Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 8:2 (2017) ► pp.183–207

Prompting offers of assistance in interaction

| The University of Queensland

One of the ways in which we can get someone to do something for us is through hinting. However, studies that have attempted to systematically examine requestive hints have faced difficulties in identifying hints as they are designed, by definition, to be ambiguous with respect to the intentions of that speaker. An alternative to this kind of circularity is to shift the analytical lens away from putative speaker intentions as the starting point of analysis. In this paper it is suggested that a properly pragmatic account of prompted offers requires systematic analysis of the situational conditions which afford the participants’ understanding of them as prompted, along with an appreciation of the three-part sequential architecture that is immanent to prompting offer sequences. It is concluded that pragmatic act theory has an important contribution to make to ongoing efforts to better understand fundamental processes of social action formation and ascription.

Keywords: offers, pre-requests, hints, non-conventional indirectness, intention, speech acts, pragmatic acts, interactional pragmatics
Article outline
  • 1.Off-record requests and requestive hints
  • 2.Dataset and method
  • 3.Prompting offers of assistance in English
  • 4.Prompted offers and the interactional sensitivity of intentions ascription
  • 5.Pre-emptive versus prompted offers of assistance
  • 6.Prompting offers of assistance as a pragmatic act
  • 7.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.8.2.02hau
References
Aijmer, Karin
1996 Conversational Routines in English. Convention and Creativity. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Arundale, Robert
1999 “An alternative model and ideology of communication for an alternative to politeness theory.” Pragmatics 9 (1): 119–154. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 “Constituting face in conversation: face, facework and interactional achievement.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (8): 2078–2105. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bertuccelli Papi, Marcella
1999 “Implicitness to whom?” In Pragmatics in 1998. Selected Papers from the 6th International Pragmatics Conference, Vol. 21, edited by Jef Verschueren, 57–72. Antwerp, Belgium: International Pragmatics Association.Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana
1987 “Indirectness and politeness in requests: same or different?” Journal of Pragmatics 111: 131–146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, and Elite Olshtain
1984 “Requests and apologies: A cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP).” Applied Linguistics 5 (3): 196–213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bolden, Galina B., Jenny Mandelbaum, and Sue Wilkinson
2012 “Pursuing a response by repairing an indexical reference.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (2): 137–155. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson
1987 Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Capone, Alessandro
2005 “Pragmemes (a study with reference to English and Italian).” Journal of Pragmatics 37 (9): 1355–1371. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven, and John Heritage
2014 “Benefactors and beneficiaries: benefactive status and stance in the management of offers and requests.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, edited by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 51–82. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Clift, Rebecca
2001 Meaning in interaction: the case of actually . Language 77 (2): 245–291. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth
2014 “What does grammar tell us about action?” Pragmatics 24 (3): 623–647. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, and Marja Etelämäki
2015 “Nominated actions and their targeted agents in Finnish conversational directives.” Journal of Pragmatics 781: 7–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan, and Michael Haugh
2014 Pragmatics and the English Language. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Curl, Traci S.
2006 “Offers of assistance: constraints on syntactic design.” Journal of Pragmatics 38 (8): 1257–1280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Curl, Traci S., and Paul Drew
2008 Contingency and action: a comparison of two forms of requesting. Research on Language and Social Interaction 41 (2): 129–153. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Downing, Arthur
2008 “Requesting in Library Reference Service Interactions.” PhD diss., Rutgers State University of New Jersey.Google Scholar
Drew, Paul
1984 “Speakers’ reportings in invitation sequences.” In Structures of Social Action, edited by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 102–128. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2011 “Reflections on the micro-politics of social action, in interaction.” Paper presented at the 12th International Pragmatics Association Conference, Manchester.
Drew, Paul, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
2014 “Requesting – from speech act to recruitment.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, edited by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 1–34. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Drew, Paul, Traci Walker, and Richard Ogden
2013 “Self-repair and action construction.” In Conversational Repair and Human Understanding, edited by Makoto Hayashi, Geoffrey Raymond and Jack Sidnell, 71–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Enfield, Nicholas J.
2014 “Human agency and the infrastructure for requests.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, edited by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 35–53. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Fox, Barbara A.
2007 “Principles shaping grammatical practices: An exploration.” Discourse Studies 9 (3): 299–318. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 “On the notion of pre-request.” Discourse Studies 17 (1): 41–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gill, Virginia Teas, Timothy Halkowski, and Felicia Roberts
2001 “Accomplishing a request without making one: A single case analysis of a primary care visit.” Text & Talk 21 (1/2): 55–81.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness
2006 “Participation, affect, and trajectory in family directive/response sequences.” Text & Talk 26 (4/5): 513–451.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness, and Asta Cekaite
2014 “Orchestrating directive trajectories in communicative projects in family interaction.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, edited by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 185–214. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Grice, Paul
1987 [1989] “Retrospective epilogue.” In Studies in the Way of Words, edited by Paul Grice, 339–385. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael
2007 “The co-constitution of politeness implicature in conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 39 (1): 84–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 “The place of intention in the interactional achievement of implicature.” In Intention, Common Ground and the Egocentric Speaker-Hearer, edited by Istvan Kecskes and Jacob Mey, 45–85. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
2015 Im/politeness Implicatures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugh, Michael, and Wei-Lin Melody Chang
2015 “Troubles talk, (dis)affiliation and the participation order in Taiwanese-Chinese online discussion boards.” In Participation in Public and Social Media Interactions, edited by Marta Dynel and Jan Chovanec, 99–133. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Heritage, John
