You Know as a With-Me Token: A Resource for Intersubjectivity and Affiliation

• In Event: 3152 - Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis: Talk, Dance, Adjacency and Non-adjacency

Abstract

The particle you know is commonplace in English-language conversation, appearing as an optional grammatical adjunct in a wide range of turn constructional and action environments. Notwithstanding this diversity, a common interactional function can be discerned together with context-specificity and particularization. The present study demonstrates that you know operates as a with-me token, claiming a state of alignment between speaker and recipient and soliciting confirmation of that claim. It is deployed at moments when either understanding or affiliation has been foregrounded as problematic, and engenders responses geared to these issues. The complexity of you know thus arises from its recurrent role in the accountable maintenance of both intersubjectivity and solidarity at moments when either or both come under evident strain. Conversely its unity resides in the fact that, across both action environments, a state of "being on the same page" is being claimed and pursued.

The present analysis is based on a large sample of cases (n=185) drawn from English-language conversations. It begins with general observations about the distribution of you know across turn constructional and action environments, and the responses it receives. It then focuses on its role in self-repair, which accounts for the vast majority of cases in our collection. It is demonstrated that you know is associated with "bigger" speech production problems, and with repair solutions that are treated by the participants as elusive or sub-optimal, or are abandoned altogether.

Authors

• Steven E. Clayman, University of California-Los Angeles

• Chase Wesley Raymond, University of Colorado-Boulder