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The Book of Answers
F O U N DAT IO N S O F H UM A N I N T E R AC T IO N
General Editor: N.J. Enfield, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics,
Radboud University, Nijmegen, and the University of Sydney
This series promotes new interdisciplinary research on the elements of human sociality,
in particular as they relate to the activity and experience of communicative interaction
and human relationships. Books in this series explore the foundations of human
interaction from a wide range of perspectives, using multiple theoretical and
methodological tools. A premise of the series is that a proper understanding of
human sociality is only possible if we take a truly interdisciplinary approach.
Series Editorial Board:
Michael Tomasello (Max Planck Institute Leipzig)
Dan Sperber (Jean Nicod Institute)
Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen (University of Helsinki)
Paul Kockelman (University of Texas, Austin)
Sotaro Kita (University of Warwick)
Tanya Stivers (University of California, Los Angeles)
Jack Sidnell (University of Toronto)
Recently published in the series:
Relationship Thinking
N.J. Enfield
Talking About Troubles in Conversation
Gail Jefferson
Edited by Paul Drew, John Heritage, Gene Lerner, and Anita Pomerantz
The Instruction of Imagination
Daniel Dor
How Traditions Live and Die
Olivier Morin
The Origins of Fairness
Nicolas Baumard
Requesting Responsibility
Jörg Zinken
Accountability in Social Interaction
Jeffrey Robinson
Intercorporeality
Edited by Christian Meyer, Jürgen Streeck, J. Scott Jordan
Repairing the Broken Surface of Talk
Gail Jeffers.n
Edited by Jörg Bergmann and Paul Drew
The Normative Animal?
Neil Roughley and Kurt Bayertz
When Conversation Lapses
Elliott M. Hoey
Communicating & Relating
Robert B. Arundale
Asking and Telling in Conversation
Anita Pomerantz
Face-to-Face Dialogue
Janet Beavin Bavelas
Living with Distrust
Radu Umbres
The Book of Answers
Alignment, Autonomy, and Affiliation in
Social Interaction
TA N YA S T I V E R S
1
3
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© Oxford University Press 2022
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Library of CongressControl Number: 2021951275

ISBN 978–0–19–756389–2
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197563892.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
To Savannah whose answer was always “yes”
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
1. Introduction 1
2. The Questions We Answer 36
3. Responding with a Non-Answer 66
4. Interjections 91
5. Repetitions 122
6. Transformations 147
7. The Modular Response Possibility Space 179
Index 203
Preface and Acknowledgments
This book brings together a long list of investigations into who responds to
what and how. That work has been both individual and collaborative. The list of
collaborators is long but started with Jeff Robinson, with whom I worked on non-
answer responses, the precursor to what is worked out here as Chapter 3. While
at the Max Planck Institute, Nick Enfield and I led a series of projects under
Steve Levinson’s direction, including one on question- response sequences.
Publications that came from that project are both joint and individual, including
a team paper covering 10 languages on the topic of the timing of answers to polar
questions in PNAS in 2009, which includes a number of the basic concepts in this
book. A special issue of Pragmatics was co-edited with Nick Enfield and Steve
Levinson in 2010, which included an article on coding with Nick which was the
basis for part of the coding done in this book. Through Makoto Hayashi’s collab-
oration with us at the MPI, we developed a joint paper published in Language in
Society in 2010 that is the basis for Chapter 6, and another large team paper in
the Journal of Linguistics in 2018 that has important bearing on Chapters 4 and 5.
While the ideas in the book represent an evolution over time, collaboration
with my MPI colleagues on this project, particularly Nick but also Steve, Penny
Brown, Christina Englert, Kaoru Hayano, Trine Heinemann, Gertie Hoyman,
Federico Rossano, Jan Peter de Ruiter, and Mark Sicoli, shaped how I conceptu-
alize questions, responses, and particularly answers. The changes in my thinking
over time may not be like all of my collaborators, but it is thanks to them, their
work, and their challenges of me that I continue to wrestle with the questions of
how people respond, what shapes their responses, and why that matters for so-
cial interaction.
Since my move to UCLA in 2010, I have continued to have my thinking
about these issues shaped by astute colleagues. Collaborations with Jack Sidnell
and Clara Bergen comparing children and adult responses to questions, and
with Chase Raymond on accountability, inform what is presented here. Stefan
Timmermans read drafts of some of the chapters, and Steve Clayman, John
Heritage, and Giovanni Rossi graciously read the entire book. I’m also grateful
for the Oxford series editorial feedback from Nick Enfield and Jack Sidnell. All
of these colleagues helped me to clarify ideas and improve the writing. They all
engaged thoughtfully with my work and I’ve benefited from them.
—Tanya
1
Introduction
Imagine for a moment that the only way to confirm a yes-no question is by saying
Yeah. How different would this make our communication system?
Well, on one level, it wouldn’t change things much. Yeah is one of the most
common ways of answering polar (yes-no) questions. Yet, it would also mean we
would no longer be able to use nodding, Mm hm, Uh huh, Yep, or Yes. These other
answers are all quite similar in type—all rely on a form that reveals nothing about
the question being answered. Perhaps they differ a bit in formality—maybe Yeah
would seem a bit too colloquial for a lawyer in response to a judge’s question—
but it might not be such a big loss.
However, the world in which Yeah is our only way of confirming a yes-no ques-
tion would also disable other types of answers, such as repeating the question’s
proposition partly or fully. For instance, if you were to ask me, “Did you see
Frank?”, I couldn’t answer “I did.” Nor could I answer, “I saw him.” What if I saw
him down the hallway but he turned away before I got to speak to him? In our
imaginary world, “seeing” would normally imply talking to. Yet, following your
question about seeing Frank, I couldn’t say “I saw him down the hallway.” which
would be a very succinct way of both confirming and qualifying that confirma-
tion. So, in this imaginary world, there is a significant reduction in the range of
expressive possibilities available to respondents.
This brief thought experiment is not entirely without a real-world cognate.
Most native speakers of a language intuitively rely on the full range of answer
types, gravitating to each in different communicative circumstances but gener-
ally being unable to articulate why one seems more apt in a given situation. In
contrast, second-language learners may initially acquire one answer type, such
as “yes,” and it may be quite a long time before they learn the subtle differences of
the many alternatives a given language offers. They may (un)successfully import
some of the norms of usage from their own first language. Or, as another example,
consider those who suffer from autism spectrum disorders and have difficulty
with what comes intuitively to their typically developed peers. These individuals
may struggle with the many alternative ways to answer because explicit rules for
using language in this way are lacking. We just know what feels right.
In this book, we’ll inhabit a world of questions and answers not only because
answers are an interesting intellectual domain, and the intuitive guidelines of
usage are discoverable, but for several other reasons as well. First, while we use
The Book of Answers. Tanya Stivers, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197563892.003.0001
2 The Book of Answers
language to do many things—tell stories, announce good and bad news, express
our opinions of people, states of affairs, and events—it’s rare that a minute goes
by in conversation without us asking or responding to a question (Farkas &
Bruce, 2009; Stivers et al., 2007). Second, answering questions is so fundamental
to human communication that it is likely one of the first and one of the last things
we do through words in our social lives: Would you like X? Can I have Y? Do you
know where Z is?
Third, questions are extremely flexible. Speakers perform a broad range of
social actions with them, from offers, proposals, and requests for action (e.g.,
Would you like me to pick the kids up? Shall we stop by the office? Can you grab
that print out?) to requests for information or confirmation (e.g., Do you want
to go to med school? You’re coming over tonight, right?) to repair initiations (e.g.,
You mean you came early?). Moreover, speakers use questions in virtually all in-
stitutional contexts, from medical consultations to legal cross-examinations to
classrooms and press-conferences; in fact, they are partly constitutive of these
social institutions (Drew & Heritage, 1992). Questions’ flexibility in action for-
mation, context of use, and turn design allows us to focus on questions while still
examining a wide swath of human communication.
Fourth, given the range of actions that speakers rely on questions to per-
form, they provide a naturally occurring common-denominator sequential
environment for study. By definition, when a speaker poses a functional ques-
tion, a response is due. In many other environments, responses are invited but
aren’t normatively required, so examining the nature of responses is particularly
complicated. If a response isn’t norm-governed, we can’t say that it was slow or
missing, for instance. Although there is tremendous diversity in the questions
asked—the social actions they implement, their position in the overall interac-
tion, their position in the current activity, their design—a response is due from
the question recipient when a questioner completes a question. This also makes
the question-response sequence a ripe environment for doing comparative re-
search, whether that comparison is socio-demographic, or involves language or
culture.
Question-response sequences thus provide us with a circumscribed do-
main of social interaction to examine what interactants are doing in answering
questions in one, rather than another, way. The typically stated objective of a
question is to secure information from the question recipient, however nominal
or substantive that information may be (Steensig & Drew, 2008). Yet with every
answer that we provide, we also convey much more about our stance toward
our recipient, giving insight into who we are to each other, alongside incremen-
tally building up, maintaining, or reducing closeness. Perhaps we think of shifts
from strangers to acquaintances to friends to romantic partners to exes as cate-
gorical, but transitions happen through social interaction, moment by moment.
Introduction 3
Maintaining a friendship is not only about the time spent and circumstances ex-
perienced together; it is also about what we say and how we say it, questioning
and responding included.
In this book, I examine response types as a system. Systems in language use
require us to consider the full set of alternatives to understand the “choice” a
speaker has made (e.g., Rossi, in press). I consider the range of responses as a re-
sponse possibility space and focus primarily on the portion of that space in which
different types of answers are given (the answer possibility space). Thus, in re-
sponse to Have you seen Frank? I not only look at how an answer like Yes differs
from an answer like I saw him yesterday but also at the affordances and collateral
effects (Enfield & Sidnell, 2015, 2017) of one answer relative to all other possibil-
ities in the system.
I am following a line of scholars who have taken different tacks to under-
standing how social interaction balances information and relationships
(they include Arundale, 2020; Enfield, 2006, 2013; Enfield & Levinson, 2006;
Enfield & Sidnell, 2017; Tomasello, 2008; among others). My focus, though, is
on responses, particularly answers to questions. I show that how speakers an-
swer provides a window into what guides speakers—three primary relational
issues: alignment, affiliation, and autonomy. Although there is no one-to-one
correspondence between answer types and these relational issues, the way
speakers rely on different answer types illustrates some of the ways that we in-
crementally manage our social relationships—building them up, maintaining
them, or taking them down.
The remainder of the Introduction will set the stage for understanding what
speakers are doing through their answer formats, with a focus on social interac-
tion research. I selectively draw on other research streams regarding questions
and responses when this work helps to reveal something about question-re-
sponse sequences in interaction. We’ll begin with an overview of prior re-
search on questions with a focus on the power of questions in spontaneous,
naturally occurring interaction. I synthesize current research to show many of
the mechanisms that questioners rely on to constrain recipients’ next actions
through questions. I next turn to responses, where I discuss four distinct paths
of alternative but non-equivalent response types to questions and what we know
about each. Through this, I also reveal how little we know about answer types in
social interaction.
I then introduce the idea of considering responses to questions as a window
into relationship management and offer the outline of a model that we will flesh
out over the course of the book—the principles of alignment, affiliation, and
autonomy that help us gain analytic leverage to understand what speakers are
doing relationally through their responses to questions. Finally, I offer a brief de-
scription of the data and methods used in the book.
Questions
The starting point for this book concerns what a question such as Did you
see Frank? sets in motion. Of course, a question such as this never occurs in a
vacuum. It’s asked during a particular interaction between individuals in a se-
quence that is part of a larger activity. It will matter whether this is a hallway stop
in an office building and the only question asked by one colleague of another,
or whether this is part of a catching-up conversation at lunch in a series of news
items. Relatedly, the question may be understood not only as a request for infor-
mation, but possibly performing other actions such as reminding (i.e., Did you
tell Frank what you were supposed to?), pre-announcing (i.e., Did Frank already
tell you his exciting news?), pre-requesting (i.e., If you haven’t seen him yet then
when you see him, can you also ask him to call me?), sometimes multiple simul-
taneously (Rossi, 2018; Schegloff, 1988). Any question will also be asked by and
of individuals in a particular social relationship who share a history. Who are the
speaker and hearer to each other and to Frank? Is Frank a close relative who is
in the hospital, and is the question asked by a family member to someone who’s
been visiting? Or is Frank a real estate agent who’s frequently moving around a
large office space, and the question is asked by one colleague of another.
Although most of this book focuses on answers, it’s critical that we’re sensitive
to the wide array of factors that shapes the question recipient’s understanding of
the question. This will aid us in our analysis of what question recipients are doing
through answering in particular ways.
Approaches to questions
The concept of a question has been central to many of the language sciences. For
philosophers of language, the contrast between interrogatives and declaratives
has been a way to examine theories of the match between language and the
world, a way of exploring presupposition and information structure, and a route
into the theory of speech acts (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969; Wittgenstein, 1953).
Linguists have devoted significant work to questions as a distinct sentence type
(König & Siemund, 2007; Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985). Those
looking cross linguistically have identified properties of questions that hold
across languages. For instance, most languages that have been studied mark both
polar and content (Wh-) questions (Dryer, 2011, 2013).
Among linguistic anthropologists, the discussion has focused on the rela-
tionship between speaking and social roles. Questions are unique in claiming
a lack of knowledge (typical of a lower-status individual) while simultaneously
being coercive of a next action (Goody, 1978; Hymes, 1962). Anthropologists
Introduction 5
see meaning as “located not only in language but in social values, beliefs, social
relationships, and larger exchange and support systems, including family struc-
ture and the social organization of the community” (Duranti, 1997, p. 277). Thus,
they draw our attention to interactants’ relationships as well as to other sources
of meaning in a question-response sequence.
Pragmatic investigations have focused on how questioning is done in practice
(Grice, 1975; Leech, 1983; Levinson, 1983). Some questions involve the morpho-
syntactic marking of interrogativity (subject-verb inversion in English) such as
“Did you see Frank?”, but in actual usage, questions often lack not only gram-
matical but even lexical or prosodic marking (Couper-Kuhlen, 2012; Geluykens,
1988). Nonetheless, speakers seem to expect responses, and recipients tend to
give them (e.g., the declarative question/B-event statement “You saw Frank.”)
(Geluykens, 1988; Labov & Fanshel, 1977; Šafářová & Swerts, 2004). Making
it more complex, some interrogatively marked utterances are not treated as
requests for information at all—the classic rhetorical question “Where are you
going dressed like that?” may be better understood as an assertion of a position
than a question (Han, 2002; Koshik, 2005; Sadock, 1975; Schegloff, 1984). Other
research has suggested that some formal questions may be designed to be “unan-
swerable” (Clayman & Heritage, 2002; Heinemann, 2008).
Functional questions—those that solicit confirmation or information—re-
gardless of formal marking—also commonly perform other social actions, in-
cluding initiating repair, assessing, requesting, offering, or inviting (Curl, 2006;
Curl & Drew, 2008; Davidson, 1984; Heritage, 2002; Schegloff, Jefferson, &
Sacks, 1977). However, even when a speaker performs actions like making a re-
quest, offering help, or proposing an activity through a question, it is virtually
impossible for them to do this without also requesting information by invoking
their willingness or ability, for instance (Rossi, 2012). Recipients sometimes
orient to this through dual responses that address the offer and their willing-
ness to perform it in two parts (Raymond, 2013; Schegloff, 2007). In sum, a cen-
tral function of questions is to seek information, though this is in concert with
many other actions. In this book, we will look at functional questions regardless
of their formal design properties. These will be the anchor points from which we
examine the projects that questioners implement through their questions and
how recipients respond.
The relevance of response to questions
Across the heterogeneity of question types and actions that speakers implement
through functional questions, all of these questions make relevant recipient re-
sponse (Sacks, 1987a; Schegloff, 1968; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973). Although, as
mentioned earlier, morphosyntax and intonation have been the primary can-
didate explanations for whether a given utterance would be understood as a
question, question recipients rely not only on morphosyntax and intonation,
but also speaker gaze (Bavelas, Coates, & Johnson, 2002; Goodwin & Goodwin,
1986; Rossano, 2010) and epistemic asymmetry to solicit response (Bavelas
et al., 2002; Beattie, 1978; Heritage, 2012a, 2012b; Kidwell, 2005; Stivers &
Rossano, 2010).
Relatedly, a declarative statement about something in the addressee’s primary
knowledge domain (e.g., a statement about the addressee, her children, work,
property, experience, etc.) may be understood as a “B-event” (something known
to or primarily by Speaker B, the question recipient) (Labov & Fanshel, 1977).
Recipients generally respond to these statements as questions (Heritage, 2012a,
2012b, 2013; Labov & Fanshel, 1977; Lerner, 2003). Let’s imagine that in the con-
text of trying to arrange a time to meet: Aliza says to Jackie, “You’ve got to pick
Caleb up at 3.” Whether this is a reminder or a question turns on who has pri-
mary knowledge about Caleb and Jackie’s schedule (epistemic primacy). If Caleb
is Jackie’s son, and Aliza is a friend, this is understandable as a question—do they
have time for coffee, or does Jackie need to get back to the school? Alternatively,
if Aliza is Jackie’s personal assistant, in charge of her schedule, this is understand-
able not as a question but as a reminder that solicits a display of understanding
and agreement rather than confirmation.
The constraining nature of questioning
Although with all questions speakers place constraints on the recipient’s next ut-
terance by virtue of soliciting response, in asking a question, questioners do far
more than that. They also set the topic, the agenda, and the terms for that re-
sponse (Clayman & Heritage, 2002; Heritage, 2010b; Steensig & Drew, 2008).
As Sacks noted early on, “The attempt to move into the position of questioner
seems to be quite a thing that persons try to do. . . . As long as one is in the po-
sition of doing the questions, then in part one has control of the conversation”
(Sacks, 1992a, p. 54). He grounded this observation in recordings of phone calls
to a suicide help line, where he found that if a question was integrated into the
opening greeting turn, the call taker could set the initial terms of the call. This
pattern is robust in institutional interactions: following an opening, the profes-
sional solicits the other’s business through a question and then proceeds through
a series of questions.
We can see this in medical visits. Most consultations for a new problem shift
from opening the consultation to beginning the business with a question like
“How can I help you today?” or “What can I do for you?”. Some begin with “So
Introduction 7
you’ve had a sore throat for several days?” (Heritage & Robinson, 2006). Whether
professionals rely on a more general inquiry or a candidate understanding built
for confirmation (Pomerantz, 1988), they typically begin institutional encounters
with an inquiry. Once this move-to-business question is answered, professionals
commonly regain the floor and a question-answer series unfolds. In the med-
ical visit, this is canonically the history-taking activity (Boyd & Heritage, 2006;
Robinson, 2003; Stivers, 2007). Certainly, patients can self-select to take a turn
during history taking, contributing something else to the visit, and they can also
answer “more” than was asked by a given question (Stivers & Heritage, 2001).
Nonetheless, the person asking the question asserts some degree of control over
the interaction through the questions’ constraints.
Questioners produce their inquiries as actions—they will unavoidably be
understood as doing something (Austin, 1962; Levinson, 2013; Searle, 1969;
Steensig & Drew, 2008). The action implemented through the question is thus
a key part of constructing a project (Levinson, 2013; Rossi, 2012) or course of
action (Schegloff, 2007) and setting an agenda. Once available, the action it-
self becomes a resource for indicating what is relevant from the recipient next
and what sort of project the questioner is engaging in (Pomerantz, 2017). For
instance, a request for action and an offer of help (Curl, 2006; Curl & Drew,
2008) may both rely on questions, but the projects—the agenda being set up
through the question—differ based on the action the question is understood to
be performing. Among other things, the action alters the benefactor-beneficiary
relationship (Clayman & Heritage, 2014).
The mechanisms that speakers rely on to set up the constraints of their
questions involve not only action but also the question’s composition and position
(Clift, Local, & Drew, 2013; Schegloff, 1993). The composition of the question is
meant to capture all aspects of how the speaker produces the question. Action,
position, and composition are tightly intertwined because composition and po-
sition, along with epistemics, may assist in action recognition (Heritage, 2012b;
Schegloff, 1996a). In what follows, we’ll examine the ways that composition and
position help to set the topic, agenda, and terms of response.
Composition
The composition of the turn and its action involves every aspect of design.
A schematic view of the domain is shown in Table 1.1.
Besides other contextual aspects that shape how a question is heard, the first
aspect of a question’s design that we observe is in the launching of the question.
Pre-turn-beginning work such as in-breaths, body positioning, and gestures can
project that what will follow will either be a new activity or will be sustaining
the ongoing activity (Depperman, 2013; Mondada, 2005; Mortensen, 2009;
Robinson & Stivers, 2001; Schegloff, 1996c). For instance, shifting from sitting
Table 1.1 Composition of the Question
Pre-turn: Turn Beginning: Question Proper

