﹃語用論研究﹄ 第 21 号（2019 年）pp. 100-117© 2019 年 日本語用論学会〈Regular Papers〉[Research Paper]

Pre-resuming Recognition Prompt:
A Collaborative Establishment of Resuming Storytelling inJapanese Telephone Conversations
Kazuki Hata
Tokyo City University
This article examines the situated action of the (story) teller in Japanese telephone conversations to prompt the recipient’s uptake for the collaborative resumption of temporarily halted storytelling: the pre-resuming recognition prompt. After the recipient’s call tocontinue the activity, the teller initiates a minimal sequence formatted in a prompt-recognition structure that unpacks about which the recipient is knowledgeable and withwhich the resumption can be launched. This prompt minimises the chance of further
blocking from a recognitional mismatch in the next opening of the storytelling.

Keywords: conversation analysis, Japanese, progressivity, recognition prompt, resumption, storytelling

1.

Introduction

Storytelling is a reflexive practice as a part of ordinary social exchange, in that themutual understanding shared between participants serves as an engine for the progression of social practices. On a turn-by-turn basis, a storytelling sequence comprises theunderpinned actions of the participants, in which the storyteller and recipient display
their orientations to the construction of storytelling in accordance with their mutual understanding (Goodwin, 1997; Jefferson, 1978; Mandelbaum, 1991). The production of
resources during the storytelling is formed to project various indications that enable therecipient to understand how the story is initiated, constructed, and concluded, as well as
what is meant, and how to respond to the story. Once the storytelling sequence is initiated, the teller is entitled to convey it accordingly. It is thus essential for the recipient
to demonstrate his/her alignment with the teller’s desire to tell the story to ensure its
progressivity (Schegloff, 1982). That is, an indication of disorientation may halt thestorytelling and leave space for the teller to confirm whether the activity is continuable.
This article identifies the particular systematics in the teller’s prompting action, as apreface to the resumption of temporarily halted storytelling, requesting a display of therecipient’s understanding of the story: what I call the ‘pre-resuming recognition
prompt’. This interactional phenomenon can be preliminarily demonstrated in the fol100

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lowing instance (T: teller; R: recipient):(1) [last_trip (simpliﬁed)]1((TAK (teller) describes that he went diving in his last seminar lodging trip andeventually spent too much money.))		 1 TAK: sonnan de okane naku
te:=			like.this n on money nothing fp“like this, there is no money left“		 2= tte[ka som				I.mean ?
		“ I mean...”(R) <<the disruption emerges>>
P0
		 3 HSA:		
[°(anonymised) kyou ko
nai tte°					
today come neg quot		“(anonymised) is not coming today“(R) : reorientation of the recipient
P1
		 5 HSA: de nanda kke?
			so what fp
		“so, what was the story“(T) : pre-resuming recognition prompt
P2
		 9 TAK: de nani yutta kke.
			so what told fp
		“so, what have I told you up to now“
(R) : recognitional uptake as a relevant response to P2
P3
		 13 HSA: okane ga do:no ko:no.
			money nom blah.blah“something about budget“		(T) : resumption of the storytellingP4		 15 TAK: sousou= mazu yosan ga mondai na no sa.
			
yes.yes first budget nom problem cop fp fp		“the budget is the first problem“
The key component of this structure is that the teller does not immediately restart
the storytelling after the recipient’s call to resume the activity, although there is an op-

1

Note that as an introduction, excerpt (1) has been simplified for readability, but it represents thephenomenon illustrated in this work.

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語用論研究 第 21 号

tion to do so. First, the disruption is triggered by the misplacement of the recipient’s
utterance (P0), which is not relevant to the teller’s storytelling, and thus blocks (but notrefuses) the progression of the activity. After the recipiency is re-established with a goahead to continue (P1), the teller opens a collaborative pathway to restart the storytelling by prompting the recipient’s recognitional uptake that unpacks a candidate resource
for the resumption (P2). In this regard, the teller’s pre-resuming prompting action is
warranted by a relevant response with the recipient’s uptake (P3), in a prompt-recognition sequence to complete, before the resumption is initiated. The accomplishment of
this P2-P3 sequence minimises the chance of a recognitional gap between the teller andrecipient for the continued storytelling. Then, the teller’s following turn for actual resumption (P4) is designed to latch onto the recipient’s response at P3, rather than serving as a direct continuation of the telling before the disruption occurs.

