Cover not available

In:(Non)referentiality in Conversation
Edited by Michael C. Ewing and Ritva Laury
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 344] 2024
► pp. 123–140

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

Chapter 7
The indeterminacy and fluidity of reference in everyday conversation

 | University of Alberta
 | University of California Santa Barbara
Published online: 1 August 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.344.07ono
Abstract
We focus on (a) the indeterminacy of reference, i.e., noun phrases which are described as having a ‘given’, ‘old’ or ‘definite’ referent, where that referent is unspecified; (b) the ways in which speakers shift reference between categorial and specific designations. The data reveal that talk displaying indeterminate and shifting reference is consistently accepted without being challenged. These facts show that reference can only be understood by considering how speakers refer locally, in the unfolding of social action, and that referential common ground is generally established despite the referential indeterminacy and fluidity. We thus promote the view that reference is a deeply social phenomenon, an emergent set of practices that is used and negotiated by people in real time.
Article outline
  • 1.Background
  • 2.Findings
    • 2.1Indeterminacy
    • 2.2Fluidity
    • 2.3Indeterminacy and fluidity
  • 3.Summary and discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (63)
References
Auer, Peter. 1984. “Referential Problems in Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 8: 627–648. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blythe, Joe. 2009. Doing Referring in Murriny Patha Conversation. Ph.D. thesis, University of Sydney.
Chafe, Wallace. 1994. Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: The Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(ed). 1980. The Pear Stories: Cognitive, Cultural, and Linguistic Aspects of Narrative Production. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cornish, Francis. 2011. “‘Strict’ Anadeixis, Discourse Deixis and Text Structuring.” Language Sciences 33 (5): 753–767. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth and Sandra A. Thompson. 2008. “On Assessing Situations and Events in Conversation: Extraposition and Its Relatives.” Discourse Studies 10 (4): 443–467. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. Forthcoming. “Action Ascription in Everyday Advice-giving Sequences.” In Action Ascription: Interaction in Context, ed. by Arnulf Deppermann and Michael Haugh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cutfield, Sarah. 2018. “Dalabon Exophoric Uses of Demonstratives.” In Demonstratives in Cross-Linguistic Perspective, ed. by Stephen C. Levinson, Sarah Cutfield, Michael Dunn, N. J. Enfield, and Sérgio Meira, 90–115. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deppermann, Arnulf. 2005. “Conversational Interpretation of Lexical Items and Conversational Contrasting.” In Syntax and lexis in conversation, ed. by Auli Hakulinen and Margret Selting, 289–317. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011a. “The Study of Formulations as a Key to an Interactional Semantics.” Human Studies 34: 115–128. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011b. “Notionalization: The Transformation of Descriptions into Categorizations.” Human Studies 34: 155–181. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. “Inferential Practices in Social Interaction: A Conversation-Analytic Account.” Open Linguistics 4: 35–55. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Djenar, Dwi Noverini, Michael C. Ewing and Howard Manns. 2018. Style and Intersubjectivity in Youth Interaction. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Du Bois, John W. 1980. “Beyond Definiteness: The Trace of Identity in Discourse.” In The Pear Stories, ed. by Wallace Chafe, 9–50. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Enfield, N. J. and Tanya Stivers (eds). 2007. Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural and Social Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Epstein, Richard. 2002. “The Definite Article, Accessibility, and the Construction of Discourse Referents.” Cognitive Linguistics 12 (4): 333–378. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, Gareth. 1982. The Varieties of Reference, edited by John McDowell, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2015. “Localising Person Reference among Indonesian Youth.” In Margins, Hubs, and Peripheries in a Decentralizing Indonesia, ed. by Zane Goebel, Deborah Cole, and Howard Manns. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies Special Issue 162: 26–41.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ewing, Michael C. 2018. “Investigating Indonesian Conversation: Approach and Rationale.” Wacana 19 (2): 342–374. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ewing, Michael C. 2019. “The Predicate as a Locus of Grammar and Interaction in Colloquial Indonesian.” In Special Issue “Usage-based and Typological Approaches to Linguistic Units” ed. by Ritva Laury Tsuyoshi Ono and Ryoko Suzuki. Studies in Language 43 (2): 402–443. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ford, Cecilia E. and Barbara A. Fox. 1996. “Interactional Motivations for Reference Formulation: He had. This guy had, a beautiful, thirty-two O:lds.” In Studies in Anaphora, ed. by Barbara A. Fox, 145–168. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fox, Barbara. 1987. Discourse Structure and Anaphora. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fox, Barbara A. (ed.) 1996. Studies in anaphora. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Frege, Gottlieb. 1892. Über Sinn und Bedeutung. Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik 100 (1892): 25–50. In Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic and Philosophy, 157–177, translated by M. Black, V. Dudman, P. Geach, H. Kaal, E.-H. W. Kluge, B. McGuinness and R. H. Stoothoff. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1984.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gernsbacher, Morton A., and Suzanne Shroyer. 1989. “The Cataphoric Use of the Indefinite this in Spoken Narratives.” Memory and Cognition 17: 536–540. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Givon, T. (ed). 1983. Topic Continuity in Discourse: A quantitative cross-language study. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles. 1996. “Transparent Vision.” In Interaction and Grammar. ed. by Elinor Ochs, Emanuel A. Schegloff and Sandra Thompson, 370–404. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hanks, William. 1990. Referential Practice: Language and Lived Space among the Maya. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1992. “The Indexical Ground of Deictic Reference.” In Rethinking Context, ed. by Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin 43–77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaiser, Elsi. 2015. “Impersonal and Generic Reference: A Cross-linguistic Look at Finnish and English Narratives.” Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, 6 (2): 9–42. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaplan, David. 1989. “Afterthoughts.” In Themes from Kaplan, ed. by Joseph Almog, John Perry, and Howard Wettstein, eds., 565–614. Oxford: Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karimi, Hossein, and Fernanda Ferreira.. 2016. Good-enough linguistic representations and online cognitive equilibrium in language processing. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (69:5):1013–1040 Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kripke, Saul. 1972. “Naming and Necessity.” In Semantics of Natural Language, ed. by Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman, 253–355. Boston: Reidel. (Published on its own as a book in 1980, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.) Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Linell, Per. 2017. “Intersubjectivity in Dialogue.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Dialogue, ed. by Edda Weigand, 109–126. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Linell, Per and Jan Lindström. 2016. “Partial Intersubjectivity and Sufficient Understandings for Current Practical Purposes: On a Specialized Practice in Swedish Conversation.” Nordic Journal of Linguistics 39 (2): 113–133. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moore, Adrian W. (ed). 1993. Meaning and Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor, Patrick Gonzales, and Sally Jacoby. 1996. “When I come Down I’m in the Domain State.” In Interaction and Grammar, ed. by Elinor Ochs, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Sandra A. Thompson, 328–369. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oh, Sun-Young. 2005. “English Zero Anaphora as an Interactional Resource.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 38 (3): 267–302. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. “English Zero Anaphora as an Interactional Resource II.” Discourse Studies 86: 817–846. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ono, Tsuyoshi and Sandra Thompson. 1997. Deconstructing “Zero Anaphora” in Japanese. Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Pragmatics and Grammatical Structure.
Ono, Tsuyoshi and Ryoko Suzuki. 2020. “Exploration into a New Understanding of ‘Zero Anaphora’ in Japanese Everyday Talk.” In Fixed expressions: Building Language Structure and Action, ed. by Ritva Laury and Tsuyoshi Ono, 41–70. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Prince, Ellen. 1981. “Toward a Typology of Given-New Information.” In Radical Pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 223–255. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Raymond, Chase W. 2019. “Intersubjectivity, Normativity, and Grammar.” Social Psychology Quarterly 82 (2): 182–204. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Raymond, Chase Wesley, and Anne Elizabeth Clark White. 2017. “Time Reference in the Service of Social Action.” Social Psychology Quarterly 80 (2): 109–131. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Russell, Bertrand. 1905. “On Denoting”. Mind 14 (56): 479–493. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1987. “You Want to Find out if Anybody Really Does Care”. In Talk and Social Organisation, ed. by Graham Button and John R. E. Lee, eds., 217–225. Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1992. Lectures on Conversation I: 349–350. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1982. “Discourse as an Interactional Achievement: Some Uses of ‘uh huh’ and Other Things that Come between Sentences.” In Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 71–93. Georgetown: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1988. “Description in the Social Sciences I: Talk-in-Interaction.” IPrA Papers in Pragmatics 2 (1): 1–24.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1996. “Some Practices for Referring to Persons in Talk-in-Interaction.” In Typological Studies in Language 33: 437–486. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2007. Sequence Organization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schütz, Alfred. 1953. “Common-sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 14:1–38.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1967. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Siewierska, Anna and M. Papastathi. 2011. “Third Person Plurals in the Languages of Europe: Typological and Methodological Issues”. Linguistics 43 (2): 575–610.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya and Jeffrey D. Robinson. 2006. A preference for progressivity in interaction. Language in Society 35.3:367–392.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Strawson, Peter F. 1950. “On Referring.” Mind 59: 320–344. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A. and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen. 2020. “English why don’t you X as a Formulaic Expression.” In Fixed Expressions: Building Social Action from :anguage Structure, ed. by Ritva Laury and Tsuyoshi Ono, 99–132. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wald, Benji. 1983. “Referents and Topic within and across Discourse Units: Observations from Current Vernacular English.” In Discourse Perspectives on Syntax, ed. by Flora Klein-Andreu, 91–116. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Lazovic, Milica
2025. Spatial resources in pre-service teachers’ instructional practices in VR tandems: co-constructing shared spaces and embodied spatial scaffolding. Frontiers in Communication 10 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