Definition:
In Conversation Analysis, a preferred response is the structurally expected, socially aligned second part of an adjacency pair. “Preferred” doesn’t mean personally desired — it means structurally unmarked and delivered without delay. Acceptances of invitations, agreements with assessments, and granting of requests are typically preferred responses.
In-Depth Explanation
“Preference” is structural, not psychological:
“Preferred” and “dispreferred” are technical terms — they describe conversational structure, not what the speaker wants:
| First Part | Preferred Second Part | Dispreferred Second Part |
|---|---|---|
| Invitation: “Want to come to dinner?” | Acceptance: “Sure, I’d love to!” | Decline: “Oh, um, well… I’d love to, but I actually have plans…” |
| Request: “Can you help me move?” | Grant: “Yeah, no problem.” | Refusal: “Ahh, I wish I could, but this weekend is really bad for me…” |
| Assessment: “That movie was great!” | Agreement: “Yeah, it was amazing!” | Disagreement: “Hmm, well, I didn’t really think so…” |
| Blame: “You forgot to call.” | Denial/account: Dispreferred | Admission: Preferred (in some contexts) |
Structural features of preferred responses:
| Feature | Preferred | Dispreferred |
|---|---|---|
| Delay | No delay — immediate | Often delayed — pause, “um,” “well” |
| Length | Brief, compact | Longer, with accounts and mitigations |
| Complexity | Simple | Complex — hedges, apologies, explanations |
| Directness | Direct | Indirect, often begins with agreement before disagreeing |
| Markers | None needed | “Well,” “actually,” “I mean,” “the thing is…” |
Examples:
Preferred (acceptance):
A: “Do you want to grab coffee?”
B: “Yeah, sure!” ← immediate, simple, direct
Dispreferred (decline):
A: “Do you want to grab coffee?”
B: “Oh… um… I’d love to, but I actually have a meeting in twenty minutes. Maybe tomorrow?” ← delayed, hedged, account given, alternative offered
Cross-linguistic application — Japanese:
Japanese has additional preference mechanisms:
- Declining is often even more elaborately mitigated than in English
- ちょっと… (chotto…, “a little…”) serves as a conventional decline marker — the speaker trails off, and the hearer understands it as a polite refusal
- Direct refusals (いいえ, iie, “no”) are rare in Japanese social interaction — the preference for indirect declining is structurally stronger
Related Terms
See Also
Research
- Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action (pp. 57–101). Cambridge University Press. — Foundational analysis of preference organization.
- Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction. Cambridge University Press. — Comprehensive treatment of adjacency pairs and preference.