A study of how senior citizens request assistance with practical tasks in the Swedish home help service: Language as social action

Lindström, Anna

doi:10.1075/sidag.17.11lin

In:Syntax and Lexis in Conversation: Studies on the use of linguistic resources in talk-in-interaction
Edited by Auli Hakulinen and Margret Selting
[Studies in Discourse and Grammar 17] 2005
► pp. 209–230

Get fulltext from our e-platform

Download Book PDF

Language as social action

A study of how senior citizens request assistance with practical tasks in the Swedish home help service

Anna Lindström | Uppsala university

Published online: 28 September 2005

https://doi.org/10.1075/sidag.17.11lin

Cited by (106)

Cited by 106 other publications

Order by:

Baxter-Webb, Ibi

2025. Calculating Costs or Weighing Social Relations? The Basis of the ‘Benefactive Order’ in Interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 58:1 ► pp. 69 ff.

Steensig, Jakob

2025. Grammatical formats of requests for immediate actions. In Grammar in Action [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 37], ► pp. 78 ff.

Wang, Xingcheng & Carsten Roever

2025. Interactional competence in online text chat. Applied Pragmatics 7:2 ► pp. 109 ff.

Alshammari, Bandar & Michael Haugh

2024. Troubles-Complaints and the Overall Structural Organization of Troubles-Remedy Sequences. Research on Language and Social Interaction 57:2 ► pp. 215 ff.

Arnold, Lynnette

2024. Living Together Across Borders,

Hoffmann, Sabine & Giolo Fele

2024. Dealing with missing participants in the opening phases of a videoconference. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 34:3 ► pp. 393 ff.

Landmark, Anne Marie Dalby & Jan Svennevig

2024. Initiating and Pursuing a Topical Agenda with Limited Communicative Resources. In Dementia and Language, ► pp. 175 ff.

Svensson, Hanna

2024. Requesting another to taste: Passing food and the distribution of agency in the organization of bodily trajectories. Discourse Studies 26:6 ► pp. 822 ff.

Tisserand, Lucien, Brooke Stephenson, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, Mathieu Lefort & Frédéric Armetta

2024. Unraveling the thread: understanding and addressing sequential failures in human-robot interaction. Frontiers in Robotics and AI 11

Bolden, Galina B.

2023. Repetitional responses to polar questions in Russian conversation. In Responding to Polar Questions across Languages and Contexts [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 35], ► pp. 40 ff.

Bolden, Galina B., John Heritage & Marja-Leena Sorjonen

2023. Introduction. In Responding to Polar Questions across Languages and Contexts [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 35], ► pp. 1 ff.

González-Martínez, Esther

2023. « Faire du coude » avec un énoncé « il y a x » : inciter à l’action et recruter une personne responsable d’agir en milieu hospitalier. Langage et société N° 179:2 ► pp. 111 ff.

Horlacher, Anne-Sylvie & Simona Pekarek Doehler

2023. Requêtes et gestion de l’expertise en contexte institutionnel : l’accomplissement multimodal des demandes de révision dans les salons de coiffure. Langage et société N° 179:2 ► pp. 59 ff.

Isosävi, Johanna

2023. Finnish and French public signs from commercial premises during the Covid-19 pandemic. Pragmatics and Society 14:2 ► pp. 306 ff.

Killmer, Helene, Jan Svennevig & Suzanne Beeke

2023. Requests to children by parents with aphasia. Aphasiology 37:9 ► pp. 1363 ff.

Kuroshima, Satomi

2023. When a request turn is segmented: Managing the deontic authority via early compliance. Discourse Studies 25:1 ► pp. 114 ff.

Nascimento, Thiago Da Cunha & Dagmar Barth-Weingarten

2023. Linguística Interacional. Revista Linguagem em Foco 15:1 ► pp. 274 ff.

Oloff, Florence

2023. « Maintenant tout a disparu » : les requêtes indirectes déclaratives dans la formation numérique pour adultes. Langage et société N° 179:2 ► pp. 83 ff.

