Mobilizing response

Why some turns compel an answer and others let you off: response is mobilised by degrees, and turn design is one of the dials.

Stivers, T. & Rossano, F. (2010). Mobilizing response. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 43(1), 3–31.

Type

Journal article

Find it

doi.org/10.1080/08351810903471258

Checked

Against the abstract, 16 September 2026

Why it is on the list

How does one person get another to respond, and when is the other person accountable for not responding? Stivers and Rossano test two inherited answers — that interrogativity does it, and that the social action being performed does it — and conclude that each has merit and neither settles the puzzle. Their account is a gradient: different actions mobilise response to different degrees, and speakers design turns with response-mobilising features that hold a recipient more or less accountable for replying. Week 1 uses this gradient to distinguish how strongly different openings invite a reply. Obligation turns out to be a dial, not a switch, which is also why the same four words are a passing token in a corridor and a real enquiry in a clinic.