Two ‘yeah but’ formats in Finnish: The prior action engaging nii mut and the disengaging joo mut utterances

•Finnish has two ‘yeah but’ formats, joo mut and nii mut.•Both of them can be used to disalign with a prior action.•The joo mut utterance implies that the speakers’ lines of action are divergent.•The joo mut utterance often suggests the closure of the sequence.•The nii mut utterance advances the line of action that was projected in a prior turn.

Finnish differs from English and some other languages in that it has two ‘yeah but’ formats, joo mut (‘yeah but’) and nii mut (‘yeah but’). Drawing on audio and videotaped talk-in-interaction between friends and relatives, and on conversation analysis as a method, I examine the extent to which these two formats share functions and to which extent they are used differently. This study argues that the basic difference between the two ‘yeah but’ formats in Finnish is that one disengages from the line of action that was projected by the prior speaker and one engages in it. The disengaging joo mut utterance implies that the participants’ perspectives on the topic are divergent. The speaker of a joo mut utterance thus excludes at least some part of the opinion or the viewpoint of the prior speaker from the on-going discussion and, in addition, often suggests a closure of the sequence. By contrast, the engaging nii mut utterance is used when the speakers share some overall action line. Furthermore, the speaker of a nii mut utterance implies that the opinion or the prior speaker's viewpoint is included in her/his own position and projects to expand the on-going sequence.