Orthaber, Sara

2023. Routine Calls for Information and Request Emails. In (Im)politeness at a Slovenian Call Centre [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 97 ff.

Rautiainen, Iira, Pentti Haddington & Antti Kamunen

2023. Nudging Questions as Devices for Prompting Courses of Action and Negotiating Deontic (A)symmetry in UN Military Observer Training. In Complexity of Interaction, ► pp. 217 ff.

Rygg, Kristin & Stine Hulleberg Johansen

2023. When the Norwegian ‘politeness marker’ vennligst becomes impolite. Journal of Politeness Research 19:2 ► pp. 439 ff.

Horlacher, Anne-Sylvie

2022. Negative Requests Within Hair Salons: Grammar and Embodiment in Action Formation. Frontiers in Psychology 12

NAKAGAWA, Atsushi

2022. Conversation Analysis of Calls in Long-distance Caregiving. Japanese Sociological Review 73:2 ► pp. 136 ff.

van der Ploeg, Mara, Annerose Willemsen, Louisa Richter, Merel Keijzer & Tom Koole

2022. Requests for assistance in the third-age language classroom. Classroom Discourse 13:4 ► pp. 386 ff.

Velea, Adina Ioana

2022. Imperatives and commitments in Romanian academic meeting interactions. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 545 ff.

Fox, Barbara A. & Trine Heinemann

2021. Are They Requests? An Exploration of Declaratives of Trouble in Service Encounters. Research on Language and Social Interaction 54:1 ► pp. 20 ff.

Harjunpää, Katariina

2021. Brokering co-participants’ volition in request and offer sequences. In Intersubjectivity in Action [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 326], ► pp. 135 ff.

Pichonnaz, David, Liliane Staffoni, Camille Greppin-Bécherraz, Isabelle Menia-Knutti & Veronika Schoeb

2021. “You Should Maybe Work Together a Little Bit”: Formulating Requests in Interprofessional Interactions. Qualitative Health Research 31:6 ► pp. 1094 ff.

Betz, Emma, Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm & Peter Golato

2020. Mobilizing others. In Mobilizing others [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 33], ► pp. 1 ff.

Golato, Peter

2020. Recruitments in French. In Mobilizing others [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 33], ► pp. 83 ff.

Humă, Bogdana & Elizabeth Stokoe

2020. The Anatomy of First-Time and Subsequent Business-to-Business “Cold” Calls. Research on Language and Social Interaction 53:2 ► pp. 271 ff.

Humă, Bogdana & Elizabeth Stokoe

2023. Resistance in Business-to-Business “Cold” Sales Calls. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 42:5-6 ► pp. 630 ff.

Kim, Stephanie Hyeri & Mary Shin Kim

2020. Requesting here-and-now actions with two imperative formats in Korean interaction. In Mobilizing others [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 33], ► pp. 19 ff.

Liu, Shu

2020. Displaying entitlement. East Asian Pragmatics 5:3 ► pp. 345 ff.

Mondada, Lorenza, Julia Bänninger, Sofian A Bouaouina, Guillaume Gauthier, Philipp Hänggi, Mizuki Koda, Hanna Svensson & Burak S Tekin

2020. Doing paying during the Covid-19 pandemic. Discourse Studies 22:6 ► pp. 720 ff.

Risberg, Jonas & Gustav Lymer

2020. Requests and know-how questions: Initiating instruction in workplace interaction. Discourse Studies 22:6 ► pp. 753 ff.

Robinson, Jeffrey D.

2020. One Type of Polar, Information-Seeking Question and Its Stance of Probability: Implications for the Preference for Agreement. Research on Language and Social Interaction 53:4 ► pp. 425 ff.

Trott, Sean & Federico Rossano

2020. The Role of Entitlement in Formatting Preferences Across Requesters and Recipients. Discourse Processes 57:7 ► pp. 551 ff.

Urbanik, Paweł

2020. Getting others to share goods in Polish and Norwegian: Material and moral anchors for request conventions. Intercultural Pragmatics 17:2 ► pp. 177 ff.

