The theme of the workshop is particles in interaction, with a special focus on response particles. Response particles (e.g. joo and nii in Finnish, yes and okay in English) are smallest linguistic units that can form a turn and a responsive action on their own. This workshop explores the possibilities of CA methods (mainly, the analysis of turn construction, sequential position and participant orientation) in understanding the use and meaning of response particles. The workshop will also draw attention to specific complexities in the analysis of response particles.  For instance, some languages (e.g., Finnish) have an abundance of response particles for doing a similar interactional job. This poses the question of how to tell apart their functional properties in terms of a division of labor. There is also evidence of the fact that over time, the use of a particle may undergo subtle changes in terms of its frequency and functional properties. These issues will be addressed by presenting different comparative points of departure for the analysis: comparing particles that are used in a similar context (such as acknowledgement tokens and change-of-state tokens); comparing the use of a particle at different points in time. A substantive part of the workshop will consist of analysis of small collections of different response particles. Participants are also encouraged to bring instances of response particles occurring in their own data for joint analysis.  

Facilitated by: Aino Koivisto and Marja-Leena Sorjonen