Linear sequences: turn-taking and adjacency pairs Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson argue that “the organization of taking turns

to talk is fundamental to conversation” (1974: 696). Turn-taking is used for talking in different speech-exchange systems such as interviews, meetings, debates or ceremonies. These authors, and conversational analysts in general, support the idea that there is a basic set of rules governing turn construction, which provide for the allocation of a next turn to one party, and coordinate transfer so as to minimize gap and overlap.

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These rules are deduced from the following facts about turn-taking:

• Speaker change recurs, or at least occurs

• One party talks at a time.

• Occurrences of more than one speaker at a time are common, but brief.

• Transitions with no gap and no overlap are common. Together with transitions characterized by slight gap or slight overlap, they make up the vast majority of transitions.

• Turn order is not fixed, but varies.

• Turn size is not fixed, but varies.

• Length of conversation is not specified in advance.

• What parties say is not specified in advance.

• Relative distribution of turns is not specified in advance.

• Number of parties can vary.

• Talk can be continuous or discontinuous.

• Turn-allocation techniques are obviously used. A current speaker may select a next speaker (as he addresses a question to another party); or parties may self-select in starting to talk.

• Various turn-constructional units are employed (words, sentences, etc.).

• Repair mechanisms exist for dealing with turn-taking errors and violations (Sacks et al, 1974: 700-01).

Turn-taking is a form of social action and, therefore, it operates in accordance with a local management system. This system is conventionally known by members of a social group, and it is essentially a set of conventions for getting turns, keeping them or giving them away. A Transition Relevance Place, or TRP refers to any possible change of turn. The most obvious markers of a TRP are the end of a structural unit (a phrase or clause) and a pause (Yule, 1996). Speakers may hold the floor for extended periods of time. Within an extended turn, they normally expect their interlocutors to indicate that they are listening. This they do by means of head nods, smiles or other facial expressions, but they can also show attentiveness by using certain common vocal indications such as uh-uh, yeah, mmm, etc. These vocal indications are called backchannels and they are important because they provide feedback to the speaker regarding the positive reception of his/her message. Consequently, the

absence of backchannels may be very frequently interpreted negatively, as lack of interest on the part of the interlocutor or as a way of withholding agreement.

Taking turns to speak in an elementary-school class

Thus, speakers having a conversation are viewed as taking turns at holding the floor, a fact that may be considered a common feature of all cultures and languages; however, the manner and frequency with which the floor is held and the turns are allocated may vary substantially from one social group to another.

Another central concept in CA is that of adjacency pair. An adjacency pair is a sequence of two utterances which are adjacent and produced by different speakers. These two utterances are ordered as a first part and a second part and they are generally typed, so that a first part normally expects and requires a given second part or range of second parts (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973). Prototypical examples of adjacency pairs would be the following:

1) greeting-greeting: A: Hello.

B: Hello.

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2) offer-acceptance: A: Would you care for more tea?

B: Yes, please.

3) apology-minimization: A: I’m sorry.

B: Oh, don’t worry. That’s O.K.

As Schiffrin notes, “adjacency pairs are organized patterns of stable, recurrent actions that provide for, and reflect, order within conversation”

(1994: 236). As such, they provide a sequence for the specification of expectations about form and meaning across utterances. Levinson states the rule that governs the use of adjacency pairs as follows: “Having produced a first part of some pair, current speaker must stop speaking, and next speaker must produce at that point a second part to the same pair”

(1983: 304). But this rule is not always followed to the letter in conversation. Frequently, insertion sequences occur (Schegloff, 1972) in which, for example, a question-answer pair is embedded within another, as seen in example 4:

4)

Child: Mom, can I play Nintendo now? (Question 1) Mother: Have you cleaned up the playroom? (Question 2) Child: No. (Answer 2)

Mother: Then, NO! (Answer 1)

Thus, we may speak of nested adjacency pairs, and in fact numerous levels of embedding are not infrequent, where, for instance, a question and its answer may be many utterances apart.

In addition, and again considering the question-answer pair, there are a great many responses other than answers which nevertheless count as acceptable seconds, such as “re-routes” (e.g.: Better ask your father), refusals to answer or challenges to the presuppositions or sincerity of the question (e.g.: You’ve got to be kidding). This fact, according to Levinson (1983: 307), seems “to undermine the structural significance of the concept of an adjacency pair”. However, the importance of the concept is reassured by the equally important concept of preference organization, which will be analyzed and described in the next section.

5.2.1.1. Preference organization

The concept of preference organization underlies the idea that there is a hierarchy operating over the potential second parts of an adjacency pair.

Thus, there is at least one preferred and one dispreferred category of response to first parts. This concept is a structural notion that corresponds closely to the linguistic concept of markedness (Levinson, 1983: 307), in such a way that preferred seconds are unmarked and dispreferred seconds are marked. For instance, the unmarked, preferred response to a request is a granting and not a rejection; the rejection being the dispreferred, marked second part, as shown in the following examples:

1) Unmarked, preferred second:

A: Hey Jack, can I borrow your car this afternoon? (First part: request) J: Sure! (Second part: granting)

2) Marked, dispreferred second:

A: Dad, could I borrow your car tonight for the prom? (First part:

request) B: Well…, I don’t trust your driving skills yet. So maybe we’ll leave it for some other time. (Second part: rejection)

Levinson explains that dispreferred seconds normally exhibit one or more of the following features:

a) Delays: (i) by pause before delivery, (ii) by the use of a preface […] (iii) by displacement over a number of turns via use of repair initiators or insertion sequences.

b) Prefaces: (i) the use of markers or announcers of dispreferreds like Uh and Well, (ii) the production of token agreements before disagreements, (iii) the use of appreciations if relevant (for offers, invitations, suggestions, advice), (iv) the use of apologies if relevant (for requests, invitations, etc.), (v) the use of qualifiers (e.g. I don’t know for sure, but…), (vi) hesitation in various forms, including self-editing.

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c) Accounts: carefully formulated explanations for why the (dispreferred) act is being done.

d) Declination component: of a form suited to the nature of the first part of the pair, but characteristically indirect or mitigated. (1983: 334)

As the reader will observe, the example of a dispreferred second above has the four features described by Levinson, for the speaker uses the marker Well (preface) followed by a pause (delay), and at the same time he gives an explanation for his rejection (account: “I don’t trust your driving skills yet”) and provides a mitigated negative answer (declination component:

“So maybe we’ll leave it for some other time”).

Example 4 in 5.2.1. above, however, only exhibits the declination component, which, as a matter of fact, is not indirect but quite the opposite. This is also a possibility, which occurs in some special contexts where the interactant that declines or rejects the request does not need to be indirect (because, as is the case in the example, there is a very close relationship (mother/son) between the interlocutors, or because the situation allows for the speakers to be direct and even impolite –as, for instance, in the discourse used among members of the armed forces²).

5.2.2. Other sequences: Repair, pre-sequences, insertion