Who controls the discourse through the use of interruptions and overlaps?
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Course
English Discourse Analysis
Institution
University Of Leeds (UoL)
This essay covers “Who controls the discourse through the use of interruptions and overlaps?” I will investigate how controlling the discourse shifts power stances within conversation. The specific features I will be investigating are interruptions, overlaps, footing shifts and politeness. I wi...
The study aims to explore the question “Who controls the discourse through the use of
interruptions and overlaps?” I will investigate how controlling the discourse shifts power
stances within conversation. The specific features I will be investigating are interruptions,
overlaps, footing shifts and politeness. I will be linking my findings back to key previous
studies in the field. The method of analysis chosen for my study is ‘conversational analysis’
(CA). Conversational analysis is a method studying verbal and non-verbal interaction. The
aim of CA is to study natural conversations and to explore how individuals respond to one
another. CA is built around the notion of turn-taking and the organisation of it; how orderly
(or disorderly) do participants behave throughout conversation.
The analysis will be conducted on an interview between Piers Morgan and a former Loreal
model regarding her comments that “all white people are racist”. The interview takes places
on Good Morning Britain; this show is generally known for discussing political and social
issues taking place within the country. An interview is generally seen as being different to a
normal day-to-day conversation. When an interview takes place, it gives out certain roles, the
interviewers role is to ask questions whilst the interviewees is to answer them. The
interviewer is deemed to hold the power as they are the ones who can set the theme and
initiate which topic the conversation is to move towards.
Literature Review -
In a normal conversation the turn-taking system functions on a turn-by-turn basis which is
decided by the speakers themselves (Sacks et al. 1974). Generally, speakers know when it is
their ‘turn’ to speak during a conversation. Interruptions are seen as a way to gain power, or
gain the floor and achieve dominance in the conversation, overlaps are more unoffending
compared to interruptions. However, Tannen (1994), do agree that interruption implies one’s
willingness to dominate but do not believe it is all negative. She claims interruption can be
used to create a connection and find a common ground. As we know, an interruption is when
someone who ‘has the floor’ is speaking and is cut off by another person. Some researchers
may not see any difference between an overlap and interruption claiming the both are
negative features.
Sacks et al. (1974) states in his study in relation to turn taking that overlaps occur “when each
[participant] projects his start to be the earliest possible start at some possible transition-
relevance place, producing simultaneous starts” (708). As mentioned earlier, overlaps are not
, deemed competitive. Schegloff, (2000) and Bilmes (1997) claim, overlaps move the
conversation forward without either person feeling threatened of losing power. Nugroho &
Lisetyo (2014) believes overlaps are very different to interruptions as overlap is generally
seen as a positive feature as it shows eagerness, whilst interruption is a negative violating the
turn-taking system. When researching interruption within CA, Okamoto et al (2002) make a
good point about taking into consideration the context of interruptions and when or where it
takes place. For example, an ‘interruption’ between friends casually debating who is a better
footballer Messi or Ronaldo, would be different from an ‘interruption’ between a boss and his
employee during a meeting. These previous studies provide useful insight in analysing
overlaps and interruptions, which will be a feature I will be investigating in my own study.
Zimmerman & House (1975), conducted their study on interruption and claimed that power
and dominance is displayed through interruption. Many researchers have referred to this
result in their own future studies on interruption.
Power plays a vital part in conversations as whoever holds power allows us to see their
version of reality. Language is one of the most obvious means through which power is
exercised. Language reveals power and creates power. Schegloff (1991), states the more one
focuses on what might be called ‘sociological variables’ such as power, the less one focuses
on the actual practices of talk-in-interaction of power. Fairclough’s (1995: 23) states
conversational analysis is “resistant to linking properties of talk with higher-level features of
society and culture – relations of power, ideologies, cultural values”. Overtime, researchers
such as Hutchby (1996) and Silverman (1997) have brought power into the analytic frame of
conversational analysis. Silverman (1997) studies the discourse of counselling in a number of
clinics, whilst Ian Hutchby (1996) explores argument sequences between host and caller in
radio talk shows.
Hutchby (1996) studied talk radio using a corpus of 120 calls taken from ‘The Brian Hayes
Programme’. He wanted to show how confrontation plays a central role in talk radio, and
how arguments are interactional accomplishments: that is, they require the active
participation of all the communicators (Hutchby 1996). His study soon turns into an
investigation of power from the local, sequential perspective. For example, how the words
used between two individuals display and reinforce inequities. “power can be viewed as an
‘emergent feature’ of oriented-to discourse practices in given settings” (Hutchby 1996: 482)
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