Bolden, Galina B., Beth Angell & Alexa Hepburn

2019. How clients solicit medication changes in psychiatry. Sociology of Health & Illness 41:2 ► pp. 411 ff.

Jansson, Gunilla, Charlotta Plejert & Camilla Lindholm

2019. The social organization of assistance in multilingual interaction in Swedish residential care. Discourse Studies 21:1 ► pp. 67 ff.

Lindström, Jan, Catrin Norrby, Camilla Wide & Jenny Nilsson

2019. Task-Completing Assessments in Service Encounters. Research on Language and Social Interaction 52:2 ► pp. 85 ff.

Rudneva, Ekaterina

2019. How Russians pre-request and seek assistance: a study of interaction in two communities of practice. Russian Linguistics 43:2 ► pp. 127 ff.

Backhaus, Peter

2018. Reclaiming agency in resident–staff interaction: A case study from a Japanese eldercare facility. Discourse Studies 20:2 ► pp. 205 ff.

Flöck, Ilka & Ronald Geluykens

2018. Preference Organization and Cross-Cultural Variation in Request Responses: A Corpus-Based Comparison of British and American English. Corpus Pragmatics 2:1 ► pp. 57 ff.

Gagne, Christophe

2018. Indirectness and entitlement in product requests in British service encounters. Journal of Pragmatics 133 ► pp. 1 ff.

Harwood, Rowan H, Rebecca O’Brien, Sarah E Goldberg, Rebecca Allwood, Alison Pilnick, Suzanne Beeke, Louise Thomson, Megan Murray, Ruth Parry, Fiona Kearney, Bryn Baxendale, Kate Sartain & Justine Schneider

2018. A staff training intervention to improve communication between people living with dementia and health-care professionals in hospital: the VOICE mixed-methods development and evaluation study. Health Services and Delivery Research 6:41 ► pp. 1 ff.

Keevallik, Leelo

2018. Making up one’s mind in second position. In Between turn and sequence [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 31], ► pp. 315 ff.

Smoliak, Olga, Amanda Le Couteur & Christopher Quinn‐Nilas

2018. Issuing and Responding to Unusual Questions: A Conversation Analytic Account of Tom Andersen's Therapeutic Practice. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 44:3 ► pp. 393 ff.

Stevanovic, Melisa

2018. Social deontics: A nano‐level approach to human power play. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 48:3 ► pp. 369 ff.

Tuncer, Sylvaine & Christian Licoppe

2018. Open door environments as interactional resources to initiate unscheduled encounters in office organizations. Culture and Organization 24:1 ► pp. 11 ff.

Bolden, Galina

2017. Requests for here-and-now actions in Russian conversation. In Imperative Turns at Talk [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 30], ► pp. 175 ff.

Haugh, Michael

2017. Prompting offers of assistance in interaction. Pragmatics and Society 8:2 ► pp. 183 ff.

Haugh, Michael

2017. Chapter 13. Implicature and the inferential substrate. In Implicitness [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 276], ► pp. 281 ff.

Heinemann, Trine & Jakob Steensig

2017. Three imperative action formats in Danish talk-in-interaction. In Imperative Turns at Talk [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 30], ► pp. 139 ff.

Lindström, Jan, Camilla Lindholm, Catrin Norrby, Camilla Wide & Jenny Nilsson

2017. Imperatives in Swedish medical consultations. In Imperative Turns at Talk [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 30], ► pp. 299 ff.

Raevaara, Liisa

2017. Adjusting the design of directives to the activity environment. In Imperative Turns at Talk [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 30], ► pp. 381 ff.

Sterie, Anca-Cristina & Esther González-Martínez

2017. Newcomer Nurses’ Telephone Calls to Porters and Doctors: Inquiring and Reporting as Vehicles for Requests. In Interactional Competences in Institutional Settings, ► pp. 143 ff.

