Week 3 Turntaking Practices Lecture 1 Dr Ufuk

Week 3: Turn-taking Practices Lecture 1 Dr. Ufuk Balaman based on Wong & Waring, 2010

• How do we figure out when to begin talking and when to stop? • Do we announce each time we are about to start and stop, for example, saying, “It’s my turn now, ” or “I’m finished, and it’s your turn”? • Do we speak in the order of our height, weight, age, or time of arrival into the conversation? • Why don’t we all talk at the same time and crash into each other all the time? • How come there usually isn’t a long gap of silence between one turn and another? • invisible traffic system • unveiling this system is the purpose • TURN-TAKING

What is a turn? • A turn is the basic unit of conversation. • The process of interactants’ production of contributions to talk-in-interaction

• Turn-taking practices refer to way of constructing a turn and allocating a turn. • Without turns, there is no interaction. • Turn-taking in English features one party [speaking] at a time and the minimization of gaps and silences (Sacks et. al. , 1974)

Main Constructs of Turn-taking • Turn-constructional unit (TCU) • Transition relevance place (TRP) • Turn allocation (next week)

TASK 1 • List three ways in which you know when someone’s turn is coming to an end and it is your turn to talk.

Turn Constructional Unit (TCU) • Turn-constructional unit (TCU) is a word, a phrase, a clause, or a sentence that completes a communicative act.

Transition Relevance Place (TRP) • TRP is a possible completion point that makes speaker transition relevant. • Projectability is an essential feature of the turn-constructional unit that allows the recipient to calculate its possible ending. • In order to take a turn, one has to know when others are about to stop talking. • Without the ability to project TCU completion, one runs the risk of interrupting others or not getting a word in edgewise.

• Knowing how to project completion allows the partner to place response tokens such as uh huh, mm hmm, yeah • The question is: on what bases are we projecting the possible completion of a TCU? • (1) grammar; • (2) intonation; • (3) pragmatics.

• An utterance is grammatically complete if it could be interpreted as a complete clause in its discourse context. (word, phrase, clause) • Intonation completion refers to a point at which a rising or falling intonation can be clearly heard as a final intonation. • An utterance is pragmatically complete when it can be heard as a complete conversational action within its discourse context.

• • • In real time, what one hears is successively: (1) I (2) I wanted (3) I wanted to know (4) I wanted to know if . . . (5) I wanted to know if you got a. . . parking place (6) I wanted to know if you got a. . . parking place this (7) I wanted to know if you got a. . . parking place this morning. As we can see, (1) projects a verb phrase (e. g. , “I what? ”), (2) projects either a noun phrase (e. g. , “wanted what? ”) or a verb complement (e. g. , “wanted to what? ”), (3) projects a verb object (e. g. , “know what? ”), and (4) projects a clause (e. g. , “if what? ”). We use, first and foremost, our knowledge of grammar in making these projections.

Multi-unit Turn • Multi-unit turn is a conversational turn that consists of more than one TCU. • How to deal with the difficulty of holding a turn long enough to finish what they are saying? • TCU-initial practices • TCU-middle practices • TCU-end practices

TCU-initial practices • (1) list initiating marker; • (2) story preface; • (3) pre-pre (preliminaries to preliminaries); • (4) big inbreath.

List initiating marker • Specify from the outset with a list initiating marker that the current TCU is only the first in a series (Schegloff, 1982, p. 75)

Story preface • Story preface is a device by which a prospective teller displays an inten- tion to tell a story and secures a multi-unit turn within which the actual story may be told. • Some examples of story prefaces are (Sacks, 1992 b, pp. 227– 228): • You want to hear a joke? • Something really wonderful happened today. • I have something terrible to tell you.

Pre-pre (preliminaries to preliminaries) • Pre-pre (preliminaries to preliminaries) is a device by which one announces an upcoming action without producing that action immediately afterwards. • Pre-pre usually takes the format of Can I X? , Let me X, or the like (Schegloff, 2007, p. 44): • • Can I ask you a question? Can I tell you something? Can I make a suggestion? Can I ask a favor?

Big inbreath • When someone takes an inbreath, you get the sense that s/he is about to take a turn, and if s/he takes a big inbreath, you know that this is going to be a long turn. • A big inbreath is another device for projecting a multi-unit turn. • It is a way of signaling that what you have to say simply cannot be confined to a single TCU.

TCU-middle practices • The middle of a TCU is also a place to mark the in -progress TCU as a prelude to subsequent ones: • (1) prospective indexicals; • (2) marked first verbs; • (3) contrastive stresses or structures.

Prospective Indexicals • Prospective indexical is an item whose referent or interpretation is to be discovered in subsequent TCUs. • prospective indexical “that” (points forward)

Marked First Verbs • Marked first verb is the verb or set of words that functions to project multi -unit turns by implying that a second verb or set of words is in the works. • • wanted to was/were going to was/were supposed to thought/was thinking tried/was trying could have should have

• Marked first verbs display the following characteristics (Schulze. Wenck, 2005, p. 325): • (1) they express intention, plan, expectation, attempt, possibility, or obligation; • (2) theyhavepast-timereference; • (3) they are followed by a complement that describes what was intended/ • planned/expected/attempted/possible/advisable; • (4) theyimplythefailureofthiseventoraction.

Contrastive Stresses or Structures

TCU-END PRACTICES • Participants also use at least two ways to project a multi-unit turn near the end of a TCU: • (1) pitch-drop withholding; • (2) rush-through.

Pitch-drop Withholding • To forestall the hearing of a TCU as complete, one can withhold the pitch drop at the end of the TCU and move directly into the next:

Rush-through • Rush-through is a turn-extension practice where one speeds up as s/he approaches a possible completion point, speeding through the juncture without any pitch drop or breath intake, and stopping at a point of “maximal grammatical control” (well) into the next TCU.

CONVERSATION WORKSHOP II

Brainstorm about what happens after one party uses the following utterances in a turn. • You want to hear a joke? • Something really wonderful happened today. • I have something terrible to tell you. • Can I ask you a question? • Can I tell you something? • Can I make a suggestion? • Can I ask a favor?

• You want to hear a joke?

• Something really wonderful happened today.

• I have something terrible to tell you.

• Can I ask you a question?

• Can I tell you something?

• Can I make a suggestion?

• Can I ask a favor?

Second Round • Take turns in an alphabetical order! • Complete a story by analyzing the relevancy of the previous turn.