Response Tokens in MSN Conversations
*Miao-Hsia Chang
National Taiwan Normal University Shin-yi Lin
National Feng-Yuan Senior High School
This paper explores the functions of the Mandarin Chinese response tokens (RT)
shi-o and o in MSN on-line talk. Both are produced in response to an informing and
betoken a change of cognitive state. Furthermore, the sequential environment of these two RTs is highly correlated with one’s intended meanings. First, both shi-o and o occur with a statement in response to an informing. However, shi-o invariably responds to new information, whereas o responds to both new and given information. Second, both occur as a free-standing item and suggest disaffiliation or topic curtailment. Third, both act as a marker of transition to a new topic. Fourth, both RTs introduce a question to probe for more information. Additionally, shi-o may be used before a dispreferred response to mitigate the dispreferred second. Whereas the free-standing and transition-marking RTs signal topic disalignment, the conversational moves of statement and question attached to these two RTs are also frequently associated with a negative prosody. In general, o figures in MSN as a strongly dissociative response particle, whereas shi-o, with a mitigating final particle, is a moderately dispreferred RT in MSN for indexing of “small surprise”.
Keywords: MSN conversations, Mandarin Chinese, shi-o, o, response token,
sequential environment, change-of-state token
1. Introduction
Language use is one kind of joint activity and is essentially social. In a conversation, when a speaker projects a turn, the recipient usually responds by virtue of a variety of tokens based on different sequential locations and their goals. Response tokens (henceforth RTs) can be defined as “conversational objects that indicate that a piece of talk has been registered by the recipient of that talk” (Gardner 2001:13). In light of their sequential contexts, different response tokens are produced to fulfill diversified conversational goals (Fishman 1983, Jefferson 1984, Drummond and Hopper 1993, Clancy et al. 1996, Reid 1995, Stubbe 1998, and Gardner 2001). In Mandarin Chinese, the RT shi-o (Y. Lin 2002 and S. Lin 2004) seems to have gained widespread popularity in on-line talk via MSN Messenger, which is a computer-mediated form of communication (CMC) widely used by young people in the last decade.1 This paper aims to explore the functions of the RT shi-o in MSN
*
The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments on this paper. We are solely responsible for any remaining errors.
1
The fact that shi-o has gained widespread popularity recently is consistent with its less frequent occurrence in an earlier databank, when MSN messenger was not available. In a Chinese corpus comprising spontaneous talk collected during 1995-1997 (26,419 morphemes), we found only one token of shi-o among 585 RTs of various types. By contrast, in part of our MSN database of an
conversations and compare its functions with its synonymous RT o. The discussion centers on the sequential relevance of shi-o and o in turn exchanges and how they signal various intended meanings of the chatters.
2. Previous studies
This section reviews previous studies on response tokens. We will focus on Mandarin Chinese o as an RT, final o and shi-o. Comparison with their corresponding term in English, oh, will be made where necessary. In Section 2.1, we first review studies on o.
2.1 O in Mandarin Chinese
O may occur utterance-initially and utterance-finally to fulfill interactional functions. Initial o serves as a response token to an informing. When taking a falling tone, it indicates that the speaker knows something, whereas o with a rising tone can denote surprise and sudden realization of a certain fact (Chao 1968, C. Wang 1998, and L. Wang 1987):
(1) A: Wanger na xiaozi, suiran nianqing, zai wai chi jiu du PN that fellow although young at outside eat liquor gamble qian.
money
‘Although Wanger is young, he drinks outside and gambles a lot.’ (8 lines by A omitted here)
B: O! Ta xiaozi jing hui he jiu bu cheng ren ma?
RT 3SG fellow should will drink liquor not become person PAR ‘Oh! Will this guy overdrink?’
(L. Wang 1987:329)
The use of initial o reviewed above is in accord with that of English oh, which is generally analyzed as a change-of-state token (Heritage 1984, 2005, Schiffrin 1987, and Aijmer 1987) in response to an informing or to a situational context which evokes the speaker’s memory. As a response to previous speaker’s informing, in particular, oh assures the alignment between speakers and listeners. The change of speaker’s cognitive state may be effected by an informing which is surprising (Heritage 1984, approximate size (26,039 morphemes) collected during 2004-2005, 30 tokens of shi-o were identified among 560 tokens of different RTs.
2005 and Aijmer 1987), hence its “newsworthiness”. This is similar to Chinese o with a rising tone. When the informing is unsurprising, oh may introduce utterances which, together with oh, assert “epistemic superiority” (Heritage 2005:198).
In utterance-final position, o is used to express friendly warning, to turn a statement into a confirmation seeking question, or to mitigate an assertion (Li and Thompson 1981:311-12 and Shie 1991:170-86). Based on prior researches of final o and English oh, Wu (2004) provides a more systematic analysis of final o2 and argues that it is an “epistemic alert” to signal to the recipients what merits attention in the current talk (p.120).3 The functions of o can be interpreted in terms of two sequential contexts. In the first position, o marks a news delivery. In the responsive position, when responding to an informing, o marks receipt of news and seeks confirmation of the informing. It may also occur as a turn of informing in this sequential position.4 While the confirmation seeking function is consistent with previous analysis, the “newsworthiness” of o is in line with Heritage’s (Heritage 1984:340, citing Jefferson 1981:62-66) observation on the “newsmarking” function of oh in English. Since of particular relevance to the present research is final o in the responsive position for confirmation seeking, an example extracted from Wu (2004:55) is given in the following:
(2) W: ta keyi xianza i zou a. 3SG can now leave PAR ‘He can leave now.’
L: hui taiwan o. return Taiwan PAR ‘Go back to Taiwan O?’
