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Research on Language and Social Interaction

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Proposals for Activity Collaboration

Tanya Stivers & Jack Sidnell

To cite this article: Tanya Stivers & Jack Sidnell (2016) Proposals for ActivityCollaboration, Research on Language and Social Interaction, 49:2, 148-166, DOI:10.1080/08351813.2016.1164409

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2016.1164409

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Proposals for Activity CollaborationTanya Stivers a and Jack Sidnellb

aDepartment of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles; bDepartment of Anthropology, University of Toronto

ABSTRACTThis article examines two common ways that speakers propose a new jointactivity—“Let’s X” and “How about X”—in an examination of video record-ings of children playing. Whereas Let’s constructions treat the proposedactivity as disjunctive with the prior, How about constructions treat theproposed activity as modifying the ongoing activity. We rely on distribu-tional as well as turn-design evidence including phonetic and bodilyresources of turn design. We also analyze deviant cases where we arguethat speakers are working to either increase or decrease the distancebetween the new activity and the prior activity. Data are in CanadianEnglish.

A distinctive feature of human sociality is our propensity for cooperation. As Tomasello observes,“human communication is . . . a fundamentally cooperative enterprise, operating most naturally andsmoothly within the context of (1) mutually assumed common conceptual ground, and (2) mutuallyassumed cooperative communicative motives” (2008, p. 6). Arguments that the design of humanlanguage reflects the fundamentally cooperative nature of human interaction span anthropology,philosophy, linguistics, and psychology (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Grice, 1957, 1975; Levinson, 2000,2006; Sperber & Wilson, 1986). Conversation analysis has documented a range of specific ways inwhich this cooperation is manifest in social norms of responding to initiating actions (Schegloff,1968), responding with aligned actions (e.g., answers rather than nonanswer responses; Clayman,2002; Heritage, 1984b; Stivers & Robinson, 2006), and answering with more affiliative acceptances orgrantings (rather than declinations or rejections) (Heritage, 1984b; Pomerantz, 1984). In each case,research has shown that the pro-social or cooperative action is more frequent, more quicklyproduced, and more straightforwardly designed than the alternative (Stivers et al., 2009).

When an individual “recruits” another to participate in a social action (e.g., requesting, offering,or proposing), s/he explicitly solicits cooperation (Drew & Couper-Kuhlen, 2014; Enfield, 2011,2014; Kendrick & Drew, 2016; Rossi, 2012).1 Unlike requesting and offering, proposing invokes bothspeaker and recipient in (a) the decision task and (b) the ensuing activity in a way that is mutuallybeneficial (Clayman & Heritage, 2014; Couper-Kuhlen, 2014). In comparison with the now-extensiveliterature on requests and offers, the turn design of activity proposals, the contexts in which thesedesigns are used, and the affordances these designs have for the organization of action have receivedrelatively little attention.

One possible reason for the relative paucity of studies focusing on proposals is that, in everydayconversation, they appear to be somewhat less frequent than other recruitment actions such as

CONTACT Tanya Stivers stivers@soc.ucla.edu Department of Sociology, UCLA, 264 Haines Hall, 375 Portola Plaza, Box951551, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551.Thank you to participants of a 2011 workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, where we presented an earlyversion of this article. This article has also been presented at the University of Helsinki in 2014 and at the American SociologicalAssociation in 2015. We received useful feedback on each of these occasions. We also thank John Heritage for comments onwritten versions of this article.1Enfield used “recruitments” in conjunction with his grant proposal “Human Sociality and Systems of Language Use” funded by theERC in 2010 (personal communication, July 27, 2010).

© 2016 Taylor & Francis

RESEARCH ON LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL INTERACTION2016, VOL. 49, NO. 2, 148–166http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2016.1164409

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requests, invitations, and offers (Stivers, 2010).2 However, interaction among children playingtogether is replete with proposals for joint activities. Such data therefore offer an excellent oppor-tunity for the examination of proposing. In what follows, we review existing literature relevant to ourstudy, describe our data, and then offer an analysis of two main formats for proposals: Let’sproposals and How about proposals.

Background

Proposals have typically been treated as part of a class of actions concerned with directing another’scourse of action (See also Asmuß & Oshima, 2012 for a review). Davidson (1984), Maynard (1984),and Drew (1984) each examine aspects of responses to proposals as grouped with other actions (seealso Sidnell, 2011). For Davidson, proposals are considered together with invitations, offers, andrequests. Maynard, working in a plea bargaining context, speaks of proposals as actions that offersolutions to the ongoing problem. Drew generally considers invitations but includes proposals underthis umbrella as well. Houtkoop’s book-length treatment of responses to “proposals” specificallyrefers to the class of actions “requests, invitations, offers, and the like” (1987, p. 1).

However, the notion that proposals are distinctive in that they do not presuppose the recipient’sinvolvement but rather invite it (in that way indexing a more egalitarian social relation than otheractions used to direct another’s course of action) was perhaps first developed by Goodwin in herinfluential work on girls’ and boys’ directive sequences (Goodwin, 1980, 1990). She compares thedirectives typically used by boys with those typically used by girls, showing that whereas boys’directives tend to take the form of imperatives or strong and overt requests, girls’ directives makemuch more use of proposals. Goodwin argues that “through the way in which they format theirdirectives, the girls make visible an undifferentiated, ‘egalitarian’ relationship between speaker andaddressee(s) that differs quite markedly from the hierarchical relationship displayed in boys’directives” (1990, p. 111).

