Kiesling, S.F., Ghosh Johnson, E., Four forms of interactional indirection. J. Pragmatics (2009), doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2009.06.004 Four forms of interactional indirection 1 Scott F. Kiesling University of Pittsburgh Department of Linguistics, 2816 CL Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA kiesling@pitt.edu Phone: +1-412-624-5916 Fax: +1-412-624-6130 Elka Ghosh Johnson DePaul University Abstract 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 1 The ideas in this paper overlap with, and derive from, an analysis only partially concerned with indirectness in Kiesling (2005) and Ghosh (2005). We thank Susan Gal, Michael Silverstein, Deborah Tannen, and the University of Chicago Semiotics workshop for valuable comments and suggestions that led to this paper.