Disambiguating discourse: members' skill and analysts problem

Both participants in ongoing interaction and analysts who subsequently may examine records of such are continually required to interpret the ongoing interaction, to disambiguate behaviors which are unclear both as to producer's intended "meanings" at different levels and producer's interactional goals, and to adjudicate among possible interpretations of "literal meaning" and "speaker's utterance meaning" (i.e., illocutionary pointlillocutionary force). Work about interactional accomplishment in conversation is necessarily also about disambiguation of meanings of social acts; it must necessarily also attend to the positive role of ambiguity in the maintenance of harmonious social relations. I have used a heuristic 'facet sentence" to identify: (1) principal varieties and sources of interpretive ambiguity for participants and for analysts; (2) possible effects of the several varieties; and (3) possible participant andlor analyst responses (i.e., attempted disambiguation or inaction) and resources for disambiguation. Two fragments of talk from a dissertation defense are used as illustrative texts. Partial analyses are presented and some implications briefly discussed. I attempt to demonstrate three points: (1) that ambiguity is endemic in at least some talk; (2) that ambiguities are differently perceived by analysts and participants; and (3) while not all ambiguities perceived by cointeractants need be resolved for talk to continue, and while some resolutions are only partial, some ambiguities require resolution and may, for the short term, become foci for interactional attention.