in-breaths, body prefaces • Grammatical form: Wh-, polar,
position, gaze, alternative question type
gesture • Proposition design
• Morphosyntax, presuppositions,
agenda, polarity, lexical choices,
embodied and prosodic design
to standing can project an alternative activity, as in projecting closing at the end

of a meeting.
While in-breaths, pointing, and eye and body positioning are understandable
as resources for projecting a turn to come, if produced prior to talk, they are typ-
ically not yet constitutive of the main turn. Speakers sometimes begin their turn
with a preface, an optional lexical element (Heritage & Sorjonen, 2018). Lexical
prefaces may project how the hearer should understand the question to follow—
as contrastive with what came prior (e.g., on “But” see Mazeland & Huiskes,
2001), as the next in a series of sequences with what came prior (e.g., on “And”
see Heritage & Sorjonen, 1994) or as occasioned by some change-of-state (e.g.,
on “Oh” see Heritage, 1984a).
In our main box in Table 1.1 are the primary aspects of the question’s design. We
can see two chief components: the type of question being launched and the proposi-
tion of the question. The three major types of questions (Wh-, alternative, or polar)
have differences in the constraints they impose on a recipient (Biber, Johansson,
Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999; Jespersen, 1964; Quirk et al., 1985). A content
or Wh-question, also known as an open question, allows recipients to provide
answers in more of their own terms. However, asking a Wh-question nonetheless
sets the topic and agenda to naming a time, place, manner, or person (for instance)
and sets expectations for clausal or phrasal answers (Fox & Thompson, 2010).
Many topics can be approached through any of these question types. A house-
mate might ask, “What time did you get home last night?” which sets the stage
for clock time in the answer (e.g., “At two.”) (Raymond & White, 2017). But the
agenda could be approached with an alternative question such as, “Was the porch
light on or off when you got home?” which works to constrain the answer options
to “On” or “Off.” Of course, a polar version of a related question might be “Did
you get home late last night?” which restricts the answer options to “Yes” or “No”
(Dryer, 2013, p. 470; See also Jespersen, 1964; Quirk et al., 1985). Each of these
questions sets a different agenda through its formulation.
The second main component of the question proper is the proposition of the
question. Every question has a proposition—a claim about the world for which
Introduction 9
something is being questioned. For instance, with the question “Have you seen
Joe?”, the proposition is that you have seen Joe, but your confirmation of this
proposition is being solicited. When speakers ask questions, they are understood
to assert “agency” over the underlying proposition by virtue of having brought it
up at all. Enfield (2011) argues that agency can be broken down in Goffmanian
terms (1981) such that the person responsible for the utterance is the principal;
the one who articulates the utterance is the animator; and the one who composes
the utterance is the author. Through the animator bias, Enfield argues that
speakers attribute an agent unity heuristic such that when an interactant hears
another articulate a proposition there will be a presumption that s/he is not only
the animator but also the author and principal. Thus, if I ask whether you are
coming to a party this evening, I have introduced the proposition (that you are
coming) for you to confirm or disconfirm (Enfield, 2011; Heritage & Raymond,
2012). The animator of the proposition is treated as the agent and is accountable
for the proposition unless there is reason to understand agency as dispersed (e.g.,
the utterance is marked as not authored by the animator, as in “Jenny said X”).
Beyond the agency involved in asserting a proposition through asking a
question, we are also interested in how the design of that proposition imposes
constraints on the question recipient. Propositions have presuppositions, and in
the case of polar questions, propositions carry a particular polarity toward the af-
firmative or the negative; and at every level, this involves lexical choices. We will
consider each of these in turn.
Presuppositions. Presuppositions have been substantially studied in philos-
ophy and then in linguistics (Lyons, 1977). In fact, “[t]‌here is more literature on
presuppositions than on almost any other topic in pragmatics” (Levinson, 1983,
p. 167). For our purposes, what’s important is the fact that questions have dif-
ferent sorts of presuppositions depending on their type. Content questions intro-
duce presuppositions associated with the question word (e.g., Where questions
presuppose that a place is known and can be named). The quandary question
“How many lies have you told” presupposes that the addressee has “told lies”.
A speaker can declare “None”; yet, the presupposition plants the seed that this
has, in fact, occurred in a way that “Have you ever lied?” does not. The more in-
nocuous “What was the last movie you saw” also carries a presupposition: that
the question recipient has “seen movies.” When this is not the case, it too can
create interactional difficulties for conversationalists.
Question recipients who offer unqualified confirmation of a question will
have also confirmed any and all presuppositions in the question, making it diffi-
cult for them to contest the presuppositions later. For question recipients to ad-
dress a problematic presupposition, they must depart from the action agenda of
the question, particularly the proposition’s design. For instance, consider a med-
ical visit when a patient mentions having frequent sinus infections. A physician
could ask “When did this cold start?” or “When did this sinus infection start?”
Both solicit a time frame for the current problem, but the difference between pre-
supposing that the problem is a “cold” versus a “sinus infection” may help to set
patient expectations for what the treatment will be. The questioner then not only
sets the agenda in terms of the current problem as opposed to past problems, and
about onset of symptoms, but also begins to lay claim to what kind of an illness
the patient has, long before a diagnosis is given. If a patient who believes she has a
sinus infection is faced with the “cold” presupposition, answering the question as
put may make it difficult later for her to resist a diagnosis of a viral cold.
Although content questions are most commonly discussed as having
presuppositions, polar questions also have them. Our example earlier—Have you
seen Frank?—presupposes both that the addressee knows Frank but also that the
addressee could have seen Frank; for instance, that they were in a place where
there was an opportunity to see each other.
Polarity. As early as the 1940s there was support for the effects of question de-
sign on responses in survey experiments (Rugg, 1941). The concern was largely
driven by efforts to avoid biasing survey and interview results through the af-
firmative or negative question tilt (also talked about as preference, conducive-
ness, and valence) of polar questions being asked (Converse, 1984; Dohrenwend,
1965; Lazarsfeld, 1944; Schuman & Presser, 1979, 1996). Yet, there are no “neu-
tral” polar questions. All questions have a tilt, preference, conduciveness, or
valence, as it has been variously discussed. Thus, the questioner’s agency is not
only a matter of bringing up the question but of designing the proposition which
includes polarizing it toward Yes or toward No (Heritage & Raymond, 2021;
Raymond & Heritage, 2021).
The issue is also important to those attempting to shape outcomes: lawyers
have learned that question design can bias a courtroom witness (e.g., Dale,
Loftus, & Rathbun, 1978; Loftus & Palmer, 1974). Marketing professions have
learned that sellers’ question designs are associated with increased sales (e.g.,
Olshavsky, 1973; Rackham, 1987; Schuster & Danes, 1986). And in medical
interviews, the concern with questioning has been how best to elicit complete
disclosure of information and concerns from patients without introducing a host
of new time-consuming problems (e.g., Heritage, Robinson, Elliott, Beckett, &
Wilkes, 2007).
The polarity that a speaker adopts with their polar question’s design has been
discussed in the social interaction literature as the “preference” built into the
question (Pomerantz & Heritage, 2012; Sacks, 1987a). Table 1.2 summarizes
some of the ways that formal aspects of turn design tilt a question toward Yes or
No. An affirmatively designed interrogative question with no negative polarity
items will tilt the question toward, or be conducive of, Yes (Quirk et al., 1985).
Introduction 11
Table 1.2 Preference in Polar Questions
Polar Question Design Example Polarity
Interrogative: basic Did Fred go to the party? Affirmative