More recently, Stevanovic and Peräkylä (2012) considered proposals in relation to deonticauthority in the context of planning meetings. They argue that deontic authority is an individual’sright to determine another’s future action. They compare two sorts of actions: “suggestions for futureevents” (2012, p. 302), which are assertions in which a speaker declaratively asserts a future plan, and“proposals,” which are made using a format that is “expressed as not binding but contingent on therecipient’s approval” (2012, p. 306). The data for their paper are Finnish, but the turn designs aretranslated as We could X or We should X or What if we X where the X component is a proposedcourse of action. Stevanovic and Peräkylä (2012) argue that although both suggestions and proposalswork to solidify a joint decision about some future activity, proposals are treated by recipients asseeking independent approval from the recipient (Yeah that’s good). In contrast, suggestions areresponded to with an information receipt (I see) or a more acquiescent token indicating compliance(Okay or All right). That is, a proposal treats the outcome or future course of action as contingent onthe recipient’s approval.

The difference identified by Stevanovic and Peräkylä (2012) is likely related to what Couper-Kuhlen (2014) discusses as agent (or in Clayman and Heritage’s [2014] terms “benefactor”) andbeneficiary. Specifically, in her recent revisiting of the array of directive and commissive actions(proposals, offers, requests, suggestions, and invitations) in everyday conversation, Couper-Kuhlen(2014) argues that proposals are distinguishable from offers, requests, and suggestions because inproposals, the agent of the future action is both self and other and that the beneficiary of the futureaction is also self and other. Invoking Goodwin’s earlier analysis (1980, 1990), Couper-Kuhlen notesthat “Proposals*, by contrast, are more symmetric and egalitarian in advocating joint action” (2014,p. 630; asterisk in original to indicate that these are “technical, not lay terms” p. 628). Clayman and

2Note that proposals were rare enough that they were folded into a category including offers, requests, and suggestions thatcombined were less than 2% but of which requests, offers, and suggestions were more frequent.

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Heritage (2014), building on Couper-Kuhlen’s discussion, argue that while this split may indeeddistinguish action type based on speaker stance, design does not determine how the recipient willtreat the action. They show that further analytic leverage can be gained through distinguishingbenefactive stance and benefactive status in much the same way that one can distinguish epistemicstance and epistemic status (Heritage, 2012a, 2012b). With regard to proposals in everyday con-versation, what Clayman and Heritage (2014) term “congruent” instances involve proposals thatadopt the stance of both self and other as beneficiaries and are taken up as such (e.g., “Shall we x”;“Yes, let’s do that”). In what they describe as noncongruent cases, offers or requests are treated asproposals; or alternatively, proposals are subsequently converted into offers.

What the literature has thus far left unexamined is the systematic use of different turn designs toimplement the action of proposing. This article begins with a brief discussion of the main ways inwhich children make bids to get another to join them in an activity. We then focus on proposals,specifically two of the most common types: Let’s X and How about X proposals. We argue thatproposals that are done through the Let’s X design treat the proposed activity as discrete from theprior activity. In contrast, we argue that proposals with How about X treat the proposed activity asan incremental modification of an ongoing activity—either building on a continuing activity orproviding a solution to an ongoing dilemma.

Data

Data for this study were collected at a university lab school in Eastern Canada by one of the authors(JS). The data are video recordings of unstructured playtime among same-age peers in a room at theschool that is separate from their normal classroom. Children were video recorded in groups of threefriends from the same class for approximately 60 minutes. An adult was present but limited his/herinteraction as much as possible. Children were allowed to select toys such as kapla (long thin blocksfor building), plastic animals, structures for running marbles, etc., to bring with them. They weretold only to “play together” and could play in whatever way they wanted during this brief respitefrom the classroom.

Recordings were generally made of three same-age peers at each grade level from transitionalkindergarten (approximately 4 years old) through third grade (approximately 8 years old). Betweenseven and 19 recordings were made at each grade level for a total of 56 recordings—approximately40 hours of interaction. Data collection procedures including use of anonymized transcripts andvideo stills were approved by the relevant IRB. Vocal data were transcribed according to CAconventions (Hepburn & Bolden, 2012). Additional visible features of data have been added asrelevant to the analysis.

For the present study, we identified all instances of Let’s and How about that involved a proposalto perform an action or activity. Thus “Let’s see,” which was done either as a request to look atsomething or as an inward-looking voiced indication of contemplation, was not included for furtherstudy. We rely on conversation analysis to analyze the difference between these forms, including ananalysis of body positioning during the turn, with a focus on the contexts in which each proposalformat occurred and the way that participants orient to the proposal—proposer and proposee. Inline with CA methods, we identify a different distribution among the two turn designs. We offerdescriptive statistical information to support our claims both with respect to the difference in contextof use and the difference in turn design features. Finally, we rely on an analysis of deviant cases forfurther support of our analysis of when and how Let’s versus How about proposals are used.

Analysis

In the social and cultural context we are concerned with here, children spend much of their timeplaying with toys and figurines and deploying these objects and their own bodies for imaginary playepisodes (Kidwell, 2011; Sidnell, 2011). In these data, likely representative of other sorts of data in

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which children are copresent, one child is routinely working to get another child to engage in someactivity with him/her. Initiations of joint activity are ubiquitous. In these data we see some sort ofinitiation of joint activity occurring as frequently as every 30 seconds. There are three main ways thatchildren initiate a joint activity. Children (a) request collaboration, (b) invite collaboration bybeginning the activity, or (c) propose collaboration. We will briefly discuss the first two and thenfocus on the third.

Requesting collaboration involves the child initiating the joint activity by asking another childto engage in a joint activity. An illustration is shown in Extract 1. In this case three juniorkindergarteners (approximately 4 years old) are playing at a table. Ria has just completedbuilding a structure out of wooden blocks. Alina is having some difficulty building her structure.The adult in the room suggests at lines 7–8 that Alina might like help from Ria, but no offer orproposal for this is forthcoming (lines 9–12). In line 22 Alina requests that Ria help her, whichRia does (lines 24–25).

