Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Conversation Analysis 503
second, here an answer. Before turning to consider the response that is
produced we need to fi rst consider in some more detail the design of this
turn. Consider specifi cally that Dick employs the past tense – ‘How did it
go?’ he asks. Clearly, with this Dick locates the party in time – specifi cally,
a time prior to the point at which this conversation is taking place.
Although we cannot, here, deal with exactly how it does this, past tense in
this context conveys that the thing being talked about (the ‘it’/the party)
is over and complete.
So, there is a problem with the way in which Dick has formulated his
question since, as it turns out, it is not quite right to say that the party is
over (the guests have stayed and thereby continued the event). But at the
same time the question is answerable as it stands – Dick has asked how it
went and the party proper is over. In asking this question Dick creates a
position for Deb to produce an answer. Thus there are two different actions
relevant next:
1. Answer the question.
2. Address the problem with how the question has been formulated.
By virtue of the conditional relevance established by the question, anything
that occurs in this slot (‘they’re still here’ for instance) may be
inspected for how IT answers the question. If it cannot be heard as answering
the question it may be inspected by the recipient for how it accounts
for not answering the question. In short, anything that occurs here can be
inspected for its relevance to the question asked and can thus serve as the
basis for further inference. Imagine this pair of utterances without the ‘just
great’ such that ‘everybody’s still here’ comes as a response to ‘Howdit
go?’. Simplifying things somewhat, the problem with this is that ‘everybody’s
still here’ could easily be heard by a recipient as ‘it didn’t go well’
or ‘it went too long’ or ‘I’m trying to get them out’. There is then a built in
reason for answering this question in a straightforward way simply
because any other way of responding might suggest a negative assessment
and invite further inquiries.
At the same time, if she chooses simply to answer Dick’s question and
respond with ‘just great’ alone, Deb has allowed a mistaken assumption
go unchallenged and uncorrected. This too is something to be avoided. As
we have already noted there are certain things that become relevant at the
completion of an event – a report to interested parties, an assessment,
the reporting of news and so on. Dick’s question, by locating the event in
the past, proposes the relevance of those activities; indeed, it invites them.
But to the extent that the event is not, in fact, over, these activities are not
the relevant ones to do. There are then a number of intersecting reasons
why Deb would like to do this assessment, ‘just great’ fi rst as a response
to Dick’s question but, at the same time, to not allow the misunderstanding
contained in Dick’s question to pass to without being corrected.