2.

Background

The talk in interaction is reflexively constructed with the establishment of mutual
understanding through exhibiting a cohesive relationship between turns of different
speakers (Schegloff, 1990). For maintaining social solidarity in the talk, a minimal sequence is constructed with the adjacent positioning of two turns. When the first speakerproduces his/her turn, the turn is designed to project a particular action. The next
speaker then produces a relevant response which reflects an understanding of the previous speaker’s action. Here, there is a sequential package of two paired turns: the firstaction (first pair part; FPP) and the next action (second pair part; SPP), as an adjacency
pair, which displays how the next turn is warranted by the current turn. As the adjacentpositioning of the separate turns is a fundamental mechanism in the talk to maintain intersubjectivity, the completion of the pair is the basis for participants to move onward to
new sequence (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974). If the responder is not in alignment with the FPP, the absence of relevant SPP is noticeable (Schegloff, 1968) andleads to the delay of the exit of such an FPP-SPP adjacency pair toward the followinginteraction (Pomerantz, 1984).
Compared to minimally constructed adjacency pairs (e.g. question-answer and suggestion-acceptance/declining), storytelling is organised as a form of extended tellingwith the production of multiple turns, wherein the participants negotiate with each otherto establish the continuity (i.e. progressivity) of the activity. Given that the storytellingis organised as a format of knowledge transition, the speakers are sensitive to (a) what
can be told in a particular moment, and (b) who is informed regarding the contents. To
establish the possibility of the proposed storytelling, the teller normatively avoids telling
something which the prospective recipient already knows, and thus has the choice tocheck whether the storytelling can be mutually accepted and expanded further before
initiating the story (Sacks, 1974). When the suggested trajectory of the activity isagreed, the teller’s role is assigned with an entitlement to initiate the story. This pref-Pre-resuming Recognition Prompt: A Collaborative Establishment of Resuming Storytelling in Japanese Telephone Conversations

103

ace of the storytelling can also be practised to position a participant who possibly
knows the story and is able to tell it or support the activity as a possible co-teller, especially in a multi-party conversation of more than three participants (Lerner, 1992).
Once the storytelling is launched, the recipient displays his/her orientation to theteller’s activity with an agreement to give speakership to a certain speaker as a teller
until one story is concluded. To support but not intrude in the activity, the recipient’s
contribution is designed to be minimal (Jefferson, 1985; Stivers, 2008). One example
of a response that indicates the recipient’s alignment is a minimal token (e.g. mm),which is given as a display of acceptance at the structural level for the teller to continue(Schegloff, 1982). That is, the recipient’s alignment tokens not only demonstrate thathe/she is now listening but also display his/her approval of the suggested indexicality ofthe storytelling.
Although the norm of alignment is applied to the recipient’s display of structuralacceptance, it does not mean that the recipient is always restricted from participating at
the content level. Unlike alignments, responses can affect how storytelling proceedswith the recipient’s affiliation “at the level of action and affective stance” (Stivers, Mondada & Steensig, 2011, p. 21). Again, as the teller-recipient collaboration is crucial tothe accomplishment of social exchanges, some conflicts between the teller’s and the recipient’s actions may block the construction of storytelling, especially when the necessity of resisting emerges (Schegloff, 2005, p. 452). For example, when the storytelling isconstructed as a vehicle for the teller to enact a social action of complaint or criticism
to a third person, the teller generally pursues an affiliative stance from the recipient (Pomerantz, 1980). Therefore, when the recipient resists the progression of the storytellingby projecting a refusal to accept the teller’s commentary, the blocking is interactionallydriven and should not be simply considered an interruption (Goodwin, 1997; Mandelbaum, 1991).

3.

