Invitations in French: A complex and apparently delicate action

In this paper, we focus on the way in which invitations - first actions that project the relevance of successive actions - are constructed. In our data of phone calls in French, far from being straight to the point, invitations appear to be complex activities, produced step-by-step, in a progressive way, both temporally and sequentially, as if they were, regardless of the context in which they occur, delicate actions. After a short overview of previous studies on invitations, we turn to analysing invitations to pre-planned events, with a special focus on the different features that make them appear as delicate actions. In the final section of the paper, we explore how the delicacy of the action of inviting is negotiated over several turns before the activity is completed and responded to. We then put this in relation to the progressive construction of the participants' identities as inviter and invitee.