Summary Conversation Analysis I:
Week 1
Lecture1:
Conversation analysts aim to describe, analyse and understand talk as a
basic and constitutive feature of human social life
How participants construct ordinary conversations provides a basis for the
organization of talk in all types of interactional contexts, institutional and
social settings.
Talk-in-interaction is the principal means through which lay persons
pursue various practical goals and the central medium through which the
daily working activities of many professionals and organizational
representatives are conducted.
Common questions in CA:
- How do people communicate through talk?
- How do people structure and coordinate their actions to produce a
coherent interaction?
Seminar 1:
De projects zijn de dingen die we analyzeren
Week 2
Chapter 3 Turn taking
Every conversation required some way of organizing and managing the
contributions of the various persons who are engaged in it. In
conversation, opportunities to participate are distributed through a turn-
taking system.
,Turns and turn-taking provide the underlying framework of conversation
turns are the basic units of conversation and they are distributed within an
economy of opportunities to speak.
Some system of turn-taking is a requirement of any coordinated action
and thus of human society. There is no society in which people don’t
organize their conversations this way.
The machinery of turn-taking is organized so as to minimize both gaps in
which no one is talking and overlaps in which more than one person are
talking at the same time. Of course, there are also exceptions to the one-
at-a-time rule.
Choral occasions = when multiple people say the same thing at the same
time
Waiting until the other one is finished doesn’t work. Then there has to be
some sort of turn-completion signal.
So how does it happen that one-at-a-time is generally preserved?
One grossly apparent fact in conversation = one party talks at a time.
There are several other such features for which any model of turn-taking
should be able to account.
The turn-taking system for conversation is locally managed (it organizes
only current and next turns, not what will happen in 30 seconds) and
party-administered (there is no referee to determine who should speak
next and for how long).
Speakers can’t construct turns out of just anything.
At the end of a turn there seems to be something of a grammatical well-
formedness. Turns are constructed out of a sharply delimited set of
possible unit-types: single words, phrases, clauses and sentences.
The (sequential) context in which a given utterance (uiting) occurs play a
decisive role.
Intonation is also relevant
Turns are themselves constructed out of units turn-constructional units.
A single turn-at-talk can be built out of several TCU’s.
Potential next speakers do not wait for the completion of a turn-at-talk.
Rather, they project its possible completion and coordinate their own
contributions with what that projection allows them to anticipate.
Transition relevance place (TRP) = at the completion of each unit,
transition to a next speaker may but not need to occur. Thus, unless
,special provisions have been made, at the possible completion of a current
turn unit, transition to a next speaker is relevant TRP
Transfer of speakership is coordinated by reference to such transition-
relevance place.
Hearers monitor talk not only to find possible points of completion but to
project and anticipate them before they actually occur.
A point of possible unit completion is a place for possible speaker
transition transition relevance place (TRP)
Speaker transition at such TRP’s is organized by a set of rules:
Rule 1 – applies initially at the first TRP of any turn (C= current speaker,
N= next speaker)
A) If C select N in current turn, then C must stop speaking and N must
speak next, transition occurring at the first possible completion after N-
selection.
B) If C does not select N, then any party may self-select, first speaker
gaining rights to the next turn.
C) If C does not select N, and no other party self-selects, then C may
continue.
Rule 2 – applies at all subsequent TRP’s
When rule 1 (c) has been applied by C, then at the next TRP rules 1 (a)-(c)
apply, and recursively at the next TRP, until speaker change is effected.
The rules are ordered, and this ordering is crucial to the way in which they
organize the distribution of turns-at-talk.
Next speakers often start before the actual completion of a turn because
when there are more than two parties involved, one other potential
speaker may target the same TRP and therefore start before the actual
completion of a turn.
Overlap vulnerable locations: post-positioned address terms and
lengthened final words.
Als er geen spatie staat betekent dit dat iemand express de mogelijkheid
van self-selectie verhaalt door direct door te praten.
Selecting a next speaker: techniques whereby a current speaker selects a
next speaker.
Such techniques can be questions, complaints, requests etc. Such
sequence-initiating actions set constraints on what should be done in a
next turn.
