Turn-taking

Turn-taking is a type of organization in conversation and discourse where participants speak one at a time in alternating turns. In practice, it involves processes for constructing contributions, responding to previous comments, and transitioning to a different speaker, using a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic cues.B: Yeah I think I know what you mean./B:Oya kara sureba kodomo ga sureba iya/ Turn-taking is a type of organization in conversation and discourse where participants speak one at a time in alternating turns. In practice, it involves processes for constructing contributions, responding to previous comments, and transitioning to a different speaker, using a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic cues. While the structure is generally universal, that is, overlapping talk is generally avoided and silence between turns is minimized, turn-taking conventions vary by culture and community. Conventions vary in many ways, such as how turns are distributed, how transitions are signaled, or how long is the average gap between turns. In many contexts, conversation turns are a valuable means to participate in social life and have been subject to competition. It is often thought that turn-taking strategies differ by gender; consequently, turn-taking has been a topic of intense examination in gender studies. While early studies supported gendered stereotypes, such as men interrupting more than women and women talking more than men, recent research has found mixed evidence of gender-specific conversational strategies, and few overarching patterns have emerged. In conversation analysis, turn-taking organization describes the sets of practices speakers use to construct and allocate turns. The organization of turn-taking was first explored as a part of conversation analysis by Harvey Sacks with Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson in the late 1960s/early 1970s, and their model is still generally accepted in the field. Turn-taking structure within a conversation has three components: This order of steps serves to maintain two important elements of conversation: one person speaking at a time and minimized space between when one person stops talking and another begins. Because the system is not optimized for fairness or efficiency, and because turn-taking is not reliant on a set number or type of participants, there are many variations in how turn-taking occurs. Another cue associated with turn-taking is that of timing. Within turn-taking, timing may cue the hearer to know that they have a turn to speak or make an utterance. Due to the very nature of turn-taking and that it is dependent on the context, timing varies within a turn and may be subjective within the conversation. Vocal patterns, such as pitch, specific to the individual also cue the hearer to know how the timing will play out in turn-taking. Deborah Tannen also shows timing differences in relation to turn-taking. For a particular study, she used a recording of a conversation between a group of her friends at dinner. The group included men and women from across the United States of mixed ethnicities. She concluded that while the amount of space left between speakers may differ, it differs most dramatically between people from different regions. For instance, New Yorkers tend to overlap in conversation, while Californians tend to leave more space between turns and sentences. When more than one person is engaging in a conversation, there is potential for overlapping or interruption while both or many parties are speaking at the same time. Overlapping in turn-taking can be problematic for the people involved. There are four types of overlap including terminal overlaps, continuers, conditional access to the turn, and chordal. Terminal overlaps occur when a speaker assumes the other speaker has or is about to finish their turn and begins to speak, thus creating overlap. Continuers are a way of the hearer acknowledging or understanding what the speaker is saying. As noted by Schegloff, such examples of the continuer's phrases are 'mm hm' or 'uh huh.' Conditional access to the turn implies that the current speaker yields their turn or invites another speaker to interject in the conversation, usually as collaborative effort. Another example that Schegloff illustrates is a speaker invited another to speak out of turn when finding a word in a word search. Chordal consists of a non-serial occurrence of turns; meaning both speakers' turns are occurring at once, such as laughter. The above types of overlap are considered to be non-competitive overlap in conversation.