Requesting in social interaction studies the contexts, evolution, and main analytic topics of requesting in naturally occurring social interaction. It is composed of thirteen chapters, which are arranged in an organic order and organized into four parts: requesting as recruitments (chapters 1–2), the relationship between requests and offers and linguistic constructions of action (chapters 3–6), requesting in family settings (chapters 7–9), and requests elicited by nonverbal actions (chapters 10–13).
The first two chapters constitute Part 1. Drew & Couper-Kuhlen (chapter 1) analyze embodied interaction, namely, the linguistic, visual, and nonverbal dimensions of interaction, though the visual and nonverbal dimensions are often ignored in traditional analyses of the forms utilized to make requests. They discuss the notion of recruitment (i.e. attempts to solicit assistance by gestures so as to meet a need, resolve a problem, or fulfill a wish) in requesting, summarize the advantage of recruitments (i.e. the requester enlists assistance without producing overt requests) and conditions for successful recruitments, identify subsequent procedures after failure to grasp recruitment displays, and outline dimensions of recruitments that require further exploration. Focusing on other aspects of requesting as recruitments, chapter 2 (by N. J. Enfield) is more concerned with the analysis of sociality rather than language itself. Based on video-recorded interactions in Lao, Enfield proposes three viewpoints on the attributes of human-human interaction. First, people are goal-driven and their behaviors are in accordance with what they are pursuing. Second, the fact that people may be beneficiaries or co-beneficiaries in requests results from the property that people are both individuals and members of a group. And third, thanks to the principle of reciprocity, people are willing to help others. This chapter also reveals five defining features of requesting in social interactions.
The relationship between requests and offers is the theme of the following three chapters in Part 2. By analyzing the ascription and formation of initiative actions, a less-studied subject in requests and offers, Steven Clayman & John Heritage (chapter 3) probe the distinction between requests and offers. They adumbrate the practices through which interactants' interests are constructed in these actions and the accepting responses are pursued. Taking the malleability of benefactive stance—an indicator of benefits and costs encoded in the future action by linguistic formats—into account, they further suggest that interactants, when confronted with actual or projected resistance to a request or an offer, can perform the desired action by means of maximizing the benefits and minimizing the costs in pursuing an accepted response. In addition, they conclude that the benefactive stance of these actions is normally congruent with benefactive status, but these actions' essential nature as indexed by linguistic practices is determined by the benefactive status rather than the benefactive stance in the case of discrepancy between them.
Chapter 4, by Kobin H. Kendrick & Drew, discusses the putative preference for offers over requests, based on the idea that offers are performed without being asked and requests are treated as face-threatening acts (Levinson Reference Levinson1983; Schegloff Reference Schegloff2007). This putative preference is untenable for the following three reasons: (i) There are no fixed sequence positions for either requests or offers, and predominantly they occur both in the initial and the final position of communication; (ii) both requests and offers may be accompanied by and constructed through indirect forms or in ways that lay claim to be something other than requesting or offering; and (iii) instead of forestalling requests, offers may prevent or obstruct requests. Kendrick & Drew also specify the relationship between requests and offers. That is, requests that indicate the acceptance of offers are another kind of response to offers. A report or display of problems as an alternative to requests can also occasion offers. Offers of alternatives are proffered after ungrantable requests. Offers can occasion requests in multiparty interaction for a kind of shareable object and vice versa.
Couper-Kuhlen & Marja Etelämäki (chapter 5) compare the linguistic constructions of requests and offers in English and Finnish everyday interactions and delineate the similar and different linguistic constructions that serve to make divisions of interactive labor in requests and offers in these two languages. They hold that the choice of certain linguistic forms is determined by factors such as divisions of labor between interactants and the sharing of agency and responsibility. Chapter 6, by Jakob Steensig & Trine Heinemann, continues the focus on linguistic constructions of action, in which two forms (with and without a modal adverb) of full-clause responses to remote requests, that is, requests to be granted in the future, in Danish interactions are considered. According to the specific forms of responses, recipients convey their commitment to and perception of the requested action differently.