The concurrence of the Mandarin Chinese copula shi with final o yields the response token shi-o that is used frequently in MSN conversations. In the following, we review previous studies on shi-o.
2
In Wu’s (2004) work, o is referred to as ou. For consistency, o is used throughout our discussion and all the examples cited.
3
Wu (2004) only focuses on o in utterance final position. O as a sole response item is only mentioned in passing, as a preface to display understanding without seeking the recipient’s “endorsement” (p.65).
4
According to Wu (2004), the informing may take place at a “dispreferred second turn” (Wu 2004:103). However, it is not intended to be confrontational but to mark the “newsworthiness” of the utterance. This analysis corresponds to the mitigating function of o discussed in Shie (1991). Since final o for informing is not the focus of the study, the reader is referred to Shie and Wu for details.
2.2 Shi-o in Mandarin Chinese
Shi is a copular verb which establishes a link between a referential subject noun phrase and a non-referential noun phrase (Chao 1968, Li and Thompson 1981, Liu et al. 1983, C. Wang 1998, and L. Wang 1987). In a response, it is an affirmation marker asserting the value of a previous speaker’s statement (Li and Thompson 1981). Accordingly, when tagged with a final o, shi-o in a responsive position seeks confirmation of the truth value of a previous statement. As exploratory studies on the conversational imports of shi-o, Y. Lin (2002) and S. Lin (2004) note that shi-o serves as a minimal response token to signal the current speaker’s attention to the topic of talk, e.g. (3). Furthermore, shi-o may elicit further question, as in (4), to show disagreement (Y. Lin 2002) or surprise (S. Lin 2004), as in (5), or to signal transition of topic, as in (6):
(3) A: Women ban lian shixi de shiqing dou mei you ren PO. 1PL class even intern AC thing all not have people post
‘In our class, we don’t even have articles about internship.’
B: Shi o!
RT
‘Is that so?’
(4) A: Wo gen ni shuo o! Mojie hao nankan. 1SG with 2SG say PAR PN very bad .look ‘Tell you what. “Lord of the Ring” was very boring.’
B: Shi o! Weishemo?
RT why ‘Really! Why?’
(5) A: Wo tongxue kan le Zhuluoji san. 1SG classmate see PAR Jurassic.Park three Tingshuo bi dier ji hao kan ye. hear.say COMP second episode good see PAR
‘My classmate went to see Jurassic Park III. (He) said that it is better than the second.’
B: Shi o? Ting juping shuo man lan de.
RT hear film.critic say rater bad AC ‘Is that so? Some film film critics said it sucks.’
(6) A: Ni qu shenqing free.for.14.days jiu ke yong le. 2SG go apply free.for.14.days then can use PAR
‘You could apply for a 14-day free use, and then you can have access to it.’
B: Shi o! Ni you xxx de email ma?
RT 2SG have PN AC email PAR ‘Yeah. Do you have xxx’s email?’
From the examples presented above, it can be seen that the functions of shi-o correspond to previous analysis of final o as a confirmation seeking marker (Li and Thompson 1981, Shie 1991, and Wu 2004) and as a marker of news receipt (Heritage 1984, 2005 and Wu 2004). However, S. Lin’s and Y. Lin’s studies suffer from several limitations. First, it is unclear what effects the sequential context has on the meanings of shi-o. In addition, neither study provides an adequate account of the association of shi-o with negative evaluations, which, as we will show in the following, accounts for a great majority of the use of shi-o. Furthermore, how shi-o differs from its synonym o as a response token is left unexplored. Given these limitations, the current research aims to provide a systematic investigation of shi-o and o in MSN talk. The focus will be on how the contingent nature and distribution of shi-o and o contribute to their interactional functions.
3. Method
This section begins with a review of the characteristics of MSN talk by comparing it with natural conversations to illuminate the interactional pattern in MSN. Then in section 3.2, we provide a description of background information of the database and the framework adopted for the analysis of shi-o and o.
3.1 Characteristics of MSN talk
MSN Messenger is an instant messaging program that allows one to have an instant on-line conversation with a group of friends simultaneously (Crystal 2001, Greenfield and Subrahmanyam 2003). Introduced in 1999,5 it differs from face-to-face natural talk in several dimensions. First, MSN talk takes a text-based form, whereas face-to-face conversations take place orally. Thus, more than one topic can proceed simultaneously in MSN while this rarely happens in natural talk due to the limitations of the human memory. Second, although MSN is an instant messaging
5
See http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/nov02/11-08MSN8GlobalTimeLine.mspx for details.
system, users can have more time to plan and construct their ideas before sending messages to others compared with speakers’ verbalization in natural talk. Third, unlike natural conversations, few audio or visual clues are involved in MSN talk, with the exception of the symbols of a variety of conventionalized facial expressions such as those of “smiley”6 (cf. Mey 1993). Besides, many words with unfamiliar look (e.g.
ㄛ for 喔 and 降 子 for 這 樣 子 ), which are derived from abbreviations and
colloquial elisions, are frequently used in MSN talk. Fourth, the language used in MSN appears in text form and at least within the time when one is still on line, is kept as history, whereas natural talk is ephemeral. Last, the limitation of computer-mediated communication and participants’ different typing rates may sometimes lead to delays in message transmission and thus sometimes result in the violation of turn-taking rules (Herring 1999).
The above discussion suggests that MSN talk is a means of communication which is “an amalgam of spoken and written language” (Greenfield and Subrahmanyam 2003). Given the characteristics described above, it is worth investigating how shi-o works within this new communicative environment and how a chatter understands the other participant(s)’ intended meanings in such an emerging communication system.
3.2 Data and analysis
The data used in this study were drawn from MSN conversations among friends or family members during the year of 2004 and 2005. The subject-matter in the conversation centers on various topics happening in daily life. The total number of participants was 42, including 24 females and 18 males ranging from 15 to 39 years of age, and with different occupations.7 A total of 126,462 morphemes were included in this data and each conversation was measured on the basis of “turn-constructional units” (Sacks et al. 1974:702). Different from face-to-face interaction, in the chat register, a default full stop is made by pressing “enter” on the keyboard (Greenfield and Subrahmanyam 2003), and thus one “enter” constitutes one turn. The total number of turn units in our databank is 11,258.
Since the functions of RTs are mainly interpretable in conversations, the main approach we take to analyze our data is conversation analysis, a “rigorously empirical approach” searching for recurrent patterns by examining natural conversation (Levinson 1983:286-87). Two criteria were used for identifying shi-o for analysis. First, only shi-o and o that were used as a response token in the turn-initial position was coded. Second, on account of the fact that MSN chatters often use various
6
Common smiley includes ☺, , , and so on.
7
As MSN is mainly used by young people, data from contributors older than 39 were only fragmentary and were thus excluded from the analysis.
homophones for a rapid and effective conversation, the various orthographic representations such as 是喔, 事喔, 是ㄛ, 是歐, 是噢, and 是哦 were identified as the same token shi-o. The same principle applies to our search of RT o. As a result, the database yields a total of 330 tokens of shi-o and 574 tokens of o.
4. Functions of the response token shi-o and o in MSN
A general analysis of shi-o shows that all tokens of shi-o and o respond to news or informing. However, shi-o and o differ in terms of the information status of the statement to which they respond to. That is, shi-o represents a typical usage of “newsmarkers” (Heritage 1984, 2005 and Wu 2004) as it responds to an informing which is new or unexpected. On the other hand, o may indicate receipt of either news announcement or information which is known to the o-speaker. As will be shown below, the difference contributes to their varying interactional and evaluative functions. In the following, we discuss the interactional functions of shi-o and o in terms of their sequential environments: With an assessment, with a question, with a dispreferred response, transition marking, and as a free-standing item. The first three environments account for shi-o and o with additional moves oriented toward the topic of talk. The last two characterize shi-o and o that are strongly topic curtailing. Among these five sequential environments, an explicit negative response is only observed to collocate with shi-o. In the following, we discuss shi-o with an assessment first.
4.1 With an assessment
A major sequential environment of shi-o (29.4%) and o (39.9%) is for them to preface a turn component whereby the chatter makes a statement or assessment of the topic of talk in the preceding exchanges. As “products of participation” (Pomerantz 1984:57), assessments show the chatter’s involvement in the talk (Pomerantz 1984:57). It may encourage the other speaker to continue the talk. In (7), shi-o acknowledges the receipt of new information. It expresses “concern” and characterizes “another’s news as troubling” (Pudlinski 2005:284):
(7) (The speakers just came back from playing basketball together.) JJ1: Jintian da qiu hao lei o.
today play ball very tired PAR
LH1: Dui a. right PAR ‘Yeah.’
LH2: Bei zhuang yixia xianzai hai hui tong. BEI hit once now still will hurt ‘It still hurts after being hit.’
JJ2: Shi o? RT ‘Really?’ JJ3: Name kelian. so poor ‘Poor fellow.’
LH3: Gen sai pao yiyang. with race same
‘(The person who bumped into me) was like running in a race.’ (JJ and LH continue the discussion about the collision in the ball game.)
Shi-o may be used after a series of contrastive messages where the speakers are negotiating about a problematic part of a topic of talk due to an information gap in their knowledge. After the problematic part is resolved, shi-o is frequently used to indicate that an understanding has been achieved. Besides, an assessment usually follows shi-o to describe the recipient’s prior misunderstanding, e.g. Wo yiwei ‘I thought…’:
(8) RY1: Ni yinggai hen hui youyong ba? Haibian zhangda de.
2SG should very skilled swim PAR seaside grow.up NOM ‘You must be good at swimming since you grew up by the sea.’
OS1: Wo bu shi haibian zhangda de. 1SG NEG COP seaside grow.up NOM ‘I did not grow up by the sea.’
RY2: Wandan bu kao hai a? PN NEG next.to sea PAR ‘Isn’t Wandan by the sea?’ OS3: Bu kao.
NEG next.to ‘No.’
RY3: Shi o.
RT ‘Oh.’
RY4: Wo yiwei Pingdong dou shi hai ne. 1SG think PN all COP sea PAR
‘I just thought (every place in) Pingdong was close to the sea.’
Additionally, shi-o may be used to respond to a rejection to an invitation or request, as in (9).
(9) CH1: Ni yao bu yao gen wo chuqu a?
2SG want NEG want with 1SG go.out PAR ‘Do you wanna go out with me?’
CW1: Ha ha! Wo you shi nei. ha ha 1SG have thing PAR
‘Ha ha! But I have scheduled an appointment.’
CH2: Shi o mei guanxi!! na xiaci.8
RT NEG relation then next. time
‘Oh, that’s all right. Maybe some other time.’ CW2: ^^9
As a “socially determined structural pattern” (Yule 1996:79) rather than from an individual’s preference (Levinson 1983 and Yule 1996), an invitation is primarily “made in the expectation that the second part will be an acceptance” (Yule 1996). A rejection to the invitation constitutes surprise to the inviter. In (9), CW does not comply with the request but refuses with an excuse. This runs counter to CH’s expectation, and she uses shi-o to index the receipt of the news along with an utterance suggestive of disappointment.
