Cover not available

Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 21:4 (2011) ► pp.527–548

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

“I have a question for you”

Practices for achieving institutional interaction in Israeli radio phone-in programs

Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 1 December 2011
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21.4.02dor
Schegloff described utterances such as “lemme ask you a question” as pre-questions, pre-pre’s or pre-delicates (Schegloff 1980). This paper provides a discussion of similar utterances in a specific institutional setting - political radio phone-in programs in Israel. The participants use these utterances in ways that are similar to Schegloff’s description. Yet, the pre-construction has additional institutional functions for the differing roles of the host and the caller. Hosts use these utterances to manage the interaction during overlaps as a means to secure an exclusive turn of talk following them. Callers use them infrequently at the beginning of their talk as story-prompts. Hosts may challenge this usage and the interactional role reversal. Regular callers can use the pre-constructions similarly to hosts. In this way, the pre-constructions in the Israeli radio phone-in programs are employed as interactional practices that relate and construct the roles in this institutional setting.
References (39)
Atkinson, Maxwell J. (1984) Our masters' voices: The language and body language of politics. London: Methuen.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, and Juliane House (1989) Cross-cultural and situational variation in requesting behavior. In Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Juliane House & Gabriel Kasper (eds.), Cross-cultural pragmatics. New Jersey: Norwood, pp. 123-154.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, and Elit Olshtain (1984) Requests and apologies: A cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics 5.3: 196-213.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dori-Hacohen, G. (2009) Citizens talk about public affairs: The description of the political phone-in program on Israeli public radio. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Haifa.
Fitzgerald, Richard, and William Housley (2002) Identity, categorization and sequential organization: The sequential and categorial flow of identity in a radio phone-in. Discourse & Society 13.5: 579-602.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Greatbatch, David (1988) A turn-taking system for British news interviews. Language in Society 17.3: 401-430.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1992) On the management of disagreement between news interviewees. In Paul Drew & John Heritage (eds.), Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 268-301.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hacohen, G. (2007) Narrative and argumentation in Israel radio phone-ins. In Frans H. van Eemeren, Anthony J. Blair, C.A. Willard, & Bart Garssen (eds.), Proceedings of the 6th ISSA conference. Amsterdam: SicSat, pp. 549-556.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hamo, Michal (2006) Caught between freedom and control: ‘Ordinary’ people’s discursive positioning on an Israeli prime-time talk show. Discourse & Society 17.4: 427-446.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John (1985) Analyzing news interviews: Aspects of the production of talk for an overhearing audience. In Teun A. van Dijk (ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis. New York: Academic Press, pp. 95-119.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2002) Designing questions and setting agendas in the news interview. In Phillip J. Glenn, Curtis D. LeBaron & Jenny S. Mandelbaum (eds.), Studies in language and social interaction. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 57-90.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John, and Marja-Leena Sorjonen (1994) Constituting and maintaining activities across sequences: And-prefacing as a feature of question design. Language in Society 231: 1-29.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John, and Geoffrey Raymond (2005) The terms of agreement: Indexing epistemic authority and subordination in talk-in-interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly 68.1: 15-38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hutchby, Ian (1996) Confrontation talk: Arguments, asymmetries, and power on talk radio. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1999) Beyond agnosticism? Conversation analysis and the sociological agenda. Research on Language and Social Interaction 32.1&2: 85-93.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2001) ‘Witnessing’: The use of first-hand knowledge in legitimating lay opinions on talk radio. Discourse Studies 341: 481-497. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (2004) Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In Gene H. Lerner (ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the first generation.Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 13-31. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Katriel, Tamar (2004) Dialogic moments: From soul talks to talk radio in Israeli culture. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William (1972) Language in the inner city: Studies in the black English vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William, David Fanshel (1977) Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as Conversation. New York: Academic Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liddicoat, Anthony, Sussanne Döpke, Kristina Love, and Anne Brown (1995) Presenting a point of view: Callers’ contributions to talkback radio in Australia. Journal of Pragmatics 221: 139-156. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maschler, Yael (1998) Rotsè lishmoa kéta?'wanna hear something weird/funny[lit.'a segment']?': The discourse markers segmenting Israeli Hebrew talk-in-interaction. In Andrias H. Jucker & Yael Ziv (eds.), Discourse markers: Descriptions and theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 13-59. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maschler, Yael, and Gonen Dori-Hacohen (in press) From sequential to affective discourse marker: Hebrew nu on Israeli political phone-in radio programs. Discourse Studies 14.5.
McCarthy, Michael J., and Anne O’Keeffe (2003) ‘What’s in a name?’: Vocatives in casual conversations and radio phone-in calls. In Pepi Leistyna & Charles F. Meyer (eds.) Corpus analysis: Language structure and language use. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 153-185. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McLeish, Robert (2005) Radio Production (5th edition). Elsevier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Panese Marcello (2010) Calling in: Prosody and conversation in radio-talk. Pragmatics 6.1: 19-87.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita (1984a) Agreement and disagreement with assessment: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In Maxwell J. Atkinson & John Heritage (eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 57-101.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1984b) Pursuing a response. In Maxwell J. Atkinson & John Heritage (eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 152-163.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 681: 939-967. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1974) An analysis of the course of a joke's telling in conversation. In Joel Sherzer & Bauman Richard (eds.), Explorations in the ethnography of speaking. London: Cambridge University Press, pp. 337-353.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schegloff, A. Emanuel (1968) Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist 70.6: 1075-1095. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1980) Preliminaries to preliminaries: "Can I ask you a question?” Sociological Inquiry 50.3-4: 104-152. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1982) Discourse as an interactional achievement: some uses of "uh huh" and other things that come between sentences. In D. Tannen (ed.), Analyzing Discourse:Text and talk.(Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics). Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, pp. 71-93.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1987) Recycled turn beginnings: A precise repair mechanism in conversation’s turn-taking organisation. In Graham Button & Jon R.E. Lee (eds.), Talk and social organization. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 70-85.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1992) On talk and its institutional occasions. In Paul Drew & John Heritage (eds.), Talk at work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2000) Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language in Society 29.1: 1-63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2007) Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge University Press, pp. 101-134. 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 391: 1-25.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weizman, Elda (2008) Positioning in media dialogue: Negotiating roles in the news interview. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Publishing Company.  BoPGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Alvanoudi, Angeliki
2019. “May I tell you something?”: When questions do not anticipate responses. Text & Talk 39:4 ► pp. 563 ff. DOI logo
Nir, Bracha, Gonen Dori-Hacohen & Yael Maschler
2014. Formulations on Israeli political talk radio: From actions and sequences to stance via dialogic resonance. Discourse Studies 16:4 ► pp. 534 ff. DOI logo
Maschler, Yael & Gonen Dori-Hacohen
2012. From sequential to affective discourse marker: Hebrewnuon Israeli political phone-in radio programs. Discourse Studies 14:4 ► pp. 419 ff. DOI logo
Maschler, Yael & Gonen Dori-Hacohen
2018. Constructing a genre: Hebrew ('ani) lo yode'a / lo yoda'at ‘(I) don’t know’ on Israeli political radio phone-ins. Text & Talk 38:5 ► pp. 575 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 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