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In German oral discourse, previous research has shown that okay can be used both as a response token (e.g., for agreeing with the previous turn or for claiming a certain degree of understanding) and as a discourse marker (e.g., for closing conversational topics or sequences and/or indicating transitions). This contribution focuses on the use of okay as a response token and how it is connected with the speakers’ interactional state of knowledge (their understanding, their assumptions etc.). The analysis is based on video recorded everyday conversations in German and a sequential, micro-analytic approach (multimodal conversation analysis). The main function of conversational okay in the selected data set is related to indicating the acceptance of prior information. By okay, speakers however claim acceptance of a piece of information that they can’t verify or check. The analysis contrasts different sequences containing okay only with sequences in which change-of-state tokens such as ah and achso co-occur with okay. This illustrates that okay itself does not index prior information as new, and that it is not used for agreeing with or for confirming prior information. Instead it enables the speaker to adopt a kind of neutral, “non-agreeing” position towards a given piece of information. ; Dans le discours oral allemand, des recherches antérieures ont montré que okay peut être utilisé à la fois comme réponse (par ex. pour manifester son accord avec le tour précédent ou pour revendiquer un certain degré de compréhension) et comme marqueur du discours (par ex. pour conclure des sujets ou des séquences de conversation et/ou indiquer des transitions). Cette contribution met l'accent sur l'utilisation fréquente de okay comme marqueur de réponse et son association avec l'état des connaissances interactionnelles des locuteurs (leur compréhension, leurs hypothèses, etc.). L'analyse s’appuie sur des conversations quotidiennes enregistrées en vidéo et sur une approche séquentielle et micro-analytique (analyse conversationnelle ...
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