As for o with an assessment, it also designates the receipt of informing and a change of cognitive state. However, compared with shi-o, the assessment following o is predominantly a brief talk, e.g. Liaojie ‘I see.’, Hao ‘okay’, Na hen hao ‘That’s good.’, which does not contain substantial proposition for topical development. (10) typifies this use, where after the message is received, the speaker reveals no interest to pursue the topic:
8
The punctuations used for each example follow those used in the original MSN text. To reflect the authenticity of the MSN lines cited, if there is no punctuation appearing in the original text, e.g. between clauses, no punctuation is used in the cited example either. However, the Chinese full stop “。” and comma “，” are converted to the English full stop and comma, respectively.
9
(10) (MN asked GG how to active “chatroom” function in the computer. Before GG1, GG has been explaining to MN about how to do this)
GG2: Jiu an zuo shang jiao de yaoqing, just click left top corner AC invitation ‘Just click the “invitation” button on the top left,’ GG3: Jiu keyi.
then can ‘It will do.’
MN4: Zhijie an zuqun ma? direct click group PAR
‘Just click the “group discussion” button, right?’ GG4: Fanzheng ni an xuanze ni yao yaoqing de.
anyway 2SG click choose 2SG want invite NOM
‘Anyway, you just click on..click on (the name of the person) you want to invite.’
MN5: O liaojie.
RT understand ‘Oh, I see.’
(The end of the current topic.)
In addition to being essentially topic curtailing, what distinguishes o from shi-o is that o responds to an informing which is given or unsurprising to the o-speaker. At the same time, o may be involved in the cognitive event of remembering and concurrently implies an “epistemic superiority” (cf. oh discussed in Heritage 1984, 2005). (11) illustrates the multi-functional quality of o:
(11) (CW and FQ are discussing about a website where they can do on-line shopping.) CW1: Wo hui mai ze ge.
1SG will buy this CL
‘I’ll buy this one (from this website).’
FQ1: O o, ni gei wo kan guo.
RT RT 2SG give 1SG see ASP ‘Oh, you showed me this (website) before.’ CW2: Dui ya.
yes PAR ‘Yes, I did.’
CW3: Women na shi mai erjiujiu zhilei de ba. 1PL that moment buy 299 and.the.like NOM PAR ‘I suppose we spent 299 dollars buying things of that sort.’ FQ2: En en.
RT RT ‘You bet.’
(FQ then describes the type of mirror that she wants to buy and this is not sold in the website that CW introduces.)
In (11), as can be inferred from the turns subsequent to o, FQ is not interested in the website introduced by CW. Instead, FQ directs the talk to the mirror in other websites.
The foregoing discussion shows that both shi-o and o respond to an informing as an indication of a change of the recipient’s cognitive state. The ensuing assessment expresses the chatter’s view toward the message received. Although it seems to promote topical development, our closer examination shows that over half (51, 52.6%) of shi-o-assessment tokens are implicative of topic curtailment or the recipients’ negative evaluation/attitude, and over eighty percent (188, 82.1%) of o-assessment tokens are topic-curtailing and produce a distancing effect since o regularly precedes a brief assessment containing little propositional content. Furthermore, unlike shi-o which unanimously receives new information, o responds to both new and given information. In turn, the non-newness of the announcement gives rise to a less interested attitude toward the topic of the talk.
4.2 With a question
Questions also occur after shi-o and o to develop the talk topically. The question addresses the propositional content of the preceding informing. It invites or requests the informative party to proffer more details. Among their uses in the MSN talk, the shi-o-question sequence makes up a third major category (28.2%), whereas o-question constitutes a minor part (10.3%). Consider excerpt (12) with shi-o-question:
(12) (MI and CW, formerly high school classmates, are chatting about a former classmate, Crystal, who was beautiful and attractive.)
CW1: Banhua… class.flower
MI1: Kan de chulai. look AC out ‘It’s obvious.’
MI2: Kending yi dui ren zhui ba. certainly one CL person chase PAR ‘I am sure lots of people are chasing her.’ CW2: @@10 ta shi gongguan de shuo.
3SG COP publicist AC COMP ‘She is the PR in the class.’
MI3: Ta ye zhi neng dang gongguan. 3SG too only can serve publicist ‘Anyway, she can only be a PR.’
(There are 17 lines omitted here. CW and MI think that Crystal as a PR will have lots of chances to know more men and will be easily distracted from her studies.)
CW3: Nansheng dou zhao ta chuqu wan. boy all find 3SG go.out play ‘Many boys asked her for a date.’
CW4: Danshi ta dou gen Duncan chuqu. but 3SG all with PN go.out ‘But she only chose to go out with Duncan.’
MI4: Shi o… ta du nali?
RT 3SG study where
‘Really? Where is he studying?’ CW5: Nian Beikeda ya.
study PN PAR
‘He is studying at National Taipei University of Technology.’ CW6: Dou xiaqu zhao ta.
all go.down find 3SG
‘He always goes southward to visit her.’ MI5: Qu Xinzhu o? go PN PAR ‘To Xinzhu?’ CW7: En. RT ‘Right.’ 10
This symbol does not indicate laughter as used commonly in linguistics. Rather it shows the interactant who feels dizzy and perplexed by the information.
MI6: Fengzi. madman ‘Maniac.’
In (12), CW and MI are conversing about the recent life of Crystal. MI contemptuously remarks that it is obvious that Crystal is popular among boys now and may be going out with them. Beyond MI’s expectation, however, Crystal only dates Duncan. The newsworthiness of the announcement is marked by shi-o. Curious and interested in knowing more about Duncan, MI asks a question after shi-o to encourage CW to continue the topic while at the same time sounding sarcastic.
