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Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 31:1 (2021) ► pp.87–113

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Enacting ‘Being with You’

Vocative uses of du (“you”) in German everyday interaction

 | University of Münster
 | University of Münster
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 2 September 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.19030.dro
Abstract
The German second person personal pronoun du is commonly described as a deictic “shifter” or a T-address term, which is incorporated as an argument of a predicate. Exploring the ways in which participants use pronouns in everyday interaction, however, shows that these are not the only uses of du. In this paper, we examine vocative uses of du in German everyday interaction. Drawing on methods of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics, we will show that speakers use vocative du for the management of being ‘with’ the other in terms of alignment as well as affiliation. What du locally accomplishes, however, is sensitive to its positioning within the temporal unfolding of turns and sequences as well as to the sequential environments in which it is used. Our findings demonstrate the context-sensitivity of du and underscore the importance of linguistic resources for the interactional establishment and maintenance of social togetherness and sociability.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The collection
  • 3.Stand-alone du
  • 4.Du-prefacing
    • 4.1Prefacing turns that initiate a new action sequence
    • 4.2Prefacing responsive turns to questions
    • 4.3Prefacing turns that expand an action sequence
  • 5.Turn-final du
  • 6.Discussion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
References (68)
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