Declarative: basic Fred went to the party? Affirmative
Affirmative declarative +tag Fred went to the party didn’t Affirmative
he?
Negative interrogative Didn’t Fred go to the party? Affirmative
Negative declarative Fred didn’t go to the party? Negative
Interrogative with negative polarity Does Fred ever go to parties? Negative
Negative declarative +tag Fred didn’t go to the party did Negative
he?
Declarative with negative polarity Fred never goes to parties? Negative
A declarative question with no negation will also tilt toward Yes. An affirmatively
designed assertion with a tag will again tilt toward Yes. Interestingly, a negative
interrogative also tilts heavily toward Yes (Heritage, 2002).
Linguists have documented that negative polarity items alter the tilt of a ques-
tion from affirmative to negative (e.g., “Do you have any questions?” reverses
the otherwise affirmative design of Do you have questions to one that prefers
No) (Bolinger, 1957; Borkin, 1971; Boyd & Heritage, 2006; Heritage et al., 2007).
Negative declarative questions such as “You didn’t see Frank?” or “Did you not
see Frank?” tilt toward (or prefer) a negative answer.
The polarity of the question facilitates a matched-type answer with evidence
supplied by the frequency and speed of response. Yes-preferring questions re-
ceive more affirmative-confirming answers, while No-preferring questions re-
ceive more negative-confirming answers (Kendrick & Torreira, 2015; Stivers
et al., 2009). When a question recipient offers an affirmative answer following
an affirmative design, these answers are also generally delivered more quickly
than in cases where a negative answer is given (Stivers et al., 2009). This result has
held up even for children (Stivers, Sidnell, & Bergen, 2018). However, in one lab-
based design, restricted to a minority of affirmatively formatted interrogatively
designed questions that only sought information, the timing difference did not
reach statistical significance (Robinson, 2020).
Overall, evidence supports the claim that polar questions in conversation
are formally tilted toward the affirmative or the negative. This leaves open
the issue of questioner motivation—some scholars discuss question design
as reflecting a kind of “best guess” or “expectation” of the recipient’s answer
(Pomerantz & Heritage, 2012; Raymond & Heritage, 2021). However, to some
Table 1.3 Social Preference
Action Example Preferred Response
Request Could I borrow the knife? Granting

Proposal Do you want to go to the beach? Acceptance
Accusation You didn’t look at my e-mail did you? Denial
Assessment She’s pretty isn’t she? Agreement
Request You don’t have a knife do you? Granting
Proposal You don’t have time to go shopping right? Acceptance
Accusation Did you look at my phone? Denial
extent, speaker motivation doesn’t matter. The design facilitates an answer,

regardless of motive. Yet, preference is more complicated than formal de-
sign alone.
Each polar question not only has a formal preference but also a social pref-
erence. Social preference is generally a bias toward the pro-social action re-
sponse to an action regardless of the turn’s design (Heritage, 1984b, 2010b).
For instance, Table 1.3 shows examples of socially preferred responses. Usually,
questions are designed in ways that the formal preference and the social
preferences have the same tilt and thus reinforce each other. In each of the first
four examples in the table, the formal preference and social preference are the
same. However, in the last three examples, the social preference runs counter to
the formal preference and can therefore be understood to have “cross-cutting
preferences” (Schegloff, 2007) because the action tilts toward a pro-social re-
sponse, but the turn’s formal design tilts in an opposing direction.
As a domain, preference is not entirely understood, and many further de-
sign elements may shape the formal preference. For instance, Lindström has
shown that adding a turn-final or to a polar question can modulate an otherwise
Yes-preferring question (1996). The trickiness can be increased exponentially
through prosodic resources, including adding stress to a polarity item or an ex-
treme final rise to a question.
Lexical choices can also add constraints by steering recipients toward or away
from an answer, even when it’s about their opinions (Magelssen, Supphellen,
Nortvedt, & Materstvedt, 2016; Rasinski, 1989). The design of any question
involves the questioner relying not only on aspects of grammar such as tense and
aspect but also on a particular lexicon (Schegloff, 1972, 1996b). Although the
grammar of a language may restrict the ordering of particular elements to first or
last position in a turn, there are nearly always many parameters of freedom for
Introduction 13
speakers to design a question. Consider: “Have you seen a movie recently?” Here
are some other versions:
You saw a movie recently, right?

Did you see a movie recently?
You haven’t seen a movie recently, have you?
You saw a movie recently?
You didn’t see a movie recently?
We have five versions without even adjusting more than the tilt of the question.
If we consider dimensions such as “movie” versus “film” or the tag “right” versus
“didn’t you?” or the production of “didn’t” versus “did not” we can see just how
many components questioners have at their disposal in crafting a question. Each
of these aspects of design does important work in setting the agenda and terms
of the question.
Position
If your head is swirling from the array of ways that a question can be designed
(its composition), let’s now consider the role of position. After all, questioners
set constraints on questioners’ responses not only through the design of their
questions but also through the position of their questions in ongoing interac-
tion. Much the same question can be asked in different positions, and that posi-
tioning matters tremendously for how it is understood, particularly with respect
to action.
By position, I mean to invoke “where” something occurs (Schegloff,
1984) which includes the very broad sense (e.g., in the beginning versus the end);
the activity sense (e.g., during the opening of a conversation; during the diag-
nosis delivery of a medical consultation); the sequence sense (e.g., as an insertion
to a base sequence) (Schegloff, 2007); and the turn sense (e.g., as the first turn
constructional unit [TCU] rather than the second). Now, why might this matter?
Consider the activity level.
In a medical visit, if a physician asks a patient “How are you” in the opening,
right after an exchange of greetings, the patient may respond Fine. But if the pa-
tient is asked after greetings, when the physician has gotten seated and is turning
to business, the patient may report coughing, stomach ache, or back pain (i.e.,
not being Fine). The activity context accounts for this because in the activity of
an opening, to provide a problem presentation would be preemptive—the phy-
sician has not yet turned to business. In contrast, at the point where the physi-
cian is embodying a readiness for business, providing an answer that passes on
an opportunity to talk about a problem (which is what “Fine” does; Jefferson,
1980) would run counter to the activity of establishing the problem (Robinson,
1998, 2006).
Now let’s consider the sequence level: A question such as “What’re you up
to this weekend” may be asked as preliminary to some action (perhaps not yet
knowable as a request or invitation) initiating a pre-sequence; or it might be
asked as an information question that’s part of a Friday exchange of upcoming
plans among colleagues. The position of the question has consequences for how
a response will be understood. For instance, a response such as “Nothing” to the
pre-sequence question is a go-ahead that promotes the issuing of the invitation,
request, or proposal that was projected by the speaker. In this way, it’s a pro-
social response. In contrast, in response to a main-line information question,
“Nothing” essentially refuses to engage with the speaker’s agenda, and is not a
pro-social response at all.
Finally, at the level of the turn, some questions will occupy an entire turn,
while others follow additional TCUs such as previous answers to other questions
or assertions. Returning to the “How are you” question example, as a reciprocal
question asked after having replied “Fine” to the previous speaker’s question,
“How are you” will heavily condition a routine brief answer. In contrast, asked
as its own turn, in the clear, the same question may elicit a much more expansive
response. Think of having gotten an update from a friend and then turning the
tables with “How are you?” to launch a similar update. In short, it is not just how
you ask but where you ask that shapes the response.
Thus, if we think about how questioners set up constraints on how question
recipients should respond, they do so through the actions they perform, the
composition of those actions, and their position. All of these are resources that
convey what sort of response is being sought and what would be optimal.
Recipient design in questions
Until now, we have left the souls of question asker and question recipient on the
sidelines. We have instead focused on the many ways in which any question asker
constrains any question recipient simply by posing a question—through the
question’s composition and position. However, when we ask a question, who our
recipient is matters for both position and composition—the principle of recip-
ient design (Sacks, 1992b). Imagine that Sarah wants to borrow a sweater from
Amanda for an evening out. There are design considerations including tilting the
request toward Yes or No, but there is also whether to initiate the sequence with
a pre-sequence signaling that the main action may be delicate; or a pre-sequence
may indicate that there are grounds for granting the forthcoming request (e.g.,
“You know how I let you borrow my nice jacket last week?”) (Schegloff, 1988,
Introduction 15
2007). A question’s design can be more or less presumptive of, for instance, a
granting. Walking toward Amanda’s closet, if she asks “Can I borrow the pink
sweater for tonight?” both by the embodied and verbal aspects of her turn de-
sign, this is more presumptive that a Yes will follow than the pre-delicate version.
How we design our questions is clearly tailored to our recipients, including our
referring expressions, the question’s tilt, and the presumptiveness of the question
(Drew, 1992; Sacks, 1987b; Sacks & Schegloff, 1979; Schegloff, 1996b).
Recipient design comes into play not only in the questioner’s composition of
the question, but also in posing the question at all to this recipient in this po-
sition. Sacks invokes the concept of a question’s “askability” which he expands
as “it stands as a sensible and appropriate question to which there is expectably
or reasonably an answer” (Sacks, 1987b, p. 217). In posing any question at all to
this recipient, the questioner displays a stance that this recipient can, should,
and will answer the question. This includes that the topic, lexical choices, and
agenda are all reasonable. This then is arguably the very first level of recipient
design.
Because of the principle of recipient design in questions, when a questioner
poses a question in an ill-fitted way, this may suggest a slightly (or even an al-
together) different relationship than the recipient thought that they had. This
is particularly striking in Garfinkel’s breaching experiment where he asked
students to behave as “boarders” in their own homes. In one case, a son asked his
mother whether she “minded if [he] had a snack from the refrigerator” (1967,
p. 48). Both the posing of a request for permission and the design including the
lexical choice of “minded” indexed an unfamiliar relationship, and indeed this
was treated as a source of “embarrassment” by his mother in front of her friends
(Heritage, 2012b). These aspects of distance are underscored in the reported re-
sponse from the mother: “Mind if you have a little snack? You’ve been eating
little snacks around here for years without asking me. What’s gotten into you?”
(Garfinkel, 1967, p. 48).
As this book unfolds, we will see that question recipients care about all of these
aspects of the questions posed to them and have many ways of pushing back
against a question that is poorly fitted or problematic (e.g., Bolden, 2009; Golato
& Fagyal, 2008; Heinemann, 2009; Heritage, 1998; Raymond, 2003; Stivers &
Heritage, 2001). Yet, as we will also see, doing so has associated affordances as
well as consequences, “collateral effects” (Enfield & Sidnell, 2017).
Responses
All functional questions make relevant response, and through the question’s ac-
tion, design, and position, questioners set up recipients to provide particular
answers. However, no question determines the nature of the response or even

whether a response will be given at all. Whatever follows a question, though, is
communicative, particularly because of the work that goes into the question’s
design. This is similar to greetings: although there is no law requiring a return
greeting, there is a social norm. By virtue of this norm, if you greet someone and
they don’t greet you back, this is a missing responsive greeting that you will un-
derstand as meaningful, whether as She probably didn’t hear me or I don’t think
she’s speaking to me (Heritage, 1984b).
Responding versus not responding constitutes the first point where ques-
tion recipients discriminate between two “alternative, but non-equivalent,
courses of action” (Atkinson & Heritage, 1984, p. 53). In naturally occurring
interaction, responses to questions occur 92%–95% of the time (Stivers,
2010; Stivers et al., 2009). Even children respond two-thirds of the time
(Stivers et al., 2018). Moreover, interactants treat non-response as prob-
lematic: questioners typically pursue responses when they aren’t provided,
or sanction the lack of response (Pomerantz, 1984; Schegloff, 2007). Pursuit
sometimes involves the speaker shifting her gaze to the question recipient
at or after the question to secure response (Rossano, 2012). At other times,
questioners add increments to a question to reinvoke the relevance of an an-
swer (Ford, Fox, & Thompson, 2002). For instance, a question such as “Are
you coming?”—in the face of no response—might be expanded with “to the
party?” Alternatively, a questioner faced with non-response sometimes en-
tirely reissues the question, reformulating it with additional response-mobi-
lizing turn design features, such as gaze or interrogative morphosyntax
(Stivers & Rossano, 2010).
To illustrate the significance of not responding, let’s look at an unusual case
taken from an attempted interview of a politician. In December 2019, reporter
Lee Fang attended a GOP fundraiser where he approached Congressman Devin
Nunes to ask him about Lev Parnas, who had been indicted for campaign fi-
nance violations. Nunes was the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence
Committee. In the video documenting the impromptu questioning, Fang
approaches Nunes as Nunes is closing down a conversation with someone else.
We can see that Fang begins with an apology, which would normally be ac-
knowledged but isn’t (“Excuse me.<Hate to interrupt_”). Then a summons
“Hey Congressman Nunes?,”, which would normally be answered but isn’t
(Schegloff, 1968).
Fang then moves to his business in lines 3–4. Notice that Nunes does not
respond to Fang’s questions in lines 4, 7/9 at all. This is particularly striking,
as two seconds of silence pass in line 10 during which Nunes just walks away,
turning his back to Fang, essentially treating him as nonexistent.
Introduction 17
(1.1)
1 FAN: [Excuse me.<Hate to interrupt_Hey Congressman Nunes?,
2 NUN: [((Looks towards Fang then turns away and starts to walk away))
3 FAN: I-I jus’ wanted to ask you really quickly what
4 Were your calls with=uhm Lev Parnas abou:t?
5 NUN: ((Walking; not looking or orienting to Fang))
6 (0.2)
7 FAN: [Were you asking abou:t thee effort tuh (0.2)
8 NUN: [((Walking away in front of Fang, back to Fang))
9 FAN: investigate (.) Hunter Biden,
10 (2.0)/((Nunes keeps walking, back to Fang))
11 FAN: Congressman Nunes.
12 NUN: ((walks into area that Fang can’t go))
Finally, Fang pursues response with an address term in line 11 which can both
act as a recompletion or another summons. However, it too elicits nothing
from Nunes.
Questions are by no means iron cages; recipients can and do evade their
constraints on occasions like Nunes did. However, they cannot escape the ac-
countability for answering that questions establish (Garfinkel, 1988). Indeed,
Nunes’s lack of response was understood in the media as stonewalling. Response
to a question is not optional in the sense of having no communicative or rela-
tional consequences. How problematic a no-response breach is will depend upon
the available account, the question being posed, the agenda of the question, and
the individuals involved. While a non-response like Nunes’s is clear because he
produces nothing at all, a speaker who produces talk but does not in any way ad-
dress the question is similarly best considered to be offering non-response, even if
it is positionally adjacent to the question.
Like questioners, recipients treat responses to questions as relevant as well.
Most commonly, if they do not produce a response quickly, we see other pre-
beginning behavior orienting to a response as “in progress,” such as gestural
indications that they are unable to produce a response (e.g., eyes turned up-
ward in a display of consideration; a finger requesting a moment), or with in-
breaths, Uhs, Uhms, or Well, projecting that something will be forthcoming
(Depperman, 2013).
Responses are not all equal, however. Answers vs. non-answer responses
constitute a second level of cooperation. Non- answer responses (Beach
& Metzger, 1997; Clayman, 2002; Heritage, 1984b; Stivers & Robinson,
2006) commonly include I don’t know/I can’t remember (which are themselves
accounts for not answering), initiations of repair, and laughter. Non-answer
responses not only fail to provide the information requested, but they can
also suggest that the questioner misjudged the recipient’s ability (or willing-
ness) to answer the question. Recall our discussion of the principle of recip-
ient design: questioners generally work to design questions that their question
recipients can and will answer. Thus, a claim not to be able or willing to answer
a question fails, in that sense.
Question recipients typically orient to answer responses as preferred, relative
to non-answer responses. While Chapter 3 will delve into this domain further,
four main forms of evidence exist for this. First, answers are delivered faster than
non-answer responses (Stivers et al., 2009; Stivers & Robinson, 2006). In all 10
languages of a study that included English, interactants produced answers to
polar questions significantly faster than non-answer responses. Second, answers
are far more common than non-answer responses (Stivers et al., 2009). Third,
non-answer responses are often designed more laboriously than answer turns—
with hesitation, mitigation, and accounts for not providing an answer (Clayman,
2002; Heritage, 1984b; Stivers & Robinson, 2006). Fourth, question recipients,
in the design of their responses, try to answer even when they cannot (Stivers
& Robinson, 2006). For instance, they may say what they know about a situa-
tion, even if this does not provide an answer. Thus, just as non-response to a
question is accountable, not responding with an answer is accountable. This is in
part because of the expectation that questioners take care to pose questions that
are reasonable for this question recipient in this position. Conversely, question
recipients also have an obligation: to answer questions if they can.
A third context where we find two alternative and non-equivalent courses
of action is specific to polar questions, where there is a clear preference for
matching the answer to the polarity of the question and thus confirming (rather
than disconfirming). Evidence is trifold: answers which confirm the question’s
proposition are far more frequent than those that disconfirm (Kendrick &
Torreira, 2015; Stivers et al., 2009). In English, 71% of answers to polar questions
were confirmations. It is important to consider that as requests for information,
if questions were “neutral,” we might expect them to receive confirmations and
disconfirmations at roughly an equal rate. This is clearly not the case.
Second, confirmations are generally delivered more quickly than
disconfirmations (Heritage, 1984b; Stivers et al., 2009), even among children
(Stivers et al., 2018). Despite disconfirmations being somewhat harder to pro-
cess cognitively (Clark, 1976), polarity matched negatives (i.e., confirmations of
a negatively marked question) are still faster than mismatched disconfirmations
(Stivers et al., 2009).
Third, interactants orient to the preference for confirmation over disconfirma-
tion. They design confirmations more straightforwardly than disconfirmations
(i.e., without hedges, mitigations, or accounts) (Ford, 2001; Heritage, 1984b;
Introduction 19
Kendrick & Torreira, 2015).1 In dispreferred question responses, adults provide