The following is another extract of the shi-o-Q sequence, which depicts a chatter GG telling her classmate EW about their former classmate, Judy, who GG met by chance the other day:
(13) GG1: Ni jide Judy ma? 2SG remember Judy PAR ‘Do you remember Judy?’ EW1: En.
RT ‘Yeah.’
GG2: Na tian wo zai Shida de kafei dian yudao ta ye. that day 1SG at PN AC coffee shop meet 3SG PAR ‘I bumped into her in a coffee shop near Shida.’
EW2: Shi o ta zai ganma?
RT 3SG DUR do.what ‘Really? What was she doing there?’
GG3: Ni zhidao ta zai kafei dian gongzuo ma? 2SG know 3SG at coffee shop work PAR ‘Do you know she is working at a coffee shop?’
(The conversation continues for five turns about the location of the coffee shop.) GG4: Ta zai Shida de dagong .
3SG at PN AC work.part.time
‘She is doing apart-time job at Shida’s division.’ EW3: (smiley):|
GG5: Yinggai ye shi zhunbei chong kao. should too COP prepare again take.exam
EW4: Ta shi daxue sheng o? 3SG COP university student PAR ‘Is she a college student?’
EW5: Chong kao ganma dagong? again take.exam what work
‘Why is she doing a part-time job if she is preparing to retake the exam?’ EW6: Zhen di ji .
very low class ‘So thoughtless.’
In the above extract, GG1 is projected to check the viability of a news announcement. Through EW1’s validation, GG gets the ratified entrance to an extended course of conversation. The headline news emerges in GG2 following a topicalizing response in EW2. That is, the recipient EW shows the informed cognitive state with shi-o and makes an inquiry to provide a sequential opportunity for the speaker to elaborate on the news. By taking a closer look at the concurring exchanges, however, we find that shi-o frequently implies a negatively evaluated attitude with respect to the topic or protagonist under discussion, e.g. the contempt for the former classmate in both (12) and (13). Such a use, in fact, accounts for approximately 44.1% (41 tokens) of all shi-o-Q sequences. This suggests a strong association between shi-o and the speaker’s negative attitude. The evaluative connotation is also found with an o-question, as we discuss in the following.
The occurrence of o with a question is the only use where o shows less detachment from the conversational topic at issue. (14) exemplifies this use:
(14) (BL likes cats and is talking about cat raising with OS, who just broke up with her boyfriend.)
BL1: Wo ye keyi ai wu ji wu. 1SG also can love house extend crow ‘If I love a girl, I can also love her pet.’ BL2: Dan jia li bixu shi ganjing de.
but home inside must COP clean AC ‘But the house must be clean.’
OS1: Buguo xianzai ta bu ai wo, suoyi hui ba qing bian but now 3SG NEG love 1SG so will use love change guei jiu yu wo yang mao.
attribute fault to 1SG keep cat
‘But he doesn’t love me anymore, so he blames our separation on the fact that I kept cats.’
BL3: O .. ta bu xihuan ni yang mao?
RT 3SG NEG like 2SG keep cat ‘Oh. He didn’t like you to keep cats?’ OS2: Zhe hen nan jie.
this very hard solve ‘It is hard to explain.’
(The topic continues about why OS’s boyfriend started to hate OS’s keeping cats.)
Compared with shi-o, as we have noted above, o seems to look less sincere perhaps due to monosyllabic form and its associated brief prosodic value. Among the 59 tokens of o-Q sequence, in fact, we observe eleven occurrences (18.6%) where the topic is discontinued one to two turns after o-question sequence is given.
The connotations implied in the use of o may also account for its lower incidence to be followed by a question, as when one displays lack of enthusiasm for the topic, a less likely situation is for him/her to probe into the topic with a question. The pursuit of a given topic with a question following shi-o, by contrast, sounds more natural as shi-o, with final o asking for confirmation (Li and Thompson 1981, Shie 1991, and Wu 2004), suggests the chatter’s uncertainty, and thereby the greater likelihood for a question to follow.
4.3 With a dispreferred response
A next environment where shi-o is enlisted is for it to prefigure a dispreferred response (6.1%). This is the context where o does not participate. When the news announced constitutes an unexpected and dispreferred informing to the recipient, the recipient may reply with shi-o first and proposes a disagreement immediately afterwards.11 This type of shi-o is distinguished from shi-o with an assessment since the response is characterized by one with an explicitly expressed dispreferred speech act which shows the speaker’s counteractive stance.
11
Here the disagreement excludes the type that is performed after self-deprecation since disagreements are the preferred response units after self-deprecation (Pomerantz 1984:83).
In the following excerpt, two participants are arguing about which type of school to choose after JA took the high school entrance exam held recently.
(15) CK1: Ni you xiang shang Taibeishangzhuan ma? 2SG have want attend PN PAR
‘Do you want to get into National Taipei College of Business?’ JA1: Bu hui ba Wo zhishao yingkai you Yongchun.
NEG will PAR 1SG at.least should have PN
‘I don’t think so. I should be able to get into Yongchun High School at least.’
CK2: Gaosu ni bu hui bi Yongchun cha. tell 2SG NEG will compare PN bad ‘Tell you what. NTCB is at least as good as Yongchun.’ JA2: Wo jiu bu hui xiang shang gaozhi or
1SG just NEG will want attend vocational.school or wuzhuan ba.
five.year.junior.college PAR
‘I guess I don’t want to go to a vocational school or a five-year junior college.’
CK3: Wo jie ye shi du dao xianzai cai houhui. 1SG elder.sister too COP study reach now just regret ‘My elder sister regrets studying in a senior high school now.’
JA3: Shi o~ wo bu zhidao la buguo benneng fanying jiu shi bu
RT 1SG NEG know PAR but intuition reaction just COP NEG xiangyao nian gaozhi or wuzhuan.
wang study vocational.school or five.year.junior.college
‘Really? I don’t know. My first intuition is not to go to vocational schools or five-year junior colleges.’
