2.3 Turn-taking strategies in English conversations
2.3.1 Verbal turn-taking strategies
In order to detect TRP, participants may look out for verbal patterns to project the end of a turn, to relinquish a turn, to keep a turn or to take a turn in English. The following verbal cues are studied in much research: adjacency pairs, name nomination, recompleters, appositionals, interruption, and syntactic cues.
2.3.1.1 Adjacency pairs
When the current speaker wants to select the next speaker adjacency pairs are used. That the current speaker uses the first part of an adjacency pair means s/he wants to relinquish the floor to the next speaker (Sacks et al., 174:717). Richards et al. (1992:7) define an adjacency pair as ―a sequence of two related utterances by two different speakers. The second utterance is always a response to the first.‖ Conversation requires a certain degree of predictability (Nunan, 1999: 133-135 and 201-204). This is partly facilitated by adjacency pairs where, according to Shortall (1996:131), the initial utterances restrict the
21
possible number of responses, and Burns (2001:134) concludes they enable speakers to
―anticipate certain types of forms and meanings from one utterance to the next.‖ Burns (2001:133) also observes that question-and-answer is one of the most common forms of adjacency pairs, but recognizes there are many others, such as requesting and granting (or denying) the request, expressing gratitude and acknowledging it (Sacks et al., 1974). The most widely used adjacency pairs indicate thanking-response, request acceptance, apology-minimization, and question-answer sequences. Whilst Richards et al. provide a narrow definition of an adjacency pair, Craig (1996) observes it can be expanded by an insertion sequence, which may be of varying complexity and include a number of turns.
The types of adjacency pairs which are most commonly used are greeting-greeting, invitation-acceptance/ decline, complaint/ denial, compliment/ rejection, challenge/
rejection, request/ grant, offer-accept/ reject, question-answer, and instruct-receipt (Sacks et al. 1974:716).
2.3.1.2 Name nomination
Besides adjacency pairs, the next speaker may be nominated by name (or title), especially in conversations involving more than two interlocutors who do not have good eye- contact, name nomination may help to avoid confusion. This social conditioning may find application in casual conversations as well as formal situations, such as meetings, lectures, and presentations.
2.3.1.3 Recompleters
Recompleters (also named post-completers in different books) refer to a class that supplies one major source of the talk done when rule 1c (―if the turn so far is so constructed as not to involve the use of a current speaker selects next technique, then the current speaker may, but need not continue, unless another self-selects‖) is applied (Sacks et al., 1974:704,718). Tag questions like ―You know?” “Don’t you agree?” etc. are examples. ―The availability of ―tag questions‖ as affiliable to a turn‘s talk is of special importance, for it is the generally available ―exit technique‖ of a turn‖ (Sacks et al.,
22
1974:718). That is, when a current speaker has constructed a turn‘s talk to a possible transition relevance place without having selected the next, and he finds no other self- selecting to be next, he may, employing his option to continue, add a tag question for example, selecting another as the next speaker upon the tag question‘s completion, and thereby exiting from the turn.
2.3.1.4 Appositionals
Appositionals are ―turn entry devices or pre-starts‖ (Sacks et al., 1974:719).
Appositionals like “well”, “but”, “and”, “so” are common in English. Appositionals are used by a participant when he wants to apply the self-selection technique to take a turn, which may satisfy the constraints of beginning. Together with tag questions, appositionals are heavily used in English and ―are to be understood as devices with important turn-organizational uses.‖ (Sacks et al., 1974:720).
2.3.1.5 Syntactic cues
Both Sacks et al. (1974) and Duncan (1973) mentioned syntax as a cue to indentify transition relevance place in turn-taking organization in English conversations. Sacks et al (1974:720) identify ―the types of turn constructional units as sentential, clausal, phrasal, and lexical, i.e. syntactically‖. The next turns can occur when current turns show them to occur at possible completion points, which ―turn out to be the possible completion points of sentences, clauses, phrases‖ (Sacks et al., 1974:720). According to Duncan (1973:287) syntax signal refers to ―the completion of grammatical clause, involving subject-predicate combination‖. This means the ends of sentence, clause, or phrase can indicate the ends of turns, when the next turns can start.
2.3.1.6 Overlaps and interruptions
One way to take a turn is to interrupt the current speaker, which leads to the coining of the terms ―overlap‖ and ―interruption‖.
23
Overlap occurs when a listener begins speaking before the first speaker completely finishes his/her turn. The model for turn-taking suggested by Sacks et al. (1074) is based on an underlying rules in American English conversation, namely that ―(1) Overwhelmingly, one party talks at a time; (2) Occurrences of more than one speaker at a time are common, but brief; (3) Transitions with no gap and no overlap are common.
Together with transition characterized by slight gap or slight overlap, they make up the vast majority of transitions.‖ Thus, in Anglo-American culture, smooth transitions from one speaker to the next tend to be valued. Although participants generally conform to the rules of the turn-taking system, brief overlap may occur when two or more participants compete for the floor. When a self-selecting listener overlaps with the current speaker at a TRP, for instance, one of them may drop out, thereby acknowledging the other's right to the turn (Nofsinger 1991:97-98).
While overlap is considered to be supportive and does not violate the turn-taking norms, interruptions which "refer to simultaneous talk that does not occur at or near a TRP" (Nofsinger 1991:102) constitute a threat to the speaker's face, the term interruption often has negative connotations.