Histoire d’öh : Alcuni usi conversazionali di ”öh” ([ø]) nel parlato italo-romanzo

This qualitative study aims to describe some interactional uses of öh [ø], a commonly used particle both in Italian and in other Italian-Romance varieties, from the perspective of conversation analysis (Schegloff, 2007). The research is based on a corpus of 59 instances from informal phone calls between friends, face-to-face conversations, and interviews in standard and regional Italian. The analysis shows that öh appears in responsive turns both as a free-standing turn-constructional unit and as a turn preface, either alone or in combination with other words. In the sequential context analyzed here - the response to a polar question, a B-event statement (i.e., a statement that indicate privileged, first-hand knowledge to a topic by the interlocutor, and which is usually treated as request for confirmation; cf. Labov and Fanshel, 1977: 100) or other types of informational turns - öh is used by participants to confirm from an epistemically qualified position. Finally, öh can take on distinct prosodic contours, lending itself to remarkable modulations that can emphasize the participant’s stance (cf. Gardner 2001).