Fox, Barbara & Trine Heinemann

2016. Rethinking format: An examination of requests. Language in Society 45:4 ► pp. 499 ff.

González-Martínez, Esther, Vassiliki Markaki & Fanny Bovey

2016. « Demandes régime dernière minute » lors de conversations téléphoniques infirmière-diététicienne. In Langage et savoir-faire, ► pp. 85 ff.

González-Martínez, Esther & Cécile Petitjean

2016. Le rire cordial dans les demandes téléphoniques par de jeunes infirmières à l’hôpital. Activites 13:1

Houen, Sandy, Susan Danby, Ann Farrell & Karen Thorpe

2016. Creating Spaces for Children’s Agency: ‘I wonder…’ Formulations in Teacher–Child Interactions. International Journal of Early Childhood 48:3 ► pp. 259 ff.

Li, Li & Wen Ma

2016. Request sequence in Chinese public service calls. Discourse Studies 18:3 ► pp. 269 ff.

Mondada, Lorenza & Marja-Leena Sorjonen

2016. Making multiple requests in French and Finnish convenience stores. Language in Society 45:5 ► pp. 733 ff.

Márquez Reiter, Rosina, Kristina Ganchenko & Anna Charalambidou

2016. Requests and counters in Russian traffic police officer-citizen encounters. Pragmatics and Society 7:4 ► pp. 512 ff.

Solberg, Janne

2016. Argument in professional-client encounters. Pragmatics and Society 7:3 ► pp. 366 ff.

Fox, Barbara

2015. On the notion of pre-request. Discourse Studies 17:1 ► pp. 41 ff.

Kushida, Shuya & Yuriko Yamakawa

2015. Fitting proposals to their sequential environment: a comparison of turn designs for proposing treatment in ongoing outpatient psychiatric consultations in Japan. Sociology of Health & Illness 37:4 ► pp. 522 ff.

Laury, Ritva, Marja Etelämäki & Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen

2015. Introduction. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 435 ff.

Drew, Paul & Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen

2014. Requesting – from speech act to recruitment. In Requesting in Social Interaction [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 26], ► pp. 1 ff.

Goodwin, Marjorie H. & Asta Cekaite

2014. Orchestrating directive trajectories in communicative projects in family interaction. In Requesting in Social Interaction [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 26], ► pp. 185 ff.

Kendrick, Kobin H. & Paul Drew

2014. The putative preference for offers over requests. In Requesting in Social Interaction [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 26], ► pp. 87 ff.

Kendrick, Kobin H. & Paul Drew

2016. Recruitment: Offers, Requests, and the Organization of Assistance in Interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 49:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Mandelbaum, Jenny

2014. How to do things with requests. In Requesting in Social Interaction [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 26], ► pp. 215 ff.

Maynard, Douglas W. & Matthew M. Hollander

2014. Asking to Speak to Another: A Skill for Soliciting Survey Participation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 47:1 ► pp. 28 ff.

Mondada, Lorenza

2014. Cooking instructions and the shaping of things in the kitchen. In Interacting with Objects, ► pp. 199 ff.

Mondada, Lorenza

2014. Instructions in the operating room: How the surgeon directs their assistant’s hands. Discourse Studies 16:2 ► pp. 131 ff.

Mondada, Lorenza

2017. Le défi de la multimodalité en interaction. Revue française de linguistique appliquée Vol. XXII:2 ► pp. 71 ff.

Mondada, Lorenza

2017. Precision timing and timed embeddedness of imperatives in embodied courses of action. In Imperative Turns at Talk [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 30], ► pp. 65 ff.

Raymond, Chase Wesley

2014. Negotiating entitlement to language: Calling 911 without English. Language in Society 43:1 ► pp. 33 ff.

Sorjonen, Marja-Leena & Liisa Raevaara

2014. On the grammatical form of requests at the convenience store. In Requesting in Social Interaction [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 26], ► pp. 243 ff.

Speer, Susan A. & Elizabeth Stokoe

2014. Ethics in action: Consent‐gaining interactions and implications for research practice. British Journal of Social Psychology 53:1 ► pp. 54 ff.

