The Use of Incey in Conversation

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

From a conversation-analytic perspective, this paper reports on the analysis of incey used as a discourse marker in spontaneous Korean conversations. Systematic attention is given to how it is used as an interactional
resource for recalibrating a prior description and engaging the hearer to take the conjoined perspective grounded on the point of here and now. It is shown that the sequences in which incey is embedded are characterized by a vivid description of an event/state of affairs or reported speech produced in the manner of having the target event/state of affairs reenacted. Such a formulation, often signaling a shift toward an
expressive mode of telling, provides a context where the hearer is invited to be involved in the detailed description of the event/state of affairs (i.e., from the shared perspective) and to appreciate its upshot by co-taking the speaker’s vintage point. Such a shift is often observed in terms of managing the boundary-marking as well, e.g., usually practiced in the form of marking contrast or mediating self-repair through which a prior turn component is progressively replaced by another. Some of the crucial implications of these practices are noted in terms of (i) the preliminary nature of incey-prefaced talk, i.e., the tendency of incey to preface materials which are still prefatory to what is to be told further later, and (ii) the ordinary nature of incey-prefaced talk which the co-participants tend to orient to as being empirically grounded and/or commonsensically accessible.