Sidnell, J. (2010). Conversati on Analysis. An Introducti on. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-
Blackwell
3 Turn-Taking
In conversation, opportunities to participate are distributed through a turn-taking system. There are
two widely held assumptions about this topic.
1. ‘Turn-taking is characteristic of “polite” conversation – a matter of politeness and good
manners.’ – However, these forms of rudeness rather presuppose than disprove the
existence of a turn-taking system.
2. ‘Certain groups of people (e.g., West Indians, Jews) simply do not take turns in conversation.’
– However, the stereotype of certain ethnic groups constantly interrupting one another is
not borne out by the research.
The One-at-a-Time Rule and its Exceptions
For conversation, the rule of ‘one party talking at a time’ is organizationally primary to minimize both
gaps of silence and overlaps. However, there are some exceptions for this rule; the “choral”
occasions at which overlap in speech does occur, such as laughter or greeting a person who enters a
room. Even in overlap, participants’ contributions are finely coordinated with one another.
Awaiting Completion: A Possible Solution?
The ‘one party talking at a time’ rule cannot be achieved by each participant waiting for the other to
finish because of several reasons.
Waiting would result in the production of a gap between the end of one turn and the
beginning of the next.
Some kind of unambiguous “turn-completion signal” would be required, which does not
exist.
However, there are systems that work this way, such as talking on VHF radios with sometimes a
“turn-completion” signal such as over.
Grossly Apparent Facts of Conversation
The “grossly apparent fact” of conversation considered so far, is that one party talks at a time. The
turn-taking system for conversation is described as locally managed (only organizing current and next
turn) and party-administered (the participants themselves work out the turns).
Again, there are systems that do work this way, such as a formal debate or a classroom discussion
where time is set and speakers are selected by a specific person.
Constructing Turns-at-Talk
Not everything is regarded as a turn-at-talk – there are some restrictions to what is hearable, by the
participants, as a turn.
There seems to be a grammatical well-formedness principle at work here: the grammatical
rules appear to shape what will count as a turn-at-talk. However, in some cases, this is not
fully the norm, since the context (the sequential context) in which a given utterance occurs
plays a decisive role together with intonation.*
* (Not a good turn) Tourist: Has
(Possibly a good turn) Parky: Did you say “has” or “jazz”
Tourist: Has
Turns are constructed out of turn-constructional units (TCU: lexical, phrasal, clausal or sentential) – a
single turn-at-talk may be built out of several TCUs. A TCU allows a projection of the unit-type under
way – it builds to a turn-at-talk.
1
, Points of Possible Completion Create Transition-Relevant Places
At the completion of each unit, transition to a next speaker may, but need not, occur. At the possible
completion of a current turn unit, transition to a next speaker is relevant – a transition relevance
place (TRP). Both current speakers and potential next speakers can be seen to orient to the relevance
of speaker transition at possible completion*. They monitor talk to find, project and anticipate
possible points of completion and this point is the TRP.
* E.g., speakers who produce multi-unit turns can increase the pace of the talk, foreclosing the possibility of
another speaker self-selecting.
How Turns are Distributed in Conversation
Speaker transition at such transition-relevant places is organized by a set of rules to which the
participants themselves orient.
A next speaker (N) may have been selected to speak next by the current turn (C) (e.g., an
addressed question). N should then speak at the first point of possible completion. If no
speaker has been selected by C, any other party may self-select. If no speaker is selected
and no other party self-selects, C may continue.
The rules are ordered and this ordering is crucial to the way in which they organize the distribution of
turns-at-talk. A party wishing to invoke the rule of self-selecting, it must start early to avoid the next
rule starting, namely C continuing. Furthermore, if there are more than two parties involved, there
are additional motivations for an early start since more than one potential N may target a TRP, which
is why N often start before the actual completion of a turn (e.g., at the final sounds or at a
recognition point).
So, there are two ways in which a next speaker can come forward: current-selects-next technique,
where N is being selected through, e.g., an addressed question, or by self-selection.
Practices of Next-Speaker Selection
Like questions, there are other sequence-initiating actions that may select a next speaker (first pair
part) when combined with some form of address, such as complaints or requests (notice: first pair
parts do not need to be addressing anyone in particular). Such actions set constraints on what should
be done in a next turn.
To do a form of address, there are several techniques: use of an address term, gazing, which are
explicit means of addressing or context-tied methods (tacitly selecting of N)*.
* E.g., in prior talk it is established that Mike was the only one of the participants who attended races, so the
questions of an eyewitness report of the race is automatically addressed to Mike.
Where the Action is: The transition Space
The turn-taking model has been criticized for being too formal and too mechanical. However, it is a
set of tools meant to be used to gain analytic leverage on any particular occasion of people talking
together, so it is not the end point of the analysis. It is like a metric: a system or standard of
measurement.
A pitch peak, produced with higher pitch and greater volume than the surrounding syllables, can
signal to a recipient that the turn is going to end at the next point of possible completion.
2
, The Transition Space: A Closer Look
Often, there is a built-in reason for answering a question in a straightforward way (e.g., ‘How did it
go?’ ‘Great!’): any other way of responding (e.g., ‘Everybody’s still here.’) might suggest a negative
assessment and invite further inquiries.
At the same time, a question can be answered to correct a problem in the formulation of the
question. To refer to the examples given above, if the question ‘How did it go?’ (asked in past tense)
only was answered with ‘Great!’, it would have assumed that the party is over, while it is not
(‘Everybody’s still here.’). So, with answering and correcting the questions two jobs are done in one
position.
In this case, the speaker talked through a possible completion to be able to correct: withhold the
production of the actual completion of the TCU and move directly into the next component of turn
(‘grea:t,<everybody:st- still here.’) a compressed transition space.
Conversationalists talk in ways that obscure, eliminate or highlight the possible completion of a turn
so as to compress or extend the transition space. A point of possible completion then is something
that a speaker constructs and prepares for the recipients as a discrete place within the ongoing
course of talk.
Overlap and Interruption
There is a pervasive view that conversation is filled with interruptions, overlap and not listening to
each other.
1. Overlapping talk tends to occur in a highly restricted set of places in conversation.
2. Most overlap appears to be a product, rather than a violation, of the system of turn-taking.
3. Conversationalists typically treat overlap as a potential source of impairment and seek to
resolve and repair it.
Overlap typically occurs at transition relevance spaces with different types of overlap.
Turn-terminal: many overlapping talk occurs when the beginning of a next turn starts just
before the prior has come to completion.
Turn-initial: overlap can occur as result from the coincidence or the self-selecting and C
continuing rules.
Recognitional: when speaker A is already able to recognize what speaker B is saying. Overlap
can be quickly resolved by one of the speakers dropping out.
None of these overlaps are really interruptive as they actually promote the progress of the action
embodied in the talk and they clearly involve one participant closely monitoring another’s talk.
Not only the occurrence of overlap but also the actions in which the participants are engaged seem
to be important to recognize a turn as interruption. It can involve disalignment and disaffiliation and
overlapped talks gets repeated.
Whereas transition relevance places are particularly vulnerable to overlap and incursion by self-
selecting next speakers, points of maximal grammatical control offer current speakers more control
by virtue of being recognizably incomplete (e.g., after saying ‘he is’, the speaker’s turn clearly is not
(grammatically) complete).
So, a particularly common place for overlap is at and around possible turn completion, because these
are places where speakers collide as it were – one continuing and one self-selecting.
3
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