Two features of this example are more or less canonical for this type of joint activity initiation:

(1) Requests in these data typically use an interrogative format such as this “Can you” frameand do not typically involve the “I was wondering” frame discussed by Curl and Drew(2008).

(2) Requests typically involve an asymmetry in the benefactor-beneficiary relationship such thatthe beneficiary is the requester and the benefactor is the requestee. This is typical of requests(Couper-Kuhlen, 2014).

An alternative way that children invite collaboration is to simply begin the activity as a publiclyvisible or audible display. It is very difficult to represent this type of initiation in text because ittypically contains no vocal component. Rather, in these initiations children start an activity such asbuilding, flying an airplane, etc., in a way that is visible, usually entering the other child’s line of sightand frequently also the physical space of ongoing activity, and in this way s/he visibly invites anotherchild’s collaboration without requesting it explicitly. For instance, in one video a child begins a battlesaying “Bang bang bang bang” as a figurine while facing another child (see Bergen, 2014 on this kindof character play). While this invites the other child to participate in a pretend battle activity, there is

(1) JK T13

01 RIA: ^Finished!^ 02 (.) 03 ADU: °Ghh(od)°. 04 ADU: °(Th)at's crazy.° 05 (.) 06 RIA: eh heh hehh 07 ADU: .mlhhh Maybe: Maybe Alina would like you to help: 08 with h^ers. 09 (0.9) 10 JOE: Because it's: like that small? 11 (0.5) 12 RIA: It's like this?

. . . ((9 lines continued talk between Joel and Ria omitted))

22 ALI: [Can you help me do thi::s_ Ria?,23 RIA: [hh .hhhh hhhh 24 RIA: [((gets up on table to look and then 25 goes to other side of table with Alina))

3For readers who specifically wish to know about the grade level of the children, this is available in the headers for each dataextract. JK and SK correspond to junior and senior kindergarten respectively. G1–G3 correspond to grades 1–3.

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no overt request or proposal to do so. What sets this type of joint activity initiation apart then is thatchildren only invite collaboration but do not make relevant a grant or rejection in any way.

Proposals for joint activity constitute the third main way that children initiate joint activities.Proposals take a variety of forms, including questions such as Why don’t we X; Do you want to X;Should we X; or We can X; but two of the most common constructions in these data are Let’s X andHow about X.4 An example of the former is shown in Extract 2. Junior kindergarteners Adam, Cora,and a third child are playing together. The two girls are playing on the floor a couple of feet awayfrom Adam, who is looking through a book that has pictures of different things that can be madewith wooden kapla blocks (which are on the floor where the girls are sitting).

After staying silent during lines 1–5, at line 6 Adam turns to the girls and proposes that they makea chair out of the kapla blocks (line 6). Cora enthusiastically accepts this proposal with “Oka:y?” inline 8 and they proceed to begin the collaborative activity.

A proposal using the How about format is shown in Extract 3. Here senior kindergarteners(approximately age 5) Asher and Bill are building a large structure on a table out of a combination ofblocks and containers. At line 7 Bill proposes that they put the “<riche:s> in this wa::::ll.”.

The proposal is accepted by Asher in line 9.Although each of these actions (requesting collaboration, simply initiating the activity, and

proposing an activity) solicits the co-involvement of the speaker and recipient in an activity, theactions differ in several key ways—(a) who stands to benefit from the proposed activity, (b) theposition of this action relative to the activities of the participants up to this point, and (c) therelevance of uptake to the action. Requests for collaboration clearly treat the activity as for the benefitof the requester, and indeed, the activity may not be possible without the participation of therecipient. However, the nature of the participation is constrained to what the requester has requested(Clayman & Heritage, 2014; Couper-Kuhlen, 2014). In contrast, simply initiating the activity invitesinvolvement by the recipient but does not make any claims as to who benefits from the involvement.

(2) JK T4 01 ADA: [((looking through book of kapla designs)) 02 COR: [(.Hhh) Kee:p i' low just (to)/(and) 03 [keep it [ n e a t, [cause we're- 04 ADA: [((stops)) [((gaze to girls))[((moves closer to girls)) 05 COR: [(there's lots of) ( ) 06 ADA: [hhHey:. Let's make uh chai:r oka:y?,07 (0.5)//((Adam showing picture to Cora)) 08 COR: Oka:y? 09 ADA: Yeah, this chair. 10 COR: Okay. So, . . .

(3) SK T13 01 ASH: If this is one wa::ll, 02 (0.8) 03 ASH: (then) we're gonna make one over the:re?, 04 (0.4) 05 ASH: Okay Bill? 06 (2.6)/((Bill moves around table looking at wall)) 07 BIL: How ‘bout we put: (.) thuh <riche:s> in this wa::::ll.08 (2.3) 09 ASH: Okay:,

4Not all utterances making use of the Let’s X or How about X frame were proposals for a joint activity. As mentioned earlier, “Let’ssee” is rarely done as a proposal of this type, for instance. Some of these are done much more as self-talk. Moreover, the Howabout X frame for objects proposes objects but not activities as in “How about this one?” Although this is very close to ourphenomenon, our focus was on proposals for joint activities that made use of one of these frames.

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The activity is treated as in progress and proceeding regardless of the other’s participation. Proposingan activity differs from each of these other actions in that it implicates speaker and recipient not onlyin terms of participation but also in terms of benefit. For instance, adding “riches” to the wall is forboth Asher’s and Bill’s benefit. It is not that the wall is Asher’s and that Bill would be providingriches to him. Nor is the wall Bill’s and he would be asking Asher to provide riches for his wall. Thus,this “improves” the wall for both of their benefit. The activity is treated as not necessarily happeningwithout the other’s participation, but what constitutes that participation is very much in the hands ofthe recipient (Clayman & Heritage, 2014; Couper-Kuhlen, 2014).

