Hør dog hvad de siger - Note-to-Self: Trials & Errors

wing a question, is thus seen as an answer to that question, and an utterance following that
answer as an evaluation or token of reception. Utterances of course can also relate to other
utterances than the one immediately preceding it, but when they do, they will usually do this
in a way that allows them to simultaneously relate to the one immediately preceding them.
For instance, you can refer to a question posed earlier in the conversation by something like
‘as you said earlier’, but you than need this prologue, a simple ‘yes’ will be taken to answer
the most immediately question.
Furthermore, responses are not limited to verbal utterances. As discussed e.g. by Pome-
rantz (1984) a dispreferred response is often delayed or marked with hesitance. Thus, hesita-
tion and pauses in responses will often be understood as tokens of disagreement. All interlo-
cutors in a conversation are therefore constantly actively involved in negotiating agreement
and even joint understanding. This has the implication that nothing that happens during an
interview can be attributed solely to one of the participants. ‘Meaning’, this phenomenon so
fundamental to interviews, is thus always and inevitably jointly negotiated, never the respon-
sibility of the respondent. No matter how the interviewer receives the respondent’s answers,
his receipt will always be a contribution – either as a request for repair, through explicitly
marking non-understanding; or as a sign of understanding and agreement if non-
understanding is not explicated. “Consequently, should no repair be initiated on their dis-
played understanding, understanding is not an issue. […] understanding may not be an issue
until it is made one, and speakers seemingly proceed on the basis that their displayed un-
derstanding is an appropriate one” (Button 1987: 163f.). In survey interviewing this marks a
dilemma between on the one hand remaining standardised and not requesting repair of re-
spondent’s (faulty) understanding of the question, and on the other participating in construc-
ting the faulty understanding through not requesting repair.
Excerpt 1 shows this dilemma in real life interviewing. The respondent and interviewer
effectively negotiates a new meaning to the term ‘mother tongue’ (one synonymous with ‘in-
ternational lingua franca’) through the interviewer’s silent acceptance. The excerpt has a
rather abrupt beginning since the interviewer’s first question refers to a question given a mi-
nute or so earlier.
(1) 1 Interv: det havde været bedst hvis alle i verden havde engelsk som
2 modersmål (.) vil du ikke s sige et eller andet om den
’it would be better if everybody in the world had English as
their mother tongue, please say something about that one’
3 Resp: jamen det er fordi at jeg synes engelsk er et godt sprog
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