The two chatters in (15) hold two different positions. CK tries to persuade JA to choose a junior college, such as Taibeishangzhuan ‘National Taipei College of Business’, whereas JA is constantly in a position of noncompliance. As a disagreement characterizes a dispreferred second/response (Levinson 1983, Pomerantz 1984, and Yule 1996), shi-o and wo bu zhidao (JA3) here function like English yeah and I don’t know (Pomerantz 1984) as mitigating delay devices to tone down the actual disagreement that follows so that the potential face threat to the addressee is reduced.
counter-argument. Prefatory to the counter-argument, shi-o is again used as an agreement preface to downplay a negative response:
(16) (GL and SL are chatting about G’s visit to G’s boyfriend’s house.) GL1: Wo hai man ai gou de.
1SG still very love dog AC ‘I love dogs very much.’
GL2: Zhende shi weile wan gou cai qu de. really be for play dog then go AC
‘It’s true that I visited (him) because I loved dogs.’
SL1: Shi o? wo jide ni pa gou.
RT 1SG remember you fear dog
‘Was that so? I remember you were afraid of dogs.’
The excerpts discussed in this section illustrate shi-o housed in a dispreferred second part to qualify an upcoming disagreeing action. With its tone of uncertainty (cf. 4.2), shi-o serves to render the whole conversational act less offensive. On the other hand, one might wonder why o is absent in such a sequential location. Although this could be a result of our limited databank which may not contain all typical uses of RT, an equally plausible explanation is that the overall o-dispreferred response sequence may sound too impolite because of the strongly topic curtailing connotation and the indifferent tone carried by o. An additional move with o that performs an explicit disaffiliating illocutionary act would thus pose even greater face threat (Brown and Levinson 1987) to the addressee. Therefore, it is avoided by the MSN chatters.
4.4 Transition marking
Shi-o and o may also be used to mark the juncture of a talk (7.0% and 10.1%, respectively), terminating the current agenda and proposing another new topic (cf. Y. Lin 2002). An exemplification of shi-o is given in (17), where WL is asking CB about his life during winter vacation:
(17) WL1: Ni hai you zai dagong ma? 2SG still have ASP work.part.time PAR ‘Are you still working part time?’
CB1: Wo zai Taizhong jiali. 1SG at PN home ‘I’m at home, in Taichung.’
CB2: You ya. have PAR ‘Yes, I am.’
CB3: Wo yao da dao shier ri. 1SG need work until twelve day ‘I will work until the 12th.’
WL2: Shi o.
RT ‘I see.’
WL3: Wen ni o ni you yao mai NB ma? ask 2SG PAR 2SG have want buy notebook.computer PAR ‘Let me ask you a question. Do you want to buy a notebook computer?’ (The NB topic continues for 73 lines in the following.)
At the beginning of (17), WL’s inquiry about CB’s recent life seems to be a warm-up activity for the main topic about notebook computer. After CB’s answer, WL replies with shi-o to close the opening greeting and directly shifts to an extended talk about computer. The short-lived opening shows that what truly interests WL is not CB’s job, despite the newness of CB’s answer (CB1-2), but the NB purchase.
The RT o also occasions a topic shift. However, the transition sequence sounds more blunt and offensive. (18) is a case in point:
(18) LS1: Ni hanjia jiajiao you ting ke ma? 2SG winter.break tutor have stop class PAR
‘Do you have a break in your tutoring job during the winter vacation?’ GG1: Jiajiao?
tutor ‘Tutoring?’
GG2: Wo hai bu zhidao. 1SG yet NEG know
‘I haven’t been informed (by the student’s parents) yet.’ GG3: Yinwei tamen xueqi mo hai mei dao.
because 3PL semester end still NEG arrive ‘Because their semester hasn’t ended yet.’
GG4: Buguo wo cai yiding hui ting yizhenzi, zhishao guonian yi but 1SG guess must will stop a.while at.least New.Year one liang ge libai.
two CL week
‘But I guess we will have a break of some sort. At least I won’t have classes for one or two weeks during the (Chinese) New Year.’
LS2: O~ wo xiao san na ge mama zhende hen ai qing jiajiao ye!
RT 1SG little three that CL mother really very love hire tutor PAR Wo hanjia bu zai hai yao wo bangmang zhao daike de. 1SG winter.break NEG at still want 1SG help search substitute NOM ‘You know, the mother of my third grade student really loves to hire tutors. During the winter break when I am not available, she even wants me to help find someone to do the job.’
LS3: Dagai yao shang ge liang san ge libai ta ye shuang. probably need have.class CL two three CL week 3SG also happy ‘She feels happier for her children to continue working for two or three weeks (during the winter break).’
(The talk continues about parents’ fondness in hiring tutors even during short vacations.)
In LS1, the chatter demonstrates her seeming interest in GG’s job. This prompts GG to report her situation for four turns without any response from LS. Then, with a minimal receipt of o, LS directly shifts to her own tutoring experience, which seems to be her real intention to start the conversation. The whole turn of LS2 embodies a marked contrast between a brief, perfunctory response and an extended, enthusiastic account of LS’s own experience.
(19) is an even more obvious exchange demonstrating a chatter’s extreme disinterest:
(19) (43 lines are omitted here. FQ is holding the floor to describe how she celebrated Valentine’s Day with her boyfriend. Then CW continues with her own story.)
CW1: Na tian qingrenjie lingchen a Ricky da lai that day Valentine’s.Day early.morning PAR PN call come shuo ta canting ding hao le jiao wo gen ta chifan. say 3SG restaurant reserve ok CRS ask 1SG with 3SG eat.meal ‘On the early morning of Valentine’s Day, Ricky called me and said that he had reserved a seat in a restaurant and invited me to have a meal with him.’
