The co-construction of pragmatic acts

In the preceding examples we have seen how not only the speaker but also other participants can influence the trajectory of a pragmatic act as it develops in interaction. This, we have suggested, is another key characteristic of pragmatic acts in interaction, namely, that they are co-constructed by two or more participants rather than simply being the “output” of the speaker or tied to individual utterances. In some cases, the pragmatic act, by definition, cannot be achieved by one participant on their own, as noted with respect to collaborative speech acts. Bribing others is a case in point. If the recipient does not accept the offer of money and so on in order to gain some particular favor (or reject the offer in such a way as to register it as asking for a favor), it does not count as a bribe. Bribing is thus an instance of a pragmatic act where co-construction of an act itself surfaces in interaction (cf. Mey 2001). An important consequence of the way in which pragmatic acts are co-constructed by two or more participants is that they can sometimes involve multiple possible understandings. This is precisely the point explored by Thomas (1995: 195–204). She notes: “The concept of ambivalence is particularly important in taking forward the view of pragmatics as ‘meaning in interaction’ in which both speaker and hearer have a part to play.” Schegloff (2006: 147) argues that since participants pursue possible understandings of talk “along multiple lines ... they are therefore prepared to recognize even ones arrived at by others that might have been thought elusive”. In other words, pragmatic acts can initially be indeterminate and so mutual understanding of them is very often co-constructed (or interactionally achieved in CA parlance). The co-construction of pragmatic acts can be clearly seen in the case of utterances where speakers offer interpretive choices to recipients, or alternatively, recipients exercise their agency in such a way as to transform the upshot of the speaker’s preceding talk.

We have already seen such phenomena in our discussion of recipient meanings. Here we offer another brief example where unsaid pragmatic meanings (termed not-saying) arise in the course of the co-construction of a pragmatic act, namely, questioning, which, in turn, arises within the frame of a broader activity type, getting acquainted:

In [6.23], we find evidence of an utterance-type through which speakers can allow recipients to choose inclusive or exclusive interpretations of disjunctives, namely, utterances ending with a trailing-off or (Haugh 2011). It is evident that such utterances are (nominally) open to interpretation as either polar questions (p or not p) or alternative questions (p or q). The former necessarily presupposes an exclusive interpretation of or, while the latter presupposes an inclusive interpretation. Here, the speaker’s utterance can be understood in two ways by the recipient. Emma could understand Chris’s utterance as a polar question (“are they happy or not?”) or as an alternative question (“are they happy or generally satisfied”?). It is left up to Emma to choose.

One further point to note is that it should now be evident from our discussion of examples of “soliciting” and “trailing-off questioning” that many pragmatic acts are not “named” in vernacular discourse. Speech act theory picks up on many of the important social actions we can observe in interaction, at least it does for those we find in English. However, there are many other pragmatic acts that are not necessarily salient in folk discourse. Our job in pragmatics is to further our understanding of not only what ordinary folk can readily recognize through speech acts they name, but also pragmatic acts that are not always immediately obvious to the casual observer.