Steensig, Jakob & Trine Heinemann

2014. The social and moral work of modal constructions in granting remote requests. In Requesting in Social Interaction [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 26], ► pp. 145 ff.

Asmuß, Birte

2013. The emergence of symmetries and asymmetries in performance appraisal interviews: An interactional perspective. Economic and Industrial Democracy 34:3 ► pp. 553 ff.

Ekström, Mats, Anna Lindström & Susanna Karlsson

2013. Managing troubles-talk in the renegotiation of a loan contract. Discourse Studies 15:4 ► pp. 371 ff.

Englert, Christina K. & Agnes M. Engbersen

2013. Age and language use. In Handbook of Pragmatics, ► pp. 1 ff.

Larsen, Tine

2013. Dispatching Emergency Assistance: Callers' Claims of Entitlement and Call Takers' Decisions. Research on Language and Social Interaction 46:3 ► pp. 205 ff.

Nolen, Jason A & Douglas W Maynard

2013. Formulating the request for survey participation in relation to the interactional environment. Discourse Studies 15:2 ► pp. 205 ff.

Asmuß, Birte & Sae Oshima

2012. Negotiation of entitlement in proposal sequences. Discourse Studies 14:1 ► pp. 67 ff.

Keisanen, Tiina & Mirka Rauniomaa

2012. The Organization of Participation and Contingency in Prebeginnings of Request Sequences. Research on Language and Social Interaction 45:4 ► pp. 323 ff.

Rossi, Giovanni

2012. Bilateral and Unilateral Requests: The Use of Imperatives andMi X?Interrogatives in Italian. Discourse Processes 49:5 ► pp. 426 ff.

Rossi, Giovanni

2017. Secondary and deviant uses of the imperative for requesting in Italian. In Imperative Turns at Talk [Studies in Language and Social Interaction, 30], ► pp. 103 ff.

Rossi, Giovanni

2025. Social Action and Language. In Systems of Social Action, ► pp. 1 ff.

Rossi, Giovanni

2025. Delicate Requests. In Systems of Social Action, ► pp. 138 ff.

Stevanovic, Melisa & Anssi Peräkylä

2012. Deontic Authority in Interaction: The Right to Announce, Propose, and Decide. Research on Language and Social Interaction 45:3 ► pp. 297 ff.

Stevanovic, Melisa & Anssi Peräkylä

2014. Three orders in the organization of human action: On the interface between knowledge, power, and emotion in interaction and social relations. Language in Society 43:2 ► pp. 185 ff.

Lee, Seung-Hee

2011. Managing Nongranting of Customers' Requests in Commercial Service Encounters. Research on Language and Social Interaction 44:2 ► pp. 109 ff.

Zinken, Jörg & Eva Ogiermann

2011. How to Propose an Action as Objectively Necessary: The Case of Polish Trzeba x (“One Needs to x ”) . Research on Language and Social Interaction 44:3 ► pp. 263 ff.

Zinken, Jörg & Eva Ogiermann

2013. Responsibility and Action: Invariants and Diversity in Requests for Objects in British English and Polish Interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 46:3 ► pp. 256 ff.

Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth

2010. Commentary on Stivers and Rossano: “Mobilizing Response”. Research on Language and Social Interaction 43:1 ► pp. 32 ff.

Maynard, Douglas W., Jeremy Freese & Nora Cate Schaeffer

2010. Calling for Participation. American Sociological Review 75:5 ► pp. 791 ff.

Lindström, Anna & Trine Heinemann

2009. Good Enough: Low-Grade Assessments in Caregiving Situations. Research on Language and Social Interaction 42:4 ► pp. 309 ff.

Steensig, Jakob & Paul Drew

2008. Introduction: questioning and affiliation/ disaffiliation in interaction. Discourse Studies 10:1 ► pp. 5 ff.

[no author supplied]

2012. References. In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ► pp. 741 ff.

[no author supplied]

2016. Requests in American and British English [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 265],

[no author supplied]

2024. Dementia and Conversational Strategies. In Dementia and Language, ► pp. 101 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 december 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.