Danish dialogue particles in an interactional perspective

Abstract

In our paper, we give an overview over what is known about some of the most frequent interjections in Danish talk-in-interaction: ja (‘yes’), nej (‘no’), mm (‘mm’), nå (approximately ‘oh’), and okay (‘okay’). We review the CA/IL literature on these words, and we present our own exemplary analyses of single instances of these words in extracts from our corpus of recorded, naturally occurring Danish interactions. Based on this, we argue that sequential position, epistemics, and affiliation and alignment should be taken into account when describing and categorizing dialogue particles in talk-in-interaction. Prosody and other phonetic cues are important for the realization of the above dimensions and functions and we review what is known about prosodic and phonetic cues plus add some of our own observations, without launching a full phonetic and prosodic analysis.