Insubordination in interaction

Abstract

This study examines a particular type of insubordinate clause in Hebrew that comprises an ironic utterance prefaced by the Hebrew causal conjunction ki ‘because.’ Our analysis reveals that in casual face-to-face interaction, ki -prefaced ironic clauses, although formally marked as subordinate of the causal variety, may function as comments conveying a negative stance toward a prior utterance, ridiculing or challenging it by appealing to shared knowledge or common sense. We further demonstrate that the use of these ki -clauses is often accompanied by particular embodied cues that index distancing from the content and facilitate the recognition of irony. In line with recent work on insubordination, we show that these clauses resist traditional subordinate-causal categorizations and require a usage-based, interactionally grounded analysis instead. By exploring this ki -prefaced construction, our study contributes both to the typology of insubordination and to the understanding of how causal clauses are recruited for stance-taking in everyday Hebrew conversation.