Linköping Studies in Arts and Science • No. 405 Studies in Language and Culture • No. 11 Apokoinou in Swedish talk-in-interaction A family of methods for grammatical construction and the resolving of local communicative projects Niklas Norén LINKÖPING UNIVERSITY Department of Culture and Communication Linköping 2007 Linköping Studies in Arts and Science • No. 405 At the Faculty of Arts and Science at Linköping University, research and doctoral studies are carried out within broad problem areas. Research is organized in interdisciplinary research environments and doctoral studies mainly in graduate schools. Jointly, they publish the series Linköping Studies in Arts and Science. This thesis comes from the Graduate School in Language and Culture in Europe at the Department of Culture and Communication, Division of Language and Culture. Distributed by Department of Culture and Communication Division of Language and Culture Linköping University SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden Niklas Norén Apokoinou in Swedish talk-in-interaction. A family of methods for grammatical construction and the resolving of local communicative projects Edition 1:1 © Niklas Norén & Department of Culture and Communication Layout & cover: Niklas Norén Cover image: © Manuel Mair www.jnetworks.at ISBN 978-91-85895-95-3. ISSN 0282-9800/ 1403-2570 Printed by LiU-Tryck, Linköping, 2007 To Coco, Markus, Maria, and Mikael Linköping Studies in Arts and Science • No. 405 Studies in Language and Culture • No. 11 Doctoral dissertation at Linköping University, 2007 ABSTRACT Norén, Niklas, 2007. Apokoinou in Swedish talk-in-interaction. A family of methods for grammatical construction and the resolving of local communicative projects. ISBN 978-91-85895-95-3. ISSN 0282- 9800/1403-2570. This thesis investigates formal and communicative aspects of apokoinou in Swedish naturally occurring talk-in-interaction. The empirical study is based on a corpus of 168 apokoinou utterances, drawn from a material of 31 hours of audio and video recordings of everyday as well as institutional activities. In contrast to the traditions of normative grammar and theoretically based approaches to language, where apokoinou and related phenomena have been excluded from grammatical description altogether or been treated as the products of various kinds of mistakes, apokoinou is here re-specified as a highly functional grammatical resource and method to accomplish local communicative projects in talk. Apokoinou in Swedish talk is a heterogeneous phenomenon, ranging from a family of methods for grammatical construction to some more grammaticalized constructions. It is formally defined as the product of a construction method, where a segment that is final in a first possibly complete syntactic segment (the pivot) is retro-constructed as initial in the following second syntactic unit. The extension of the pivot segment is made by way of a doubling of syntactic constituents from the pre-pivot segment. From a strict and normative sentence-perspective, this doubling renders the final phase of the whole utterance as incoherent with the initial phase. From a usage-based and communicative perspective, however, the retro-construction of the pivot is made with syntactic, prosodic and lexical resources that work to integrate the utterance within an interactionally coherent unit through a moment-by-moment temporally organized process. Apokoinou is used by participants as a method to accomplish two consecutive actions within one utterance, where the second action can change perspective on some local topical aspect, confirm or insist on some local topic or action, close and demarcate a local project, and resume turns or skip-connect to pending local communicative projects after interstitial activities. These are all recipient designed local communicative projects in the sense of being designed to fit within the ongoing wider communicative context and they are often interactionally achieved in and through minimal sequences. These results have implications for grammatical theory. Among these are (i) that grammar must be seen as conditions on dynamic constructional processes, not only as static and fixed structures; (ii) that grammar is organized on a local level rather than on a maximally general level; (iii) that apokoinou should be included in a grammar of Swedish conversational language as one of the grammatical resources available for participants in Swedish talk. Key words: apokoinou, ethno-methods, utterance construction methods, syntax as process, prosody, grammatical constructions, communicative projects, Swedish talk-in-interaction, conversation analysis, interactional linguistics, dialogical grammar. Acknowledgements But now it is time to close this thesis project. There are many people who have helped, supported and inspired me to finally come to this point and to whom I wish to express my deepest gratitude. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Per Linell, who has encouraged me throughout my work with his warm personality, his knowledge, his enthusiasm, and his remarkable eye for the potentials of an emerging text. In 2001, Per took me in as a doctoral student at the Department of Communication Studies (Tema K) where he introduced me to a dynamic research environment and made me interested in the field of dialogical grammar. He possesses the unique combination of both being able to inspire theoretically and to give detailed and insightful comments on the concrete analysis of data. Over the years, we have had many and long talks, during which I have acquired a great number of the analytical tools and knowledge that are necessary for being a researcher within this field and in general. Per’s wide network of colleagues has also given me the opportunity to meet with other researchers from both near and far, especially through his involvement in the NorFA Network for Researchers in Conversation Studies (Convnet). I also wish to extend my warmest thank-you to my assistant supervisor Jan Anward, both for many valuable and significant comments on my work and for introducing me early to all the colleagues at the Department of Language and Culture and especially everybody in the Graduate School of Language and Culture in Europe. Jan does not know no for an answer and always knows how to combine sharp analysis with a smile. Jan (and funding from STINT) also made it possible for me and other doctoral students at the graduate school to meet with the research group on interactional linguistics in Potsdam. Our trips to Berlin and the workshops with Margret Selting, Elisabeth Couper-Kuhlen, Elisabeth Reber, and all the others have been a great inspiration for my present and future work. I am also indebted to my association with the research project of Grammar in Conversation – A study in Swedish, funded by Stiftelsen Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (proj.nr. K1999-5169:1), first as a research assistant at Bengt Nordberg’s seminar at FUMS in Uppsala, where I first came into contact with the field of interaction and grammar, and then in Linköping. I am truly grateful for all the seminars, meetings and dinners we have had in Linköping, Gothenburg, Helsinki, and Uppsala over the years. My warmest thanks to Jenny Öqvist for all the fun and for the great work you have done in reading and commenting the whole manuscript. I also wish to thank Jan Lindström for his useful comments as opponent on my final seminar, and Susanna Karlsson for sharing your wisdom about prosody and life. It would be impossible to do research on grammar in interaction without a large material of recordings of talk. I would like to thank all of you who have given me the permission to use the recordings that are part of my material; Bengt Nordberg, Leelo Keevallik, Anna Lindström, Jan Einarsson, Jens Allwood, Cajsa Ottesjö, Per Linell, Jan Anward, Lars-Christer Hydén, Diana Bravo, Jan Lindström, and Anne-Marie Londen. During the first four years as a doctoral student, I was at the Department of Communication Studies. I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the doctoral students and colleagues there, especially Linda, my roommate during those years and my only fellow doctoral candidate of the year 2001. The last two years I have been a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Language and Culture in Europe. You have all been a great support for me during this last period of my work, especially Maria with whom I have shared many aspects of finishing a thesis during a summer. Many other people have contributed to making this thesis possible. Anna and Wolfgang, you helped me to manage the situation of living in Uppsala and working in Linköping through accommodating me during my stays in Linköping. Norman Davies, you helped me getting my English into shape. All my friends in Uppsala; all members of Vintage, many neighbors at Oslogatan, and everybody in the old Studenvägen bunch. You made my time off work meaningful. Special thanks to Ulrika and Kalle for all the dinners and all the talk, and to Irma for your splendid work as a translator from Finnish conversational language. I cannot express the extent of my gratitude to my parents Stig and Birgit Djurström and my sister Karin for their achievements during this time. Your unconditional support, ranging from childcare and renovation of houses to financial aid, has been invaluable. Finally, I wish to extend my gratitude to my family that to my own surprise has grown even larger during these six years. You have inspired me all the way. My children Markus, Maria, and Mikael and last but