| This paper shows how a particular type of initiating action makes relevant a responding action that contains multiple components. Prior research has noted that in response to a first pair part, “agreeing” second pair parts are typically brief, single component responses (e.g., in response to an offer, a simple acceptance is usually produced), where disagreeing responses are typically expanded and are composed of more than one component. An exception to this is the case of compliments where Pomerantz (1978) showed that an “agreeing” response to a compliment may consist of more than one component (e.g. a token of appreciation and then agreement). I use the method of conversation analysis and data from a customer service call center in a camera repair shop to analyze the responding action to customers’ inquiries about the repair status of equipment they sent in for service. In paper I show how customers' repair status inquiries are a type of initiating action that makes relevant a responding action that contains more than one component as a single response: a report of the current location of the item being fixed, and also a report of how long it is likely to take to complete the repair. The analysis focuses on the interactional practices that participants use to jointly construct a multi-componential responding action as a relevant and complete response to repair status inquiries. Customers’ repair status inquiries are first pair parts of single adjacency pair sequences, and the discovery of a multi-componential responding action expands our understanding of the types of actions organized by the adjacency pair. |