Data

The data used in this study consist of approximately 11 hours of recordings of Japanese telephone conversations from November 2018 to February 2019. The participants
were 20 Japanese nationals who, at the time of the recordings, were undergraduate students (aged 19 to 24) enrolled at several universities in the Tokyo area and formed 11
conversational pairs. The conversations were conducted within the participants’ homes,
or outside, and were recorded by utilising smartphones with a specialised built-in or
third-party recording application. All excerpts have been transcribed using a highly
specific and finely tuned system with descriptions of different conversational features(Jefferson, 2004).
The basis for this article comprises a core collection of 12 storytelling sequenceswhere an abrupt disruption of the activity emerged due to the recipient’s disorientation,
which was not designed to resist to the progression of the exchange for interactional

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purposes. Focusing on how the participants resumed the activity, I identified eight instances of different speakers practising the pre-resuming prefacing, allowing the teller
him/herself to identify the right resource to restart the activity. In the other four cases,
the teller skipped the clarification of the recipient’s recognition and directly initiated theresumption. In these cases, the teller faced a blockage, either right after the resumption
or later, and had to cease the storytelling again due to the mismatch between the teller’s
expectation and the recipient’s recognition regarding the story.2

4. Analysis
This section examines a pre-resuming recognition prompt: the teller’s prefacing action in pursuit of the recipient’s aid in resuming the storytelling, which is a systematic
method of enabling collaboration between the teller and recipient to accomplish the resumption. As a response to the recipient’s go-ahead for continuation (P1), the teller’s
deployment of a preface for resumption (P2) prompts the recipient’s recognitional uptake at the next position (P3), formulating a minimally constructed prompt-recognition
sequence. Following this, I argue that the accomplishment of this P2-P3 sequence prior
to the resumption contributes to re-establishing the progressivity of the storytelling in acollaborative way by unpacking what is tellable in the next opening (P4), that is, without leaving space for another obstacle that blocks the restarting of the activity.
My analysis begins with excerpt (2). In the middle of this storytelling (line 3),
SHO (recipient) abruptly reveals an orientation to a third person (about whom I do notpossess information) in his turn overlapping with MAY (teller)’s continuation of thestory. The teller treats this misplacement of the recipient’s utterance as a sign of disorientation, and it therefore leads to a temporary stop of the activity.

(2) [accounts_for_unvisit]((YUU (teller) explains that he intended to submit his essay on time but lost thedraft, so he decided to re-write it from scratch.))		 1 YUU: jissaisukoshi wa yondetashi:			
actually some
top have.read fp
		“actually, I have read some”
		 2
			
		

2

kaki kiru[jishinga
write finish		confidence nom“I am confident that I will finish writing“

As the context of talk is essentially situated and vulnerable to renewing (see Ford, 2001), it is notguaranteed that the teller’s preface will always be observed more frequently than cases of direct continuation. From a building collection of micro-analysis of each case, this work instead gives an account of the phenomenon of the teller’s prefacing before resuming the disrupted storytelling.

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P0	 3 SHO:		
[ah > chotto matte<=					ohwhile wait
“ wait a moment“				 4 YUU: = eh?
				what
		 5

(0.2)

		 6 SHO:° (inaudible) sokoni [ aru
desho?°
				
there		exist cop		“(inaudible) seems to be there“
		 7 YUU:			[ ah.
						oh
		 8

(1.8)

P1	 9 SHO: > hai hai.< (0.3) sorede sorede?
				 okay okay	 andand		
“and then“
		 10

(0.4)

		 11 YUU: a: un.
			ah yes
		 12

(0.8)

P2 13 YUU: e::tto (.) na(h)nda(h) kke.
			
well
what
fp
			
“ where were we“
		 14

(0.7)

P3 15 SHO: aa (0.6) jishin
ga atte nanchara tte=			ahconfidence nom there something quot
P3 16
=toko [ made,			
point		to“	oh, (you said) something about confidence“		(L.15–6)
P4 17 YUU:		
[ sou sou.=					yes yes
P4 18= daijoubu tte omotta wakeyo.
				alright quot thought reason fp
		“yeah, I thought I would be alright“(L.17–8)

