Getting others to do things

Getting others to do things is a central part of social interaction in any human society. Language is our main tool for this purpose. In this book, we show that sequences of interaction in which one person's behaviour solicits or occasions another's assistance or collaboration share common structural properties that provide a basis for the systematic comparison of this domain across languages. The goal of this comparison is to uncover similarities and differences in how language and other conduct are used in carrying out social action around the world, including different kinds of requests, orders, suggestions, and other actions brought together under the rubric of recruitment.

N. J. Enfield is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney and Director of the Sydney Centre for Language Research. His wide-ranging research on language, culture, and cognition is based on extensive field work in mainland Southeast Asia, especially Laos. His books include A grammar of Lao (Mouton de Gruyter, 2007), Natural causes of language (LangSci Press, 2014), The utility of meaning (OUP, 2015), How we talk (Basic Books, 2017), Dependencies in language (LangSci Press, 2017), The concept of action (CUP, 2017, with Jack Sidnell), and The languages of Mainland Southeast Asia (CUP, 2020).