Turn Taking In conversation, the roles of speaker and listener change constantly.

The person who speaks first becomes a listener as soon as the person addressed takes his or her turn in the conversation by beginning to speak. Conversations need to be organized therefore there are rules or principles for establishing who talks and then who talks next. This process is called turn taking. The study of turn taking includes, 1.Turn constructional component 2. turn allocational component or turn taking rules 3. implicit and explicit markers. Sacks suggested some guiding principles for the organization of turn taking in conversation. He observed that the central principle that speakers follow in taking turns is to avoid gaps and overlap in conversation. Turn constructional component The Turn constructional component describes out of which turns are fashioned. These basic units are called turn constructional units or TCUs. These units are grammatically, pragmatically, semantically, intonationally correct units. In a particular context they accomplish recognizable social actions TCU is a stretch on speech at the end of which another person could not start speaking. Turn allocational component /Turn taking rules The completion of a TCU results in a transition relevance place or TRP. At that point it is possible for another speaker to start speaking. The rules are1. If the current speaker selects another speaker, that speaker must speak next. 2. If the current speaker does not select another speaker, someone may self-select as next speaker. 3. If nobody self selects, the current speaker may continue. Sacks, Schegloffm, and Jefferson called it local management system. Speakers themselves may signal their willingness to give up the floor in favor of another speaker (who can be nominated by current speaker only) They can do this by directing their gaze towards the next speaker and by employing characteristics gesturing patterns synchronizing with the final words. They may alter speech, speak more softly, lengthen the last syllable or use stereotypical discourse markers e.g. you know or sort of things etc. The current speaker indicates through certain markers that another person can take over. The other person may read the signals from the flow of speech, which suggest an opening is possible. These signals or markers are of two types. 1.Implicit markers 2.Explicit markers. Implicit markers: These are paralinguistic features such as body language and prosodic features. e.g. falling tone and rising tone. Explicit markers: These are linguistic features which invite a response - a)clauses-A super ordinate clause allows turn taking. A subordinate clause does not allow turn taking b)suggestion - A speaker asks for suggestion. e.g. Shall we go to picnic? c) Request - A speaker request the other person. e.g. Could you please open the door? d) Question-A speaker asks question. e.g. What do you think?

Organization of conversation A conversation can be viewed as a series of speech acts greetings, Inquiries, invitations requests refusals, accusations, denials, promises, and farewells. To accomplish the work of these speech acts some organization is essential. A coherent conversation proceeds in an orderly way by a series of interaction moves with each participant having a turn to speak. However in emotional conversation, one speaker may interrupt another, this interruption is called turn stealing. The right to speak in interaction is referred as the floor. Rules of turn taking tells us how to get the floor, to hold the floor, and to give up the floor. Getting on the floor holding the floor and giving up the floor, involves a whole series of signals some of which can be rather subtle. The most common signal that someone is ready to give up the floor is pausing. Generally the person who is speaking has the most rights over the floor. They usually can hold the floor for as long as they want, can select who will speak next and can constrain the next turn by controlling the topic. Speakers who want to keep the turn or control the turn employ following strategies 1. They dont pause at the end of the sentences 2. They make their sentences run on by using connectors like and, then, but so,etc . 3. They place their pauses at points where the message is clearly incomplete. .......................................................................................................................................................... Turn-taking A turn is the time when a speaker is talking and turn-taking is the skill of knowing when to start and finish a turn in a conversation. It is an important organisational tool in spoken discourse. Example One way that speakers signal a finished turn is to drop the pitch or volume of their voice at the end of an utterance. In the classroom There are many ways that speakers manage turn-taking and they vary in different cultures. Areas that can be considered in language teaching include pronunciation, e.g. intonation, grammatical structures, utterances such as 'ah', 'mm' and 'you know', body language and gestures.

LECTURE 10 A SYSTEM FOR CONVERSATIONAL TURN-TAKING Conversation, of course, always requires at least two participants. More importantly these two participants must take turns speaking. If they did not, if only one person spoke and the other only listened, it would not be a conversation but rather a lecture or a speech. In a conversation, on the other hand, the participants take turns. We will call the two participants in a conversation current speaker and next speaker. But how do current speaker and next speaker organize their turn-taking? Do they just start talking whenever they want to? Are there rules to taking a turn in a conversation? These are exactly the sorts of questions that Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson (1974) attempted to answer in their now-classic CA paper A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation.

