Action formation and ascription
Action formation and ascription
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DOI:
10.1002/9781118325001.ch6
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发表时间:
2013
影响因子:
2.6
通讯作者:
S. Levinson
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
S. Levinson
The ability to conduct conversation is a miracle in general, but particularly striking is the speed and apparent accuracy of action ascription. To see this, consider the following facts: it takes over 600ms to plan and execute the shortest turn-at-talk (see Levelt, 1989), while on average the gaps between turns are around 200ms, depending a bit on the language (de Ruiter, et al., 2006; Stivers, et al., 2009). As Figure 6.1 makes clear, this entails that B must plan his or her turn well before the prior speaker A’s is finished. Of course, B’s turn will mostly be tied to A’s turn via sequence organization in particular: If A’s turn was a question, B’s turn is expectably an answer; if an offer, an acceptance or rejection is in order, and so forth (see Stivers, this volume, on sequence organization). So action ascription by B of A’s turn is a prerequisite for the design of B’s turn—the very ‘proof procedure’that makes CA possible. 1 Although occasional misunderstandings of action content do occur, they are surprisingly rare.The challenge for participants, then, is to assign at least one major action to a turn they have only heard part of so far. But to do this, they must have parsed what they have heard and understood its grammar well enough to predict both the content and its structure, so that they can predict when it will come to an end (otherwise their response may come too early or too late). Further, action