Request for Reconfirmation

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Request for Reconfirmation
Author(s):	Katharina König (University of Münster, Germany) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1883-2812)
To cite:	König, Katharina. (2026). (Story-)Telling. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: [ ]

With a request for reconfirmation (RfRC), a speaker prompts a prior speaker to at least minimally reconfirm something the other has said in a prior turn. Consider line 7 in the following example from Marmorstein & Szczepek Reed (2024: 259):

(1) [REC 51.17]

1   Lau:  <<h> was thAt the gUY who bOUght you:: (0.3) [cham↑PA:GNE;> 
2   Car:                                               [<<h> cham↑PA:GNE;
3         ↑YEAH:.> 
4   Lau:  MOet. 
5   Car:  [S:O WEIRD. 
6   Lau:  [<<h> ↑PPARently you’re suppOsed to> pronOUnce mOey as MOETh -
7 → Car:  hhh. REA:LLY#1?
                       
                      #1
8   Lau:  YEAH. 
9         appArently because it’s a [DUTCH wOrd. 
10  Car:                            [moet
11        (0.5)
12  Lau:  ‘nd apparently .h [i- it’s a DUTCH fAmily (0.2) 
13  Car:                    [it’s not FRENCH; 
14  Lau:  In <<sh-> .h FRA:NCE.

RfRCs can be instantiated by (partial) repeats (Aldrup, 2024 for English and German), simple particles (so-called newsmarks such as English really (see line 7 in the above example), German echt (Gubina & Betz, 2021), Hebrew be’emet (lit. ‘in truth’, Marmorstein & Shor, 2025) or Icelandic nú (lit. ‘now’, Hilmisdóttir, 2016)) or other routinized formats (English did you?, Jefferson, 1981; Thompson et al., 2015). Depending on the type of particle or the subject language, an RfRC’s prosodic shape may be a distinctive cue (Selting, 1996, Weber & König, 2025) or it may add an affective lamination (Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 2006). They can form multimodal gestalts with, for instance, raised eyebrows (Dix & Groß, 2023, Marmorstein & Shor, 2025).

RfRCs are sometimes grouped together with requests for confirmation (Raymond & Stivers, 2016); they differ, however, in terms of their sequentiality (König & Pfeiffer, 2024): In contrast to RfCs, which can be used to initiate a sequence, RfRCs operate back on another speaker’s prior turn and are thus sequence bound (in the above example, Car’s really targets Lau’s prior utterance, line 6). They treat the prior as an informing (Jefferson, 1981; Thompson et al., 2015). Unlike RfCs that formulate candidate understandings, RfRCs do not offer an interpretation of a prior turn but rather target an informing ‘as is’, i.e. as it has been presented by a prior speaker. Moreover, RfRCs can be distinguished from RfCs by their sequential trajectory. RfRCs rarely receive disconfirmation (Gipper et al., 2024; Marmorstein & Szczepek Reed, 2024) but rather invite reconfirmation (see line 8 in the above example).

RfRCs have been described as a social action that can serve as a vehicle for other actions, thereby opening up different response possibility spaces: RfRCs can contextualize ‘newness’ (Heritage, 1984) or remarkability (Marmorstein & Szczepek Reed, 2024), inviting only minimal uptake through, for instance, nodding or single response tokens. They tend to receive more elaborate responses when they register surprise (Wilkinson & Kitzinger 2006), trouble or genuine disbelief (Aldrup, 2024; Thompson et al., 2015, Marmorstein & Shor, 2025). In the above example, in which the accompanying facial expression (open mouth, frown, see #1) frames the final-rising really? as doubtful, the response not only offers re-confirmation but a substantiation of the claim (line 9). While repeat-formatted RfRCs are largely associated with troubles of understanding or a display of disbelief in languages such as English and German (Aldrup, 2024) and thus invite expanded responses, in Mesoamerican languages, these sequences do not tend to carry such laminations but rather register information uptake (Brown et al. 2021; also see Gipper et al. 2024 for Yurakaré, isolate, Bolivia). Overall, this suggests that languages differ in the range of actions that RfRCs typically implement, and consequently in the response possibility spaces they project.

Additional Related Entries:

• Candidate understanding
• Multimodal Gestalt
• Newsmark
• Repair
• Retro-sequence

Cited References:

Aldrup, M. (2024). Asking the obvious: Other-repeats as requests for reconfirmation. Contrastive Pragmatics, 5(1-2), 274–306.

Brown, P., Sicoli, M. A., & Le Guen, O. (2021). Cross-speaker repetition and epistemic stance in Tzeltal, Yucatec, and Zapotec conversations. Journal of Pragmatics, 183, 256–272.

Dix, C., & Groß, A. (2023). Surprise about news or just receiving information? Moving and holding both eyebrows in co-present interaction. Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality, 6(3).

Gipper, S., König, K., & Weber, K. (2024). Structurally similar formats are not functionally equivalent across languages: Requests for reconfirmation in comparative perspective. Contrastive Pragmatics, 5(1-2), 195–237.

Gubina, A., & Betz, E. (2021). What do newsmark-type responses invite? The response space after German echt. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 54(4), 374–396.

Heritage, J. (1984). A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action. Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 299–345). Cambridge University Press.

Hilmisdóttir, H. (2016). Responding to informings in Icelandic talk-in-interaction: A comparison of nú and er það. Journal of Pragmatics, 104, 133–147.

Jefferson, G. (1981). The abominable Ne? A working paper exploring the phenomenon of post-response pursuit of response. University of Manchester Sociology Occasional Paper 6, 1–82.

König, K., & Pfeiffer, M. (2024). Requesting confirmation or reconfirmation across languages: An introduction. Contrastive Pragmatics, 5(1-2), 1–26.

Marmorstein, M., & Shor, L. (2025). Orienting to knowledge as remarkable: The newsmark be’emet (‘in-truth’) in Hebrew conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 238, 40–59.

Marmorstein, M., & Szczepek Reed, B. (2024). Newsmarks as an interactional resource for indexing remarkability: a qualitative analysis of Arabic waḷḷāhi and English really. Contrastive Pragmatics, 5(1-2), 238–273.

Raymond, C. W., & Stivers, T. (2016). The omnirelevance of accountability: Off-record account solicitations. In J. D. Robinson (Ed.), Accountability in Social Interaction (pp. 321–353). Oxford University Press.

Selting, M. (1996). Prosody as an activity-type distinctive signalling cue in conversation. The case of so-called ‘astonished questions’ in repair-initiation. In M. Selting & E. Couper-Kuhlen (Eds.), Prosody in Conversation. Interactional Studies (pp. 231–270). Cambridge University Press.

Thompson, S. A., Fox, B. A., & Couper-Kuhlen, E. (2015). Grammar in Everyday Talk: Building Responsive Actions. Cambridge University Press. Weber, K., & König, K. (2025). Exploring the fuzzy boundaries between newsmarks and change-of-state tokens in High German and Low German talk-in-interaction – A variational-pragmatic and interactional perspective. Journal of Pragmatics, 242, 93–107.

Wilkinson, S., & Kitzinger, C. (2006). Surprise as an interactional achievement: Reaction tokens in conversation. Social Psychology Quarterly, 69(2), 150–182.