The three actions also differ somewhat also in terms of their response-mobilizing properties(Stivers & Rossano, 2010). Collaboration requests are typically designed as interrogatives andthrough their morphosyntax as well as their epistemics strongly solicit granting or denial. Activityinitiations, insofar as they simply perform an action without any specific vocal social action, onlyinvite the joining in of the recipient in the activity. Proposals, as an action, fall between the two,implicating acceptance or rejection (Asmuß & Oshima, 2012), though we expect that this relevancecan be increased through turn design (Stivers & Rossano, 2010). Proposals then are unique as a wayto initiate joint activity, suggesting mutual benefit for both speaker and addressee and invitinguptake, without necessarily imposing a strong demand for it.

An examination of proposals

For this study we identified 215 instances of Let’s proposals and 65 instances of How about proposalsacross the data set. We will argue that the crucial difference between these two proposal formats isthat Let’s formatted proposals treat the activity being proposed as discrete from the prior activity andthus as constituting something new. By contrast, How about formatted proposals treat the activitybeing proposed as an incremental adjustment of an ongoing activity. In what follows we providemultiple types of evidence in support of this argument. We begin with distributional evidence andthen move to data internal evidence including turn design features, forms of uptake, and finallydeviant cases.

Activity type: new vs. modifications. Activity proposals fall into two main types: proposals foractivities that are discrete from the prior activity—to a greater or lesser degree—and proposals for amodification of the activity that is otherwise ongoing. When we talk about a new activity we meanthat the activity is qualitatively distinct from what was previously being done by the children. Thiscan be seen if we return to Extract 2. There Adam’s Let’s proposal to build a chair is completelydiscrete from what they were doing just prior insofar as he has been looking at a book on his ownwhile the other two children are playing in another part of the room. The proposal would involve thechildren in a wholly different activity—that of building a chair.

Similarly, see Extract 4. Here, first graders Kelsey, Sadie, and Tom are at a table playing withplastic animal figurines. They are actively engaged in this as seen by the talk across lines 1–3.However, at line 6, Sadie proposes Let’s get tuh thee other side of thuh room—a proposal to literallyrun across the room which they then do.

(4) G1 T6 01 KEL: °Yeah they are.° 02 SAD: Yeah these are thuh saddest piggies in thuh 03 who:le world. 04 (2.1) 05 TOM: Je:nga[:, 06 SAD: [Kel:sey let's get tuh 07 th[ee other side of thuh roo:m.08 ADU: [I don't want to hear that ( a:ll) again that 09 was so: loud. ((yelling))

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Extract 5 offers a final illustration, this time prefaced with Okay. Here, junior kindergartenersClaire, Cora, and Adam, shown earlier, are using wooden kapla blocks to build structures on thefloor. We see an indication that one such structure is being finished at line 1. Cora is, in line 3,working to suggest something that is not completed and is rejected by Claire at line 4. AlthoughCora pursues, Claire competes for the floor with three uses of Cora’s name as a summons (Schegloff,1968, 1986) and then a pre- in line 7 (Schegloff, 2007).

Line 12 is not built as a continuation of what Claire started but opportunistically seizes on havingCora’s attention to propose a new structure to build. While proposals for new activities are oftenhighly separate, in this case we see that in a building activity, building new structures is also treatedas new. Similarly, new activities can include discrete phases of a game. For instance, shifts frombuilding something to testing it or using it in some way would also constitute (and are treated asconstituting) discrete activities. New activity proposals vastly outnumber proposals to modifycurrent activities: 69% (n = 194) versus 31% (n = 86).

When children propose modifying an ongoing activity, we can observe two primary types ofmodifications—incremental changes in the activity and proposals for activities that offer a solutionto some problem with the ongoing activity. Extract 3 illustrates a child proposing an incrementalmodification to an ongoing activity. This proposal concerns where to put the riches vis-à-vis a walledstructure that the children are already working on together. The proposal is to modify a wall thatalready exists in their structure, and the participation in the activity remains the same.

A similar case is shown in Extract 6. Junior kindergarteners Matt, Bill, and another child havebeen pretending to be teachers in a class. We see this at line 1 with the directive and subsequentacceptance (line 3). The children are off camera (standing and sitting virtually under the camera)during most of this extract, and we hear minimal vocal participation in the several seconds followingline 1. It is then, at line 10, that Matt proposes that this is not a regular class but shark class and thathe is shark kid/boy (i.e., a pupil) and then in somewhat of a reversal, that he is the teacher (line 12).

(5) JK T4 01 ADA: [Look at my bed.= 02 [((finishing a kapla bed)) 03 COR: =And then sometimes=.hh=you can pu- .hh 04 CLA: <No.= 05 COR: =nor[mal o:ne like this an' then you- 06 CLA: [Cora? Cora?, 07 CLA: Cora:. (.hh) °lemme [>(show you something?)<° 08 ADA: [Yea::h. 09 (.) 10 CLA: You should take this part .hhH 11 (.) 12 CLA: (h)°O°kay let's make a karate building.13 CLA: <I could show you how. 14 (0.7) 15 CLA: (I know)- 16 COR: An E:LEphant in a DI:nosaur be:d? ((loud)) ((All kids laugh))

(6) JK T2 MAT: ( ) Just pretend like we #are.=h# ((teachers)) 01

02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13

(0.4) BIL: °Yeah.° (1.5) MAT: .hhh [hu:h_ BIL: [(mm) (1.7) ?? (stop_) (1.8) MAT: °Hm mm hm° ((humming)) .hh how about this is shark_ .hh °class an' I'm shark kid_ MAT: .h I mean: shark boy; so I am thuh teacher_ (hh) BIL: <En I'm- en I'm the best super hero in thuh wor:ld.

