Grammar and Intersubjectivity: The Case of the Do-construction in English Conversation

• In Event: 101 - Regular Session. Conversation Analysis

Abstract

My goal in this paper is to bring a decidedly sociological lens to bear on a particular syntactic construction which is ‘marked’ compared to the ‘unmarked’ default. I aim to illustrate how the do-construction in English conversation—i.e., ‘they do like cake’ (cf. ‘they like cake’)—provides us with a case-in-point of how concrete grammatical resources can be deployed in the service of intersubjectivity, actively working to finely (re)shape hearers’ understandings as interactants progress through talk. More generally, I argue that “marked” vs. “unmarked” syntactic forms embody speakers’ orientations to the developing state of intersubjectivity that they are creating with their interlocutor: When speakers produce a “non-least-effortful” syntactic structure, they acknowledge the role that they themselves have played in sequentially generating a given understanding, while simultaneously heading off a potential breach in intersubjectivity by linguistically flagging for the interlocutor that the turn in question is doing something new or unexpected. Put in Goffman’s terms, the speaker’s syntax indexes that s/he has been heard (or might conceivably have been heard) to have “taken a line”, and now that that line is going to be altered, the hearer must be made aware so that intersubjectivity can be maintained. I illustrate how such intersubjective awareness can be achieved grammatically through syntax.

Author

• Chase Wesley Raymond, University of Colorado, Boulder