Issues in Action Formation : Requests and the Problem with x

Abstract

In previous interactional studies of formats for utterances doing requests, attention has been given to the initial verb (such as can/could or wonder) and possibly the subject (especially I vs you). The current study examines the main types of grammatical variation found in what we call the " x component," that is the segment after the initial verb and subject. We examine two types of requests: those with can you x and those with wonder x, and we find that variations in the x component in these requests are associated with variations in the unfolding development of the request sequences. We thus suggest that the x component is crucial to the interactional work accomplished by the requesting utterance.