When one question is not enough
The import of a second question in information seeking
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/eap.40997Keywords:
self-initiated same-turn repair, information seeking, interactional import, solidarityAbstract
Information seeking is pervasive in ordinary conversation as well as institutional interaction. When seeking information from co-participants, interactants mobilise a variety of practices that are deemed as appropriate or effective under each circumstance. Initiating repair, namely, affixing another question to the first one in the present study, is one of those frequently used practices. With this practice, the speaker can correct a factual error, i.e. an error that is opposite to the fact, in his/her talk. In most cases in our data, however, the interactant initiates a repair just to ‘fine-tune’ his/her question which seems to be unproblematic. Based on a corpus of 74 cases in Mandarin daily conversation, we, from a conversation analysis perspective, analyse 5 kinds of situations in which one question is added to another in the same turn. By appending another question to the prior one, the speaker can tacitly seek the particularly required information and hence promote intersubjectivity and affiliation between interactants and maintain social solidarity as a whole.
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