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Using niin-interrogative to treat the prior speaker's action as an exaggeration

This article examines an interrogative construction with which recipients in Finnish interactions treat the co-participant's prior action as having exhibited a stance that was overstated. A key element in the interrogative is the intensifier niin which foregrounds the scalar character of its head word (e.g. niin hirmune `so/that/as terrible') and suggests that the place it points to is too high on the scale. We will show that the niin-interrogative can target something the co-participant explicitly mentioned or only implied, and it can have in its scope either the prior turn or a longer stretch of talk. Niin-interrogatives form one means for indicating that the co-participant's claim departed from some normal way of perceiving social life, and they orient to a moral norm of walking the golden mean. As compared to other ways of dealing with exaggeration, a niin-interrogative allows the recipient to express her disagreeing stance in a fashion that avoids an open conflict.