„Tady mám takovou větu – a já nevim, jestli je prostě správně napsaná česky“: Příspěvek k problematice pokládání dotazů jazykové poradně
“I have a sentence here – and I just don’t know if it is written correctly in Czech”: A contribution on submitting queries to the Language Consulting Centre

Summary/Abstract: The Language Consultation Centre (LCC) of the Czech Language Institute has been offering telephone consultations for almost eighty years. During that time papers about the content of queries were published fairly regularly, but the interaction between callers and LCC employees was mostly disregarded (with a few recent exceptions). Therefore, this paper presents an analysis of the ways that the callers formulate their queries. For this purpose, I examined 102 language queries from 63 recordings of authentic phone calls to the LCC using the methodology of conversation analysis. In the queries I identified recurring components and divided them into seven categories based on their functions: thematizing knowledge deficit, defining the topic of the query, supporting or rejecting the solution, disclaiming authorship (of a “problematic” language form), justifying the query, providing additional information, and signalling transition to the next part of the utterance. This categorization proved that language queries are complex utterances that reflect the norms of the genre of telephone language consulting. In other words, the inquirers are well aware of what information they can present and how, and what they can expect from LCC employees in return.

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