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This proposal, as with other How about proposals involves an incremental adjustment to theongoing activity of being teachers—classroom play, essentially. In this case the modification is tobecome sharks.

Extract 7 illustrates the second type of activity modification proposal. Here senior kindergartenersKen and Shawn have been playing with animal figurines. We can see that at line 1 they arenegotiating who will be the bad guy and who will be the good guy in this character play. A disputeoccurs across lines 3–7. The target proposal is at line 9 with “^How ‘bout we both be good guy:s.”Critical here is that the two are engaged in an activity involving bad guys and good guys alreadywhen Shawn proposes that they could both be good guys.

When children propose a new activity relative to what had been going on, they use the Let’sformat nearly all of the time, as shown in Table 1, and only seldom used for modification proposals.In contrast, when proposing a modification of an ongoing activity, they almost always rely on theHow about format. See Table 1. This difference in distribution is significant, χ(1, N = 280) = 136.21,p < .001, suggesting that the relationship between type of activity and proposal design is not one ofchance.

This distributional asymmetry offers a first form of evidence that the Let’s and How about proposalformats are distinct and are used in different contexts. In the next section we turn to a second form ofevidence—the way that the turn is designed beyond the Let’s or How about component.

Proposal turn design. Our two focal types of proposals tend to be designed in ways that eitherhighlight the activity as new and disjoined from prior interaction (Let’s X) or downplay thedisjunctiveness of the proposal (How about). Disjunctiveness can be highlighted both in terms ofturn position and composition. Although there is no recipe for doing disjunction, Let’s proposalsfrequently mark disjunction with some range of features including coming out of a silence, startingthe TCU with a sharp in-breath, high pitch onset, using a disjunctive preface, and/or a shift in bodyorientation. Prefaces seen in these data were most commonly summonses, address terms, No/Yes,Okay, Now, and Oh. Not all of these features are present at any one time, but the range of featuresoccurs more typically with Let’s proposals than with How about proposals.

For instance, Let’s proposals occur with turn prefaces more frequently than How aboutproposals, as shown in Table 2. The differential distribution of turn prefaces across proposaltypes is statistically significant, χ2(1, N = 280) = 16.86, p < .001. Moreover, when we consider thetypes of prefaces that are used, we see that these tend to be prefaces that accentuate the disjunctivenature of the turn.

(7) SK T10 01 KEN: He- [You're a bad guy_ I'm a good guy.= 02 KEN: [((pointing to figure in Shawn's hands)) 03 KEN Yah=[hi=ya ((attacking Shawn's figure with his 04 own)) 05 SHA: [(^^no no no no [no^^) 06 SHA: [((pulling figure away)) 07 SHA [((pushing Ken away)) 08 SHA: I (wan-)/(wil-) (0.5)/ ((reaching for new figure)) 09 SHA: [We're- ^How 'bout we both be good guy:s. 10 SHA: [((getting new figure)) 11 KEN: [Thuh hippo's uh good guy. 12 KEN: [((Bouncing hippo on Shawn's body as he lays on 13 table))

Table 1. Proportions of Let’s and How About Proposals by Activity Type.

New Activity Proposal Modification Proposal

Let’s proposal 87% (n = 187) 13% (n = 28)How about proposal 11% (n = 7) 89% (n = 58)

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A summons, for instance, is a marker of an action as disjunctive with what came prior by virtueof requesting someone’s attention from an alternative activity that they were otherwise engaged in.As analyzed by Schegloff (1968), a summons is a generic preliminary action, one which initiates asequence that precedes some additional sequence such as a request, or in this case, a proposal.Summonses do not occur in the middle of an ongoing activity but at the beginning—the phoneringing or verbal calling of someone being prototypical instances. These children are togetherinside one room—at most a few yards apart. Yet the summons works to highlight that what iscoming next is not related to what came prior. Address terms in this context may act assummonses or as resources for next speaker selection (Lerner, 2003; Sacks, Schegloff, &Jefferson, 1974). Either way, address terms also serve to indicate that what is coming next requiresadditional early-turn attention.

No and Yes interjection tokens are also frequently included as a turn preface but are mostcommonly used to close a prior sequence, and then the proposal comes next. They arguably drawa contrast between what has been rejected or agreed to previously and the proposal that the turndelivers. In contrast, Oh and Now preface the proposal in a way that suggests that what will comenext has been just thought of (in the case of Oh (Heritage, 1984a) or to semantically indicate a shift(in the case of Now). Okay/All right have been shown to be boundary marking, often serving to closesequences (Beach, 1993, 1995; Schegloff, 2007).

In addition to the prefaces, Let’s turns are also frequently designed in ways that accentuate theirdisjunctiveness through other aspects of turn design, whereas How about proposals typicallyinvolve turn designs that phonetically and bodily minimize disjunctiveness with the ongoingactivity. In making this claim, we are drawing on many studies of phonetic resources (Couper-Kuhlen, 2004; e.g., Goldberg, 1978; Local & Kelly, 1986; Local, 1992) and a range of work on bodilyresources for indicating continuation versus discontinuation with ongoing activities (e.g.,Depperman, Schmitt, & Mondada, 2010; Mondada, 2009; Pillet-Shore, 2010; Robinson, 1998;Robinson & Stivers, 2001; Schegloff, 1998). Of course, as indicated earlier, not all of these featuresare present in any given case, but they work in concert to highlight (or downplay) the disjunc-tiveness of the proposal.

With respect to highlighting the disjunctiveness of the proposal, we can observe this if we returnto Extract 2, reproduced next. The Let’s proposal is preceded by an increased-volume summons Heyissued to the two girls, despite their being in very close proximity.

