Rae2022a
| Rae2022a | |
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| BibType | INCOLLECTION |
| Key | Rae2022a |
| Author(s) | John P. Rae |
| Title | On Doing Things Through Topical Puns and Near-Synonyms in Conversation |
| Editor(s) | Raymond F. Person Jr., Robin Wooffitt, John P. Rae |
| Tag(s) | EMCA |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Year | 2022 |
| Language | English |
| City | New York |
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| Pages | 79–96 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.4324/9780429328930-5 |
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| Howpublished | |
| Book title | Bridging the Gap Between Conversation Analysis and Poetics: Studies in Talk-In-Interaction and Literature Twenty-Five Years after Jefferson |
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Abstract
In spontaneous talk, speakers occasionally use one expression where another one might be expected. For example, a caller to a radio talk-show, complaining about getting reliable travel information from a telephone helpline, outlines the complexity of their freelance work arrangements by saying that they do not have a ‘regular timetable’. Although this is unproblematic, an expression such as a ‘regular schedule’ might be expected. However, the word ‘timetable‘ is closely fitted to their overarching topic: rail travel, where we commonly speak of a train timetable. Although the speaker‘s choice of a near-synonym (‘timetable’ rather than ‘schedule’) involves a semantic connection between two related terms, it does more than this. Drawing on Jefferson’s (1996) analysis of the poetics of word-choices in conversation, this chapter proposes that near-synonyms can have an intimate relationship to a speaker’s course of action; they can foreshadow what the speaker is going to say, or do, and thereby can help to achieve understanding.
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