Modified Repeats: One Method for Asserting Primary Rights From Second Position
Author:
- Tanya StiversTSTanya Stivers
- 1 April 2005
- journal article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Research on Language and Social Interaction
- Vol. 38 (2) , 131-158
Abstract
In this article I examine one practice speakers have for confirming when confirmation was not otherwise relevant. The practice involves a speaker repeating an assertion previously made by another speaker in modified form with stress on the copula/auxiliary. I argue that these modified repeats work to undermine the first speaker's default ownership and rights over the claim and instead assert the primacy of the second speaker's rights to make the statement. Two types of modified repeats are identified: partial and full. Although both involve competing for primacy of the claim, they occur in distinct sequential environments: The former are generally positioned after a first claim was epistemically downgraded, whereas the latter are positioned following initial claims that were offered straightforwardly, without downgrading.Keywords
This publication has 21 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Terms of Agreement: Indexing Epistemic Authority and Subordination in Talk-in-InteractionSocial Psychology Quarterly, 2005
- Grammar and Social Organization: Yes/No Interrogatives and the Structure of RespondingAmerican Sociological Review, 2003
- The Social Brain: Mind, Language, and Society in Evolutionary PerspectiveAnnual Review of Anthropology, 2003
- Conversational Structure and Language Acquisition: The Role of Repetition in TzeltalJournal of Linguistic Anthropology, 1998
- Practices and actions: Boundary cases of other‐initiated repairDiscourse Processes, 1997
- On repeats and responses in Finnish conversations1996
- Prosody as an activity-type distinctive cue in conversation: the case of so-called ‘astonished’ questions in repair initiation1996
- The prosody of repetition: on quoting and mimicry1996
- A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement1985
- Topical Talk, Ritual and the Social Organization of RelationshipsSocial Psychology Quarterly, 1984