Abstract
This paper studies adults’ responses to children’s requests by focusing on turns that account for not granting the request on the grounds of involvement in another activity, i.e., multiactivity. The data consist of everyday interactions among family members at homes and in cars. The collection – 17 request sequences – is analysed with the conversation analytic method. We show the following: first, account turns verbalise either the ongoing or the requested activity, or both; second, account turns are a practice for foregrounding and communicating “exclusive order”, i.e., they indicate that two progressing activities intersect with each other and cannot be progressed simultaneously, and that one activity is prioritised over another; third, account turns are used either to suspend or abandon the course of action initiated by the request; fourth, accounts – through various sequential and turn design features – display adults’ level of commitment to resuming and returning to the requested activity later; and, finally, accounts indicating high commitment negotiate the “sequential implicativenesses” of the intersecting courses of action, displaying orientation to progress initiated activities. Accounts that display partial or no commitment frame the prioritisation of an activity in terms of “incapability” or “unwillingness” to progress the request sequence and thereby construct the “limits of multiactivity” in situ.
Funding source: Academy of Finland
Award Identifier / Grant number: 287219
Funding source: Oulun Yliopisto
About the authors
Anna Vatanen, PhD, works as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Research Unit for Languages and Literature, University of Oulu. She is an interactional linguist and conversation analyst who works on video-recorded conversational data. Her research has been published e.g. in Research on Language and Social Interaction, Journal of Pragmatics, Language in Society, and Discourse Processes. Address for correspondence: Research Unit for Languages and Literature, P.O. Box 1000, FI-90014 University of Oulu, Finland.
Pentti Haddington is Professor of English language and interaction at the University of Oulu. He uses videos and conversation analysis to study talk and multimodal interaction. His current interests are multiactivity, interaction in multinational crisis management training and interaction in digital environments. His work has been published e.g. in Research on Language and Social Interaction, Journal of Pragmatics and Text & Talk. Address for correspondence: Research Unit for Languages and Literature, P.O. Box 1000, FI-90014 University of Oulu, Finland.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our close colleagues in Oulu (COACT community) and Helsinki, as well as audiences in various conferences who have offered valuable comments to this study through the years.
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Research funding: This paper is part of the project “iTask: Linguistic and embodied features of interactional multitasking”, funded by the Eudaimonia Institute of the University of Oulu and the Academy of Finland (project number: 287219).
Appendix: Transcription conventions
Talk (based on Jefferson 2004):
Embodiment (adapted from Mondada 2018):
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