FQ1: O o. RTRT ‘Oh. Oh.’ FQ2: Ei! VOC ‘Hey!’ FQ3: Ni qu kan Liangdai. 2SG go watch two.generation
‘Go watch the (TV program), Super Generation.’
(FQ continues to tell CW about the TV program and asks CW to watch it.)
The above extract is an interesting manifestation of a strategic reply employed by a speaker who is taking the main floor. While CW tries to direct the talk to her romance, FQ successfully fulfills a recipient role in a disaffiliative fashion and attains the floor again with a new focus of talk.
So far, we have shown that by using shi-o or o, a chatter may become an even more aggressive interactant veering the trajectory of talk to a part in which the chatter is more interested. What distinguishes the two RTs is the degree of directness conveyed in the response sequence. The o-response prefatory to the transition sounds abrupt and insincere perhaps due to the brevity of its form. The shi-o-transition sequence, again due to final o, takes on a softener tone and acts as a “weak bridge” to facilitate the transition to a new focus of talk so that the otherwise sharp transition is rendered smoother.
In the preceding discussion, shi-o and o with additional moves have been shown to denote different degrees of a news recipient’s involvement and attitude toward the topic of talk. The dissociative attitude is manifested most noticeably when shi-o and o occur as a free-standing item, as we discuss in the following.
4.5 As a free-standing item
A free-standing shi-o or o is defined as one occurring as a sole item in a response turn following which the chatter immediately relinquishes the turn to the previous chatter. Both free-standing shi-o (29.4%) and o (39.4%) account for another major category as do those with an assessment. They both exhibit the speaker’s disinterestedness in the informing and the intention to curtail the topic. In (20), BM enthusiastically tells CW of a friend’s birthday, tagging the announcement with ye to reinforce the announcement as “new and impressive” (Shie 1991:155). However, CW only acknowledges the news with a bare shi-o:
(20) BM1: Xiaozhu 813 shengri ye. PN August 13th birthday PAR
‘Do you know that August 13th was Xiaozhu’s birthday?’
CW1: Shi o.
RT
‘Is that so?’
BM2: Ta qu chonglang. 3SG go surf
‘He went surfing.’ BM3: Xia dao wo le.
scare reach 1SG CRS ‘What he did scared me.’ CW2: Hai bian ba.
sea side PAR
‘I guess it was ocean surf.’
BM4: Buran qu he shang chonglang o? otherwise go river up surf PAR ‘Where else? Can you surf on a river?’
According to Button and Casey (1985), after headline news, a news announcer prefers to be asked a question by the recipient so that the topic can be continued. Instead of making a request-to-tell, however, CW responds minimally. Such lack of interest can be further evidenced in CW2, which sounds dispassionate and redundant, in that surfing obviously takes place at the sea. Consequently, the current topic does not last too long.
A radical example can be seen in (21), where the speaker’s repeated use of bare shi-o demonstrates the chatter’s detachment and absent-mindedness:
(21) KU1: Tamen you zenyang ma? 3PL have do.anything PAR ‘Did anything happen to them?’ JA 1: Hai hao la.
just good PAR ‘They were OK.’ J A2: Jin nian,
this year ‘This year,’ KU2: (smiley)
JA 3: Keneng shi wo yeye shengbing gang huilai. maybe COP 1SG grandfather get.sick just back
‘Maybe they were visiting my grandfather, who just came just back (from the hospital).’
KU3: Shi o.
RT
‘Is that so?’
JA 3: Jiu hen gaoxing a. then very happy PAR ‘They were happy.’
KU4: Shi o!
RT ‘Oh!’
JA4: Suoyi dajia ye gaoxing. so everyone also happy ‘So everyone was happy, too.’
(Five turns are omitted here, where JA continues a soliloquy of the family gathering.) JA5: A bu gai jian de.
PAR NEG should scurrilous NOM
‘Yet the one who used not to be so scurrilous’ JA6: Faner bian jian le.
but change scurrilous ASP ‘became mean instead at that time.’
KU5: Shi o.
RT
‘Mm huh.’
JA7: Aya! wo zuotian chi wan nianyefan jiu qu guang, EX 1SG yesterday eat finish New.Year’s.Eve.dinner then go stroll Wufenpu jia Raohe jie.
PN plus PN street
‘Ah! After the dinner on Chinese New Year’s Eve yesterday, I went shopping at Wufenpu and Raohe Street.’
At the beginning of the talk, as a polite entry to the chat, KU1 asks about JA’s parents, who often fought with each other, which worries JA a lot. While the enquiry prompts JA to engage herself in an extended talk, KU actually shows little interest in the details. This is clearly demonstrated in three consecutive, lone shi-os, which display KU’s minimal involvement and a continuous relinquishment of the main floor.
An even clearer illustration is the second half of the conversation in (21), where JA seems to be talking to herself. The implication of KU’s nonchalance and failure to align herself finally raises JA’s awareness, and JA abandons the family topic by moving to a new one in JA7.
The disinterestedness revealed by a free-standing RT is as prominent in the use of o. Compared with shi-o, however, the topic involving o is even shorter-lived. The minimal form of o yields a detached attitude and implies that the chatter is not surprised at or interested in the previous informing. (22) is a typical case, where the topic expires immediately after the o receipt:
(22) (A message pops up on FQ’s screen when she is surfing the net.) CW1: Wo yao chi Mosi.