There are, of course, different ways of organizing turn-taking. For example, in a formal debate or in a legal courtroom there are very strict rules controlling exactly who gets to talk at what time. We could say that the speaking turns are pre-allocated which means that the order of the speakers is fixed according to some tradition. A system of pre-allocated turn-taking is common in many formal ceremonies, for example weddings, graduations, etc. Turns in casual conversation, however, are NOT pre-allocated. There is no tradition or plan which says, for example, that first the oldest person speaks then the second oldest person speaks. To say this another way, in casual conversation turn allocation is locally managed, i.e. it is decided turn by turn, moment by moment. Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson were primarily interested in the turn-taking system for casual conversation because they felt that casual conversation was the basic form of all talk. What they wanted to know was this: If the speaking turns are not pre-allocated, how do participants in the conversation select the next speaker? After carefully studying very detailed transcripts of actual recorded conversations, they proposed what they called the turn-allocation component of the turntaking system. This is a set of speaker-selection rules. Basically, what these rules say is that: RULES OF THE SSJ TURN-TAKING SYSTEM 1a. Current speaker may select, that is choose, who will be next speaker. For example, I could say John, what do you think? or How bout some more peanuts? (Imagine that only one of two people in a room has ALREADY had some peanuts. If this is the case, I must be talking to THAT person and not the other person.) Current speaker might also select next speaker with gaze, i.e. making eye-contact. 1b. If current speaker does not select next speaker, a next speaker may self-select. What this means is that any participant in the conversation can choose herself as next speaker. Whoever begins speaking first becomes the new current speaker. 1c. If no other participant selects him or herself as next speaker, current speaker may, but need not, continue speaking, for example: A: Great weather today! (.) A: Wanna play tennis later? 2. Rules 1a, 1b, or 1c continue to apply at every possible transition relevance place until speaker transfer occurs. WHAT IS A TURN

Can next speaker self-select, that is, just start talking anytime he or she wants to? Or are there special places in the talk that speaker-changes or speaker transitions become relevant? In order to answer these questions we first have to define what we mean by a turn. A turn is composed of at least one turn-constructional unit (TCU) which may be any sort of projectable unit in the language. By projectable we mean that the hearer can guess when its likely to end, that is, guess when the talk will be a complete idea. For example if I say My father bought... this doesnt seem complete so it is very unlikely that next speaker would begin speaking after bought. Normally next

speaker would wait to hear what my father bought. Which of the following seem complete to you? In other words: Which ones could you comfortable stop after? Write a C in front of the complete TCUs. _____ I went to the store| _____ My brother broke| _____ The man over there belongs to my| _____ Sunday| _____ With my friend| _____ To my mothers house| _____ Together with| _____ About 1500 yen| When current speaker completes one TCU s/he reaches a possible transition relevance place (TRP), i.e. a place/time where a speaker-transition MIGHT occur either through the current speakers selects next rule or the next speaker self-selects rule. Or current speaker may simply continue by adding another TCU to the previous TCU as in the following example: I went to Vivre (TRP) with my friends (TRP) to watched a movie (TRP) on Friday (TRP) While syntax (grammar) is a very important clue for listeners in predicting up-coming TRPs, intonation plays an even more important part. Typically one TCU has one intonational curve as in the following:

I went to Vivre (TRP) with my friends (TRP) to watched a movie (TRP) ................................................................................................................................................................. Adjecency pair

"One of the most significant contributions of CA [Conversation Analysis] is the concept of the adjacency pair. An adjacency pair is composed of two turns produced by different speakers which are placed adjacently and where the second utterance is identified as related to the first. Adjacency pairs include such exchanges as question/answer; complaint/denial; offer/accept; request/grant; compliment/rejection; challenge/rejection, and instruct/receipt. Adjacency pairs typically have three characteristics:
o o o

they consist of two utterances; the utterances are adjacent, that is the first immediately follows the second; and different speakers produce each utterance.

