Sequence organisation

Heritage & Atkinson (1984) contend that CA practitioners primarily investigate sequences and turns within those sequences, rather than isolated sentences or utterances. In particular, they elucidate how a turn is ‘contextually understood by

61

reference to their placement and participation within sequences of actions’ (Schegloff, 1984 cited in Heritage & Atkinson, 1984: 5). Indeed, the most

substantive focus of CA analysis is bound up with participants’ orientations to the turn-within-sequence in interaction, as well as a here-and-now context constructed by current actions (Heritage & Atkinson, 1984: 6) as discussed in the previous sub-sections. This approach is the key divergent point from the speech act theory grounded on the analysis of syntactic and semantic features of utterances. In addition, CA’s notion of action sequence is expanded through ‘sequential implicativeness’, especially adjacency pair structure. This will be thoroughly explicated in the current section. (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973: 296).

Sequence organisation is germane to turn and turn-taking system, which were explicated previously. Turns in general are not free-standing, rather they are orderly and coherently clustered together in order to make a meaning in

conversation (Liddicoat, 2011). This clustering of turns at the talk-in-interaction refers to sequence organisation (ibid). Sequence organisation is imperative to understanding how CA grasps and analyses human interaction as it is a salient resource to proceed a course of action. In this sense, the notion of sequence organisation pertains to the fundamental view of CA; the action being performed by participants is more important than a mere topic of the talk-in-interaction when it comes to making sense of on-going talks (Liddicoat, 2011). Most importantly, interactants constantly link a current action with further actions whilst manifesting a particular interactional phenomenon; adjacency pair, which is ‘the basic

building-blocks of intersubjectivity’ (Heritage, 1984a cited in Seedhouse, 2004: 17)

Adjacency pairs denote the paired utterances, which are the basic unit of sequence organisation. It specifically refers to the production of the first part of the pair (e.g. question, greeting, telling) and the second part of the pair (e.g. answer, greeting, accept) and these two are ‘conditionally relevant’ (Seedhouse, 2004: 17). Based upon the definition, Schegloff & Sacks (1973) propose four key features of adjacency pairs as follows: 1) it consists of two turns; 2) by two different

interactants; 3) which is located one after the other; 4) these two turns are

62

second pair parts (SPPs). The most relevant example in this thesis to explicate this concept will be question-answer sequence as a question invites its answer in any kind of interview settings; 5) adjacency pairs are composed of pair types. In other words, when a particular FPP is initiated in a sequence, a following SPP should be the appropriate type for the action occurred by the FPP. For instance, a question should be followed by a relevant answer in a research interview, rather than a greeting or a decline in order to be regarded as a completed sequence.

The most basic practice of adjacency pair, in particular, the minimal form of an adjacency pair is encapsulated as follows: a recognisable FPP has been uttered by a first speaker followed by the first possible completion point. Then, the FPP speaker should terminate the turn and a next speaker initiates a related SPP type. This process displays not only the current speaker’s understanding of the prior turn but also ‘embody an action responsive to the prior turn’ (Schegloff, 2007a). Most importantly, this signifies that if a turn reaches a possible completion and transition point, another interactant’s talk becomes possibly relevant. This is an underlying mechanism of turn-taking system and its accompanying sequence organisation, encompassing both ‘retrospective and prospective understanding’ of the on-going conversation (ibid: 16).

Of course, there is an exception, for example, a FPP speaker produces a turn; however, the next speaker does not follow up through SPPs. (i.e. an absence of the talk such as silence) In this case, the so-called nextness between the two speakers is not accomplished. Schegloff (2007a) defines this as negative observation implying relevant absences. This official absence signals ‘it is relevant for something to happen or be done or be mentioned’ (ibid: 19). Therefore, ‘the absence of the talk in this position is accountable and interpretable’ (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973 cited in Liddicoat, 2011: 141). In other words, the relevance rule contributes to, for example, how silences get heard by interactants (Schegloff, 2007a: 20).

Specific second pair parts are made salient to a particular sequence organisation, called ‘preference organisation’, for example, invitation-accept and invitation- rejection. Broadly speaking, the former is considered as generally favourable to

63

achieve solidarity between interactants whilst refraining from a potential conflict or sanction. Put more simply, it is referred to a preferred response, which is socially affiliative, attuned to normative behaviours, and the seen-but-unnoticed pathway to keep the interaction going (Seedhouse, 2004). Whereas the latter, the dispreferred response is socially disaffiliative, simultaneously, accountable. That is, it is highly likely to accompany candidate excuses to justify the response. Of course, a speaker can provide a direct dispreferred answer such as no without any articulation. This, in turn, would be interpreted as sanctionable as its lack of mitigation and attenuation. One of the most important facts of the

preferred/dispreferred response is that it is concerned with interactional features of sequences, rather than psychological aspects such as intention or motivation of speakers.

Preference organisation is delivered in two different directions. First of all, preferred actions tend not to entail a space after the FPP. This is simply because no account is needed for the response, as this action itself corresponds to socially affiliative behaviour as well as default social norms. On the contrary, dispreferred actions tend to involve mitigating devices such as delay (e.g. inter-turn gap) and turn-initial hesitation (e.g. hedging markers including uh, um and well).

Moreover, the FPP speaker receives an incoherent confirmation or disconfirmation from the recipient (i.e. SPP) (Pomerantz 1984). As noted

previously, the dispreffered actions are highly likely to be treated as accountable, therefore, the SPP speaker tend to add excuses right after the response. For example, Heritage (1984a) claims that an enormous amount of rejections/declines are articulated on the basis of inability (e.g. prior appointment) rather than

unwillingness or uninterest of the SPP speaker. With these mitigation strategies, the SPP speaker attempts to minimise the level of disaffiliation immanent in activating a dispreferred action (Seedhouse, 2004).

Pomerantz (1984) attempts to expand the notion of dispreferred action whilst stating that the FPP speaker regards SPP speaker ‘having some problem in responding’ and that is why they provide a dispreferred action (ibid: 152). More specifically, the FPP speaker presumes that 1) the SPP speaker may not

64

speaker may be confused as the FPP speaker assumes that SPP knows about it but in fact, she or he does not; 3) the SPP speaker may hesitate to respond as she or he does not agree with or support the FPP’s action.

In order to solve the aforementioned problems, Pomerantz describes three potential solutions respectively: 1) the FPP may review his or her assertion, scanning for any troublesome word selections (e.g. unclear pronunciation or unknown vocabulary). If the problematic source is recognised, the FPP speaker would provide a more understandable reference to replace the troublesome one; 2) The FPP speaker would check the facts and information on which he or she used for the assertion; 3) The FPP speaker may review her or his assertion whilst evaluating whether there was an inaccurate, overstated or fallacious source in the assertion. If it is evaluated as wrong, the FPP speaker would revise what she or he had asserted in an appropriate way. These three possible solutions are relevant to my data analysis because if the interviewee provides mitigating devices, the interviewer often attempted to review possibly troublesome words or phrases in her previous turns, then offer additional references. One important thing to highlight here, the production of mitigating devices by the interviewee may not explicitly mean dispreferred actions. It is rather a ‘situated thinking process’ (Heritage, 2005b), which often occurs in L2 speakers’ talk. This phenomenon is also closely linked with repair work, which will be explained in the following section.