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語用論研究 第 21 号

The recipient’s overlap itself may not affect the progressivity of the activity unless therecipient’s action contributes to the storytelling (Schegloff, 1982; Stivers, 2008). Nevertheless, in (2), what SHO (recipient) produces in line 3 is a preface to cease the ongoing storytelling. In addition, SHO (recipient)’s following turn (line 6), addressed to thethird party, is delivered at a relatively lower volume on the audio, to which YUU (teller)
only has access in telephone conversation, implying that SHO (recipient) may be physically away from his smartphone. These utterances by SHO (recipient) are not supportive of YUU (teller)’s activity and are thus misplaced in the context. YUU (teller) thenseems to display his understanding of why SHO (recipient) needs to suspend the storytelling (line 7) and ceases the activity.
Once the recipient is ready to reorient to the storytelling, he/she prompts the teller
to continue the story (P1). In this regard, one type of go-ahead from the recipient is adirect invitation for the teller to continue the activity. In line 9, SHO (recipient) produces an utterance in the form of request for information. This move on SHO(recipient)’s part to indicate his retention of the recipiency suggests that the activity is
incomplete and, as a direct invitation, entitles YUU (teller) to continue the activity. After this, YUU (teller) chooses to preface a resuming action (line 13) to unpack the candidate resource to resume the temporarily ceased activity (P2), although he also has theoption to initiate the resumption directly.
I now exemplify the point that YUU (teller)’s prefacing (P2) is designed to ensurecollaboration with SHO (recipient) by prompting a recognitional uptake prior to the resumption. This teller’s turn of a recognition prompt is grammatically formatted at the
FPP slot as a content question, whose action is warranted by the recipient’s relevant
SPP response (P3). In line 15, SHO (recipient) displays his current uptake of the storyline at the SPP slot by partially reproducing the previously delivered content of thestory but disclosing a specific component of the story about which he is uninformed:“nanchara (something)”. In this prompt-recognition sequence, SHO (recipient) clarifies a boundary between the informed and uninformed materials of the story, to which
YUU (teller) is accessible in a turn-by-turn exchange. Then, YUU (teller) confirms theuptake, displaying that his expectation matches the recipient’s recognition (line 17), andhe implements the restart without leaving a recognitional gap between the teller and recipient (line 18). As mutual understanding is established, the resumption is successful
without halting the activity again.
Excerpt (3), below, reveals a similar pattern in the collaborative process of resuming abruptly disrupted storytelling. Again, my focus is on the action formation of theteller and recipient in the prompt-recognition sequence, in which they collaboratively reestablish the progressivity of the storytelling without leaving the recipient uninformed
about the fundamental component of the storytelling.

(3) [gift_shopping]((MAY (teller) is telling a story about unsuccessfully giving a gift to his acquaint-Pre-resuming Recognition Prompt: A Collaborative Establishment of Resuming Storytelling in Japanese Telephone Conversations

107

ance.))
		 1 MAY: de ((anonymised)) ni denwa
shite=
			anddat phone-call do“then, I made a phone call to (anonymised)“				 2= kiite miyou tte omotte:				asktryquot think“(and) tried to ask“
		
		 3

(.)

		 4
			
		

DEmo DE(h) nai kara=
but pick neg because“	
but because (anonymised) did not pick up my
call”

		 5
= ko[mattan da kedo.
				in.trouble n cop but“I was stumped but...“		
P0	 6 AKI:		 [°gomen= ima denwa chu:°					sorry
now phone during		“I am on the phone“
		 7

(1.2)

P1	 8 AKI: go(h)men gomen.=
			
sorry
sorry
P1’	  9 MAY: = un. (0.2) demo mou
heiki?
				mhm
but already okay		“but are you okay now“
		 10

(.)

