandarin

Published online: 24 May 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.273.14wu
This chapter examines three particles that have epistemic functions in English and Mandarin: turn-initial ‘oh’ in English, turn-initial ‘ou’ in Mandarin, and turn-final ‘a’ in Mandarin. It is argued that while ou and oh converge in registering a ‘change of state’ of information, orientation or awareness, turn-final a is used to register a contrast between oneself and an interlocutor, which often implicates, and reflexively embodies, the speaker’s pre-existing knowledge, perspective, expectation or experience in relation to the matter at issue. This “contrast-invoking” usage of turn-final ‘a’ can be mobilized to problematize the action of the previous speaker by marking it as counter to the speaker’s expectation, thus converging with oh-prefacing in this particular interactional usage despite their normal functional divide. The chapter ends with a consideration of putatively universal pragmatic needs that are carried out using distinctive resources, and a distinctive division of labor among resources, in the two languages.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. Oh in Anglo-American English
  • 3.Initial Ou in Mandarin Chinese
  • 4.Final A in Mandarin Chinese
  • 5.The convergences
    • 5.1Responding to a question while indexing the question’s inappositeness or redundancy
    • 5.2Oh-prefaced and a-finalized responses as escalated disagreement
    • 5.3Oh-prefaced and a-finalized responses as independently arrived at
  • 6.Concluding discussion
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
  • Abbreviations
References (42)
Chao, Yuan-ren. 1968. A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clayman, Steven, and John Heritage. 2002. The News Interview: Journalists and Public Figures on the Air. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Drew, Paul. 1992. “Contested Evidence in a Courtroom Cross-Examination: The Case of a Trial for Rape.” In Talk at Work: Social Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew and John Heritage, 470–520. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. 2016. “Polar Questions.” In The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, ed. by Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath, Chapter 116. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Available online at [URL]. Accessed on 2016-03-08.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fox, Barbara A., and Sandra A. Thompson. 2010. “Responses to Wh-Questions in English Conversation.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 43: 133–156. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1978. “Response Cries.” Language 54: 787–815. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heinemann, Trine, and Aino Koivisto (eds). 2016. “Indicating a Change-of-State in Interaction: Cross-linguistic Perspectives.” Journal of explorations 104: 83–88.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John. 1984. “A Change-of-State Token and Aspects of Its Sequential Placement.” In Structures of Social Action, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 299–345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1998. “Oh-Prefaced Responses to Inquiry.” Language in Society 27 (3): 291–334. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. “ Oh-Prefaced Responses to Assessments: A Method of Modifying Agreement/Disagreement.” In The Language of Turn and Sequence, ed. by Cecilia Ford, Barbara Fox, and Sandra Thompson, 196–224. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. "Epistemics in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge." Research on Language and Social Interaction 45: 1–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John, and Geoffrey Raymond. 2005. “The Terms of Agreement: Indexing Epistemic Authority and Subordination in Assessment Sequences.” Social Psychology Quarterly 68 (1): 15–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. “Navigating Epistemic Landscapes: Acquiescence, Agency and Resistance in Responses to Polar Questions.” In Questions: Formal, Functional and Interactional Perspectives, ed. by Jan P. De Ruiter, 179–192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John, and Marja-Leena Sorjonen (eds). frth. Turn-Initial Particles across Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Jefferson, Gail. 1978. “Sequential Aspects of Storytelling in Conversation.” In Studies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction, ed. by Jim Schenkein, 219–248. New York: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kim, Hye Ri Stephanie, and Satomi Kuroshima (eds). 2013. “Turn Beginnings in Interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 57: 267–337. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Li, Charles, and Sandra A. Thompson. 1981. Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lü, Shuxiang, and Dexi Zhu. 1953. Yufa Xiuci Jianghua [Talks on Grammar and Rhetorics]. Beijing: Zhongguo Qingnian.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey. 2003. “Grammar and Social Organization: Yes/No Interrogatives and the Structure of Responding.” American Sociological Review 68: 939–967. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey, and John Heritage. 2006. “The Epistemics of Social Relations: Owning Grandchildren.” Language in Society 35: 677–705. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1987. “On the Preferences for Agreement and Contiguity in Sequences in Conversation.” In Talk and Social Organization, ed. by Graham Button and John R. E. Lee, 54–69. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1992. Lectures on Conversation Vol. 2 (Fall 1968-Spring 1972). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson. 1974. “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation.” Language 50: 696–735. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1984. “On Some Questions and Ambiguities in Conversation.” In Structures of Social Action, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 28–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1996. “Confirming Allusions: Toward an Empirical Account of Action.” American Journal of Sociology 104 (1): 161–216. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1997. “Practices and Actions: Boundary Cases of Other-Initiated Repair.” Discourse Processes 23 (3): 499–545. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. “On Dispensability.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 37: 95–149. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. “Interaction: The Infrastructure for Social Institutions, the Natural Ecological Niche for Language and the Arena in Which Culture Is Enacted.” In The Roots of Human Sociality: Culture, Cognition and Interaction, ed. by Nicholas J. Enfield and Stephen C. Levinson, 70–96. New York: Berg.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis, Volume 1. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. “One Perspective on Conversation Analysis: Comparative Perspectives.” In Conversation Analysis: Comparative Perspectives, ed. by Jack Sidnell, 357–406. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya. 2010. “An Overview of the Question-Response System in American English.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2772–2781. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. “Morality and Question Design: 'Of Course' as Contesting a Presupposition of Askability.” In The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation, ed. by Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig, 82–106. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, Nicholas J. Enfield, Penelope Brown, Christina Englert, Makoto Hayashi, Trine Heinemann, Gertie Hoymann, Federico Rossano, Jan Peter De Ruiter, Kyung-Eun Yoon, and Stephen C. Levinson. 2009. “Universals and Cultural Variation in Turn-Taking in Conversation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (26): 10587–10592. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, and Makoto Hayashi. 2010. “Transformative Answers: One Way to Resist a Question’s Constraints.” Language in Society 39: 1–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Terasaki, Alene K. 2004. “Pre-Announcement Sequences in Conversation.” In Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, ed. by Gene Lerner, 171–223. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. “Initiating Repair and Beyond: The Use of Two Repeat-formatted Repair Initiations in Mandarin Conversation.” Discourse Processes 4: 67–109. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. “Repetition in the Initiation of Repair.” In Conversation Analysis: Comparative Perspectives, ed. by Jack Sidnell, 31–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. “Doing Conversation Analysis in Mandarin Chinese: Basic Methods.” Chinese Language and Discourse 7: 179–209. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (17)