1984 “A change of state token and aspects of its sequential placement.” In Structures of Social Action, edited by Maxwell J. Atkinson and John Heritage, 299–345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2015 “ Well-prefaced turns in English conversation: A conversation analytic perspective.” Journal of Pragmatics 881: 88–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 “The recruitment matrix.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (1): 27–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hofstetter, Emily, and Elizabeth Stokoe
2015 “Offers of assistance in politician-constituent interaction.” Discourse Studies 17 (6): 724–751. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holdcroft, David
1976 “Forms of indirect communication: an outline.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 9 (3): 147–161.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Scott, and Sally Jackson
1983 “Strategy and structure in conversational influence attempts.” Communication Monographs 50 (4): 285–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail
1988 “On the sequential organization of troubles talk in ordinary conversation.” Social Problems 35 (4): 418–441. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel, and Michael Haugh
2013 Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kärkkäinen, Elise, and Tiina Keisanen
2012 “Linguistic and embodied formats for making (concrete) offers.” Discourse Studies 14 (5): 587–611. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kendrick, Kobin H., and Paul Drew
2014 “The putative preference for offers over requests.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, edited by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 87–113. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
2016 “Recruitments: Offers, requests, and the organization of assistance in interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (1): 1–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kidwell, Mardi
2000 “Common ground in cross-cultural communication: Sequential and institutional contexts in front desk service encounters.” Issues in Applied Linguistics 11 (1): 17–37.Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey
2014 The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lerner, Gene
1996 “Finding “face” in the preference structures of talk-in-interaction.” Social Psychology Quarterly 59 (4): 303–321. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen
1983 Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lindström, Anna
2005 “Language as social action. A study of how senior citizens request assistance with practical tasks in the Swedish home help service.” In Syntax and Lexis in Conversation, edited by Auli Hakulinen and Margaret Selting, 209–230. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 “Accepting remote proposals.” In Enabling Human Conduct: Naturalistic Studies of Talk-in-interaction in Honour of Emanuel A. Schegloff, edited by Geoffrey Raymond, Gene H. Lerner and John Heritage. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mey, Jacob L.
2001 Pragmatics. An Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. [1993]Google Scholar
2010a “Reference and the pragmeme.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (11): 2882–2888. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010b “Societal pragmatics.” In The Pragmatics Encyclopedia, edited by Louise Cummings, 444–446. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ogiermann, Eva
2015a “Direct off-record requests? – ‘Hinting’ in family interactions.” Journal of Pragmatics 861: 31–35. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015b “In/directness in Polish children’s requests at the dinner table.” Journal of Pragmatics 821: 67–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita
1980 “Telling my side: “limited access” as a “fishing” device.” Sociological Inquiry 501: 186–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1984 “Pursuing a response.” In Structures of Social Action. Studies in Conversation Analysis, edited by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 152–163. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita, and John Heritage
2013 “Preference.” In Handbook of Conversation Analysis, edited by Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 210–228. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey
2003 “Grammar and social organization: yes/no interrogatives and the structure of responding.” American Sociological Review 681: 939–967. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rossi, Giovanni
2014 “When do people not use language to make requests?” In Requesting in Social Interaction, edited by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 303–334. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey
1992a Lectures on Conversation. Volume I1. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
1992b Lectures on Conversation. Volume II1. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sanders, Robert, and Kristine Fitch
2001 “The actual practice of compliance seeking.” Communication Theory 11 (3): 263–289. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel
2007 Sequence Organization in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A.
1980 “Preliminaries to preliminaries. ‘Can I ask you a question?’” Sociological Inquiry 50 (3/4): 104–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanual A., and Gene Lerner
2009 Beginning to respond: well-prefaced responses to wh-questions. Research on Language and Social Interaction 42 (2): 91–115. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Searle, John
1969 Speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sifianou, Maria
1993 “Off-record indirectness and the notion of imposition.” Multilingua 12 (1): 69–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1997 “Politeness and off-record indirectness.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 1261: 163–179. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stevanovic, Melisa, and Anssi Peräkylä
2012 “Deontic authority in interaction: the right to announce, propose, and decide.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (3): 297–321. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, and Federico Rossano
2010 “Mobilising response.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 43 (1): 3–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taleghani-Nikazm, Carmen
2006 Request Sequences: The Intersection of Grammar, Interaction and Social Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Terkourafi, Marina
2011 “The puzzle of indirect speech.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (11): 2861–2865. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 “Re-assessing the speech act schema: twenty-first century reflections.” International Review of Pragmatics 5(2): 197–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walker, Traci
2013 “Requests.” In Pragmatics of Speech Actions, edited by Marina Sbisà and Ken Turner, 445–466. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weizman, Elda
1985 “Towards an analysis of opaque utterances: hints as a request strategy.” Theoretical Linguistics 121: 153–163. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1989 “Requestive hints.” In Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies, edited by Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Julianne House and Gabriele Kasper, 71–95. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.Google Scholar
2007 “Quantity scales. Towards culture-specific profiles of discourse norms.” In Dialogue and Culture, edited by Marion Grein and Edda Weigand, 141–152. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wong, Jock
2015 “A critical look at the description of speech acts.” In Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society, edited by Alessandro Capone and Jacob L. Mey, 825–855. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 22 other publications

