Responsive List Construction

Abstract

Research by Gail Jefferson has established that list construction in conversation can be used to perform a range of interactional tasks. This report provides an extension and application of Jefferson's work to demonstrate how this practice can be used to produce a delicately formulated, multifaceted response. A preliminary characterization of a single case of responsive list construction is presented. Next, the practice of list construction is described. List construction can be used to formulate a class of objects through an inductive procedure by moving from the particular to the general. This feature of list construction can be used to correct an error in an unexposed fashion by recasting a problematic, but possibly complete, remark as merely the first item in a list. These features of list construction are then applied as analytic resources in a further explication of an individual utterance presented at the outset of the report. Responsive list construction can be used to achieve a qualified acceptance of a prior speaker's utterance by incorporating that utterance into a list of related items, thus in effect balancing multiple social concerns.

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