vocal orientation to this in the form of prefaces, hedges, mitigation, or accounts
in 52% of turns (Stivers et al., 2018). In Kendrick and Torreira’s examination
of preference in request/proposal/offer sequences, they found that this was
even more frequent: 65% of dispreferred responses included some indicator of
trouble, such as a pronounced inbreath, a particle such as Well, or a vocal delay
such as Uhm (2015). When coupled with other turn design resources including
delays, lexical choice, and bodily behavior, there is strong support for the differ-
ence in these two alternate courses of action.2
As an illustration, in 1.2, Ilene and Alexa are on the phone, and Ilene invites
Alexa to come out this weekend. We see many of the canonical properties of
disconfirming turns when Alexa ultimately declines Irene’s invitation (lines 5–7).
The rejection is first delayed. The turn proper is prefaced with a change-of-state
token (Heritage, 1984a) indicating this was news to her. This is followed by fur-
ther delays “(.) uhm (.)” and a second preface “well” (Davidson, 1990; Heritage,
2015). The first TCU offers an attempt to answer, but one that also defers an-
swering I’ll ask, and then the next TCU offers an account for what is clearly a
rejection: “I’m going out with a friend of mine.”.
(1.2) Heritage II:2:3

1 Ile: h Yes dahling.
2 Ale: ^Hello[:
3 Ile: [Uhm:n ‘ello I jus’ wan’ed tuh see if you wanted t’kem
4 out this week˘e:nd.
5 (.)
6 Ale: ^Oh::, (.) uhm (.) well ah’ll as:k I’m going out with a
7 friend of mine.
8 Ile: Oh. Alright, that’s fine,
Among answer responses that are confirming, there is at least one more level of
alternative conduct, and that level bears on the answer design. Raymond (2003)
1 Heritage and Raymond (2012) differentiate between “affirming” and “confirming,” arguing
that repetitional answers confirm, whereas a Yes merely affirms. However, when declarative or tag
constructions are used, even an interjection is understood as confirming because the action of the
question is to request confirmation. Given the relative frequency of requests for confirmation, I use
“confirm” throughout.
2 Robinson (2020) did not find the same pattern with confirmations reaching statistical signif-
icance. However, he also restricted his sample to questions which he believed were relatively neu-
tral and appeared primarily if not only concerned with information requests. These comprised only
40% of the total corpus. It is possible that the questions he excluded drive the patterns shown by
most other scholars, including Kendrick and Torreira (2015) and Stivers et al. (2009, 2018). Most
data, across children and adults, across the full range of questions speakers ask, show the patterns
described here.
No Response
Polar Question
Non-Answer
Non-Type
Conforming
Polarity
Response Mismatched
Type Conforming
Answer
Non-Type
Polarity Conforming
Matched
Type Conforming
Figure 1.1 Summary of levels of alternative conduct in question-response sequences.
conceptualizes a difference between answers which are “type-conforming” and

those that are “non-type-conforming.” Specifically, he shows that “Yes” type
answers (i.e., “Yeah” or “Mm hm” types) conform to the terms and agenda of the
question, whereas other answers, such as repetitions, do not. As with the earlier
alternative courses of action discussed, this level provides a binary analysis of the
options and identifies the preferred option.
Taken together, we can conceptualize what happens following the asking
of a question as a series of alternative but non-equivalent paths that question
recipients navigate. This is depicted in Figure 1.1.
We began with Non-Response versus Response; then Non-Answer Response
versus Answer; then Polarity-Mismatched versus Polarity Matched; and finally,
Non-Type Conforming versus Type-Conforming. Although I will ultimately re-
place the final distinction with alternative descriptive categories, it does point to
the relevance of the question’s terms, which will be important as we proceed.
A Window into Relationship Management
What should be clear by now is that questioners and their recipients have myriad
resources at their disposal to construct questions and respond to them. I will
argue that although these resources are deployed to elicit and provide infor-
mation, they are simultaneously relied on to manage our social relationships
in ongoing interaction. Who we are to one another is heavily derived from
Introduction 21
our conversations. Social interaction is the vehicle through which we build

friendships and partnerships as well as dissolve them. We do not simply “be-
come” close or distant: it happens turn by turn, moment by moment. Question-
response sequences might seem an inauspicious place to consider social
relationships. However, I will argue that the question-response sequence is
an excellent window into social relationship management precisely because
questions can perform so many actions and are implicated in so many activities,
while simultaneously constituting the same basic sequence structure (see also
the introduction to a special issue on affiliation and disaffiliation in questions in
Steensig & Drew, 2008).
One of the biggest puzzles for evolutionary psychologists and language
scholars alike has been why humans came to have language as a way of com-
municating. Communication is ubiquitous across the animal kingdom, and we
now know that plants can also communicate with others. Trees can communi-
cate, including to convey warnings to others through fungal networks (Gorzelak,
Asay, Pickles, & Simard, 2015). However, humans alone developed a verbal lan-
guage complete with grammar and including, at present, about 6,500 languages
(Eberhard, Simons, & Fennig, 2020). One split in theories about the evolution of
language was whether information transmission or relational management was
the primary driver. Although both are clearly important, an information-trans-
mission model highlights the importance of language for coding propositional
information such as where food is or who is nearby (Pinker & Bloom, 1990). In
contrast, the alternative argues that language was driven by a need to relate to
multiple individuals in a shorter time as group size expanded (the social brain
hypothesis) (Dunbar, 1998; Dunbar, 2011).
Although the matter remains unsettled, we do know that language as it is
used now involves both information transfer and relationship management.
We also know that language use requires substantial cooperation with our
fellow interactants. Our physiology is partly to blame for this: there is a literal
bottleneck in our ability to produce language anywhere near as fast as we think
(Levinson, 2000). We therefore necessarily rely on a communication system that
depends heavily on shared social norms that enable our interlocutors to make
reliable inferences. As Levinson puts it, “Inference is cheap, articulation expen-
sive, and thus the design requirements are for a system that maximizes inference”
(Levinson, 2000, p. 29).
Grice was one of the first to offer a set of principled ways that we can under-
stand each other beyond what is semantically encoded. He put forward a number
of conversational maxims as well as the Cooperative Principle (Grice, 1975) that
have been developed and refined over the years (Levinson, 1983, 2000; Sperber
& Wilson, 1986). What I propose here relies partly on these maxims, but also
considers how we communicate and understand one another at a more granular
level than Grice, Sperber and Wilson, or Levinson. As I work to link practices
to the management of social relationships, I also build on Enfield’s work, at the
micro level (Enfield, 2013).
By the end of the book, I will use the various answer types to infer the shape of
the response possibility space. That shape, I argue, reflects interactants’ concerns
with three main relational principles: alignment, affiliation, and autonomy.
Each position within the larger possibility space has associated affordances and
consequences that bear on the social relationship between questioner and recip-
ient because each represents some level of cooperation. Loosely, we can think of
alignment as involving cooperation with what the speaker is doing; affiliation
as cooperating with how the speaker is performing the action; and autonomy as
cooperating with who is performing the action. At times these aspects of coop-
eration may be in conflict; at other times they are not at all. Regardless, together
they both reflect and help account for our use of the response possibility space,
particularly the answer possibility space within it. Here, I offer a brief outline of
these concepts, and as the book progresses, we will develop each concept and
consider how the types of responses speakers provide to questions speak to these
concepts, with a focus on the main types of answers.
Alignment and affiliation have been used somewhat interchangeably in the in-
teraction literature, broadly to mean “cooperation.” However, in the storytelling
context, I have argued that these terms could and should be used to disentangle
two separable dimensions of cooperation (Stivers, 2008). In storytelling, aligning
actions support the structural asymmetry of the telling by moving the activity
forward. Aligning actions in response to a story launching include continuers
and acknowledgments that pass on the opportunity to take a full turn at talk and
thus support the ongoing telling (Bavelas, Coates, & Johnson, 2000; Goodwin,
1986; Goodwin, 1980; Jefferson, 1984; Schegloff, 1982). Alignment, as I conceptu-
alize it, is thus concerned with structural-level cooperation. We can think of three
main aspects of alignment relevant to question-response sequences: aligning
with the questioner’s project, design, and posing of the question to this recipient
at this sequential juncture.
Autonomy is intended to cover the multiple dimensions of agency that exist
(Enfield, 2013; Enfield et al., 2018) and the independence of our positions.
Autonomy concerns the degree to which the proposition in the answer is offered
by the speaker rather than being dependent on the questioner’s own proposition.
For instance, when speakers ask questions or otherwise initiate new sequences
of action and assert propositions, they can be understood as exerting relatively
high sequential as well as thematic agency (Enfield et al., 2018). In contrast with
this, when someone is responding to that initiating action, they are accepting
reduced sequential agency. However, a responding speaker may still contest the
Introduction 23
independence of her rights to introduce a proposition (thematic agency) even

when, by sequential position, she has been beaten out by the questioner.
Thus, the more the question recipient relies on the questioner’s agency in
asserting the proposition, the less autonomy she exerts over her response. The
distinctiveness of autonomy is brought into relief when we consider how it can
be observed within aligning and affiliative responses as well as those that are not.
Question recipients can and do at times work to show that they are not just going
along with the questioner when they have aligned and affiliated. They work to
exhibit their independence and agency even within the otherwise significant
constraints of a question response.
In storytelling, affiliation concerns the affective stance taken up towards the
story. An affiliative response endorses the teller’s stance towards the event as
funny, sad, or startling. In contrast, a disaffiliative response adopts a stance that
is at odds with the teller—laughing when the teller has indicated that it was dis-
appointing, for instance. Assessments are an obvious way to indicate an affective
stance to a telling (Bavelas et al., 2000; Goodwin, 1986; Goodwin & Goodwin,
1987; Goodwin, 1980).
Affiliation is also necessarily at issue in responding to polar questions for at
least two reasons. First, questions are not neutral. For example, as we reviewed
earlier, each polar question is tilted toward Yes or No. Although questions with
cross-cutting preferences may make it highly challenging for recipients to nav-
igate, these questions are far less common than polar questions that have clear
affirmative or negative polarity. In these cases, regardless of whether this is moti-
vated by expectations, hopes, or recipient attentiveness, an answer that matches
this stance is affiliative, whereas an answer that does not is disaffiliative. As we
will see, this is not a black and white domain but rather filled with shades of gray.
Second, questions initiate projects. These projects not only have a structural
component looking for promotion (i.e., alignment), but nearly always implicate
the questioners as individuals. For instance, if Jen is hosting a party, and I call to
offer help, I may make a series of offers—to bring extra tables and chairs; to come
early to set up; to buy paper plates. It may take a number of sequences to make
these offers. Importantly, there is a project of “helping” in the works. When Jen
embraces my help, she affiliates.
These three dimensions can all be thought of as on a scale that increases and
decreases incrementally rather than being discretely “on” or “off.” Moreover, the
three function independently though they affect one another with collateral
effects (Enfield & Sidnell, 2017). As the book unfolds, for instance, we will see
that the degree of autonomy and/or alignment that a question recipient shows
can be leveraged to increase (or decrease) affiliation. Or, we may do affiliative
work at the cost of alignment.
These three concepts taken together hark back to Goffman (1967) and Brown
and Levinson (1978). While alignment is structural and affiliation is affective,
both resonate with the concept of positive face, defined as “[t]‌he want of every
‘competent adult member’ that his [sic] actions be desirable to at least some
others” (Brown & Levinson, 1978, p. 62). Conversely, autonomy resonates with
the concept of negative face, defined as “the want of every ‘competent adult
member’ that his [sic] actions be unimpeded by others” (Brown & Levinson,
1978, p. 62). Arundale has further worked to extend these ideas into social inter-
action (Arundale, 2020). Questions, like all actions that make relevant response
in interaction, necessarily constrain (or impede) our freedom to maneuver—our
autonomy. In the context of response, I will argue that we balance our actions in
terms of relative alignment, affiliation, and autonomy.
Data
For this book I rely on a corpus that is substantially larger than that used
in previous conversation analytic studies of responses to assess the relative
distributions of these answer types and examine the functions of these various
answer types relative to one another. I examined 150 spontaneous naturally
occurring conversations occurring in British or American English, involving a
mix of telephone and face-to-face interactions, nearly all of which involve people
who know each other reasonably well. The participants range from college
students to families with children to residents of a nursing home. Settings range
from dinner tables to sorority houses to board games, food preparation, and hair
salons.
Some of the participants are working-class barbers and their clients, or
those who work on trailer hitches, while others live in upper-middle-class
suburbs. Nearly all participants are native English speakers. While most are
White, approximately 15% of the sequences are drawn from African American
participants. Although the data do not approach what a quantitatively minded
scholar would want for a regionally or nationally representative sample, it is,
by most standards, purposively heterogeneous. Finally, while it is my hope that
the findings I discuss here are considered with respect to other languages, it is
entirely my expectation that there will be different inflections in different lan-
guages. While I have predictions which I touch on at the end, all claims are with
respect to the data at hand—English-language conversation.
Because my focal interest was in understanding the domain of answering
questions, the data were restricted to the 1,738 polar questions in these data that
received answer responses. As would be predicted based on known interactional
preferences discussed earlier, the majority of those (n =1,284; 74%) involved
Introduction 25
confirmatory answers. Seventy-one percent of these are drawn from face-to-

face American data. I focus on confirmations rather than on all answers because
mismatched polarity answers may, due to their being dispreferred alternatives al-
ready, rely on different answer types than matched-polarity answers. By focusing
on confirmations, we are focusing on the most preferred response path while
working to understand what sets the answer types apart in this otherwise coop-
erative context. That said, I did include questions that were clearly confirming
negatively polarized propositions (e.g., He didn’t come by? No.). I augmented this
collection with additional non-answer responses which I explain in Chapter 3.
I take a conversation analytic approach to these data (Heritage, 1984b, 2010a;
Sidnell & Stivers, 2012). I work to identify and characterize communication
practices—how they are constructed and what people rely on them to do in so-
cial interaction. As Schegloff put it:
One form that an account of an action can take is a characterization of some

form or practice of talking and some characterization of the place or location in
which that practice is employed—as in articulating a greeting term in an initial
slot or exchange in a conversation (1996a, p. 169).
The characterization of response practices is indeed the basis for each of

