actually

My data had this interesting use of 'actually':
125 C: we're rea↑dy (0.2) can you help us get to the toy shop (0.2)
126 so we can buy some new juggling balls for ↑Hen↓ry
127 M: actually (0.4) can I just do it ((M lifts H's fingers off the mouse))

While searching today, I found a CA article about 'actually'.

Clift, R. (2001). Meaning in interaction: The case of actually. Language, 7 (7)

In writing about topic and actually she says:
"In all these cases, then, a topic is reopened by a speaker with an actually -prefaced turn AFTER that same speaker has initiated the closing down of that topic. Placed thus, actually is heard as registering a change of mind, undoing the committment expressed in the speaker's previous turn; the placement of actually turn-initially serves to link the speaker's prior and current turns, projecting back to the prior and offers the alternative version in the current turn." (pp. 267-268)

I looked back in my data and found M's prior turn. It was:
115 M: I'm not helping him

That's pretty interesting, and I'm going to have to go back to my analysis and think about. Previously, I had M's use of 'actually' as responding to the computer's talk (line 125), but my reading today puts a different take on it.

The author goes on to say:
"Note, too, that it does not attempt to repair the prior turn. repair serves to alter in some way a turn in progress or just delivered. yet such an option (in the form of, say, 'I mean + reformulation') is simply not possible in the environemnts cited here, because the actually-marked turn is in complete contrast to the speaker's previous turn. Nothing of the previous turn can be salvaged or amended; turn initial actually thus serves to make this reversal. Indeed, turn -initial actually can serve to display a revision of a prior stance even when that stance is not explicitly formulated." (p. 268)