Korean ‘topic’ particle nun as a categorization resource for organizing retro-sequence: Redressing the situated action ‘on the periphery’

This article, from a conversation-analytic perspective, analyzes the Korean ‘topic’ particle nun used in news inquiries and assessments, whose pragmatic functions are described in terms of a categorization practice launching a retro sequence. This process is triggered by the nun-marked referent formulated as a ‘peripheral’ (e.g., hitherto-unnoticed or marginalized) category incumbent, which is now ‘seeable’ retrospectively as potentially relevant to the domain of situated action being currently organized. The preceding sequence is thereby shown to be ‘incomplete’ in light of a category relationship newly informed by the nun-marked referent, whose relevance is empirically grounded in conventional/shared ‘in-principle’ knowledge. Remedially motivated in this way, nun-marked inquiries embody the questioner's orientation to privileging the recipient's in situ epistemic rights, often being formatted as negative questions optimized for confirmation. In nun-marked assessments, the speaker's claim of epistemic authority, grounded in normative knowledge, is qualified through sequential and action-formational operations that render them externally made commentaries, often organized as postmortems self-absorbedly vocalized. The deeply inferential and normative character of the membership category ‘peripheral’, variously indexed by the nun-marked referent, is evidenced across different contexts, as an oriented-to feature in the service of elaborating upon circumstantial details of the situated practice on its periphery. •The Korean ‘topic’ particle nun serves as a tying device implementing categorization practices.•The referent that nun marks is proposed as a currently ‘peripheral’ but empirically relevant category incumbent vis-à-vis the preceding talk.•The nun-utterance launches a retro-sequence.•The nun-utterance tends to be grounded in conventional knowledge mobilized to prompt the recipient to redress the currently situated work.•Epistemic authority attributed to the nun-speaker is mitigated through turn design or sequential operations.