Chapters 3–6. Such a characterization and analysis (e.g., of what an “interjection
answer” is, or what an “upgraded interjection answer” is) will necessarily rely on
several types of evidence. A basic understanding of the practice’s distribution
will be important so that we understand which practices are more common and
in what sequential contexts. For this, I generally use descriptive statistics. In line
with conversation analytic (CA) methods, I also rely heavily on data-internal ev-
idence—the contexts in which practices are used; participant orientations to the
claimed functions; and in some cases, deviant cases where a particular instance
does not initially seem to support the analysis but a deeper review of the case
reveals that it actually strengthens our analysis of the function (Wooton, 1989).
Although the chapters review a variety of subtypes of answers, these cate-
gories were not originally assumed. Instead, an inductive approach guided the
analysis. Looking at sequences that begin with questions, I approached the data
by asking: What are speakers doing when they respond in different ways? Is there
an order to the different ways that they respond? With these guiding questions,
I built collections of responses to questions and then looked for patterns and evi-
dence to guide subdivisions within these collections.
Once the basic inductive analyses were complete, and I knew the main
practices I was working with, I formalized my coding in order to be able to pro-
vide accurate reports of the basic distributions of practices in the data included
in this book. I coded not only for the specific practices that make up the main
chapters of the book, but also for particular aspects of the question because this is
the primary sequential context for the answers.
Specifically, for each question that received a confirming answer, the question
was coded along several dimensions. I followed previous studies in which we
developed a system for coding questions (Stivers & Enfield, 2010). First, the ac-
tion implemented by the question: I coded for (i) requests for information, (ii)
other initiations of repair, (iii) requests for confirmation, (iv) assessments, and
(v) recruiting actions such as requesting, offering, or proposing (Floyd, Rossi, &
Enfield, 2020; Kendrick & Drew, 2016; Rossi, 2012). The rationale is that these
actions serve distinct social-interactional functions including the distribution of
information, repairing problems in talk, transfer of labor, and stance taking (see
Tomasello, 2008, for a discussion of basic human actions in communication).
I also coded for whether the polar question was interrogatively designed, declar-
atively designed, or utilized a turn-final tag. Third, I indicated whether questions
began with a lexical preface such as Well, And, or Oh.
In terms of the answers, having identified three types of answers as the pri-
mary types across the data, when coding, I discriminated between interjections,
repetitions, and transformations delivered in the first TCU. For each of these
main types of answer, I further coded for a range of subtypes, which I discuss in
the relevant chapters. If more than one answer was delivered, even if done in a
single prosodic contour, that was coded for up to two answers.3 Finally, I coded
for answer prefaces similar to the way I coded for question prefaces. If a speaker
expands with a multi-TCU response, usually that is an answer plus additional in-
formation. I did not code that. My focus was on the answer proper.
I did not code the timing of the responses. Given the substantial amount of
work that has been done including on significant subsets of this corpus on timing
(Stivers et al., 2009, 2018), my intention was to focus on the answer design and to
treat our understanding of timing as relatively well established.
The Book’s Organization
In the next chapter of this book, we take a closer look at polar questions in
English. The goal of the chapter is to provide a description of, and illustrate, the
types of actions that polar questions implement and the design they tend to take.
This will provide a richer context for understanding what the answer possibility
3 Head nods were coded as unmarked interjections. If they were positioned in overlap with a
vocal answer of another type, the vocal answer was coded. Thus, an interjection followed by a repe-
tition that was overlapped with a head nod would be coded as an interjection +repetition, not two
interjections.
Introduction 27
space is by understanding the nature of what people are commonly responding

to. In Chapter 3, I discuss the issue of response more generally—answering
versus not answering—as well as other dimensions of response: delays, hedges,
and prefaces. This will help us better situate answers both in terms of the alter-
native courses of action that speakers take when they do not answer and to offer
insight into other aspects of response design that are sometimes present in both
answer and non-answer responses.
In Chapters 4– 6, I examine the three primary types of answers, in
turn: interjections, repetitions, and transformations. In each of these chapters
I review the subtypes of these answers and build an argument for the commu-
nicative niche that each answer type and its subtypes fill. Finally, in Chapter 7,
I draw together the themes I have sketched in Chapters 2–6 to build a case for
the ways that answer types reveal how we balance the at times competing desires
to align our social actions, affiliate with our co-interlocutors, and display the au-
tonomy of our social actions relative to our fellow interactants. I offer a sense of
the contours that account for the answer possibility space.
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Dien ochtend juist had z’n vrouw voor ’t eerst zoo gegriend omdat ze
vergeten had voor de jongens eten klaar te maken. De kerels
hadden gescholden en op tafel gebonkt met d’r zwarte, gebarsten
knuisten.… dat se vrete mosse.… dat se dáás leek.… En er was
thuis ’n lawaai wéést van wa-ben-je-me. Toen had hij d’r, in z’n
grimmigheid ’n opstopper pal tegen d’r snoet gemept, dat ze te
duuzelen stond; en niks zei ze, bleef ’m alleen maar [26]aanzien, met
oogen die besefloos wijd vraagstaarden, staarden naar wat ie nòu
dààn had. Plots was ze heviger in grienen uitgebarsten en had ze
krampzwaarder snikken uit d’r borst gescheurd. Daar kon ie dien
ochtend met z’n gedachte maar niet van af. Hij was ’n
ongeluksvogel. Nou dattie wel dacht ’n beetje rust te krijgen, werd
z’n wijf mal, stapel. En al maar had ie aan dat grienende mormel
gedacht, met telkens stijgende woedevlagen, bij elkaar harkend
nijdig de blaren, tot gouïge lichtduintjes, rond groen-brons en
roodgegloeid boomgeglans. Midden in z’n harken, hoorde ie weer d’r
snikken. Zoo mal, woestgillend en heesch had ze gegriend, ’m al
maar ankijkend. Toen, in-één, was dolangstig door ’m heengeschokt
’n gedachte, die ie zichzelf bijna niet voorhouen durfde.… aa’s z’n
wijf, z’n bloedeigen wijf nou d’r maar zoo deed om sain te snappen,
om achter de waarheid te komme van z’n rommelen in de donkere
kelderhoekjes, als d’r niemand was dan zij. Angst-zweet was er op
z’n lijf gewazemd, en zwel-benauwing had ie in z’n gorgel gevoeld.
Nou, là die dokter moar klietere, had ie gebromd, die hep gekoop
seure.… hài sat t’r mee.….. in huis.….. hai.… hai alleen! da’ verrekte
waif!.… da lamme waif!.… f’ r’ wâ sei dokter nie wa’ d’r skol.… dan
wist ie t’met’.… waa’s ’t puur uit!—
’n Jongen die ’m zag staan, stil met z’n hark, had toen, midden in z’n
woedend gemopper geschreeuwd.…
—Haei! Hassel.… Blommepot!.… mo je niet strak-en-an na huis.…

