The request system in Italian interaction © Giovanni Rossi 2015 Printed and bound by Ipskamp Drukkers, Nijmegen Cover photo: a workshop in Isera, Trentino, Italy (April 2015). The request system in Italian interaction Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. dr. Th. L. M. Engelen volgens besluit van het college van decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op maandag 22 juni 2015 om 12.30 uur precies door Giovanni Rossi geboren op 17 april 1987 te Rovereto, Italië Promotor Prof. dr. Nick J. Enfield Copromotor Dr. Kobin H. Kendrick (Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik) Manuscriptcommissie Prof. dr. Stephen C. Levinson Prof. dr. Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen (Helsingin Yliopisto, Finland) Dr. Traci S. Walker (University of York, Groot-Brittannië) The research reported in this thesis was supported by the European Research Council and by the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften, München, Germany. For my mother, Maria Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................................... xi Transcription conventions .................................................................................................................................. xv Abbreviations used in glossing ......................................................................................................................... xvii 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Human cooperation and requesting ......................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Language and social action ..................................................................................................................... 2 1.3 Italian grammar and interaction .............................................................................................................. 4 1.4 Research on requesting ........................................................................................................................... 5 1.4.1 Making and understanding requests .......................................................................................... 6 1.4.2 A face-threatening and putatively dispreferred act .................................................................... 8 1.4.3 Approaches to request form selection ........................................................................................ 9 1.4.3.1 Greatest potential obstacle ...................................................................................... 10 1.4.3.2 Politeness strategies ................................................................................................ 11 1.4.3.3 Sociological variables ............................................................................................. 12 1.4.3.4 Entitlement and contingencies ................................................................................ 13 1.5 Aim and scope of this study .................................................................................................................. 14 1.6 Data, methodology, and conceptual distinctions for analysis ............................................................... 16 1.6.1 Data .......................................................................................................................................... 16 1.6.2 Sampling .................................................................................................................................. 16 1.6.3 Identification of requests ......................................................................................................... 18 1.6.4 Forms and frequencies ............................................................................................................. 19 1.6.5 Methods of analysis ................................................................................................................. 21 1.6.5.1 Conversation analysis ............................................................................................. 23 1.6.5.2 Linguistics ............................................................................................................... 26 1.6.5.3 Multimodal analysis ................................................................................................ 27 1.6.5.4 Quantification .......................................................................................................... 27 1.7 Overview of the thesis ........................................................................................................................... 28 2 When do people not use language to make requests? ................................................................................ 31 vii 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 31 2.2 Background ........................................................................................................................................... 33 2.2.1 Request forms and modality .................................................................................................... 33 2.2.2 Projectability and anticipation in activities .............................................................................. 34 2.3 Nonverbal forms of requesting ............................................................................................................. 37 2.4 Nonverbal requests rely on the projectability of action within a joint activity ..................................... 39 2.5 The verbal component of requests serves the recognition of non-projectable actions ......................... 46 2.6 Naming requests rely on the partial projectability of action ................................................................. 54 2.7 A competing motivation for verbalising projectable requests: securing immediate recipiency ........... 57 2.8 Discussion ............................................................................................................................................. 63 3 Bilateral and unilateral requests: the use of imperatives and simple interrogatives ............................ 69 3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 69 3.2 Background ........................................................................................................................................... 71 3.3 Similar actions in similar circumstances ............................................................................................... 75 3.4 Imperatives ............................................................................................................................................ 75 3.4.1 Grammatical description .......................................................................................................... 75 3.4.2 Imperative requests contribute to the progress of a joint project ............................................. 76 3.5 Simple interrogatives ............................................................................................................................ 85 3.5.1 Grammatical description .......................................................................................................... 85 3.5.2 Simple interrogative requests launch a new individual project ............................................... 86 3.6 Quantitative analysis ............................................................................................................................. 93 3.7 Secondary uses of imperatives and simple interrogatives .................................................................... 98 3.7.1 Simple interrogative requests that serve a collective outcome ................................................ 98 3.7.2 Imperative requests that do not contribute to the progress of a joint project ......................... 101 3.8 The normativity of form selection ...................................................................................................... 112 3.9 Form-function fit ................................................................................................................................. 120 3.10 Discussion ......................................................................................................................................... 123 4 Overcoming unwillingness: the use of puoi x ‘can you x’ interrogatives .............................................. 127 4.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 127 4.2 Background ......................................................................................................................................... 128 viii 4.3 Grammatical description ..................................................................................................................... 129 4.4 Puoi x requests attempt to overcome unwillingness ........................................................................... 130 4.4.1 Overt resistance .....................................................................................................................