Systems of social action : the case of requesting in Italian / Giovanni Rossi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rossi, Giovanni (Sociolinguist), author.

Series:

Foundations of human interaction.

Oxford scholarship online.

Foundations of human interaction

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Italian language--Social aspects.

Italian language.

Request (Linguistics).

Social action.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (228 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

This text is about social action as it is carried out in everyday life. To some readers, the phrase social action may evoke the idea of people taking the initiative for change at the political and economic level of society; these are social actions that take days, months, or years to accomplish. The kinds of actions this book is concerned with are, instead, much more rapid and minute. They are actions performed on the fly, in the back-and-forth of ordinary interaction; they are actions like questions, answers, complaints, compliments, and requests.

Contents:

Intro

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication Page

Epigraph

Contents

Acknowledgments

Transcription and Glossing Conventions

1 Social Action and Language

1.1 Theory and analysis of social action

1.2 Social influence

1.3 The language of requests

1.4 Aims and scope of this study

1.5 Data and methods

1.5.1 Corpus and sampling

1.5.2 Sociodemographic features

1.5.3 Request sequences defined

1.5.4 Classifying request practices

1.6 Overview of the book

2 Nonverbal Requests

2.1 Projectability in everyday activities

2.2 Nonverbal request practices

2.3 Nonverbal requests rely on the projectability of action within a joint activity

2.4 Language serves the recognition of non-projectable requests

2.5 Partially projectable requests require little language

2.6 A competing motivation for verbalizing projectable requests: Securing recipiency

2.7 Conclusion

3 Bilateral and Unilateral Requests

3.1 Imperatives and interrogatives in the Italian language

3.2 Research on imperative and interrogative requests

3.3 Imperatives and simple interrogatives across sociodemographic categories

3.4 Imperatively designed bilateral requests

3.5 Interrogatively designed unilateral requests

3.6 Linguistic features of bilateral and unilateral requests: A quantitative analysis

3.7 Imperatively designed unilateral requests

3.8 Responses to imperative and simple interrogative requests

3.9 The normativity of request design

3.10 Conclusion

4 Delicate Requests

4.1 "Puoi X?'' (Can you X?) interrogatives

4.2 Research on delicate requests

4.3 Delicate requests in the face of resistance

4.4 Delicate requests in anticipation of trouble

4.5 Overly delicate requests

4.6 Conclusion

5 Pre-Requests

5.1 "Hai X?'' (Do you have X?) interrogatives.

5.2 "Hai X?'' (Do you have X?) functions as a pre-request

5.3 Blocking responses to pre-requests are not designed as dispreferreds

5.4 Go-ahead responses to pre-requests lead to sequence expansion

5.5 Conclusion

6 At the Edges of Requests

6.1 Impersonal deontic declaratives defined

6.2 Impersonal deontic declaratives accomplishing one of two actions

6.2.1 Requests versus accounts

6.2.2 Responsibility and visible behavior

6.2.3 Quantitative analysis

6.3 An open response space

6.3.1 Multiple agents

6.3.2 Agent negotiation

6.3.3 Not responding

6.4 Conclusion

7 A System of Practices

7.1 Social and linguistic systems

7.2 Anatomy of a system

7.2.1 Closure

7.2.2 Cohesion

7.2.3 Functional organization

7.2.4 Composition and opposition

7.3 Social relations and everyday cooperation

7.4 Conclusion

Appendix: Statistical Analyses

Index.

Notes:

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on April 29, 2025).

ISBN:

0-19-069076-3

0-19-069074-7

0-19-069075-5

OCLC:

1504687711