Arundale, Robert B.
2021. Toward a pragmatics of relating in conversational interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 179 ► pp. 19 ff. DOI logo
Arundale, Robert B.
2022. Temporal Organization and Procedure in Ascribing Action. In Action Ascription in Interaction, ► pp. 31 ff. DOI logo
Clift, Rebecca & Michael Haugh
2021. Conversation Analysis and Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 616 ff. DOI logo
Elder, Chi-Hé
2021. Speaker Meaning, Commitment and Accountability. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 48 ff. DOI logo
Elder, Chi-Hé
2024. Pragmatic Inference, DOI logo
Elder, Chi-Hé & Michael Haugh
2018. The interactional achievement of speaker meaning: Toward a formal account of conversational inference. Intercultural Pragmatics 15:5 ► pp. 593 ff. DOI logo
Elder, Chi-Hé & Michael Haugh
2023. Exposing and avoiding unwanted inferences in conversational interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 218 ► pp. 115 ff. DOI logo
Filipović, Luna
2022. Language and Culture as Sources of Inequality in US Police Interrogations. Applied Linguistics 43:6 ► pp. 1073 ff. DOI logo
Fukushima, Saeko
2024. Japanese politeness revisited: from the perspective of attentiveness on Twitter. Journal of Politeness Research 0:0 DOI logo
Gubina, Alexandra & Arnulf Deppermann
2024. Rejecting the validity of inferred attributions of incompetence in German talk-in-interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 221 ► pp. 150 ff. DOI logo
Haugh, Michael
2017. Chapter 13. Implicature and the inferential substrate. In Implicitness [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 276], ► pp. 281 ff. DOI logo
Haugh, Michael
2022. Action Ascription, Accountability and Inference. In Action Ascription in Interaction, ► pp. 81 ff. DOI logo
Haugh, Michael
2024. Chapter 7. Ostensible offers, politeness and sincere hypocrisy. In The Pragmatics of Hypocrisy [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 343], ► pp. 162 ff. DOI logo
Hiramoto, Takeshi
2024. Framing offer-related actions as assistance at jewelry stores in Japan. Discourse Studies DOI logo
Kendrick, Kobin H.
2021. The ‘Other’ side of recruitment: Methods of assistance in social interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 178 ► pp. 68 ff. DOI logo
Mandelbaum, Jenny & Gene H. Lerner
2023. On the communicative affordances of instrumental action: Offering meal service to others, whilst serving oneself. Journal of Pragmatics 209 ► pp. 149 ff. DOI logo
Põldvere, Nele, Rachele De Felice & Carita Paradis
2022. Advice in Conversation, DOI logo
Riou, Marine, Stephen Ball, Austin Whiteside, Sheryl Gallant, Alani Morgan, Paul Bailey & Judith Finn
2020. Caller resistance to perform cardio-pulmonary resuscitation in emergency calls for cardiac arrest. Social Science & Medicine 256 ► pp. 113045 ff. DOI logo
Rudneva, Ekaterina
2019. How Russians pre-request and seek assistance: a study of interaction in two communities of practice. Russian Linguistics 43:2 ► pp. 127 ff. DOI logo
Stevanovic, Melisa
2018. Social deontics: A nano‐level approach to human power play. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 48:3 ► pp. 369 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Approaches and Methods in Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 567 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Fundamentals of Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 13 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.