Online turn taking, split adjacency pairs and split TCUs

In online chat environment, the turn-taking organization is highly complicated and controlled by specific patterns. “Since there is no smooth sequential order, interlocutors are forced to manage turn-taking and turn-giving in ways that are different from oral talk” (Negretti, 1999, p. 82). For example, features in oral interaction such as

transitions, overlaps, and the both context-free and context-sensitive turn-taking system occur in Webchat in Negretti’s multi-parties web-based study but in a different way. Turns are highly context-sensitive with many disrupted sequences in online setting. Furthermore, overlaps occur often times when a participant posts a new message

without the response from the other in multi-parties’ online chatting. On the other hand, the feature of “one party talks at a time” is sometimes strictly carried out in dyadic conversation revealing on the screen. Participants exchange their conversation by

keying on the keyboard first and press the ‘enter’ key to send out the message afterward. It depends on the speed of typing and the timing for pressing the ‘enter’ key on the keyboard to reveal the turns on the screen of computers. Though it is defined as ‘synchronous’ online talk, the delay of turns occurs due to the time between the participants’ writing and posting on the computer screen. Participants need to read the texts posted first and type to respond later compared with the aural and face-to-face

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conversation. Therefore, what are the exact TCUs used at what exact TRP are more complicated in online chat setting. Herring’s (2001) two different dyadic interactions (e.g., multi-parties chat, one between ashna and jatt, and the other between Dave-G and kally) provide a typical mode of online discourse:

Extract 3.5

[1] <ashna> hi jatt

[2] *** Signoff: puja (EOF From client) [3] <Dave-G> kally i was only joking around [4] <Jatt> ashna: hello?

[5] <kally> dave-g it was funny [6] <ashna> how are u jatt [7] <LUCKMAN> ssa all12

[8] <Dave-G> kally you da woman!

[9] <Jatt> ashna: do we know eachother?. I'm ok how are you [10] *** LUCKMAN has left channel #PUNJAB

[11] *** LUCKMAN has joined channel #punjab [12] <kally> dave-g good stuff:)

[13] <Jatt> kally: so hows school life, life in geneal, love life, family life? [14] <ashna> jatt no we don't know each other, i fine

[15] <Jatt> ashna: where r ya from?

(Herring, 2001, p. 619)

At first glance of the chat script, it is difficult to figure out the indexicality of the turn- taking because the turn-taking and adjacency pairs are disrupted complicatedly. However, it is possible to track and divide the two dyadic interactions as the following extracts due to the indication of participants’ names which are automatically shown on the computer screen.

Extract 3.6

[1] <ashna> hi jatt [4] <Jatt> ashna: hello? [6] <ashna> how are u jatt

[9] <Jatt> ashna: do we know eachother?. I'm ok how are you [14] <ashna> jatt no we don't know each other, i fine

[15] <Jatt> ashna: where r ya from? (Herring, 2001, p. 619)

76 Extract 3.7

[3] <Dave-G> kally i was only joking around [5] <kally> dave-g it was funny

[8] <Dave-G> kally you da woman! [12] <kally> dave-g good stuff:) (Herring, 2001, p. 619)

The above practice is termed ‘addressivity’ by Werry (1996), which is one method for users to adapt to the complex of turn-taking in multi-parties synchronous CMC. On the other hand, according to Tudini (2010), dyadic chat talk

provides greater freedom to split grammatically defined turn constructional units (TCUs) such as sentences or even phrases…In dyadic chat, the apparently

interactionally unmotivated splitting of sentence TCUs is necessary to keep up the appearance of co-presence and participation in the conversation. (p.48)

Different from the face-to-face talk, the ‘disrupted’, ‘disjointed’, or ‘delayed’ adjacency (Garcia & Jacobs, 1999; Gibson, 2014; Herring, 2001, 2012; Smith, 2003) or ‘split adjacency pairs’ (Tudini, 2010) are salient features of online text-based conversation. Split adjacency pairs mean the lack of sequential coherence. Herring (1999) explains that messages are transmitted linearly in the order depending on the time they are received by the one-way (participants talk on the same window) CMC systems. Therefore, a message, especially in multi-party interaction, can be separated in linear order from the preceding message where it should be responding to when another message(s) happen to be sent in the same time. Through the observation on split adjacency pairs, applying the mechanism of turn-taking in spoken discourse directly to online text chat may be problematic. However, the addressivity in multi-party online talk (cf. extracts 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7) or dyadic online chat (cf. this study) facilitates the allocation of turn-taking as well as the coherence of split adjacency pairs.