(Scott Thornbury and Diana Slade, Conversation: From Description to Pedagogy. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006)

Seor Biggles: Miss Bladder, take a letter. Miss Bladder: Yes, Seor Biggles. (Monty Python's Flying Circus) Woody: Pour you a beer, Mr. Peterson? Norm: All right, but stop me at one. Make that one-thirty. (Cheers) Mitchell Pritchett: Hey Cam, does the gardener usually work on Saturdays? Cameron Tucker: I don't know, he comes when we need him. He's like Batman, but straight. (Modern Family) Elaine: Ugh, I hate people. Jerry: Yeah, they're the worst. (Seinfeld) "To compose an adjacency pair, the FPP [first pair part] and SPP [second pair part] come from the same pair type. Consider such FPPs as 'Hello,' or 'Do you know what time it is?,' or 'Would you like a cup of coffee?' and such SPPs as 'Hi,' or 'Four o'clock,' or 'No, thanks.' Parties to talk-in-interaction do not just pick some SPP to respond to an FPP; that would yield such absurdities as 'Hello,' 'No, thanks,' or 'Would you like a cup of coffee?,' 'Hi.' The components of adjacency pairs are 'typologized' not only into first and second pair parts, but into the pair types which they can partially compose: greeting-greeting ("hello,' 'Hi"), question-answer ("Do you know what time it is?', 'Four o'clock'), offer-accept/decline ('Would you like a cup of coffee?', 'No, thanks,' if it is declined)." (Emanuel A. Schegloff, Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis I. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007)

... "Cooperative overlap occurs when one interlocutor is showing her enthusiastic support and agreement with another. Cooperative overlap occurs when the speakers view silence between turns as impolite or as a sign of a lack of rapport. While an overlap may be construed as cooperative in a conversation between two friends, it may be construed as an interruption when between boss and employee. Overlaps and interrogative have different meanings depending on the speakers' ethnicity, gender, and relative status differences. For example, when a teacher. a person of higher status, overlaps with her student, a person of lower status, typically the overlap is interpreted as an interruption." (Pamela Saunders, "Gossip in an Older Women's Support Group." Language and Communication in Old Age: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Heidi E. Hamilton. Taylor & Francis, 1999)

"[T]he two-way nature of cross-cultural differences typically eludes participants in the throes of conversation. A speaker who stops talking because another has begun is unlikely to think, 'I guess we have different attitudes toward cooperative overlap.' Instead, such a speaker will probably think, 'You are not interested in hearing what I have to say,' or even 'You are a boor who only wants to hear yourself talk.' And the cooperative overlapper is probably concluding, 'You are unfriendly and are making me do all the conversational work here' . . ..'" (Deborah Tannen, "Language and Culture," in An Introduction to Language and Linguistics, ed. by R. W. Fasold and J. Connor-Linton. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000)

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In the first example, intonation goes up, which signals that the speaker wishes to continue. In the second sentence, intonation goes down signaling that the speaker is giving up their turn. Turn taking in conversation is a difficult element to master. In English speaking turns are NOT strictly by turn, as it is in many languages. English often has "a catch as catch can" conversational turn taking system. However it is also guided by intonational cues. Generally speaking a falling tone indicates that the speaker is relinquishing their speaking turn, that they are passing the floor on to someone else. A falling tone usually indicates that the speaker has finished speaking for that particular moment. This is vital information for conversational management. It's not part of grammar but it's a vital part of langauge and communication. Do your students know about these intonational cues in conversation? It's a vital part of listening. Top-Up Listening teaches this. Teach your students about intonation and turn taking. They can use the information! ... What is an Isertion Sequence Definition An insertion sequence is a sequence of turns that intervenes between the first and second parts of an adjacency pair. Examples (English) the turns which separate the parts of the requestacceptance pair are insertion sequences:

Generic An insertion sequence is a kind of

What is a sequence? What is a delay?

A sequence is a unit of conversation that consists of two or more adjacent and functionally related turns. A delay is an item used to put off a dispreferred second part. Examples (English) turn, insertion sequences in the fourth and fifth turns, and the well, pause, and self-repair in the sixth turn:

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