P1’11 AKI: un= he(h)iki(h)=			mhm okay		“I am okay“P1’12 MAY: = o(h)u.
				right
		 13
(0.5)
		 14 MAY: sorede:: (0.3) e:to
			
then
well
		 15

(0.6)

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語用論研究 第 21 号

P2 16 MAY: do(h)ko made hanashita kke.
fp
			
where
to
told
		
“what have I told you so far“
		 17

(0.3)

		 18 AKI: hh huh huh huh huh
		 19

(0.3)

P3 20 AKI: u(h)n ((anonymised)) ga nanka
itta n			
yes
nom something said n			desho?
			right?
“(anonymised) said something, didn’t she“
		
		 21

(0.4)

P4 22 MAY: so::u (.) mou
iranai tte iu n da yo			yes
anymore no.need quot say n cop fp
			
na,=
fp
			
		
“(she) said she does not need it anymore“
		 23 AKI: = a:: souiu koto datta no ne:::				oh such thing cop
fp
fp
		“I get it“
Compared to (2), the disorientation of the recipient (P0) in (3) is displayed more abruptly here, without any signal of that disorientation a priori. In line 6, AKI (recipient)’s
overlapped utterance, produced at a relatively lower volume available to MAY (teller),does not retain relevancy to the teller’s storytelling and is thus not situated in that context. Consequently, the storytelling is not continuable, which is evident in that MAY(teller) ceases the activity until AKI (recipient) shows her readiness to be the recipient
again.
Since the progressivity of the activity becomes interrupted with the recipient’s disorientation, the teller must temporarily halt the activity until the recipient returns to thestorytelling. Then, the teller and recipient collaboratively establish space to resume
with the recipient’s display of reorientation to the teller. Regarding this point, (1) and(2) illustrated that the recipient can assist the teller in continuing the activity by requesting information as a direct invitation. Alternatively, in (3), MAY (teller) chooses to initiate an inserted sequence (P1’) in line 9 to confirm the availability of the recipient
again. This decision by MAY (teller) implies that he has a desire to receive a more
concrete display of the recipient’s availability to continue the activity successfully, although the AKI (recipient)’s apology for being disoriented (line 8) stands as a possible

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signal of the re-establishment of recipiency and can solicit the teller’s continuation in an
indirect way. After the production of AKI (recipient)’s confirmation of her availability(line 11), MAY (teller) closes that P1’ sequence with a minimal token, “o(h)u (right)”(line 12). This teller’s minimal token is not designed to pursue further responses in thisinserted sequence but indicates an achievement of the relevant response and thus enables a shift to the next course of action (Schegloff, 1990). That is, the accomplishmentof the P1’ sequence contributes for MAY (teller) to ensure that the storytelling activity
is now progressive with AKI (recipient)’s reorientation.
Then, MAY (teller) attempts to request the aid in resuming from AKI (recipient) in
the prompt-recognition sequence (P2-P3). In line 16, the teller’s production of a preface (P2) is designed to prompt AKI (recipient)’s uptake as a relevant response. The recipient then displays her uptake in line 20 (P3) as a conforming response that accomplishes the teller’s request, which provides a possible resource for the resumption of thestorytelling. The production of the recipient’s uptake allows MAY (teller) to restart thestory in line 22 (P4) without enacting another blocking action.
Regarding the interactional importance of the teller’s preface before resuming, (3)provides significant insight in that the recipient’s uptake (P3) does not necessarily follow the teller’s construction of the story before the disruption emerged. Instead, after
MAY (teller) explains that the third person did not pick up his call (lines 1-4), AKI (recipient) eventually pre-empts the story and jumps to the outcome of miscommunication
between MAY and the person (line 20). In this moment, MAY (teller) may understandwhat is tellable in the subsequent space of the conversation and adjust his telling to accommodate the recipient’s uptake, although he could take an alternative approach andretry the disrupted turn (line 5) by recycling a constituent in that turn (Schegloff, 1987).
As illustrated in the examples so far, the recipient helps the teller to restart the activity in alignment with the recipient’s recognition. If the teller directly initiates the resumption of the storytelling without confirming the recipient’s understanding, as a reply
to the recipient’s go-ahead (P1), there is a risk of a recognitional gap between the teller
and recipient in the next opening of the storytelling. In those cases, the storytelling issuspended again until the recognition gap is resolved, as can be seen in (4). Throughout this exchange, TOM (recipient) is outside, and line 2 is the moment at which sheorients to the presence of a third party and leaves a distracting resource, which halts theongoing storytelling. In line 6, AKI (teller) enacts the immediate continuation, but
TOM (recipient) then blocks the continuation (line 9) due to a lack of understanding
and leaves space for another inserted sequence to complete before resuming the telling.

