Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-dqfph Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-13T06:20:46.498Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Meaning in Interaction: The Case of Actually

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Rebecca Clift
Rebecca Clift*
Affiliation:
University of Essex
*
Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex C04 3SQ, Great Britain [rclift@essex.ac.uk]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

One aspect of the relationship between meaning and interaction is explored here by taking the English particle actually, which is characterized by flexibility of syntactic position, and investigating its use in a range of interactional contexts. Syntactic alternatives in the form of clause-initial or clause-final placement are found to be selected by reference to interactional exigencies. The temporally situated, contingent accomplishment of utterances in turns and their component turn-constructional units shows the emergence of meaning across a conversational sequence; it reveals syntactic flexibility as both a resource to be exploited for interactional ends and a constraint on that interaction.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 77 , Issue 2 , June 2001 , pp. 245 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 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

Aijmer, Karin. 1986. Why is actually so popular in spoken English? English in speech and writing: A symposium, ed. by Tottie, Gunnel and Backlund, Ingegerd, 119–29. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
Aijmer, Karin, Atkinson, J. Maxwell; and Heritage, John (eds.) 1984. Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Atkinson, J. Maxwell, and Heritage, John. 1984. Preference organization. In Atkinson & Heritage, 53–56.Google Scholar
Blakemore, D. 1992. Understanding utterances: An introduction to pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Brown, Gillian, and Yule, George. 1983. Discourse analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511805226CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallace. 1994. Discourse, consciousness, and time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Clift, Rebecca. 1999. Grammar in interaction: The case of actually. Essex Research Reports in Linguistics 26. Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex.Google Scholar
Concise Oxford dictionary of current English. 1965.Google Scholar
Drew, Paul. 1987. Po-faced receipts of teases. Linguistics 25. 219–53.10.1515/ling.1987.25.1.219CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drew, Paul, and Holt, Elizabeth. 1998. Figures of speech: Idiomatic expressions and the management of topic transition in conversation. Language in Society 27. 495–522.10.1017/S0047404500020200CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Derek. 1999. Shared knowledge as a performative and rhetorical strategy. Pragmatics in 1998: Selected papers from the 6th international pragmatics conference (IPrA), Reims, 19-24 July 1998, ed. by Verschueren, Jef, 130–41. Antwerp: International Pragmatics Association.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J., Kay, Paul; and O'Connor, Mary Catherine. 1988. Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of let alone. Language 64. 501–38.10.2307/414531CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, Bruce. 1996. Pragmatic markers. Pragmatics 6. 167–90.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1994. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Julia. 1982. Discourse particles: A study of well, actually, you know and I mean. Cambridge: University of Cambridge dissertation.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles. 1979. The interactive construction of a sentence in natural conversation. Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology, ed. by Psathas, George, 97–121. New York: Irvington Publishers.Google Scholar
Heritage, John. 1984. A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In Atkinson & Heritage, 299–345.Google Scholar
Heritage, John. 1998. Oh-prefaced responses to inquiry. Language in Society 27. 291–334.10.1017/S0047404500019990CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John, and Atkinson, J. Maxwell. 1984. Introduction. In Atkinson & Heritage, 1–15.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail. 1978. Sequential aspects of storytelling in conversation. Studies in the organization of conversational interaction, ed. by Schenkein, Jim, 219–48. New York: Academic Press.10.1016/B978-0-12-623550-0.50016-1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail. 1992. Is ‘no’ an acknowledgment token? Comparing British and American uses of (+)/( – ) tokens. Paper presented at the meeting of the International Sociological Association sociolinguistics section, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, August 1992.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail. 1993. Caveat speaker: Preliminary notes on recipient topic-shift implicature. Research on Language and Social Interaction 26. 1–30.10.1207/s15327973rlsi2601_1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Samuel. 1967 [1755]. A dictionary of the English language. New York: AMS Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226471013.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus and the mental representations of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511620607CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenk, Ute. 1998. Marking discourse coherence: Functions of discourse markers. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.Google Scholar
Maynard, Douglas W. 1980. Placement of topic changes in conversation. Semiotica 30. 3–4, 263-90.10.1515/semi.1980.30.3-4.263CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicolle, Steve. 1998. A relevance theory perspective on grammaticalization. Cognitive Linguistics 9. 1–35.10.1515/cogl.1998.9.1.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Elinor, Schegloff, Emanuel A.; and Thompson, Sandra A. (eds.) 1996. Interaction and grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511620874CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Onions, Charles T. 1966. The Oxford dictionary of English etymology. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Oxford English dictionary, 3rd edn. 1995.Google Scholar
Partridge, Eric A. 1965. Usage and abusage: A guide to good English. London: Hamilton.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita. 1980. Telling my side: ‘Limited access’ as a ‘fishing’ device. Sociological Inquiry 50. 186–98.10.1111/j.1475-682X.1980.tb00020.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita. 1984. Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In Atkinson & Heritage, 57–101.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey; and Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1975. Everybody has to lie. Sociocultural dimensions of language use, ed. by Blount, Ben and Sanches, Mary, 57–80. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1987. On the preference for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation. Talk and social organization, ed. by Button, Graham and Lee, John R. E., 54–69. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1992a. Lectures on conversation, vol. 1, ed. by Jefferson, Gail. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1992b. Lectures on conversation, vol. 2, ed. by Jefferson, Gail. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff, Emanuel A.; and Jefferson, Gail. 1974. A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50. 696–735.10.2307/412243CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1982. Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of ‘uh huh’ and other things that come between sentences. Georgetown University roundtable on languages and linguistics, 1981. Analyzing discourse: Text and talk, ed. by Tannen, Deborah 71–93. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1984. On questions and ambiguities in conversation. In Atkinson & Heritage, 57–101.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1986. The routine as achievement. Human Studies 9. 111–51.10.1007/BF00148124CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1988. On an actual virtual servo-mechanism for guessing bad news: A single case conjecture. Social Problems 32:442–57.10.2307/800596CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1990. On the organization of sequences as a source of ‘coherence’ in talk-in-interaction. Conversational organization and its development, ed. by Dorval, Bruce, 51–77. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1992. Repair after next turn: The last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation. American Journal of Sociology 97. 1295–1345.10.1086/229903CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1996. Turn organization: One intersection of grammar and interaction. In Ochs et al., 52–133.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A., Jefferson, Gail; and Sacks, Harvey. 1977. The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53. 361–82.10.2307/413107CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. Elinor Ochs; and Thompson, Sandra A. 1996. Introduction. In Ochs et al., 1–51.Google Scholar
Schwenter, Scott, and Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2000. Invoking scalarity: The development of in fact. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 1. 7–25.10.1075/jhp.1.1.04schCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Sara W., and Jucker, Andreas H. 2000. Actually and other markers of an apparent discrepancy between propositional attitudes of conversational partners. Pragmatic markers and propositional attitude, ed. by Andersen, Gisle and Fretheim, Thorstein, 207–37. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.79.10smiCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan, and Wilson, Deirdre. 1995. Relevance: Communication and cognition. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Taglicht, J. 2001. Actually, there's more to it than meets the eye. English Language and Linguistics 5. 1–16.10.1017/S1360674301000119CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watts, Richard J. 1988. A relevance-theoretic approach to commentary pragmatic markers: The case of actually, really and basically. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 38. 1–4, 235-60.Google Scholar
Waugh, Evelyn. 1981 [1930]. Vile bodies. Harmonds worth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre, and Sperber, Dan. 1993. Linguistic form and relevance. Lingua 90. 1–25.10.1016/0024-3841(93)90058-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar