"To Be Honest": Sequential Uses of Honesty Phrases in Talk-in-Interaction

In this article, we examine parenthetical uses of honesty phrases (HPs) such as to be honest and honest to God in mundane domestic telephone calls and, for comparison, police interrogations. Parenthetical uses of HPs express a speaker’s stance on the complement to which they are attached. We focus on HPs in two kinds of turn se-quences: in framing dispreferred answers in question–answer (Q–A) sequences and in framing assessments. In Q–A sequences, HP+complement structures offer ac-counts for inability to answer in the form of reports on the speaker’s intentional state (what they think, know, prefer, etc.). In assessment sequences, they frame first as-sessments as personal to the speaker and make relevant subsequent claims for inde-pendent, “my-side ” assessments by second assessors. Generally, HPs are optional members’methods (among others) of asserting sincerity and independence as the ba-sis of what they are saying on occasions when something functional, normative, or otherwise motivated is expectable. There is at least a prima facie interest in what people are doing when they preface or frame the things they say with phrases such as to be honest or to tell the truth. One of Grice’s (1975) maxims for conversation, which he called “quality, ” was that people are assumed, by default, to be telling