The “disrupted turn adjacency is the rule rather than the exception” (Smith, 2003, p. 42) in online setting. For example, Tudini (2010) finds that the fundamental building

organization in online dyadic conversation is the question-answer adjacency pair (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973) and it confirms the phenomenon of split adjacency pairs in her study. Her participants seem to “have different expectations in chat, and allow themselves a longer space to respond to first pair parts” (p. 37). However, the lack of contiguity or split adjacency pairs mentioned above appear to be not problematic for

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participants’ co-construction and understanding of online communication in Tudini’s dyadic online chat study.

Similar to split adjacency pairs, turn constructional units (TCUs) in online chat settings tend to display split grammatical units freely. The interlocutors can have options to transit turn-taking system by employing sentences, clauses, phrases or words (i.e. TCUs) at the transition relevance place (TRP) “when a speaker change may occur” (Seedhouse, 2004, p. 28) in face-to-face conversation. However, in online chat setting, turns cannot be seen by other participants as they are being typed. As Gibson (2014) explains:

their exchanges are typically not visible to each other in their production, but only once they have been completed. When writing a message in a chat room, fellow discussants cannot usually see the text until it is posted. As such, in all of these forms of mediated text interaction the turn transition placement that is so central to CA has no equivalence. (p. 65)

Therefore, the phenomenon of split turn constructional units in online chat setting is more complicated than that in face-to-face conversation. Two types of split turn constructional units may take place in online chat data, which occur frequently in this study. The first type of split turn constructional units emerges in the same turn or “a multi-unit turn” (Liddicoat, 2011) by the speaker as shown in extract 3.8 due to the technical constraints of the social medium. When chatting in inbox, users of the social website—Facebook have two choices to send their messages; they can either click the ‘enter’ key any time they want to send out what they type or choose to click the ‘enter’ key in various turn constructional units in the same turn and send out all messages at a time. Extract 3.8 is a typical example of placing various TCUs in the same turn as a whole message. The L2 speaker explains the conditions of her schooling and health in response to the L1 speaker’s question in the prior turn.

Extract 3.8 P7-2013-0312-E-C (in the data of this study)

43 2:01pm C: I got tons of assignment to do this week and actually

My body is kind of weak

I've been like that since I wan little I can not stay up late

but here in college

there's too much academic works since this week stressed out

and exhausted that was why

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Another type of split turn constructional units (TCUs) in this study is demonstrated in the subsequent extract 3.9 in which participants employ split TCUs in different turns to “keep up the appearance of co-presence and participation in the conversation” (Tudini, 2010, p. 46).

Extract 3.9 P2-2013-0328-O-C (O: L1 speaker; C: L2 speaker)

37 18:02 C: did you have a spring ?

38 18:02 O: what about Kinmen? Is that a very clean place as well? 39 18:02 O: do you mean a spring holiday?

40 18:04 C: yep i also wanna tell you kinmen is also a place that is really clean and beautiful .no air pollutants no much car on the road

41 18:04 C: and you can also see many cows stand behind the road

42 18:04 O: ah nice

43 18:04 O: sounds like a nice place 44 18:05 O: I would like to visit very much

45 18:06 O: What will you do during the summer time?

46 18:06 C: nonono. it's hard to explain.unm....spring means hot hot water and you could go inside then you will feel refresh and comfortable

47 18:07 O: oh, i know

48 18:07 O: you mean when I went to hualien? 49 18:07 O: Yeah I went to the hot springs, it was nice

The L2 speaker describes the environment of her university in turns 40 and 41 in response to the question of the L1 speaker in turn 38. It is noticed that turns 38 and 39 by L1 speaker display different topic strands simultaneously by the same participant, which differs from face-to-face interaction as Negretti (1999) mentions in her study. Then, the L1 speaker responds in the subsequent turns 42, 43, and 44 about his

comments on the L2 speaker’s university. In turn 45, the L1 speaker shifts the topic to activities of the coming summer break. Turn 46 is a split second part of question-answer adjacency pair in relation to the prior turns 37 and 39. The subsequent three turns 47, 48 and 49 by the L1 speaker respond to and comment on the L2 speaker’s answer in turn 46. The salient feature of the split TCUs, especially produced by the L1 speaker, reveals not only the technical constraints of the communicative medium but also a strategy for holding the floor by participants in online chat setting.

In terms of floor, three elements pertaining to floor can be inferred from the

conversation: the topic, the communicative behavior and the participants’ sense of the progress-in-talk. Though TCUs occur in the same turn as shown in extract 3.8, the participant may intend to hold the floor, which is similar to the L1 speaker’s

employment of split TCUs in different turns shown in extract 3.9. The phenomenon is well described by Negretti (1999) as “A participant can receive multiple responses to

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different previous turns and use the same turn to simultaneously post several messages contributing to different strands” (p. 81).