Cover not available

In:Intersubjectivity in Action: Studies in language and social interaction
Edited by Jan Lindström, Ritva Laury, Anssi Peräkylä and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 326] 2021
► pp. 135–159

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

Brokering co-participants’ volition in request and offer sequences

 | University of Helsinki
Published online: 17 November 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.326.07har
Abstract
This chapter examines multilingual interactions where bilingual participants engage in advancing mutual understanding between other participants by language brokering (e.g. Bolden 2012) requests and offers from Finnish to Brazilian Portuguese. Brokering turns involve either (i) declarative statements regarding the prior speaker’s volition towards the requested/offered matter or (ii) questions concerning the recipient’s volition. The use of these formats displays the broker’s intersubjective interpretation of locally relevant features of the action, such as the distribution of benefits and agency, and contingencies in its realization. The investigation of language brokering in this context also contributes to research on requests, offers and related social actions (e.g. Couper-Kuhlen 2014), action ascription (Levinson 2013; Deppermann & Haugh forthcoming), and on verbs expressing volition (Sacks 1992: 181; Schulze-Wenck 2005).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Wanting something: Volition in the transfer of objects and services
  • 3.Three types of brokering
    • 3.1Brokering prior action as a request
    • 3.2Brokering prior action as an offer
    • 3.3Somewhere between requests and offers
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (40)
References
Antonini, Rachele. 2010. “The Study of Child Language Brokering: Past, Current and Emerging Research.” MediAzoni 10: 1–23.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bolden, Galina. 2012. “Across Languages and Cultures: Brokering Problems of Understanding in Conversational Repair.” Language in Society 41: 97–121. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Broth, Mathias, Jakob Cromdal, and Lena Levin. 2019. “Telling the Other’s Side: Formulating Others’ Mental States in Driver Training.” Language & Communication 65: 7–21. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 1998. “‘Irrealis’ as a Grammatical Category.” Anthropological Linguistics 40 (2): 257–288.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Childs, Carrie. 2012a. “’I’m Not X, I Just Want Y’: Formulating ‘Wants’ in Interaction.” Discourse Studies 14 (2): 181–196. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012b. “Directing and Requesting: Two Interactive Uses of the Mental State Terms Want and Need.” Text & Talk 32 (6): 727–749. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clayman, Steven E., and John Heritage. 2014. “Benefactors and Beneficiaries. Benefactive Status and Stance in the Management of Offers and Requests.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 55–86. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth. 2014. “What Does Grammar Tell Us about Action?” Pragmatics 24 (3): 623–647. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, and Marja Etelämäki. 2014. “On Divisions of Labor in Request and Offer Environments.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 115–144. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Curl, Traci S. 2006. “Offers of Assistance: Constraints on Syntactic Design.” Journal of Pragmatics 38: 1257–1280. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Curl, Traci S., and Paul Drew. 2008. “Contingency and Action: A Comparison of Two Forms of Requesting.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 41 (2), 129–153. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deppermann, Arnulf. 2011. “The Study of Formulations as a Key to Interactional Semantics.” Human Studies 34 (2): 115–128. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. “How Does ’Cognition’ Matter to the Analysis of Talk-in-Interaction?” Language Sciences 34: 746–767. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’: Recipient Design by Using Negation to Constrain an Action’s Interpretation.” In Grammar and Dialogism: Sequential, Syntactic, and Prosodic Patterns between Emergence and Sedimentation, ed. by Susanne Günther, Wolfgang Imo, and Jörg Bücker, 15–52. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deppermann, Arnulf, and Michael Haugh. (forthcoming). “Action Ascription in Social Interaction.” In Action Ascription. Interaction in Context, ed. by Arnulf Deppermann, and Michael Haugh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Deppermann, Arnulf, and Julia Kaiser. (forthcoming). “Achieving the Intersubjectivity of Action and Enabling Coordination: Intention Ascriptions in Second Position with Du Willst/Sie Wollen (‘you want’) in German.” In Action Ascription. Interaction in Context, ed. by Arnulf Deppermann, and Michael Haugh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Drew, Paul, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen (eds). 2014. Requesting in Social Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Edwards, Derek, and Jonathan Potter. 