(4) [part-time_job]((AKI (teller) is sharing a negative experience at her part-time job with a customer
who became angry because the food arrived late.))110

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		 1 AKI: de[mo: okyakusan ga n			butcustomer nom“but the customer is...“		
P0	 2 TOM:		 [Ah= daijoubu desu.
					oh okaycop		“that is fine“
		 3

(0.5)

P1	 4 TOM: gomen= daijoubu kiiteru.
			sorry okay
listen		“go ahead.“
		 5

(0.4)

P2	 6 AKI: soredesa (.) kanari okotta mitai de=			andquite get.mad seem and		 7= kitto,				likely		“	and (the customer) got quite mad and“(L.9–
10)
		 8

(0.3)

		 9 TOM: e (0.2) dare ga:?
			huh
who nom		“who (got quite mad)?“
		 10

(0.9)

		 11 AKI: e? (0.4) sono hito (0.6) toiuka okyakusan?=			huhthat guythat.is customer		“I mean, the customer.“		 12 TOM: ah= sono kyaku
no hanashi ne?=			oh that customer gen storyfp		
“is the story about that customer, then“
Exchange (4) is one example (among four cases in my collection) of an unsuccessful recipient design of the resumption and a failure to establish mutual understanding.
It is particularly notable that in line 6, AKI (teller) resumes the storytelling with anomission of the subject. This turn design, which includes dropping off a personal refer-Pre-resuming Recognition Prompt: A Collaborative Establishment of Resuming Storytelling in Japanese Telephone Conversations

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ence, called ‘zero anaphora’,3 is the practice of leaving some resources unexpressed, reflecting the teller’s supposition as something provided in the sequence (Oh, 2005). In
line 1, where the disruption emerges, the teller mentions the personal reference:“okyakusan (customer)”. However, this production of the reference overlaps with
TOM (recipient)’s disorientation (P0), meaning that she may not hear AKI (teller).
Hence, TOM (recipient) is not able to align with the initiation of the resumption in line
6 and blocks the continuation. In line 9, TOM (recipient) produces a content question
to disclose “who got quite mad”, thereby locating what needs to be ‘repairable’ (Schegloff, Jefferson & Sacks, 1977) in AKI (teller)’s previous launch of the resumption.
Once TOM (recipient) displays her informed status (line 12), the resumption of the storytelling is accepted retrospectively (Schegloff, 2007, p. 217).
Again, a mutually collaborative course of action shared between the teller and recipient is important for a successful resumption without further blocking. Nevertheless,the orderliness of the storytelling is highly contingent on the context, and the teller’s attempt at collaborative unpacking is not always guaranteed to solicit a supportive action
from the recipient. In this regard, excerpt (5) demonstrates a unique construction ofstorytelling, the only one identified in my collection, in that the teller’s request to
prompt the recognition is not achieved with the recipient’s relevant response. To understand this exchange, one must know that SHO (recipient) is playing a video game during the phone call, which is the reason he provides a clear signal of his abrupt disorientation in line 6.

(5) [lazy_brother]((REN (teller) continues a story about her family issues, which includes her comments about the negative attitude of her younger brother.))		 1 REN: sorede atashi ga iwareru no wa=
			
then
I
nom be.said gen top		“and then, I was blamed“		 2=[ nanka nattoku
ika naku te.
				 like convinced be neg
quot		“it was not convincing to me“		 3 SHO: [ so:ne:				I.agree
		 4

3

(0.4)

The phenomenon in which an overt reference is omitted is also discussed using different terms,
such as ‘pro-drop’ (Markee, 2000) or ‘argument omission’ (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 2018).

