Accountability and type-fittedness as indicators of conditional relevance in interaction

In this paper, we analyze sequences of proposals for joint future action in German conversations, with the aim of capturing participants’ orientations towards conditional relevance (CR). We establish a data-driven operationalization of CR on the basis of different design-features of the proposals such as interrogativity, modal verbs ( wollen, sollen, können ), modal particles, and inbreath as well as by including contextual features, such as repetition of the proposal and gaze towards recipient(s). The responses to the proposals are categorized in terms of their type-fittedness related to approval/rejection. Our analysis confirms the view of CR as a scalar variable in proposal sequences. We show that the integration of accountability of proposal design and type-fittedness of responses is well suited to explaining variation in interlocutors’ orientations towards conditional relevance in addition to relating response mobilizing features to the presence or absence of a response.