"Don't get me wrong": recipient design by reactive and anticipatory uses of negation to constrain an action's interpretation

Buchbeitrag

Speakers’ dialogical orientation to the particular others they talk to is implemented by practices of recipient-design. One such practice is the use of negation as a means to constrain interpretations of speaker’s actions by the partner. The paper situates this use of negation within the larger context of other recipient-designed uses of negation which negate assumptions the speaker makes about what the addressee holds to be true (second-order assumptions) or what the addressee assumes the speaker holds to be true (third- order assumptions). The focus of the study is on the ways in which speakers use negation to disclaim interpretations of their turns which partners have displayed or may possibly arrive at. Special emphasis is given to the positionally sensitive uses of negation, which may occur before, after or inserted between the nucleus actions whose interpretation is constrained by the negation. Interactional motivations and rhetorical potentials of the practice are pointed out, partly depending on the position of the negation vis-à-vis the nucleus action. The analysis shows that the concept of ‘recipient design’ is in need of distinctions which have not been in focus in prior research.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

Classification and Topics

• Subject: Negation ; Konversationsanalyse ; Germanische Sprachen; Deutsch

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Deppermann, Arnulf
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Berlin [u.a.] : De Gruyter
• (when): 2014-10-30

Further information

• URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-31804
• Last update: 06.03.2025, 9:00 AM CET