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		 5 REN: wata- (.) iya=[chotto rifujin dem			((I)) no little unreasonable“ it is a bit unreasonable“		
P0	 6 SHO:			 =[ UWa:,						 wow
		 7

(0.2)

		 8 REN: e (.) nan[i?
			
eh
what
P1	 9 SHO:		
[ gome:n= na(h)ndemo na(h)i.
					sorry
anythingneg			“ nothing“
		 10

(1.6)

P1’11 REN: matte. (0.3) hanashi kiiteta?
			
wait
story
be.listened		“ were you listening“
		 12

(0.2)

P1’13 SHO: un. (0.3) ah kiiteta (.) heiki=			
yeslistened
alright
P1’14=[ heiki.
				 alright		“I was listening, it is fine“(L.13–14)
P2 15 REN: [ matte,=
				wait
P2 16= sakkidoko made hanashita?
				just.now where totold		“ wait, what did I tell you (before)“(L.15–16)
		 17

(0.8)

		 18 SHO: gomen= chotto bikkuri
shita dake da yo:			sorry little be.surprised did
only cop fp
		“	
it is just that I was just distracted“
		 19

(1.1)

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		 20 REN: nanka nagara de[sho:,			
what while cop		“ you were doing something else, weren’t you“
		 21 SHO:		
[ DA:ijoubu=					alight
		 22
= mou
hontoni.
				already seriously		“it is alright, seriously“(L.21–22)
In line 8, REN (teller) treats the production of SHO (recipient)’s exclamation in line 6
as misplaced in the situation. After the storytelling ceases, SHO (recipient)’s following
apology in line 9 might be a resource to signal his reorientation to the activity, but REN(teller) decides to launch a sequence to check SHO (recipient)’s orientation not just at
the moment, as in (3), but also before the disruption emerged. Here, it is implied that
this P1’ sequence is inserted because REN’s clarification request “nan[i (what)” (line8) receives a dispreferred response from SHO (recipient) in line 9, which does not satisfy REN (teller)’s request (Pomerantz, 1984). Then, with SHO (recipient)’s insistenceon his orientation in lines 13 and 14, REN (teller) attempts to unpack SHO (recipient)’s
recognition regarding what was delivered right before the disruption in lines 15 and 16.
In contrast to the other cases, (5) clearly illustrates that the teller’s action ofprompting the recipient’s recognitional uptake opens a ‘possible’ pathway of collaborative resumption with the recipient’s aid, but is prospectively made relevant and only
warranted by the recipient’s following action. In lines 15 and 16, REN (teller)’s request
for SHO (recipient)’s uptake may work to disclose the right resource for the smooth resumption of the storytelling, but subsequently, in line 18, SHO (recipient) resists the request. Instead, SHO (recipient) gives an account for his disorientation with anotherproduction of an apology. Considering that the recipient’s response does not support
the accomplishment of the teller’s FPP, SHO (recipient) leaves space for REN (teller) toreorient to the weak recipiency.

5.

Discussion and conclusion

This article has illustrated how resumption is collaboratively constructed between
the teller and recipient when storytelling is temporarily halted (P0). This is a moment
when a disturbance in the progressivity of the ongoing storytelling emerges with the recipient’s abrupt disorientation. This is not a situated practice to resist the storytelling,such as a conflict between the teller and recipient in terms of the contents provided
through the telling (Goodwin, 1997; Mandelbaum, 1991). Instead, the instances considered in this study are circumstances in which the recipient is distracted by somethingimportant (for him/her) that occurs outside of the context of the telling. Given that therecipient’s produced utterance is not relevant to the telling and thus misplaced, the teller

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語用論研究 第 21 号

decides to temporarily halt the activity until the recipient returns attention to the telling.
The recipient then signals readiness to reorient to the telling, providing an opportunity for the teller to resume the activity (P1). This action formation of go-ahead (either
direct or indirect) may affect how the teller prepares to resume the activity. That is, therecipient’s P1 is not guaranteed to be followed by the teller’s direct (pre-)resumption
action, which is vulnerable to context renewing, depending on whether the teller decides
to initiate the (pre-)resumption of the storytelling or take another step to confirm theavailability of the recipient (Figure 1).
(a)
P1:

P2:

direct go-ahead(request for continuation)

prefacing resumption

(b)
P1:

P2:

indirect go-ahead(apology for disorientation)
P1’(T): rechecking
P1’(R): confirming
prefacing resumption

