Questions Only Indirect Speech Acts
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The last feature is sequencing, which is defined by Cutting 2002 as “the
negotiation of the participants‟ utterance on which a mutual conversation is occurring
” p. 31. Cutting categorizes sequence into three namely pre-sequences, insertion sequences, and opening and closing. Pre-sequences prepare the ground
for a further utterance and signal the type of utterance to follow Cutting: 2002, p. 30. Three types of pre-sequence are pre-invitation Will you come if I get you
another tickets?, pre-request Do you have some time?, and pre-announcement You‟ll never know.
Insertion is a pair embedded within other adjacency pairs which act as macro-sequences Cutting: 2002, p. 30.
The invitation “Let‟s go to the movies tonight.
” might result to a question “What time will the movie start?” from the second participant before the answer to the first participant is given. It is common
to have a question which was responded with another question as the speakers try to know the detailed information. According to Cutting 2002, opening-closing
sequence shows the speaker‟s attempt to start a new conversation or end it.
Greeting is most likely used to open the conversation and the leave taking is used to close the conversation.
Those common characteristics indicate the participants‟ contribution in the attempt to generate a relevant and coherent conversation. According to Levinson
1984, relevance in conversation comes from the topic related between the preceding and the following utterances p.31. On the other hand, coherence
means “the overall sense of a discourse that results from relationships a within a sequence of utterances and b between those utterances and thei
r context p.31”.
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A relevant conversation then is achieved when the speakers are talking about the same topic in the context while coherent means the sense of discourse between the
utterances. The example is when a participant makes a question, the other participant is expected to give answer as suggested by the adjacency pairs.
As mentioned earlier, one of the problems with coherent and relevant conversation is an ill-sequence conversation. Levinson 1984 illustrates the
common sequence of a conversation as utterance X, followed by Y, and then Z and they have to occur in that order to be recognized as a coherence conversation.
However, there is a case in which the sequence is not XYZ as mentioned p. 291 - p. 292. If a question is symbolized as an X, the Questions Only utterances
sequence, in which the participants are allowed to only speak in question, should be XXX sequence. As suggested by Levinson, the sequence was considered ill.
Also, according to adjacency pair, a question is expected to be followed by an answer.
On the other hand, there are some objections to the notion. First is the term answer itself is not a simple term to determine. As suggested by adjacency pair,
question-answer pair is the most observable pair among others. This pair, syntactically, can be pointed out as the interrogative sentence will be followed by
a statement. However, Coulthard as cited in Levinson, 1984, p. 293 states that a conversation is not ruled by such pairs and the rules are not merely related to
sentences form or category. Another objection states that to define „answer‟ which
suggests “answerhood is a complex property composed of sequential location and
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topical coherence across two utterances, amongst other things” Levinson, 1984:
p. 293. Some experts object further to the conversation sequences. Labov
Fanshel as cited in Levinson, 1984, p. 288 states “obligatory sequencing is not to
be found between utterances but between the action that are being performed”. The utterances type or form is not responsible for the coherence of a conversation.
According to Levinson 1984, the order and coherence of a conversation is not located in the utterances form but in the speech acts performed by the speaker
through their utterance p. 288. It is the act performed through the utterances which make utterances coherence one another.