2005. “Discursive Psychology, Mental States and Descriptions.” In Conversation and Cognition, ed. by Hedwig te Molder, and Jonathan Potter, 241–259. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harjunpää, Katariina. 2017a. “Translatory Practices in Everyday Conversation. Bilingual Mediating in Finnish–Brazilian Portuguese Interaction.” Ph.D. dissertation. Helsinki: University of Helsinki.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017b. “Mediated questions in Multilingual Conversation: Organizing Participation through Question Design.” In Linking Clauses and Actions in Social Interaction, ed. by Ritva Laury, Marja Etelämäki, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 75–102. Helsinki: SKS.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John, and D.R Watson. 1980. “Aspects of the Properties of Formulations in Natural Conversations: Some Instances Analysed.” Semiotica 30 (3/4): 245–262. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karttunen, Lauri. 1971. Implicative Verbs. Language 47 (2): 340–358. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kendon, Adam, and Laura Versante. 2003. “Pointing by Hand in ‘Neopolitan’”. In Pointing: Where Language, Culture, and Cognition Meet, ed. by Sotaro Kita, 109–137. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kendrick, Kobin H., and Paul Drew. 2016. “Recruitment: Offers, Requests, and the Organization of Assistance in Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction, 49 (1): 1–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kärkkäinen, Elise, and Tiina Keisanen. 2012. “Linguistic and Embodied Formats for Making (Concrete) Offers.” Discourse Studies, 14 (5): 587–611. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lev, Michael. 2014. “The Nanti Realis Status System.” Linguistic Typology 18 (2): 251–288.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 2013. “Action Formation and Ascription.” In Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 103–130. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindström, Anna. 2005. “Language as Social Action: A Study of How Senior Citizens Request Assistance with Practical Tasks in the Swedish Home Help Service.” In Syntax and Lexis in Conversation. Studies in the Use of Linguistic Resources in Talk-in-Interaction, ed. by Auli Hakulinen, and Margret Selting, 209–230. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mondada, Lorenza. 2014. “Requesting Immediate Action in The Surgical Operation Room: Time, Embodied Resources and Praxeological Embeddedness.” In Requesting In Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 267–302. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. “Multiple Temporalities of Language and Body in Interaction: Challenges for Transcribing Multimodality.” Research On Language And Social Interaction, 51 (1): 85–106. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Raymond, Chase. 2014. “Epistemic Brokering in the Interpreter-Mediated Medical Visit: Negotiating ‘Patient’s Side’ and ‘Doctor’s Side’ Knowledge.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 47 (4): 426–446. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rossi, Giovanni 2015: The Request System in Italian Interaction. Ph.D. Dissertation. Nijmegen: Radboud University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rossi, Giovanni, and Jörg Zinken. 2017. “Social Agency and Grammar.” In Distributed Agency, ed. By Nick J. Enfield, and Paul Kockelman, 79–86. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation, Vol. I, ed. by Gail Jefferson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schulze-Wenck, Stephanie. 2005. “Form and Function of ‘First Verbs’ in Talk-in-Interaction.” In Syntax and Lexis in Conversation. Studies on the Use of Linguistic Resources in Talk-in-Interaction, ed. by Auli Hakulinen, and Margret Selting, 319–348. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Skårup, Terkel. 2004. “Brokering and Membership in a Multilingual Community of Practice.” In Second Language Conversations, ed. by Rod Gardner, and Johannes Wagner, 40–57. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sorjonen, Marja-Leena, and Raevaara, Liisa. 2014. “On the Grammatical Form of Requests at the Convenience Store: Requesting as Embodied Action.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 243–268. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stevanovic, Melisa. 2011. “Participants’ Deontic Rights and Action Formation: The Case of Declarative Requests for Action.” Interaction and Linguistic Structures 52. Available at: [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zinken, Jörg. 2016. Requesting for Responsibility. The Morality of Grammar in Polish and English Family Interaction. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Dell’Oro, Francesca
2025. Volition ascription to the addressee in a diachronic perspective. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 26:2 ► pp. 232 ff. DOI logo
Lindholm, Camilla, Jenny Paananen, Melisa Stevanovic, Elina Weiste & Taina Valkeapää
2024. Requests for concrete actions in interaction. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 34:2 ► pp. 190 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 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