Cited by 17 other publications

Huang, Shu-Yu
2025. Establishing joint attention to embodied actions with zheyang(zi) in Taiwan Mandarin cooking demonstrations. Chinese Language and Discourse. An International and Interdisciplinary Journal 16:2 ► pp. 271 ff. DOI logo
König, Katharina & Martin Pfeiffer
2025. Coding request for confirmation sequences: Methodological reflections from a cross-linguistic research project. Research on Language and Social Interaction 58:3 ► pp. 303 ff. DOI logo
Zhang, Shuling & Mengying Qiu
2025. Indexing a withdrawal from one’s previously-taken position. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 35:1 ► pp. 129 ff. DOI logo
Yu, Guodong, Yaxin Wu, Paul Drew & Chase Wesley Raymond
2024. The DIG Mandarin Conversations (DMC) Corpus. Chinese Language and Discourse. An International and Interdisciplinary Journal 15:1 ► pp. 105 ff. DOI logo
Zhu, Dongyi
2024. Constructing elderly patients’ agency through conversational storytelling. Linguistics Vanguard 10:1 ► pp. 189 ff. DOI logo
Raymond, Chase Wesley, Rebecca Clift & John Heritage
2021. Reference without anaphora: on agency through grammar. Linguistics 59:3 ► pp. 715 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Wei
2021. The question-response system in Mandarin conversation. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 31:4 ► pp. 589 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Wei
2025. Insertional code-switching as interactional resource in Mandarin–English bilingual conversation. International Journal of Bilingualism 29:4 ► pp. 883 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Wei
2025. Response particles in Mandarin conversation. Chinese Language and Discourse. An International and Interdisciplinary Journal 16:1 ► pp. 81 ff. DOI logo
WU, JINGXUAN & CARSTEN ROEVER
2021. Proficiency and Preference Organization in Second Language Mandarin Chinese Refusals. The Modern Language Journal 105:4 ► pp. 897 ff. DOI logo
Persson, Rasmus
2020. Taking Issue with a Question While Answering It: Prefatory Particles and Multiple Sayings of Polar Response Tokens in French. Research on Language and Social Interaction 53:3 ► pp. 380 ff. DOI logo
Zhai, Mengying
2020. Peer-interaction patterns in a Chinese as a foreign language pair writing task. Chinese as a Second Language (漢語教學研究—美國中文教師學會學報). The journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA 55:2 ► pp. 133 ff. DOI logo
Clift, Rebecca & Chase Wesley Raymond
2018. Actions in practice: On details in collections. Discourse Studies 20:1 ► pp. 90 ff. DOI logo
EVANS, NICHOLAS, HENRIK BERGQVIST & LILA SAN ROQUE
2018. The grammar of engagement I: framework and initial exemplification. Language and Cognition 10:1 ► pp. 110 ff. DOI logo
Wu, Ruey-Jiuan Regina
2016. Doing conversation analysis in Mandarin Chinese. Chinese Language and Discourse. An International and Interdisciplinary Journal 7:2 ► pp. 179 ff. DOI logo
Wu, Ruey-Jiuan Regina
2016. Turn design and progression. Chinese Language and Discourse. An International and Interdisciplinary Journal 7:2 ► pp. 210 ff. DOI logo
Wu, Ruey-Jiuan Regina
2018. Turn design and progression. In Between turn and sequence [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 31], ► pp. 287 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue