Ordering a series of turn-initial particles

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to describe the principles behind the ordering of a series of four different particles – hee ‘hey’, ja ‘yes’, eh ‘eh’, and nou ‘now’/’well’ – in the beginning of a sequence-initiating turn in which the speaker launches a new activity framework. A surprising result of the analysis is that it shows that the speaker lays the groundwork for a new activity framework in a turn-initial trajectory that indexes the turn’s position within the overall-structural organization of the talk both at the local level of the organization of subsequent sequences and at the global level of the organization of activities. The positioning of each particle in the series locates the order of organization by reference to which it operates. The study’s methodology – using multiple collection studies to establish the orientations that are at work – is an attempt to find an appropriate heuristic for developing an empirically plausible analysis of a complex configuration of single-case phenomena.