Singing in interaction

Abstract

Drawing on a database of 26 hours of video-recorded Finnish conversations from three different settings – everyday conversations among family and friends, instrumental lessons and church workplace meetings – we consider the ways in which singing can be used as an interactional resource to enact the three basic communicative motives of humans: requesting, informing, and sharing. Singing has the potential to initiate joint activities, which allows the participants to share their emotional stances. The usage of singing is, however, more limited in requesting or informing – a disadvantage which people, especially in musical settings, need to deal with. There are, nevertheless, situations where the possibility to choose to perform such actions through singing can help maintain mutual solidarity between participants. We argue that people’s distinct ways of interpreting spoken and sung utterances can be best understood from the perspective of participants’ orientations to agency and accountability.