8.2 The notion of preference

The difference between conversation analysis and speech act theory is not only due to a different methodology (although methodology is claimed to be an important discovery procedure by conversation analysts). Nor is it simply a matter of different units of analysis. The analysis of what comes before and after an utterance is only part of what conversation analysts bring to the study of language as action. More importantly, for them, conversations become the places where one can study the mundane activity of being a social actor in the ethnomethodological sense of someone who is accountable for his actions (Garfinkel 1967; Sacks 1992a, 1992b). By looking at sequences like adjacency pairs we can see how talk establishes frames which evoke, suggest, and even impose certain expectations on participants. This important aspect of conversational systems is partly captured by the notion of preference.

8.2The notion of preference

Early on in his lectures Sacks became interested in the fact that we hear certain utterances as “idioms” (he also used the word “composites” [1992a: 8]), that is, as chunks that we associate with certain routine activities. He gave as an example may I help you (or its variant can I help you). This utterance in most contexts is not thought of as a real question, but rather as an offer of help by a person who is qualified to do so. It might be said by a clerk in a department store or by an operator who will direct your call. In the calls to the suicide prevention center studied by Sacks, this phrase was used by a professional who listened to callers’ problems. In speech act theory, an utterance like may I help you would be analyzed as an indirect speech act (see section 7.2.1.1). As in the cases of indirect requests, a question would be said to function as an offer by virtue of a series of inferences (e.g. a question has the force of an offer if the speaker uses it to ask whether a preparatory condition concerning the speaker’s ability to do a certain action obtains). But Sacks was not just interested in how we understand a question as an offer. He was drawn to the sequential contexts of such questions, namely, to what usually follows. He noticed that there is a tendency to answer “yes” to a question like may (or can) I help you? This caused him to reflect on what happens when a different type of answer, e.g. I don’t know occurs:

(25) A: Can I help you?

B: I don’t know hheh I hope you can

A: Uh hah Tell me about your problems

B: I uh Now that you’re here I’m embarasssed to talk about it. I don’t want you telling me I’m emotionally immature ’cause I know I am

(Sacks 1992a: 10)

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In this example, by taking a different course of action than expected, the caller seems to reject the “routine” nature of the question. Sacks speculated that this might be a way of rejecting the “routine” nature of the treatment; the caller in this case seemed to have previous (probably negative) experience with routine treatment, as shown by the following comment I don’t want you telling me I’m emotionally immature ‘cause I know I am.

Since these preliminary observations, conversation analysts have shown that in all kinds of situations there are preferred courses of action and that the study of both preferred and dispreferred replies to questions and other first pair parts can give us a sense not only of what social actors are after, but also of what is considered to be normal or expected in any given situation. Looking at preference structure is a way of getting to the heart of what makes language such a powerful instrument of culture.

Similarly to those who think of culture as a public phenomenon – whether in the form of rules or in the forms of embodied practices (see chapter 2) –, Sacks and other conversation analysts did not think of preferences as psychological properties, residing in an individual’s consciousness. Rather, they saw preferences as tendencies provided in the system and by the system. Thus, when conversation analysts examine the tendency for the recipient of an accusation in a British court to deny it (Atkinson and Drew 1979), they are not invoking or looking for individual motivations. They are simply describing a cultural preference (Bilmes 1988). Preferences are interpretive frameworks within which members must operate at the very moment of engaging in the mediating activity of talk:

The concept of “preference” has developed in conversation analytic research to characterize conversational events in which alternative, but nonequivalent, courses of action are available to the participants ... The term “preference” refers to a range of phenomena associated with the fact that choices among nonequivalent courses of action are routinely implemented in ways that reflect an institutionalized ranking of alternatives. Despite its connotations, the term is not intended to reference personal, subjective, or “psychological” desires or dispositions.

(Atkinson and Heritage 1984: 53)

This conceptualization of preferences has a number of theoretical and methodological implications. Theoretically, by pointing to what is more likely to be said on any given occasion, the notion of preference uncovers the subtle and yet powerful ways in which individuals are subjected to the pressures of culture, where choice is possible but alternatives are by no means equal. The discussion of preferences is thus a potentially powerful tool for discussing the role played

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by language in shaping human behavior that was so central to early linguistic anthropologists like Edward Sapir:

It is strange how frequently one has the illusion of free knowledge, in the light of which one may manipulate conduct at will, only to discover in the test that one is being impelled by strict loyalty to forms of behavior that one can feel with the utmost nicety and can state only in the vaguest and most approximate fashion.

(Sapir [1927] 1963: 549)

Preferences are not strictly controlling mechanisms. It is always possible to resist or violate a preference in favor of a dispreferred move (see example [25] above). Such alternative moves, however, need some extra work and are not without consequences. Dispreferred activities (e.g. saying “no” to an offer, disagreeing on an assessment, etc.) “are usually performed with delay between turns, are commonly delayed within turns, and are variously softened and made indirect” (Atkinson and Heritage 1984: 53). Thus, it is not by accident that when, in example (25) above, we do not find “yes” after can I help you?, there is laughter and then in the next turn some hesitation by the person who offered assistance. The preferred course of action has not been followed and some extra work (in the form of justification, explanation) is necessary to go on and deal with the problem created or implied by the unusual move.

8.2.1Repairs and corrections

A set of phenomena where one can see the notion of preference at work is what conversation analysts call repair. The term “repair” has a wider scope than the term “correction,” given that “[t]he term ‘correction’ is commonly understood to refer to the replacement of an ‘error’ or ‘mistake’ by what is ‘correct’” (Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks 1977: 363). The phenomena called “repairs” by conversation analysts, however, are not contingent upon error in the traditional sense, they are attempts at resolving what is being perceived and/or defined as a “problem” or “trouble” in the course of an interaction. The notion of repair is closely connected to the sequential nature of conversational interaction. People who talk to one another need a mechanism that allows them to maintain continuity in the interaction while taking care of whatever problem arises in the course of their conversation.12 For instance, sometimes a person might have difficulty finding the right word or making sense of what someone else said. Other times, a participant might simply feel that what has been said is not accurate or needs to be rephrased, corrected, or augmented. There are times, in other words,

12Such continuity need not be thematic. It might be about maintaining the attention of an interlocutor, as shown by Goodwin (1979, 1981).

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when a person feels the need to “fix” what is being said or done. This “fixing” can be done by the same speaker, as in (26) below, where the speaker rectifies his earlier description making it more specific (my son becomes my oldest son):

(26) Ralph: Somebody said looking at my:, son my oldest son, (Goodwin 1981: 130)

Other times the repair may be initiated by another speaker and then corrected by the person who originated the “trouble.” This other-initiated repair is typically done by what conversation analysts call repair initiators, that is, by oneword questions such as huh? What? Who? or by an echo question, that is, a question that repeats part of the structure that is defined as “trouble” adding a wh-word, e.g. the who? and the what? may be used for repairing a noun and the do what? or go where? may be used for repairing a predicate. Here are two examples of repairs done with echo questions:

(27)A: Well who’r you workin for.

B:‘hhh Well I’m working through the Amfat Corporation.

→A: The who?

B:Amfah Corporation. T’s a holding company.

[

A: Oh

(Schegloff et al. 1977: 368)

(28)(Members of a rock band are discussing how to organize their performance)

Will: That might be kinda weird to do tha:t. (0.8)

→Russ: Do what?

[

Joy: Forget the mikes: step o:ut step out in front

[

Will: Tryin ta do ((gestures with guitar))

(Keating 1993: 418)

Repair can also be both initiated and fixed by another speaker, as in (29):

(Schegloff et al. 1977: 378)

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