In terms of body positioning, the proposal is also delivered as disjunctive with what Adam had beendoing. Adam is the boy kneeling on the right in the figures. Note too that he shifts his torso and legs torotate toward the girls and away from the chair. If we compare Figure 1a from line 1 of Extract 2, withFigure 1b, we see the beginning of his move, which occurs right after the summons Hey in line 6.

Table 2. Proportions of Let’s & How About Proposals Observed With Versus Without Turn Prefaces.

Prefaced Unprefaced

Let’s proposal 47% (n = 101) 53% (n = 114)How about proposal 18% (n = 12) 82% (n = 53)

(2) JK T4 ADA: [((looking through book of kapla designs; Figure 1a)) COR: [(.Hhh) Kee:p i' low just (to)/(and) [keep it [ n e a t, [cause we're- ADA: [((stops)) [((gaze to girls))[((moves closer to girls)) COR: [(there's lots of) ( ) ADA: [hhHey[:. Let's make uh chai:r oka:y?, ADA: [Figure 1b (0.5)//((Adam showing picture to Cora)) COR: Oka:y? ADA: Yeah, this chair. COR: Okay. So, . . .

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11

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A second example is shown in Extract 8 involving first graders. Here, Laura is standing on theopposite side of a table from Logan and Mico. Laura is facing the camera. Mico and Laura areworking together to build a structure with wooden blocks on which a marble will roll. In line 1 andfollowing up in line 9, Logan initiates a sequence involving a structure he’s working on indepen-dently. In competition, Laura first proposes one way the structure they are working on jointly couldbe done (lines 2–7), and then, in line 10, Laura proposes a wholly different idea in her proposal tostart off really high. This Let’s proposal begins with the turn preface Oh, here produced with highpitch onset and a further pitch rise in the Oh contour. High pitch has been found to occurcommonly in activity and topic shift contexts (Couper-Kuhlen, 2004) and thus highlights thedisjunctiveness of what she is doing in line 10.

In addition to the high pitch and the Oh preface, the sharp in-breath “.hh” also boundaries off theproposal as disjunctive. Although the basic orientation of her body remains to the table, we can see ashift in the intensity of her body if we compare Figures 2a and 2b. In 2b, which is taken just as she’spursing her lips and starting “^O^h.”, her upper body can be seen to shift from a relaxed posture toan actively engaged one: Her eye gaze focuses on a different area, and her hands move into a liftedand held position.

Taken together, her body, preface, pitch, and in-breath show that what she is starting here isdisjunctive from what came before. Note that in Figure 2b the leaning forward shows engagement,and that is precisely the point—her engagement contrasts with her more passive appraising bodyposture in 2a. We can also see that following the proposal, Mico accepts it vocally (lines 13 and 17)and then begins to work on it physically as well.

Figure 1a. Body positioning from Extract 2, line 1. Figure 1b. Body positioning from Extract 2, line 7.

(8) G1 T4 LOG: Wanna see this? 01

02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

LAU: °No then it would be like-° LAU: .hh ^No. It has to be- start like this. (.) LAU: °So it gets power (enough to go down). (.) LAU: Then it should- (.) like go down, (1.4)/Figure 2a LOG: Wanna see mi:ne?= LAU: =^O[^h. .hh Let's start off ri:lly high? [Figure 2b ((note rounded lips)) .hh (.) MIC: Y[eh LAU: [Start off- really high and then uhm a few levels going down (then) this? (4.4) LAU: Y:e[:s. LAU: [And then it will be fun.

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As should be clear, strong boundary marking is common in the design of Let’s proposals, whetherthat is visibly achieved with a shift in body orientation or vocally with a turn initial preface, oftenincluding sharp in-breaths, high pitch, etc. These design elements contrast with the way that Howabout proposals are typically designed to minimize the disjunctiveness between the proposed activityand the ongoing interaction. This is achieved with the relative scarcity of prefaces, thus suggestingthat there is nothing to set apart between the prior turn or sequence and the present one. Similarly,even when these proposals do involve pitch shifts, they are less marked relative to the prior activitythan those seen in the case of Let’s proposals. Consider Extract 9 in which Laura (who we met inExtract 8) proposes that a particular point should be the entrance to the structure being built. Justprior to this, the girls were working on the structure, but Sylvia had placed cards in the way of thefinal piece of the structure. It is at this point that Extract 9 begins. Laura’s “Excuse me.” (line 1) isdesigned to get Sylvia to move the cards out of the way. This becomes more explicit in line 4. InFigure 3a, Laura who is at the end of the table, on the left of the figures, is physically moving some ofSylvia’s cards while Sylvia is placing others of them down simultaneously. This clears the path for thenext wood block in the gap that is visible next to the girls’ hands.

The proposal itself is uttered as Laura moves to place the wooden piece across the gap in thestructure (Figure 3b). What is important for us is that bodily, Laura and Sylvia are oriented to thesame basic place. Although there is a repositioning of bodies, they remain oriented to the same pointin the wall. The proposal is to build on what they have already constructed: In this case, it literallybuilds since the gate is an element of the already existing wall. And, since this is the same individual

Figure 2a. Body positioning from Extract 8, line 8.

(9) G1T9 01 LAU: Excuse me. 02 (.) 03 SYL: 'kay(.) Uhm- 04 LAU: °Y' have t' move- put these in [my ( ).° 05 (3.2) [Figure 3a 06 LAU: How >'bo[u'< this is how you got in. 07 [Figure 3b 08 (.) 09 SYL: [°(yeah.)° 10 LAU: [Like a li'l' gate. 11 LAU: .hh No this should=h uhm go out 12 SYL: °Ye[s:,° 13 LAU: [°(then)/(in) 14 LAU: .hh .th So like thi:s?

Figure 2b. Body positioning from Extract 8, line 11.

