Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-npj9w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T13:54:30.668Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Linguistic Indeterminacy and Social Context in Utterance Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

John Dore  and
R. P. McDermott
John Dore
Affiliation:
Baruch College, City University of New York
R. P. McDermott
Affiliation:
Teachers College, Columbia University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Two approaches to the problem of interpreting utterances are sketched: a structural account at the levels of sentence and speech act, and an interactional account of their functions and consequences as constitutive of the social order in which they occur. For the problem of utterance interpretation, linguistic analyses can specify potential meanings and functions, but cannot indicate actual interpretations to which conversationalists are oriented. Linguistic analysis alone renders an account that is propositionally ambiguous, functionally equivocal, and interactionally indeterminate. In order to account for how talk becomes determinate for conversationalists, a pragmatically-based interactional approach is offered. A segment of actual conversation that occurred during a first-grade lesson is analysed here, with focus on a description of the contexts in terms of which talk is understood. One utterance in particular, characterized as a pragmatic counterfactual, is discussed at length as a unique product of an interactional account of conversation.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 374 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bilmes, Jack. 1981. Proposition and confrontation in a legal discussion. To appear in Semiotica.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birdwhistell, Ray. 1970. Kinesics and context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Charney, E. Joseph. 1966. Psychosomatic manifestations of rapport in psychotherapy. Psychosomatic Medicine 28.305–15.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cicourel, Aaron. 1974. Cognitive sociology. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Cole, Michael, Dore, John, Hall, William; and Dowley, Gillian. 1978. Situation and task in young children's talk. Discourse Processes 1.119–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Andrade, Roy. 1974. Memory and the assessment of behavior. Measurement in the social sciences, ed. by Blalock, H. M., 159–85. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Dore, John. 1977. Children's illocutionary acts. Discourse production and comprehension, ed. by Freedle, Roy, 227–44. Norwood: Ablex.Google Scholar
Dore, John. 1981. Conversation as accountability practice. Cognition and Brain Theory 4.201–15.Google Scholar
Dore, John, Gearhart, Maryl; and Newman, Denis. 1978. The structure of nursery school conversation. Children's language, vol. 1, ed. by Nelson, Keith, 337–98. New York: Gardner.Google Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, Susan. 1976. Is Sybil there? The structure of some American English directives. Language in Society 5.25–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frake, Charles O. 1980. Language and cultural description. Stanford: University Press.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1979. Response cries. Lg. 54.787–815.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. 1967. Logic and conversation. William James Lectures, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. 1970. Toward a theory of communicative competence. Recent Sociology 2.114–48.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K., and Hasan, Ruqaiya. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1974. Foundations in sociolinguistics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail. 1974. Error correction as an interactional resource. Language in Society 3.181–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail. 1978. What's in a ‘nyem‘? Sociology 12.135–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendon, Adam. 1977. Studies in the behavior of social interaction. Lisse: de Ridder.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1973. The art of sounding and signifying. Language in its social context, ed. by Gage, William, 84–116. Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington.Google Scholar
Gage, William, and Fanshel, David. 1977. Therapeutic discourse. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
McDermott, Ray P. 1976. Kids make sense: An ethnographic account of the interactional management of success and failure in one first-grade classroom. Stanford University dissertation.Google Scholar
McDermott, Ray P. 1981. Entretien avec Ray L. Birdwhistell. La nouvelle communication, ed. by Winkin, Yves, 291–301. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Winkin, Yves, Gospodinoff, Kenneth and Aron, Jeffrey. 1978. Criteria for an ethnographically adequate description of activities and their contexts. Semiotica 24.245–75.Google Scholar
Aron, Jeffrey, and Roth, David. 1978. The social organization of behavior: Interactional approaches. Annual Review of Anthropology 7.321–45.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita. 1978. Compliment responses. Studies in the organization of conversational interaction, ed. by Schenkein, Jim, 79–112. New York: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1973. On some puns with some intimations. Sociolinguistics, ed. by Shuy, Roger, 135–44. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1974. An analysis of the course of a joke's telling in conversation. Explorations in the ethnography of speaking, ed. by Bauman, Richard & Sherzer, Joel, 337–53. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Sherzer, Joel, Schegloff, Emanuel; and Jefferson, Gail. 1974. A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation. Lg. 50.696–735.Google Scholar
Scheflen, Albert. 1966. Natural history method in psychotherapy. Methods of research in psychotherapy, ed. by Gottschalk, Louis & Auerbach, Arthur, 263–86. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.Google Scholar
Scheflen, Albert. 1973. Communicational structure. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel. 1972. Notes on a conversational practice: Formulating place. Studies in social interaction, ed. by Sudnow, David, 75–119. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel. 1979. The relevance of repair to syntax-for-conversation. Discourse and syntax (Syntax and semantics, 12), ed. by Givón, Talmy, 261–86. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel. 1980. Preliminaries to preliminaries: ‘Can I ask you a question?‘ Sociological Inquiry 50.104–52.Google Scholar
Searle, John. 1969. Speech acts. Cambridge: University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, John. 1979. Expression and meaning: Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge: University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharrock, W. W., and Turner, Roy. 1978. On a conversational environment for equivocality. Studies in the organization of conversational interaction, ed. by Schenkein, Jim, 173–97. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1979. Language structure and linguistic ideology. The elements: A parasession on linguistic units and levels, ed. by Clyne, Paul et al., 193–247. Chicago: CLS.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1980. The three faces of ‘function’: Preliminaries to a psychology of language. Proceedings of a Working Conference on the Social Foundations of Language and Thought, ed. by Hickmann, Maya, 1–34. Chicago: Center for Psychosocial Studies.Google Scholar
Vendler, Zeno. 1976. Illocutionary suicide. Issues in the philosophy of language, ed. by Mackay, Alfred & Merrill, Daniel, 135–45. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Vološinov, V. M. 1973. Marxism and the philosophy of language. New York: Seminar Press.Google Scholar
Wells, Gordon. 1973. Coding manual for the description of child language. University of Bristol.Google Scholar
Wieder, D. Lawrence. 1974. Language and social reality. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar