| Indirectness has long been a topic of investigation in linguistic philosophy as well as psycholinguistics; however, focus in these areas has been on the understanding of indirectness, rather than the actions accomplished by it (eg., Searle 1975, Gibbs 1994). Our research investigates the use of indirect responses to inquiries in British and American English, focusing on the different actions accomplished by being 'indirect' vs. giving a simple, or type-conforming (Raymond 2003) response. In certain kinds of sequences, the social action that can be accomplished by formatting one's response indirectly are treated, by interactants, as more appropriate than a standalone yes/no. Not only are indirect responses used to dispute or correct the terms of an inquiry (cf. Stivers & Hayashi frth.), but also to elaborate upon or enrich the co-participants' shared understanding of the situation. In other words, far from being a way to obfuscate, turns at talk that traditional linguistic methodologies would class as indirect responses can instead be seen to be designed and treated as a clear and informative way of moving the interaction forward. The phonetic patterns employed in the production of indirect responses support this analysis. There is little evidence of reduction; rather, pitch, timing and stress patterns converge to match those usually found on initiating, rather than responsive, actions. This research challenges the traditional linguistic construal of indirectness, and also touches on emergent questions about preference organization. |