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who produced the proposal in Extract 7, we can also see that the same speakers rely on differentformats in different contexts.

Finally, return to Extract 3 discussed earlier and reproduced next. Here too the proposal Howabout we put thuh riches in this wall is built to be parasitic on the current activity and is designedwithout any marking of disjuncture. In Figures 4a and 4b, Bill is in white facing the camera. Asherhas his back to the camera in Figure 4a and is at the end of the table in Figure 4b. The “wall” thatis visible in 4b is what Asher refers to in line 1. In line 3 he requests confirmation that the plan isto make a wall that would be perpendicular to the existing wall. Bill’s proposal implicitly confirmsthis insofar as it is designed in a way that presupposes the very wall that Asher was asking about.However, Bill’s proposal is to put “riche:s” in the wall, which would entail a different design forthe wall than the fence structure of the first wall.

Critical for our analysis here is that this How about proposal is built to be parasitic on the currentongoing activity of building walls. The proposal itself is emerging out of a silence during which Billmoved from one end of the table to the other, likely in anticipation of making the proposal regardingthe wall. Yet nothing marks the proposal as disjunctive with the ongoing activity.

Thus far we have shown that Let’s proposals and How about proposals are used for different types ofactivity proposals: Let’sproposals aremost commonly usedwhen the activity is newor disjunctivewithwhatcame before; How about proposals are most commonly used when the activity is not disjunctive with theongoing activity but involves an incremental shift or offers a solution to a dispute concerning the activity.Wehave also shown thatwhereas Let’sproposals are built to highlight the disjunct between the proposal andthe prior activity using turn prefaces, sharp in-breaths,marked pitch, and substantial body shifts,Howaboutproposals are built to minimize the disjunct between the current proposal and the prior activity. In thefollowing section, we turn to a final form of evidence in support of this analysis—deviant cases.

Figure 3a. Body positioning from Extract 9, line 5. Figure 3b. Body positioning from Extract 9, line 7.

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Deviant cases. If Let’s is a practice for marking a proposed activity as disjunctive with the prioractivity, and How about is a practice for marking a proposed activity as conjoined to what has comeprior, two sets of deviant cases emerge: those where an activity is clearly not new but where Let’s isnonetheless used and those where an activity is clearly disjunctive but where How about is used. Weargue that the small set of cases that do not conform to the pattern nonetheless support our analysisfor reasons that will become apparent. Consider Extract 10. Here Alina is making a structure out ofwooden kapla blocks. In Figure 5 we can see Alina’s hands on the blocks of an already quite tallstructure. Ria is standing next to her.

The relevant proposal in Extract 10 is by Ria: let’s make it as tall as a kid. Such a proposal, giventhat it simply proposes making a structure that Alina is already making taller, even taller, is clearlyan incremental one relative to the ongoing activity. However, it uses Let’s and is even prefaced with asharp in-breath and an Oh.

What is distinctive about this proposal is that the building has, thus far, been Alina’s alone. It is inher epistemic and deontic domain of authority (Heritage & Raymond, 2005; Stevanovic & Peräkylä,2012). This proposal is, then, not merely to modify an activity but also to modify the underlyingparticipation structure of that activity. Thus, although Let’s seems inapt for this interaction purely interms of the relationship between the new activity and the ongoing or just prior activity, it is entirelyunderstandable in terms of the disjunct of the participation.

A similar case is shown in Extract 11. Here the proposal is at line 18 being made by Bill andinvolves a proposal to get into a pretend pirate ship (actually a plastic tub). Critical for under-standing this is that Matt was sitting and moving the tub around as of line 1 as the adult is askingabout a rule they were talking about. Just prior to line 10, Jon, followed by Bill, walked over to the

Figure 4a. Body positioning from Extract 3, line 4. Figure 4b. Body positioning from Extract 3, line 8.

(10) JKT101 RIA: Oh maybe sometime(s) .h you could [°°( )°° 02 [((pointing to structure)) 03 (0.2) 04 JOE: Oh (wai-) there's much kapla, 05 (2.7) 06 JOE: Oh wait. (.) I need to grab (more.) 07 (0.4) 08 RIA: Could I h^elp you? 09 (0.9) 10 ALI: Ye: yes? 11 (0.9) 12 RIA: .hhh Oh [let's make it .H as ta::ll as uh ki:^:d. 13 [Figure 5 14 ALI: ((smiling and gazing to Ria)

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tub. In overlap with line 10, Jon climbed into the tub behind Matt (Figure 6). Although this tub hadnot previously been announced to be a pirate ship, the boys have been playing pirates and thusMatt’s sitting in the tub could be understood by the boys as sitting in a boat of some type because therug had previously been water. Either way, when Bill proposes to climb in, two boys are alreadyinside, thus arguably making the proposal clearly incremental rather than disjunctive.

Not only is the case one of an incremental activity in which a Let’s proposal is used, it also startswith a summons “Hey!” highlighting it as disjunctive. However, once again, Bill is coming as anoutsider to an activity that is in progress between the other boys. Thus, while the activity is arguablya continuation of what they are already doing, the participation of Bill is new.

A final deviant case can be found in Extract 12. Here a How about proposal is used for an activitythat is clearly disjunctive with the ongoing activity. The ongoing activity involves a disputeconcerning sitting on different chairs. Specifically, Stephanie, Ria, and another child were playingwith blocks on the floor. Ria gets up and goes to sit on one of three chairs against the wall (See

Figure 5. Body positioning from Extract 10, line 13.