je waif stong op wacht.… t’met al ’n uur!.…
En teruggeschreeuwd had ie—„vast nie, la moar stoan”.… lacherig
gemaakt, valsch, want de buurlui, en ’t heele stedeke wisten al, dat
z’n vrouw zoo raar deed. Telkens dien ochtend weer, was de angst in
’m teruggedraaid, dat ze zich zoo maar hield, die feeks, die lintwurm,
dà sluwe kreng. Want in den laatsten tijd had ie voor hààr veel
minder z’n steeldrift verborgen, had ie al ’n beetje gerekend op ’r
vergeetkop. Zichzelf inpratend, dat ze zich toch vergiste, dat ze
werkelijk zwak van kop was, had ie gauw afgeharkt om te kunnen
snuffelen in de winterkasten of daar t’met nog wat lag, dat ie hebben
wou. Bij z’n rondgaan, langs den tuin-achterkant, had ie ’n [27]trap
tegen de deurluiken gegeven, omdat alles zoo stom-gesloten en
potdicht-sarrend ’m beloerde.… Vroeger elke plek besnuffeld!.… Wat
had ie al niet mee gepikt, toen de weduwe nog leefde.…
Damesskoentjes met gespeltjes.… brokkies van dat faine goed mit
kanten skulpies.… En linte!.… en grafbloarkranse.… en zilveren
suikerlepeltjes.… En plate en kemieke poppetjes.… Elk jaar wat.…
En armbande.. gevonde in den tuin na ’t krikkete.… En
damespetoffels.… van sai.… so glad as ’n mol om d’r over te
straike.… En meiderokkies.… onderrokkies.… gekleurd.… En
damesrokkies, allemaal geel mit sai.… prêchtig! En twee peresols.…
rooie.… he!.… hè!.… da was mooie woar.… En wa lai da nou
allemoal kloar voor sain!… precies hoe en wanneer ie die dingies
gekaapt had.… Dàt nou allemaal had ie gevoeld dien ochtend in
dien tuin.… En de heeleboel zoo maar verstopt, nauwelijks verstopt
àchterof, in ’n vuile hoek, bij ’t vat gepekeld vleesch, achter àn, in de
donkerste kuil, daar, in ’n groot zwart hok, waar niemand kwam, dan
hij zelf, zachies an met stukkies en beetjes afgeschut. Daar lei ’t
verknaagd en beskimmeld ’n beetje. Maar daar lei ’t. ’t Was toch wel
lollig weest dà’ s’n waif soo’n vuilpoes hiete, soo klieterde en stonk
t’met van ’t smeer.… Da se nooit-nie keek na d’r kelder, en da hai,
alleenig, bai skoonmoak ’t eerst rondrommelde.… En.… da Guurt d’r
de koning te raik mee was da sai d’r niks mee van doen had.… ook
soo’n skoone!.. Wel lollig toch dà’ hai nou joar an joar, veur
skoonmoak sorgde doar.… en al die hoeke … dà’ t’r leê, z’n spulle.…
rustig.… bestig.… Soms kreeg ie zoo’n vreeselijk verlangen er naar
te kijken dat ie ’t niet uithouen kòn. Dan moest ie zien, ’s nàchts, als
allen snurkten en ronkten. Want na z’n zware ziekte sliep ie weinig,
lag ie soms halve nachten wakker, en dan was ’t maar
prakkeseere.… met open ooge, tegen ’t donker beskot van de
bedstee.… Ja dat had ie daar nou allemaal staan.… Nou kon ’t
verrotte voor zijn part, as ie maar wist, dat ie ’t had, dat ’t van hem
was.… Zoo voor zijn eige òòge en hànde.. dat ie ’t kon grijpen en
zien wanneer ie wou.—Maar ’t zalige ook was, dat geen
[28]sterveling wist dàt ie gapte,.… hij de fesoenlijkste tuinder van de
plaats. En als ie nagong,—al liep ie in Amsterdam,—da s’n spulle
dààr leie.… in zijn kelderhoek.… God-kristus! dat ontroerde zoo
hevig, gaf ’m zooveel geluk, dat ie d’r bevingen van kreeg, in z’n
armen en beenen, en handen, en dat z’n hart ging hameren.… En
helsch-lekker was ’t, dat niet één uit de plaats, niet één bij ’m thuis
wist waar ’t lag.… zelfs z’n vrouw niet. Elke dag effetjes zag ie z’r bij
dwalen, dàn Dirk, dàn Piet, dan z’n meid Guurtje.… maar vast
niks.… Nooit niks merken.… En spannend, zag ie ze, nou jaren en
jaren achtereen, wegduiken in de rotte kelder, en weer opduiken en
nooit niks, nooit nooit niks!.… Dat gaf ’m nog weer ereis gloeiende
vreugd, maar stil, stil.… in zichzelf gesmoord.…
Met z’n stoel strompelde ouë Gerrit nog dichter bij de kachel,
onbewust, ’t zelf niet merkend, in brandende opwinding, blij iets te
bewegen. Z’n vrouw zag ie sjokkeren van den stal naar de keuken,
met ’n peinzerig gezicht, en rooie huil-oogen, ’n paar kopjes
wegdragend van ’t koffieblad. Vandaag had ie puur trek om er is te
kaike na z’n spulle.… Maar hij dorst nie.… Guurt, s’n dochter mos
sóó komme.… aa’s tie ’t moar weer es sag.…
Wà’ kon ie lolle, lolle, soo in ’t donkere hok, tusschen z’n gestolen
rommel in.… Wa genot! om te stikke! Wà’ had ie ’t netjes an rijtjes
legd lest.… Die vervloekte muize.… allegoar goatjes d’r in.… Hij kon
se de kop afbijten.—Nee, vandaag zou die ’r geen poot anzette, als
ie ’t moar sàg, soo moar sag, kon ie al sterven van heetige lol.—Wâ
spulle! Wà’ kon die ’r mee doen.… Nee, toch niks doen d’r mee.…
Alleen moar hebbe, wéte, al moar wéte en beseffe, dat ’t van sain
was.…, dat ie ’t kaapt had van andere.… andere.… Kristis, wà’ lol,
wà’ salig.… So moar had ie ’t gegannift van ’n aêre en nou was ’t
van sain, van hèm, van hem, van sain. Wat zoet, wat zalig zoet dat
toch was, dat nemen! Hoho!.. ho.. ho.… Van g’n waif, van g’n waive
hield ie zooveul.… Da [29]gappe.… puf!.… naar je toe.… En zoo
verborgen weg duufele in je eige kelder.… En dan, aas de
menschen je vrage en segge.… Hai je al hoort?.… dà’s stole of dit is
stole, dan verbaasd meekijke en lache, en dan zoo zeker, zoo zeker
wete dà’s se hem, hèm, mit z’n grijze kop, z’n faine noam net soo
min verdenke, aa’s den bestolene self.… En dan lol, brandend lollig
van binnen, daà’ niemand je sien hep.… niemand, nooit niks!.… En
dan àl maar meer lachen om ’n grappie ertusschen en schudden met
de zilveren haren, en dan, daardoor heen, maar genieten, bij ’t
spreke d’r over … En wrijven door de baard, en zalig, zoet van
binnen weten: jonge, kerel, dà’ hep jài nou,.… dà’ lait nou stikempies
op z’n rug, bai jou.… Niemand hep sien.… En dan ’t genieten er van,
de eerste week.… nachten, als ie niet slapen kon, in het kelderhok,
met ’t lampie.… en soms, als ie ’t niet kon houen, als ie van binne
opbrandde van zien-dorst, dan op den dag ook nog effe.. Aa’s ’t
most, en ’t kwam, dol-heet-begeerend, dan omkeerend van ’n
boodschap en dan loeren op ’n vrij gelegenheidje. En dan de tweede
nacht, aa’s ’t verlange om te zien zoo hevig was, dat ie lag te beven..
om z’n spulle te pakken.—Als ’t door ’m heengierde, onrustig gehijg
van kijkdrift en voeldrift. Als ie zich dan al lekkerangstig eindelijk
voelde, òver z’n wijf, heenstapte.… bang-vol en blij dat ze ’m wouen
snappen, en eindelijk met wild lichtgejuich in z’n oogen, in en uit z’n
kelder kwam, zonder dat ie gesnapt was. Dan in bed weer zien,
rustiger en verzadigd, hoe alles gelegen had, kijkend met oogen
dicht. Herinnerend hel-schittering van knoppies, blinking van
lepeltjes, en na-tastend in z’n verbeelden de kleuren en ’t zachte
goedje.—Dan den volgenden nacht weer, kijken en tasten, slaaploos
met zweet-hoofd van angstig-zwaar genot.—Na ’n week begon lust
te luwen, bleef ie ’r maanden zonder, dacht ie er nog alleen maar
aan, in z’n bedstee, stil-starend tegen beschot-donkerte, dat ’t daar
lei, effe onder ’m.. dat ie ’t kon zien, kon hebbe aa’s ie wou.. dingen
al van veertig jaar, nooit niks van verkocht.… nooit niks.… gegapt
voor sain … zalig zoodje.. Nou vàn sain, vàn sain alleen. En geen
[30]sterveling die wat wist van z’n zalig genot, geen die iets wist van
z’n sluipen ’s nachts, z’n waken, z’n woest-geheime passie, z’n
heethevig begeeren.
Van heel klein al had ie ’n diep jubel-genot gekend voor stil stelen,
juist op de gevaarlijkste plekken. Nou nam ie alleen wat ’m beviel,
maar toen, nog jong, nam ie elk onbeheerd ding mee. Telkens werd
’t ’m toen afgenomen, kreeg ie ransel en straf, omdat ie ’t nog niet
goed wist te verbergen, of handig genoeg weg te kapen. Op later
leeftijd was ie zich gluip’riger gaan toeleggen op stil-stelen, op dat
loerend geheim-zoete stelen, met uren-geduld van ’n poes,
onbeweeglijk, rumoerloos dan toespringend als de kansen schoon
stonden, en dan alles vergeten, om te hèbben, te hèbben. Eerst had
ie, als eenmaal de dingen van hem waren, er niks meer voor
gevoeld. Later tikte ie de zaakjes op hun kop, maar bewaarde ze
meteen; werd zoo nieuwe prikkelhartstocht, dien ie eerst niet gekend
had. En nooit nog had ie goed beseft hoe ie eigenlijk aan dien
steeldrift kwam. Zóó zag ie iets, zóó gréép ie, zonder dat z’n
hartstocht ’m kleinste nàdenkruimte liet. ’n Vrouw pàkken en stelen,
maar stelen nog liever.—Verder was z’n heel leven niks voor ’m
geweest. Z’n land ging al jaren bar slecht; z’n zoons bestalen ’m, z’n
pacht en schulden al hooger, de opbrengst al minder.… Maar ’t gong
z’n triest gangetje nog.… Toch was ’r niks geen pienterigheid meer in
z’n werk; z’n steellust was alles, ging nog ver boven lijfbegeeren
uit.… ontzettend, van genot, van stil genot.
Eens had ie, zoo in ’n angst-bui, die ’m in z’n jonge jaren maar heel
zelden bekroop, aan dominee in ’t geheim verteld dat ie zoo graag
dingen wegnam, die van hem niet waren, zoo alleen maar om ze te
hebben, en om te doen, te doèn vooral. Maar die man had ’m
uitgescholden, had ’m de deur gewezen in woede.… zeggend dat ie
niet verkoos voor den gek gehouen te worden. En hij in z’n boerige
stommiteit en blooheid had niks verder kunnen zeggen. Toen had ie
dominee in de kerk nog es hooren dreigen met de hel, dat dieven
monsters waren.. [31]En hij had dol-angstig gegriend, bang, bang, de
hel, de hel.… En de ouë vrome, streng-bijbelsche dominee had hèm
onder de preek aangekeken. ’n Tijdje was ’t stil in ’m gebleven. Maar
z’n begeerte vrat dieper in. Geen rust had ie waar ie was. ’t
Verlangen, heet schroeiend, kwam in ’m opblakeren, als ie iets zag,
van verre al, hartkloppingen beukten z’n slapen en z’n binnenste
stond in brand. Dan de gréép.… En als ’t gedaan was, voelde ie zich
opgelucht, lollig, lekker.… tot ie later weer moest, en de hitte-greep
weer kwam. Door dominee’s gedreig had ie nooit iemand meer iets
durven zeggen, wat ie toen wel gewild had. Want ’t werd ’m soms,
zoo zwaar, zoo bang,—maar dan weer vond ie ’t zoo zalig, zoo
zoet.… Zoo was ’t geweldiger in ’m doorgevreten, met de jaren
erger, kon ie ’r niet meer zonder. En om zich heen zag ie niemand
die wist wat in hem omging, hoe wreed-rauwelijk ie genoot, en hoe ie
leed, als ie wroeging, angst voelde. Want elke week precies toch
ging ie naar de kerk, soms als ’n zelf-marteling om te hooren wat ’m
te wachten stond. En elk woord paste ie dan toe op zich-zelf, elken
zin, elken uitleg. En soms midden door z’n donkeren, hoog-donkeren
angst, schoot dan berouw, klagelijk deemoedig voornemen, dat ie
nooit meer iets van ’n ander zou wegnemen. Twee dagen daarna als
de woorden van dominee afgekoeld waren, zat ’t alweer in hem te
hijgen, als ie maar iets zag, dat alleen stond, dat ie hebben moèst.
Dan bleef ie in zoete streel-stemming van z’n eigen begeerte, tot ze
onstuimiger, brandender oplaaide, niet meer te houen, en duizelde ie
van nieuw genot, dat te wachten stond. Dan kwam er al dagen
vooruit, licht of doezelig geduizel in z’n hoofd, vreemde ontroeringen
en gevoelige toeschietelijkheid thuis, in alles.… zelfs z’n stem begon
te vleien, lichtelijk.
En dan had je ’t, volop ’n groote blij ontroerende angst voor wat ie
doen ging en voor wat nou weer in ’m woelen en snoeren kwam. Zoo
wàchtte ie op zich zelf, dook er grillige benauwing ônder z’n
hartstocht uit.—Soms klaar-fel in één, heel kort, zag ie zich-zelf,
begreep ie, hoe ie Onze Lieveheer bedroog, den dominee, de
menschen, de wereld.. Dat kwam dan meestal ’s nachts, als ie
wakker lag, niet slapen kon, en er klare kijklust [32]juist in z’n oogen
kittelde; in die lange, donker-dreigende nachten, als ie verschuil-
angst voelde, angst dat ie slecht was, dat ie toch eens gesnapt zou
worden, dat z’m in de kelder zouen pakken en opsluiten, of dat ze ’m
eerst midden op den weg zouen sleuren, zóó, midden op straat
jagen, en dat iedereen ’m dan kon zien met z’n grijzen kop, z’n lange
haren.… dat ze’m zouen uitjouwen, uitgieren en met steenen gooien.
Dan werd ie week, voelde ie, hoe hardvochtig ie was voor z’n wijf en
kinderen.… In die angstnachten voelde ie zich aan alle kanten
bedreigd, zàg ie klaarder dan op den dag, hóórde ie beter, de
vreemdste tikjes, kraak-lichte geluidjes, strak-zuiver in de
nachtstilte.. En hij, hij die nooit niks gevoeld had,—wel duizend keer
in ’t holst van winternachten dwars door ’t Duinkijker bosch, van ’t
zeedorp Zeekijk, naar Wiereland was geloopen,—híj huiverde dàn,
en kippevelde van angst, hij lag daar te stumperen, te beven en
benauwend te zweeten, naast z’n wijf, beschutting zoekend àchter
haar dooie, snorkende lijf, toch blij dat zij er tenminste was, ’n
mensch net als hij, die ie hoorde ronken.… die hij kende.… die hem
kende.… En als ie dan, loerend stil, in ’t pikdonkre vunzige ruimtetje
van het hollig bed-steetje, uit groenig vuur op ’m zag aangrijpen,
handen met kromme, scherpe worg-nagels, vreeslijke, knokige,
graaiende handen, beenderige geraamte-handen, vaal en grauw en
hij lag te steunen, zoetjes in zweetangst te kermen, zich verkrimpend
en kleinmakend àchter ’t half-wezenlooze lijf van z’n vrouw—dan
begon ie stil tegen haar lichaam te praten, òp te biechten, luid, met
beverige stem, tegen haar rug.… Dan angstigde ie uit, dat ie ’t haàr
wel zeggen wou, z’n slechtighede.… aa’s se’t maar nie verklikte …
da’ se ’m steenige souê … En dat alles, alles in de kelder lei.…
In den stillen nacht hoorend z’n eigen holle beefstem, weenend van
wanhoop, keek ie even òp achter het ronkend lijf van z’n vrouw of ’t
groenige vuur nog liktongde—van ’t donker beschot naar ’m toe.
Maar als ie dan geen beenige grauwige geraamte-hand meer zag,
zweeg ie gauw met biechten, verroerde ie zich niet meer, ’n kwartier,
’n half uur, al spijtig, gejaagd dat ie te veel had [33]gezegd, dat ie zich
had laten bangmaken. Bleef ’t weg, ’t groenige vuur, dan begon z’n
zweet-benauwing wat te luwen, gingen er knellingen los van z’n kop,
z’n beenen, begon ie weer ’n beetje ruimer te ademen .… in zichzelf
gerustgesteld, dat ie toch iemand opgebiecht had wat ie deed—En
aa’s ze wakker was zou ie ’t weer zeggen. Stilletjes wel, dacht ie
’rbij, dat ze toch alles weer vergat,.… maar dat kon hem niet
schelen, had hij niks mee van noode. Hààr zou ie ’t zeggen, dan wist
ie ’t ten minste niet meer alleen. Als ie dan eindelijk achter ’t deurtje
van ’t donkere bed-holletje durfde kijken, in de scheemrige
schijnseltjes, naar de stille schaduw-schimmen van de roerlooze
kamer en hij zag op ’t ruit, aan den straatweg, ’t nachtlichtje,
blompotjes-schaduw en tak-vormpjes, grillig-dwars en puntig op ’t
vaal-geel gordijntje lijnen, kreeg ie weer moed, zei ie zichzelf, dat ie
’n lintworm was, drong ie zich op, dat ie nog nooit-ofte nimmer
kwaad had gedaan.….
.… Dief? .… dief.…? nee, dâ was tie nie, heelegoar nie.… En

snappe?.… nooit!.… nooit!.… Wou ie stele om geld?.… bah! kon ’m
geen zier skele.… ’t Was lekker, ’t was puur zalig.… Hij mos
gappe.… hij mòs of ie wou of nie.… Soms wou ie zelf nie.…, en toch
most ie.… En dan had ie al branding en wilde jeuking in z’n
handen.… Nee pakke dée ze’m nooit van d’r leve.… want sluw, sluw
was ie, aa’s de beste.… En wie had d’r ooit erg in sain? Hij mit z’n
grijze kop, hij diake weest?.… Hij die nooit dronk, hij die met jare
beule en ploetere, eindelijk ’n stukkie grond had gekocht, met veul
hypetheek?.… ze zeie allemoal wat van z’n zachtzinnigheid, en hoe
goeiig ie omging met z’n ongelukkig suf waif.…
Maar aa’s tie alleen was met haar, kon ie z’n geduld niet houên. Dan
griende ze, had ze vergeten waar ze woonden, wist ze niet meer den
naam van haar kinderen; dan griende ze maar, grienen. En hij er
tegen in, haar meppend met wat ie maar in handen kon krijgen. Dan
griende ze erger, mepte hij harder, uit drift, uit dolle drift, dàt ze
blerde.… En toch vergat ze waàrom ze griende, wist ze na ’n paar
minuten niet meer, [34]dat haar man ’r geranseld had, sjokte ze weer
stil-droevig voort, alleen brandende pijn-plekken voelend op ’r lijf en
handen..
Eergisteren nog had ie ’n paar mooie ronde bollemanden gekaapt, ’n

stel witgeschuurde klompen en ’n nieuwe overschieter.… Donders,
vaa’n arme kerel, dat had ’m even heel erg gespeten, maar ’t stond ’r
zoo zalig voor.… Niet lang was de bedenking. Door z’n bars boeren-
verstand, wrokkig, eigenzinnig en steenhard-achterlijk was de
gedachte gegaan dat ’t maar ’n zuiplap was, hij er toch nies an had.
Listig en bijgeloovig, dat was ie, bang en brutaal. En gisteren had ie
alles aangedurfd.… Zoo, in de zon had ie staan blinken, de
overschieter, en de mandjes ’n eind verder, en bij ’n ander de witte
klompies. ’t Was plots in ’m gaan kriebelen, hij had zich voelen bleek
worden, gejaagd, kloppingen op z’n borst, in z’n strot, hooger op
naar z’n kop.… En opgejaagd in zichzelf gromde ’t: da mo je hewwe
Ouë, da mo je hewwe.… Er was licht in z’n oogen geloensd, raar
valsch licht, als uit de oogappelspleet van ’n kat die ’n vogeltje met
stil lijf en zachte kopwending alleen beloert.—Z’n handen waren
gaan woelen in z’n broekzakken en voor ie zelf wist of ’t kon, of
niemand ’m zàg, had ie ’t beet, beet, beet, schuurde ie met z’n stille
juichstem langs brandende hebzucht, die nou te blakeren lag, wild in
z’n strot, had ie ’t ding in knelkramp vast, schroefvast en daverde z’n
hart in geweldsbonzen, dat z’n ooren dicht suisden van woest genot.
Zoo was ie weggehold, keek ie strak voor zich uit, zwaar, lang
genietend, om te voelen hoe ’t afloopen zou.… met ’t heete steel-
gevoel in ’m, zoo zàlig zoet-spreidend over z’n harsens, dierlijk
genietend van eigen benauwing.… En dwars door vage-angst-van-
pakken, lol dat niemand ’m in den weg was getreden, dat ie dadelijk
kwam, waar ie wezen wou, dat ’t dadelijk kon geduwd in z’n kelder
en daar begulzigd met z’n oogen. Toen, alleen z’n wijf thuis, kon ie ’t
raak-zeker wegstoppen waar ie wou. Eén huilgenot was uit ’m
gevloeid. En gisterennacht had ie ’t weer gezien. Tranen van
ontroering had ie zitten schreien in z’n kelder. [35]
Over z’n spullen gebogen, beaaiend met z’n kijk, had ie ’rbij gezeten
in z’n rooie wollen onderbroek en z’n wilden zilveren haarkop, te
schreien in z’n kelderhok, met z’n klein lampje, rossig-geel, bewalmd
in vunshoek, genoot ie van z’n doorgestane spanning, duizendmaal,
zacht-snikkend in stembeving zich zelf zeggend, in huil, dat ’t nou
van hem was, van hem.… Dat ’m dat geen sterveling kon afnemen,
Dirk niet, Piet niet, Guurtje niet.… En stil als ’n faustig spooksel,
kromde z’n verdonkerd rood lijf zich in z’n lage kelder, veegde ie z’n
tranen van de handen, snikte ie zachter, luchtte ie op, lag ie om en
om z’n gestolen waar, zoet-innig streelend, en bleekte z’n zilveren
haardos en kindergezicht, in het wazige kelderschimmige
lampschijnsel òp, met gelukslach en zalige verrukkings-koorts.
Nee, niks kon ’m meer skele.… z’n kinders, z’n waif, z’n pacht, z’n
schulden, z’n hypetheek.… Alleen die lamme notaris, die ’m ’r in had
met vijfhonderd gulde losgeld en al de rente, ses pissint, zat ’m
dwars.… En de dokter.… die z’n rekening hewwe wou.. en veurskot
van grondbelasting.… Snotverjenne, dat was nou ruim dertig joar
puur, dat notaris ’m losse duiten leent had.… En nou, nou Dirk en
Piet bij andere wat wouen knoeien mit grond, nou eischte ie op, in
één s’n geld, met dertig jaar rente.… godskristis.….. Da was puur ’n
slag.… miskien ’n kleine twee duuzend gulden mit de rente van àl ’t
deze! En nou weer ’n paar termaine hypetheek achter en pacht en
nog drie joare raize achter.… Nou dan moest s’n brokkie moar an de
poal.… Hai verrekke.… sullie ook verrekke.… Hai had toch se
genot.… Moar dwars, dwars zat ’t ’m; nòg twee koebeeste voorschot
waa’s tie ook achter! Nee, dwars zat ’t sàin!.… ’n suinige boel!.…
Aa’s s’n heule rommel achtduuzend beskoûde, was tie d’r.… Maar
da had ie t’met an volle skuld!.… Tug, ’t brok stong nog onder sain
klompe!.… [36]
[Inhoud]
II
Guurt, de mooie blonde dochter van Gerrit Hassel, kwam op ’r

fameuze dij, met ’n groote witte schaal grauwe erten aansjokken, en
’n pan uien met aardappelenbrei, die vettig smeulden en geurden in
wasem voor d’r uit. Guurt was de mooiste blonde van Wiereland,
met zwaar-korpulent, hoog boerinnelijf, rompig-rond en heupmollig,
dat droeg, droomerig fijn klein hoofdje, wonder-blauw starende
oogen, fijn poppig gezichtje, potsierlijk-lievig, teer en damesachtig in
’t zware zonneblond van haardos, kontrasteerend-pronkend op ’r
vetten schommelenden vleesch-groei van flank en boezem.
Vrouw Hassel zat stil-ontdaan, met ’r huilerig gezicht vlak voor ’t
raampje op den weg te kijken naar de kale tuinderijen, en de goor-
gele hooi-klampen. Haar versmoezelde trekmuts zat scheef-
achterover, en de eindkrullen ervan hingen slapvuil langs d’r slapen.
Even blies ’n geraas door ’t vertrekje, en hoog-plechtig sopraande de
staartklok ’t twaalfuurtje uit, na elken slag meetrillend ’n zangerig
geluid als van tooneelklok, die vreemd-bekorend-sonoor, ’n
nachtelijk spanningsuur aanluidt, in melodrama.
Achter in den stal, rumoerden de jongens binnen, zich in haast ruw

neerschuifelend met stoelen aan tafel, beslijkt van grondwerk, overal
langs schurend met hun modderplunje, gulzig laag bukkend in
dierlijken vreetstand voor d’r borden.
Ouë Gerrit zat in gemakstoel, tegenover z’n vrouw. Plots zakte stom
z’n kop op de borst; kruisten zich z’n handen in krampigen bid-buig.
De jongens en vrouw Hassel brabbelden wat meê, gejaagd.
Gulzig-spraakloos begon er geëet, klikklakking van lepels op borden

en schaal, die naar alle richtingen getrokken werd. Piet had zich
zwaar-vol opgeschept, ruw-weg bij-lepelend, dat het donker
klonterde op z’n borst, erwten met vet en kleine ertusschen
gesnipperde vleeschbonkjes. Dirk kauwde, kauwde langzaam,
zwaarder, met bij-zijduwing van kaken, en schoof na iederen hap z’n
vuile lepel in de schaal, langzaam, langzaam, [37]zoekend naar
plekjes met vleeschbonkjes. En Piet er haastiger tegen in,
opstapelend nieuwe lepelingen, telkens met z’n slijk-bruine vingers,
reuzige grauwe klauw, erwteklusjes, druipend bedoopend met vet,
wegzuigend, van mondgulzige toppenduw, z’n spreekholte in. Want
telkens had ie wàt te zeggen, met barst-vollen, spuug-spattenden
mond. Ouë Gerrit smakte zuinigjes z’n bord erwten op. Alleen vrouw
Hassel at niets, bleef suffig-beteuterd kijken naar éen plek buiten ’t
raam, met oogen flauw-versluierd van tranen.
Jammerlijk druilde stilte op haar grauw-verflenst gezicht dat sufte
onder ’t vuil-grijze haar, bijzij steekmutsfloddering los uitkrullend. Om
haar heen bleef zuigen stil gesmak van uitgehongerde kerels, die
met zweet en vuil nog op rood-grauwe gezichten, stil maar hapten
en kauwden, in grimmig kaakbeweeg, rauw en vraatvol, zich
vergulzigend als beesten.—Guurt kwam pas zitten, met geschuifel
van ’n stoel en wegduwing van Piet’s arm, vluggelijk biddend.
—Mo’k nie sitte?.… jai la nou nooit niks veur ’n ander.…, mokte ze
bits.
—Jonges, zei Hassel plots bezorgd, morge is ’t houtvailing bai jonker

van Ouenaar.… wie goat t’r hain.…? Sel ik ’t moar sain, hoho!
—Nou, gromde Dirk, z’n lepel uit z’n mond zuigend en gravend in de
weer vol geplompte schaal,.… daa’s net, wà’ hai je meer?.…
De Ouë wist wel dat ie moest, al vond ie ’t lam werk. Maar als Dirk
en Piet zeien dat ’t gebeuren zou, durfde hij niet nee zeggen, bang
dat ze ’r de heele boel op ’n goeien dag bij neersmeten.
—Aa’s t’r t’met wat is.… vier en vaif.… enne nie genog!..
—Mit staive stàp d’r moar op an Ouë .… sal wel wa sàin.…

seurderij.…, bromde Dirk, met vollen mond, in z’n altijd klanklooze
kortsnauwende bitse zinnetjes.
De ouë zei al niets meer, keek sip voor zich, verschuchterd, zat star
op z’n met zware duimvegen uitgelikt bord te kijken.
—Godverjenne moeder, barste Piet los, zwaar-boerend voor [38]zich

uit, in zangrige stijging van Wierelands spreekgeluid, godverjenne,
waa’t is t’r t’met mi je veur.… ik sien je kwalik ’s murregens.…
—Wa?.. wa?.. wa sait tie?.… wa sait tie?.… schrikte vrouw Hassel
òp uit ’r sufkijk over het kale land.
Piet brokkelde weer onverstaanbaar iets verder, met uitgebuilden

mond, stamp-vol van uien en aardappelenbrei, die z’n lippen
overdrongen. Telkens greep ie met z’n grauwe vuile modderhanden
in de pan, rondwroetend tusschen breiklodders, om direkt weer in te
stoppen als ie met beklemming van zacht-roggelende ademhaling,
ingeslikt had. Zoo aldoor met vollen mond blijvend, wou ie spreken,
iets driftigs uitstooten, dat brabbelend wegsmoorde in z’n
uienkauwsel.
Vrouw Hassel zat te wachten, maar hoorde niets meer.… Eindelijk

na zware ademhaling, kraste er stemgeluid op, had ie alles
doorgeslikt. Guurt, naast ’m, zat te giegelen om z’n gulzig geslobber,
lachend, lijf-schuddend achter haar dikke handen.
—Nou moeder, wa’ kaik je aa’s ’n skoap.… f’rjenne!.… je sou main

broek làpt hebbe.… d’r sit ’n gat in.… daa’ k’r t’met deurvalle sel.…
hai je dà nou weer f’rgete?.… bin je dan t’met fe’gete daa’k ’n broek
droag?.… geep.… dwarrel!.… wa skeel je.…?
—Sai vergeet puur d’r kop van d’r romp, woedde de Ouë.
—En.… ne.… de bloedworst, hai je ’m kloar moeder, vroeg Dirk er

loom midden in.
Vrouw Hassel zat met inspanning naar ’t stemgekruis te luisteren, vol

angst-trekken om d’r ingevallen mageren neus en mond, vooruit al
voelend, dat ze wat leelijks te hooren kreeg. Maar herinneren van
bloedworst en broek deed ze zich. niets meer. Al wat zij haar
voorhielden was nieuwtje, hoorde ze nou pas voor ’t eerst, meende
ze.
—Ja, ja, stamelde ze in verwarring terug.… ik wee nie wâ main
skeelt.… ik bin d’r puur f’rskote van kinders!.… En zwaar te huilen
begon ze.
—Seg waif, bler nie.… valt rege sat.… snauwde hard [39]de Ouë en
allen nu snauwden mee, van lamme kemedie, gesanik van dit-en-
van-dat, scholden eruit voor luiwammes, die gluipertjes wou maken.
En stil snikte ze door, zonder dat ze zich met ’n woord meer
verdedigen kon. Uitgesuft zat ze weer. Niemand die voelde wat ze
had, wat ze leed. O! leed?.. leed?.. Nee, pijn had ze niet. Alleen zoo
raar, zoo doovig, zoo rare banden kruislings over d’r hoofd,
gespannen! en zoo knellend, zoo stevig.… En niks, niks meer kon ze
onthoue.. Ze huilde weer harder.… Guurt keek ’r àn, met d’r
glimlacherige blauwe oogen, of ze zeggen wou: hou je je aige moar
stiekem van de domme, je bin immers zoo sterk aas ’n paard.…
Dirk grabbelde ’n pijp vol, met kop in de tabaksdoos geduwd, en Piet

diepte mee in. ’n Paar minuten bleef er stilte-gepaf van alle lijven.
Alleen Gerrit en de vrouwen vouwden de handen, prevelden
plechtig-mechanisch dankgebed.
—Seg Ouë.… kristus! wa he’k ’n pain in main polse.… kristus!.…

main klauwe!.… saa’k verbrande aa’s ’k weet hoe ’k sitte mot.…
jesis wa pain.… main stuit.…
Afbrekend eigen zin bleef Dirk op z’n doorbarste spithanden

staren.…
—Nou Ouë, murge goant beertje d’r an—Met ’n schonkigen draai

van z’n zwaar lijf keerde ie zich naar Gerrit, ’m drie maal zwaar
boerend vlak in ’t gezicht. Vader Hassel keek bedrukt.
—Tjonge, daa’s te vroeg, f’rdomd, daa’s te vroe-eg, zàng-zeurde z’n

stem.
—Nou maor, hai goant, daa’s main werk.… ikke hep ’r lol in.… Ikke
hou van da werkie.… Aas ’t poar weke verduufle gong he’k g’n fait
meer.… nee.… nou mot tie.… jesis! me sai laikt of ’k spersie-bedjes
maok hep.… da verrekte diepspitte..
Dirk was rood van stille woede dat de ouë tegensprak, woede die
aan kwam stuiven in bloedvlekken op z’n woest-kakigen wreeden
kop. Z’n vlassige brauwen gramden in dreiging naar elkaar, en z’n
kaken beefden. Dàt was z’n grootste hartstocht, slàchten; zelf ’t mes
in ’t plooiige nek-vette van ’t varken te vlijmen, ’m bij z’n strot te
smakken, dat ie spartelde, dan ’m te zien rochelen en hooren gillen,
met bloed op z’n handen, [40]warm-lauw, stankig en rood. Dan
genoot ie met ’n bedaarde lol, niemand mocht er an komme thuis. As
ie ’t niet zelf kon doen, vrat ie ’t niet; most ’t vleesch verkocht. Al de
kippen, die niet meer legden, draaide ie even gemoedereerd den
kop om. Guurt joeg ze op, greep ze, en hij alleen wrong ze den hals
af. En Guurt zàg ’t ook dol-graag, al griende ze ’r soms bij van
rillerigheid. Zij, zij met ’r meidehanden dee ’t altemet eerder dan
Kees, de erge strooper, waar ieder in de plaats bang voor was; Kees
de Strooper, oudste zoon van Hassel.
Piet had zich languit met z’n modderlaarzen en slijkgoed op den

grond neergesmakt, vlak bij de rookige kachel, om wat te tukken.
Dirk zat te smoken, slaperig weggedoezeld in blauwe rookkrullen,
stomp, naar den straatweg kijkend. Ouë Gerrit voelde slaaploomte
en rilling.
’n Paar uur maar had ie vannacht geslapen. Alleen Guurt lachte luid
en brutaal, joligde tegen Dirk, die stom aanluisterde zonder zich te
verroeren, wat ze snapte van Annie en Geert Slooter, dochters van
’n tuinder, bij hen in de buurt.
—Nou Dirk.… enne.… nou mo je wete.… nou sait se Annie.… se

binne veur sain in ’n f’rseeekering … aas sain … sie je.… d’r vader.…
aas sain nou wa beurt.… dan.… danne kraige sai ’n prais.… ’n prais
sa’k moar segge.… van ’t Nuuwsblad.… En nou sait Geert.…
hohà!.… nou sait Geert.… gom.… ikke wou moar da die ouë suiplap
soo dood bleef aa’s ’n pier.… in se werk.… he?.… dan heppe wai
vaifhonderd poppies.… Is da nou woar Dirk.…? kraige sullie dan
soveul?.… puur vaifhonderd.… tog jokkes hee?
—Nou seker, bromde Dirk, wrevelig dat ie spreken moest, aa’s t’r
stoat, sal wel ’t uitkomme t’met.…
—Nou, en nou sait Annie, sait se main.… f’r wa’ sai nooit niks meer
van je sien, s’avens.…
—La se stikke.… mestvarke.… hep màin noodig.… dwarrel!

