Two functions of context invokers in quantification sequences

• In Event: 50403 - Conversation Analysis and Ethnomethodology: Context, Sequence, and Meaning in Interaction

Abstract

This paper is an “ethnomethodological conversation analytic investigation” (Maynard 2012) of a type of quantification sequence, when one party asks another a ‘how much’, ‘how many’, ‘how long’ etc. question. Amount questions are often treated as having a special sort of interactional delicacy. The precision, imprecision, and granularity of answers to amount questions carries with it assertions (or implications) of one’s ‘licensed franchise’ to give particular counts (Garfinkel 1962) or estimates (Sacks 1995:236).

This extended abstract is based on a larger analysis of 16 cases of quantification sequences that include the ‘context invoker’ device (e.g., ‘it depends’) as part of the response turn. This paper is an analysis of two trajectories these sequences can take.

In the first case the context invoker operates as an account for the delays in producing an answer, an account for answer mitigation, and works to forecast the introduction of factors that will shape the answer-to-come. In the second case, the context invoker operates as a block to the quantification question, treating the question as - in-principle- unanswerable due to various contextual factors.

Routinely, people get by answering quantity questions without invoking context. Thus the move to invoke context in these sequences is a choice, a resource that is always potentially available. When context is invoked in these sequences, interactional choices and processes generate the trajectory the sequence takes (i.e., the intention of either of the parties is not determinative). The interactional unfolding of these quantification sequences wherein context is invoked reveals some of the operative interactional work that sustains the (socially shared) sense that matters in the world are, generally, countable and quantifiable (Garfinkel 1962, 1967; Maynard 2012; Halkowski 2023).

Author

• Timothy Halkowski, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point