1SG want eat PN
‘I want to eat at MOS restaurant.’ FQ1: Zeme turan? so sudden ‘So sudden!’ FQ2: Zaijian. goodbye ‘Bye, then.’ CW2: orz12 tumaluo. tomorrow
‘(I mean I will eat MOS fast food) tomorrow.’
FQ3: O.
RT ‘Oh.’
(The end of the current topic.)
In brief, as free-standing RTs, both shi-o and o appear frequently to show a conversant’s minimal involvement. The brevity of the response is commensurate with a tone of detachment. If the other participant does not pursue the topic further, the topic is usually curtailed and a new one ensues. The indifferent tone is particularly evident when a chatter responds with o than with shi-o.
12
This is a popular sequence of English letters symbolizing a person who kneels down on the ground. It usually indicates that the chatter cannot believe the information s/he just received.
5. Summary and discussion
In the preceding discussion, we have illustrated the use of response tokens shi-o and o in MSN conversations in terms of their sequential environments and the conversational functions they perform. To recapitulate, a summarizing table of their distribution is given in the following:
Table 1. Distribution of shi-o and o in the MSN talk
Sequential context Shi-o O
Neg.* Other Neg.* Other
51 (15.5%) 46 (13.9%) 188 (32.8%) 41 (7.1%) With an assessment 97 (29.4%) 229 (39.9%) With a question 93 (28.2%) 59 (10.3%) With a dispreferred response 20 (6.1%) 0% Transition marking 23 (7.0%) 58 (10.1%) Free-standing 97 (29.4%) 228 (39.7%) Total 330 (100%) 574 (100%) *
With negatively evaluative prosody.
Several points can be highlighted from the preceding discussion and from Table 1. First, both shi-o and o emerge as “response cries” (Goffman 1981) to the situation of talk and betoken a change of the speaker’s cognitive state to signal that an informing has been received (Heritage 1984, 2005, Schiffrin 1987, and Wu 2004). They may facilitate a subsequent storytelling or the alignment of speakers in their specific conversational roles.
However, the news which shi-o and o respond to differs with regard to their information state. Whereas shi-o unanimously acknowledges the announcement of fully new information, o responds to both new and given information. The receipt of given information sometimes gives rise to a cognitive state of remembering or a sense of “epistemic superiority” which is also observed in the use of English oh (Heritage 2005).
Another major distinction between the shi-o and o concerns the degree of topic alignment/disalignment conveyed by different sequential components. Although both shi-o and o occur with additional moves that seemingly promote topical development, shi-o conveys a softer tone toward the news received compared with the abrupt and less friendly tone of o. Furthermore, the topic accompanying the o response is usually curtailed soon, as manifested by the lack of substantial propositional content in the
additional moves following o (188 among 229 tokens). These varying emotive functions may well arise from the forms these two RTs take. That is, shi-o is tagged with a final o with a confirmation seeking and mitigating function (cf. Section 2), whereas o as a lone item in the response sounds brief and abrupt and thus creates a stronger distancing effect.
Despite the different tones conveyed by the use of shi-o or o alone, as shown throughout the preceding discussion, the two RTs carry a strong negative prosody and dissociative attitude concerning topical development. Specifically, if we sum up the occurrences of shi-o and o with additional moves pertaining to negative evaluation, together with free-standing, transition marking shi-o and o, and those with a dispreferred response, we find seventy percent of shi-o uses and eighty-two percent of o uses that either point to a chatter’s negative attitude or that effect a termination of the topic in focus. In a nutshell, we believe that o figures in MSN conversations as a strongly dissociative response particle, whereas shi-o is a moderately dispreferred response token recruited in MSN for indexing of “small surprise” or “unexpectedness”.
The functional distributions of the RTs shi-o and o shed light on their preponderance in MSN conversations. The motivation for using a topic curtailing RT or for expressing “small surprise” may stem from the nature of the conversation in MSN. That is, at work or after work/school, some young people have made it a habit to use MSN to chat with friends or family about studies, friends, family, life, etc. while being engaged in more important activities such as studying, working, or processing documents with the computer. As the chat does not take place face-to-face, the chatter may exit anytime (e.g. to take a shower) and come back on line later. These facts contribute to an on-line chat environment which mostly involves light, casual topics or short problem-solving sequences (e.g. asking for a file). The news announced or an informing made, therefore, tends to be short-lived and less serious in nature. Furthermore, when a new message is sent in, the window icon (beeps and) keeps blinking, which seems to urge the recipient to respond. In order to show participation, the receiver thus frequently resorts to shi-o or o to signal that the message is received. When it is intended as a more polite reply, shi-o is used for mitigation. This may in turn account for the predominance of shi-o and o to be topic curtailing on the one hand and the implication of the chatter’s dissociative or detached attitude on the other.
6. Conclusion
young people (cf. Footnote 5). Drawing on data from MSN conversations, this paper explores the sequentiality and interactive functions of shi-o and o. This study is significant in several ways. First, we have shown that shi-o is used recurrently in this new speech genre as an emblem of information receipt. Second, we have provided a unified account of shi-o and o in terms of the turn components surrounding them and their affective values. Third, we have made a systematic comparison among the nuances of these two response particles and their synonyms in spoken Chinese and English.
There are, however, several issues that call for future research. For example, we do not examine the functions of shi-o and o as RTs in spoken Chinese conversations. A related study concerns how the prosodic realizations of shi-o and o interact with their discourse functions. If a study on RTs in oral conversations is to be undertaken, these factors need to be taken into consideration.
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[Received 4 July 2008; revised 24 November 2008; accepted 6 January 2009]
Department of English
National Taiwan Normal University Taipei, TAIWAN
Miao-Hsia Chang:mhchang@ntnu.edu.tw National Feng-Yuan Senior High School Taichung, TAIWAN
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