Figure 1 Two sequential contexts (a) (b) of resuming the disrupted storytelling
In (a), the recipient’s go-ahead is formulated as a clear interrogative request for continuation, as in excerpts (1) and (2), which indexes the activity with the suggested entitlement of the teller to provide the story at the following space (Heinemann, 2006). On
the other hand, in (b), and in excerpts (3) and (5), the teller chooses to insert anothersequence to reconfirm the recipient’s availability for the resumption of storytelling after
the recipient’s apology for disorientation. This implies that the teller may orient to assuring the progressivity of the activity over its immediacy, prioritising a progression of
the sequence as much as minimising the risk of the emergence of further disorientation.
Following P1, the teller’s prefacing of resumption is a reasonable practice to accomplish the progression of a resumption (P2). With the placement of P2, the teller
opens collaboration with the recipient; this action is more than just requesting information to resolve an asymmetry of knowledge between the participants (Heritage, 2012).
In this regard, this study finds that the teller’s P2 turn of pre-resumption provides anopportunity, in the sequence of prompt-recognition, to solicit the recipient’s recognitional uptake as a relevant response (P3), as in the following schematic description (Figure
2).
P0		
P1 (R)<<the disruption emerges>>: reorientation of the recipient

P2 (T)
P3 (R): FPP (pre-resuming recognition prompt): SPP (recognitional uptake)P4 (T): resumption of the storytelling

Figure 2 The exchange of story resumption with the insertion of a minimal prompt-recognition structurePre-resuming Recognition Prompt: A Collaborative Establishment of Resuming Storytelling in Japanese Telephone Conversations

115

Grammatically, the P2 as FPP is in a content question format, but it does not strictly
stand as a request for information to deal with the teller’s uninformed status regarding
the content as in the general aspect of interrogatives with rising final intonation (Couper-Kuhlen, 2012; Stivers, 2010). Without displaying any sign of undergoing a shift
from uninformed to informed (Heritage, 1984),4 the teller rather implements the initiation of the resumption (P4) with its relevance to the recipient’s P3 by first confirming
the recipient’s uptake and then continuing the story, instead of implementing a directcontinuation of the story before the disruption occurred. The achievement of this format of a minimal sequence structure is thus an interactional practice of the teller, whois meant to resume the temporarily halted activity but also to collaboratively accomplish
a successful resumption without leaving a large recognitional gap between the teller andrecipient.
I readdress the point here that the teller’s recognition prompt is a situated practiceof carefully monitoring what is tellable when resuming the storytelling (Lerner, 1992;
Sacks, 1974) to minimise the risk of another block. As is evident in (4), the recipient
does not always guarantee his/her understanding of the content. If the teller successfully acquires an opening to resume the storytelling but mismatches the content by, for instance, skipping the components necessary to progress the story, the resumed storytelling may become vulnerable to be once again blocked and postponed until the story becomes tellable upon the recipient’s recognition of the content. In this way, the recipient’s recognitional uptake warrants the smooth resumption of the storytelling by unpacking a candidate resource for the teller to accomplish that practice.
While I do not intend to oversimplify the context by stating that the resumption‘should’ be done by prefacing the activity or is ‘always’ done in the suggested structureof resuming, this study provides an account of why the teller projects a preface after therecipient’s go-ahead signal. The results of this study coincide with CA work that hassuggested that the teller acts to secure the progressivity of the telling by carefully monitoring what is tellable in a specific moment. The presented work extends this line ofresearch by suggesting that this collaborative feature of storytelling construction is not
exceptional in the instances of abruptly disrupted storytelling which emerges without
any interactional motivation for blocking the activity.
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Transcription convention
[
]
(.)
(0.3)
=
exp.
,
?

overlap on/offset
micro-pause (<0.2 sec)
length of silencelatching
truncation
final pitch (falling)
final pitch (slightly falling)
final pitch (rising)

>
<
(( ))
example:°EXAMPLE

accelerated talktranscriber’s comment
word stresssound stretch
lower volume
increased volume

LOC
N
NOM
QUOT
TOP

Locative
Nominaliser
Nominative
Quotative
Topic

Abbreviations in transcription
ACC
COP
DAT
FP
GEN

Accusative
Copulative
DativeFinal Particle
Genitive