Four forms of interactional indirection

Building on previous research that points out the limited conception of indirection in pragmatics, we argue that the notion of indirection should be expanded to take into account any use of language that is ‘unconventional’ in a particular community. We argue that at least four types of indirections can be recognized: stance indirection, topic indirection, participation indirection, and production indirection. We then exemplify these different forms of indirection through the analysis of three examples.