Eh-prefaced questions in Indonesian multiparty conversation: Projecting action and managing participation

Abstract

Research on turn-initial particles in conversational questions remains limited, particularly within Indonesian interaction. Although turn beginnings are widely recognised as crucial sites for projecting action and organising participation, their role in Indonesian question design has not been systematically examined. To address this gap, the present study adopts a conversation-analytic approach to investigate the interactional functions of eh-prefacing in Indonesian multiparty conversation. The analysis is based on 9.5 hours of video-recorded multiparty interaction involving 88 participants, including family members, friends, neighbours, tutors, teachers, and students, across a range of naturally occurring everyday settings. Focusing specifically on questions produced under next-speaker selection, the study identifies five recurrent environments in which eh-prefacing occurs: topic initiation, self-initiated repair, response pursuit, resumption of prior talk, and access to recipient knowledge. Across these environments, eh-prefaced questions function as turn-entry devices that signal the forthcoming action and mobilise recipient attention. In contrast, the interrogative format proper implements actions such as requesting information or confirmation. The findings show that eh-prefaced turns are context-sensitive, multifunctional resources that play a central role in organising action, participation, and epistemic relations in Indonesian interaction. More broadly, this study provides a sound basis for cross-linguistic comparison of conversational and linguistic practices by showing how turn-initial particles function as resources for early action projection, thereby refining our understanding of question design and interactional organisation across languages.