kabbeloebelaap!.…
—Nou hait s’nie g’laik.… sa’k stikke aa’s se ’n sint los kraigt van den
ouë.… nou is tie weewnoar.… en hokke [41]mi Jan en alleman dat ie
doe.… ’n wijd skandoal.… Nou lest, mi Sint Jan mosse Annie en
Geert.… mosse ze ’n poar nuwe laarse.… hai gaift g’n sint.… strak-
en-an komp ie thuis.… stroal!.… En hài an ’t danse.… de guldes
rolde sain broek uit.… sóó, langs se paipe op de vloer.… Dà’ ware
sullie bai aa’s kippe hee?.… Se heppe grabbeld en vochte.… Hai
was smoor.. en niks het ie sien.… ha! ha!.… ha! ha! ha!.…
Wat ’n beeste, wat ’n maide.… nou binne sullie skoene goan

koope.… Ho-je-wi! wa ’n pinkebul!—
Gieren deed Guurt, met ’n bord in ’r hand, wild op ’r dijen patsend,

dat ze schommelde.
—Hep jai Kees nie sien maid, vroeg dwars-vreemd en stroef Dirk er
tegen in.
—Kees? Kees? sien ik t’met nooit.

—Wâ? en Grint dan, sain buurman? Kom je’r nie meer? Skarrel je
doar nie?.… en se seun?.… is da doàn? verdomme.… Die jonge
was puur mal op je.…
—Wa? die staive hark? die .. kikker.. àn main blouze seg!.… gierde
Guurtje, wild naar achter stormend, met vingergetrommel op borden.
—Houw doar smoele.… kaa’n g’n tuk pakke.… schorde Piet

slaperig-stemlui van den grond, zich wild in protest, met lijf-lawaai,
omdraaiend.
—V’rek, kom bai je, goedigde Dirk, zich aan den anderen kant van
den kachel neersmakkend.
—Guurt, denk ’r an, één uur!
—Ja, stem-gilde ze uit ’t achterend, ja sel d’r sain!
Om één uur moesten ze weer op, spitten, spitten tot oneindige

troosteloosheid van winterdonkering over avondvelden kwam
droeven.
En Guurt bleef met ingehouen, geluid-dempende bewegingen

vaatwerk-rommel beploeteren. Haar princessekopje roezemoesde.
Zij was de mooiste meid van Wiereland. Iedereen had ’t gezeid.… en
ze wist ’t zelf ook wel. Ze had wel nooit wat geleerd, maar de
jongens keken d’r an, of ze ’r t’met allegaar teg’lijk wouen. Maar
mooie Guurt wist wat ze waard was. ’n [42]Meneer wou ze hebben, ’n
meneer mit mooie mesjette, in nette kleere, en ringe om se hande.…
’n faine hoed.… en faine jas. En dan niks g’n konkelefoesies om den
meneer, maar blij om den stand, om ’t hooger-opkomme. Dat was
brandendste eerzucht in ’r. En aa’s tie, onfesoenlijk wou, voor d’r
trouwe, sou se’m meppe.… O! se hield ’r wel van soms, maar so als
die meide van Wiereland, soo dol.… nee, dà’ had se nooit niks soo
erg naar verlangd. Die gooie zich te grabbel. Die moste wel, die
hadde niks anders. Maar zij, de mooiste meid van Wiereland! De
apetheker haalde d’r stiekem àn.… dacht moar.… stom
boerinnetje.… En de dokter wou er soene.. t’met de heule ploats.…
Lest mit d’r seere vinger wou die vent d’r nie helpe.… of eerst ’n
lekkere soen.… so’n vuilpoes!.… dà’ hep ’n waif.… acht kooters.…!
En dà kreeg se, en dî kreeg se; allegoar van meneere.… En mee
ging se.… met kennissies en skarrelaars, die wà’ graag de meneere
van de plaots ànhaakte.… Nou, da had ze t’met puur sien.. maar bai
haar, niks g’n kansies.… Zij wou nooit, nooit gemeen sain.… Alleen
moar lolle en lache.… en pronke.… en t’met alle kemedies sien. En
dan moar al die manne opwinde, en net doen of se wou.… of se soo
moar te neme was.… En aa’s se dan woue toehappe.… pats, dan
d’r van langs, mit d’r stevige knuiste, dan seie se niks meer.… dan
was ’t glad f’rbai.
Zoo was mooie twintigjarige Guurtje, met haar dames-hoofdje, haar

prachtig goudhaar, haar lichten lach, haar fijne trekjes en blauwe
oogen-vreugd, met ’r hoog-zwaar, frisch boerinne-lijf, haar
schommelend-onderstel, de begeerlijkste meid van ’t dorps-stadje,
waarvan geen tuinder, geen meneer zich op beroemen kon dat ie ’r
gepakt had. Maar allen had ze dol gemaakt en opgejaagd, van
hartstocht. Midden in ’t paringsgedrang van beest-menschjes,
koketteerde zij grof en stoeide met allen zoo goed en zoo kwaad als
haar sluwe meisjesnatuur met berekening dat klaar kon spelen. Zij,
vrij koud voor lijfgenot, zocht naar zwakkelingen met geld, die op ’r
verkikkerd werden, [43]ambtenaartjes eerste klas.—Op één had ze al
lang ’t oog, ’n heel piek-fijn heertje, ’n rijk, wellustig slap-blond
mannetje, maar chiek, ruikend naar odeur, met lokkende snor en
streelend baardje, en zooveel geld as tie maar wou.… Die most se
anhake, hebbe, al kwam de onderste steen boven, hem met z’n
duiten, z’n chiek, z’n geurtjes en odeurtjes. En hij wou haar ook,
maar d’r lijf alleen. Alles sloeg ze àf, en toch maakte ze ’m vuriger
door ’r verleidelijke gekunstelde boerinne-onschuld. Hij, ouderloos
mannetje, zwak dobberend, afgezwabberd, wou iets om handen,
was ambtenaartje geworden.… later burgemester.… misschien! .…
zoekend naar rijke heere-boerdochter, die z’n afgezwabberd lijf wel
hebbe wou.… Toen, in één verkikkerd op ’t frisch-wellustige lijf van
Guurt, ’r blonde haaraureool, ’r fijn snoetje.… Maar veel gegeven,
weinig meegenomen, nooit iets kon ie bij ’r gedaan krijgen; niet eens
mocht ie d’r met ’n zoen besmakkeren. Ze had ’m gezeid dat als ie ’r
hebben wou, ie maar met ’r trouwen most. Hij stond wel op zich-zelf,
en dertig jaar, kon ie doen wat ie wou.… Maar van die platte familie
gruwde ie, die ruwe broers, die vuile moeder.… Daarom draalde
ie.… En zij voelde z’n dralen. Sluw, hitste z’m met ’r lijf-mooi erger
op, zich nog minder gevend dan eerst. Zoo was ze ’m gaan
beheerschen.… En nou most ze zich bekennen, dat ze hem toch
ook wel aardig vond, met z’n manchette, en z’n blondkrullend
snorretje vooral, met dat gleufie in ’t midden, en z’n zachte kijkers,
z’n goeie netuur.… o ja alles vond ze mooi an ’m. Maar ’t meest was
’t ’r te doen om z’n duiten, z’n lekkere duiten.…
Dat ze zich prachtig kon maken, dat ze baas over ’t ventje was.… zij
met ’r dijen, waarachter ie zich verschuilen kon, zonder dat z’n
neuspunt te zien kwam. Maar hij wou, durfde maar niet. En zij,
doorkoketteerend, met andere jongens van de plaats en van Duinkijk
en van de sekretarie, dat ie dol werd van heetige jaloersigheid. En
de anderen gebruikte zij om ’m op te winden, metéén te laten zien,
dat ze maling aan hem had, en dat kerels als boomen om ’r
heendrongen, naar ’n [44]gunstje bedelden. Zoo, als ’n plompe, maar
stomp-sluwe dorps-Carmen had ze Jan Grint den tuinderszoon, dien
ze al van ’r schooljaren kende, mal gemaakt, maar toen ie met liefde
en vuiligheid kwam had ze ’m de deur uitgesmeten. Ze kreeg
smeekbrieven van ’m; dat hij d’r vroegste minnaar was en dat ie zich
z’n handen van de romp zou afsnijen, aa’s sai ’t puur hebbe wou.…
Maar ze dàcht niet aan ’m. Ze wou met ’m lachen en uitgaan of

The Book of Answers Alignment Autonomy and Affiliation in Social Interaction Foundations of Human Interaction Tanya Stivers Full Chapter

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The Book of Answers Alignment Autonomy and Affiliation in Social Interaction Foundations of Human Interaction Tanya Stivers Full Chapter

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The Book of Answers: Alignment,

Autonomy, and Affiliation in Social

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of CongressControl Number: 2021951275

Preface and Acknowledgments  ix

The relevance of response to questions

The constraining nature of questioning

Table 1.1 Composition of the Question

Pre-​turn: Turn Beginning: Question Proper

to standing can project an alternative activity, as in projecting closing at the end

Table 1.2 Preference in Polar Questions

Polar Question Design Example Polarity

Interrogative: basic Did Fred go to the party? Affirmative

Table 1.3 Social Preference

Action Example Preferred Response

Request Could I borrow the knife? Granting

extent, speaker motivation doesn’t matter. The design facilitates an answer,

You saw a movie recently, right?

Recipient design in questions

answers. However, no question determines the nature of the response or even

Kendrick & Torreira, 2015).1 In dispreferred question responses, adults provide

(1.2) Heritage II:2:3

Figure 1.1 Summary of levels of alternative conduct in question-​response sequences.

conceptualizes a difference between answers which are “type-​conforming” and

A Window into Relationship Management

our conversations. Social interaction is the vehicle through which we build

independence of her rights to introduce a proposition (thematic agency) even

confirmatory answers. Seventy-​one percent of these are drawn from face-​to-​

One form that an account of an action can take is a characterization of some

The characterization of response practices is indeed the basis for each of

The Book’s Organization

space is by understanding the nature of what people are commonly responding

Lindström, A. (1996). Affiliation and disaffiliation in Swedish conversation. Unpublished

Robinson, J. D. (2003). An interactional structure of medical activities during acute visits

Schegloff, E. A. (1984). On some questions and ambiguities in conversation. In

—Haei! Hassel.… Blommepot!.… mo je niet strak-en-an na huis.…

.… Dief? .… dief.…? nee, dâ was tie nie, heelegoar nie.… En

Eergisteren nog had ie ’n paar mooie ronde bollemanden gekaapt, ’n

Guurt, de mooie blonde dochter van Gerrit Hassel, kwam op ’r

Achter in den stal, rumoerden de jongens binnen, zich in haast ruw

Gulzig-spraakloos begon er geëet, klikklakking van lepels op borden

—Jonges, zei Hassel plots bezorgd, morge is ’t houtvailing bai jonker

—Mit staive stàp d’r moar op an Ouë .… sal wel wa sàin.…

—Godverjenne moeder, barste Piet los, zwaar-boerend voor [38]zich

Piet brokkelde weer onverstaanbaar iets verder, met uitgebuilden

Vrouw Hassel zat te wachten, maar hoorde niets meer.… Eindelijk

—Nou moeder, wa’ kaik je aa’s ’n skoap.… f’rjenne!.… je sou main

—En.… ne.… de bloedworst, hai je ’m kloar moeder, vroeg Dirk er

Vrouw Hassel zat met inspanning naar ’t stemgekruis te luisteren, vol

Dirk grabbelde ’n pijp vol, met kop in de tabaksdoos geduwd, en Piet

—Seg Ouë.… kristus! wa he’k ’n pain in main polse.… kristus!.…

Afbrekend eigen zin bleef Dirk op z’n doorbarste spithanden

—Nou Ouë, murge goant beertje d’r an—Met ’n schonkigen draai

—Tjonge, daa’s te vroeg, f’rdomd, daa’s te vroe-eg, zàng-zeurde z’n

Piet had zich languit met z’n modderlaarzen en slijkgoed op den

—Nou Dirk.… enne.… nou mo je wete.… nou sait se Annie.… se

—La se stikke.… mestvarke.… hep màin noodig.… dwarrel!

Wat ’n beeste, wat ’n maide.… nou binne sullie skoene goan

Gieren deed Guurt, met ’n bord in ’r hand, wild op ’r dijen patsend,

—Kees? Kees? sien ik t’met nooit.

Preface and Acknowledgments ix

Pre-turn: Turn Beginning: Question Proper

Figure 1.1 Summary of levels of alternative conduct in question-response sequences.

conceptualizes a difference between answers which are “type-conforming” and

confirmatory answers. Seventy-one percent of these are drawn from face-to-