Part 3 concerns requests in family settings. Anthony Wootton (chapter 7) explores two request forms (declarative I want and interrogative can I) used by four-year-olds in daily interactions as responses after their initial requests have been rejected and after the use of imperatives by parents. He shows that the two forms function distinctly, in nonequivalent ways, and that there is a decrease in the use of I want and an increase in interrogative requests such as can I after age four. Chapter 8, by Marjorie Goodwin & Asta Cekaite, deals with the bodily construction of directives and responses to them, in particular the haptic forms used to get children to bed in English and Swedish everyday lives. Through investigating responsive actions, Goodwin and Cekaite find that compliance and noncompliance are manifested in different tactics involving embodied actions. Based on video recordings at the family dinner table, chapter 9, by Jenny Mandelbaum, considers requests by which interactants perform actions other than requesting. It indicates that the formulation, fulfillment, and appreciation of requests may serve as vehicles to implement other actions that have no direct relationship with requests. This suggests an avenue for the further study of politeness and morality associated with requests in this dimension.
In the last part, close attention is paid to how nonverbal actions, such as gaze, gesture, body position, and the location of action in a spatial environment, are employed to solicit requests. Chapter 10, by Marja-Leena Sorjonen & Liisa Raevaara, focuses on the selection between a phrasal (NP) and a clausal format to request tobacco products, a concrete object, at kiosks in Finland. Request formats are selected according to factors such as the physical arrangements of space, the participants' location and body movement, and the sequential trajectory of the transaction. Research on immediate requests to be granted promptly in chapter 11, by Lorenza Mondada, is located in the operating room. Multimodal formats (from grammar to gestures and embodied engagement) are described and investigated as are the embeddedness of such requests in the ongoing activity and silent ways to respond to them. The importance of the preparation of requests and their relevance and recognizability in complex sequences are also demonstrated.
Giovanni Rossi (chapter 12) shows that adding or omitting language in imperative requests in Northern regions of Italy depends on two kinds of criteria, namely, a recognizing criterion and a perceptual criterion. The former relates to the relative projectability of the action by which requests are implemented and the latter has more to do with the perception of the auditory and visual modalities and their effects for recipiency. Finally, Federico Rossano & Katja Liebal expose the similarities between apes and human infants in ways to request and offer food as well as evidence for their conclusion that the development of interactive skills is prior to that of language. It is no wonder that this interesting chapter occupies the final position in the volume.
Requesting in social interaction is one of the most basic and ubiquitous activities and it has particular significance for our social life. This volume is an excellent collection of research on requesting from the perspective of conversation analysis, a research methodology unearthing, describing, and explaining the social orders behind the execution of social actions. The main contributions of the present volume are worth mentioning. First, the background to and evolution of work on social action and requesting are depicted and summarized, then the reasons why requesting stimulates continual interest from researchers are uncovered as well. Second, it is a comprehensive collection of research on requesting in ordinary social interactions. It ranges from linguistic constructions to nonverbal and embodied actions in face-to-face interactions of requests; looking at infants, children, adults, and even orangutans. Thanks to the technology of video-recordings, findings, and conclusions from the perspective of conversation analysis are more convincing. Third, it provides readers with enlightening ideas and novel angles, such as requesting as recruitments in chapter 1–2, initiative actions as study subjects in chapter 3, denial of the preference for offers over requests in chapter 4, and divisions of labor in requests and offers and treating requests and offers as a joint venture in chapter 5. It presents remarkable findings in fine detail. For instance, chapter 6 gives a demonstration of the distinction between the employment of modal and nonmodal full-clause responses to remote requests. Chapter 7 innovatively displays how to pursue re-requests, the second action after the initial one has been refused. Chapter 8 demonstrates how interactants calibrate their actions with respect to each other's in their everyday lives by intertwining resources (facial expressions, gesture, gaze, and intonation, to name but a few). All in all, this volume of comprehensive, novel, and nuanced studies on requests and offers paves the way for further study on requesting. It can be regarded as an encyclopedia of study on requesting which is worth thorough reading.