(11) JKT801 ADU: What's thuh bubble ru:le. 02 MAT: [((sitting in plastic tub)) 03 (0.5) 04 ???: [(Head) 05 MAT: [Heads! Don't touch heads. 06 (0.4) 07 ADU: Don't touch heads? 08 BIL: Don't touch anybody. 09 (.) 10 ADU: W'l- <Oh: [there's uh head rule and there's= 11 JON: [((climbing into the tub behind Matt)) 12 BIL: [((Standing to side of plastic tub)) 13 ADU: =uh bubble rule? 14 MAT: Yes.= 15 JON: Yeah. 16 ADU: °Oh: okay.° 17 (.) 18 BIL: Hey! [(0.2) 19 [((Figure 6)) 20 BIL: [Let's go (in) your p^irate ship together. 21 MAT: [WHOA! 20 MAT: [Yeah ( ot) #Arr matey:#. 21 MAT: [((Standing to make room for Bill))

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Figure 7). She first sits in the middle chair and then in overlap with line 1, moves to the chair to herright, closest to Stephanie (standing). Then in line 3, Ria moves to the chair that is bigger than theother two. The dispute continues across lines 4–14. The proposal How about we play together outsideis clearly disjunctive relative to their play on and around the chairs and even relative to the creatingof corrals for the animals with blocks just prior to this extract.

In this case, although the proposal is entirely disjunctive, it is like other How about cases inthat it proposes a solution to an ongoing dispute. In proposing the activity with a form thathighlights its connection to the prior activity, it proposes the new activity to be related to—rather than disjunctive with—the prior. Thus, this suggests that Let’s and How about might beused strategically in some deviant cases specifically to treat an activity as more or less disjunctivethan it might otherwise appear.

In this section we have examined three cases that initially appear to offer counterevidence forthe claim made that Let’s proposals treat the proposed activity as disjunctive and How aboutproposals treat the proposed activity as only incrementally modifying the ongoing activity. Wehave shown, however, that these cases, like other deviant cases we have, actually provide furtherevidence for our claim. Specifically, Let’s is used in proposals that appear to be only incrementalmodifications when the proposal involves moving into someone else’s participation domain,

Figure 6. Body positioning from Extract 11, line 19.

(12) JKT6 01 STE: No me sittin' there. 02 STE: .hh no- .h me sit in: (begah). 03 (1.2)/((Ria moves to big chair)) 04 STE: [No:: meh- I said me sit in bi- th' big o:ne. 05 [((Ste steps across blocks and walks to and 06 touches chair)) 07 (0.5)/((Ste and Ria gaze at each other)) 08 RIA: (hhhe)/(3.0) 09 STE: °Sittin- I: [sittin' here.° 10 STE: [((touching chair)) 11 (1.7) 12 RIA: I s (0.2) first./((bouncing on chair)) 13 (1.6)/((Ste turning to look at other chairs)) 14 STE: °Please could I sit in here:_° 15 (0.8) 16 RIA: [.HH [£°How about we play togetha outsi^::de.° 17 [((turning in chair to face Stephanie)) 18 [Figure 7 19 (0.5) 20 STE: °Ye^ah(h).°°

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epistemically, deontically, or both. How about, used in new activity proposals, minimizes theappearance of change in contexts of conflict, for instance. While such cases are rare, they provideimportant evidence that shows these two proposal types not only occur in different contexts butare treating the contexts as different—Let’s treats the context as disjunctive, and How about treatsthe context as conjoined.

Discussion

As social actions that are concerned with directing individuals, proposals are unique in treating theother as both a benefactor and a beneficiary of the activity at hand (Clayman & Heritage, 2014;Couper-Kuhlen, 2014). These data provide a particularly rich opportunity for study because of thehigh concentration of activity proposals. We have shown that proposals for new, disjunctiveactivities outnumber those for incremental modifications of ongoing activities and that the designof these types of proposals is systematically different. Proposals for disjunctive activities typically relyon Let’s, and the design orients to the action being implemented as disjunctive through the relativelyfrequent inclusion of other markers of disjunctiveness, including shifts in body position, gaze, andpitch as well as sharp in-breaths and prefaces that signal something disjunctive is likely to follow. Incontrast, proposals for activities that represent only incremental modifications of the prior orongoing activity typically employ How about. There is an orientation in the design of these actionsto the relative continuity of the proposed action with the ongoing activity that is seen in not markingthe turn with sharp in-breaths, prefaces, or substantial shifts in pitch or body position. Althoughboth sorts of proposals represent first-position actions in a sequence, the former is more likely to beat the start of a larger activity, whereas the latter may be part of an ongoing activity and even part ofa larger sequence (e.g., in an ongoing dispute).

These proposals provide evidence for the reflexivity with which interaction practices are used.Certainly the distributional evidence of Let’s and How about proposals for new versus ongoing activitiesis compelling, but what is particularly interesting here is the reflexivity that the practice affords. As is thecase with any systematic practice in interaction, once there is a stable function, speakers can exploit thatto new communicative ends. Here, the stability of the use of Let’s for disjunctive proposals affords a newusage—when a speaker wishes to treat a proposal as more disjunctive than it might appear to be, s/he

Figure 7. Body positioning from Extract 12, line 18.

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can use a Let’s proposal. Similarly, speakers can treat a proposal for a new activity as relatively lessdisjunctive than it might appear by relying on the How about proposal. Yet such a system only works ina social context where speakers share a repertoire of practices and use them in a stable way the vastmajority of the time. In this article we observe that not only do young children rely on a practice, theyhave sufficient reflexivity about it to make use of it to further communicative ends.

This article opens up a series of questions for future research. First, when are children relying onproposals, requests, and activity initiations to engage others in new activities? Second, there are anumber of other proposal formats that we did not investigate (e.g., Why don’t we X or We could X),and these formats raise the question of what they are practices for doing relative to Let’s and Howabout? Third, as children develop, do they rely differentially on the various available ways of securingothers’ involvement in joint activities?

ORCID

Tanya Stivers http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1488-5685

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