How does a speaker show that they are addressing what they say to some
specific co-participant?
A technique can be: the use of an address term (name, you etc.). Adress is
often signalled by gaze.
There are also more tacit (stilzwijgend) and context-tied methods. For
example, by eliminating all but one co-participant.
, As analyst, you have to be attentive to whatever features of context a
speaker might invoke in order to achieve next-speaker selection in some
particular situation.
There are ways in which the transition space can be obscure or even
eliminated so as to prevent speaker transition via self-selection.
Alternatively, the transition space can be extended and exaggerated so as
to invite or re-invite speaker transfer. The transition space has boundaries
and can be manipulated. The system is locally managed and participant
administrated.
Openings sequences: in openings talk is directed to the accomplishment of
several distinct tasks such as the identification and recognition of the
parties, greetings and initial inquiries such as “how are you?”.
Callers often use the position right after the opening sequence to display
why they are calling. reason for the call/anchor position
Anaphor = a substitute for a noun that is already mentioned
Anything that occurs in the slot after a question may be inspected by a
recipient for how it accounts for not answering the question.
Compressed transition space = never letting the transition space occur
door direct door te praten
Each point of possible completion is a place where certain things may
relevantly happen. People talk in such ways so as to prepare a possible
completion – and the transition space associated with it – for certain things
to happen there or not happen there.
Conversationalists talk in ways that obscure, eliminate or highlight the
possible completion of a turn so as to compress or extend the transition
space. A point of possible completion then is something that a speaker
constructs and prepares for the recipients as a discrete place within the
ongoing course of talk.
Overlapping talk tends to occur in a highly restricted set of places in
conversation. Most overlap appears to be a product, rather than a
violation, of the system of turn-taking. Extended episodes of overlapping
talk provide some of the most remarkable displays of fine-grained
orderliness in conversation.
Most cases of overlap occur in the transition relevance space.
Overlap can also occur when rule 1b (next speaker self-select) and rule 1c
(current speaker continues) happen together. This happens when a co-
participant’s incipient turn-starts occur at points of possible, not actual,
completion within the current speaker’s turn.
Week 1
Lecture1:
Conversation analysts aim to describe, analyse and understand talk as a
basic and constitutive feature of human social life
How participants construct ordinary conversations provides a basis for the
organization of talk in all types of interactional contexts, institutional and
social settings.
Talk-in-interaction is the principal means through which lay persons
pursue various practical goals and the central medium through which the
daily working activities of many professionals and organizational
representatives are conducted.
Common questions in CA:
- How do people communicate through talk?
- How do people structure and coordinate their actions to produce a
coherent interaction?
Seminar 1:
De projects zijn de dingen die we analyzeren
Week 2
Chapter 3 Turn taking
Every conversation required some way of organizing and managing the
contributions of the various persons who are engaged in it. In
conversation, opportunities to participate are distributed through a turn-
taking system.
,Turns and turn-taking provide the underlying framework of conversation
turns are the basic units of conversation and they are distributed within an
economy of opportunities to speak.
Some system of turn-taking is a requirement of any coordinated action
and thus of human society. There is no society in which people don’t
organize their conversations this way.
The machinery of turn-taking is organized so as to minimize both gaps in
which no one is talking and overlaps in which more than one person are
talking at the same time. Of course, there are also exceptions to the one-
at-a-time rule.
Choral occasions = when multiple people say the same thing at the same
time
Waiting until the other one is finished doesn’t work. Then there has to be
some sort of turn-completion signal.
So how does it happen that one-at-a-time is generally preserved?
One grossly apparent fact in conversation = one party talks at a time.
There are several other such features for which any model of turn-taking
should be able to account.
The turn-taking system for conversation is locally managed (it organizes
only current and next turns, not what will happen in 30 seconds) and
party-administered (there is no referee to determine who should speak
next and for how long).
Speakers can’t construct turns out of just anything.
At the end of a turn there seems to be something of a grammatical well-
formedness. Turns are constructed out of a sharply delimited set of
possible unit-types: single words, phrases, clauses and sentences.
The (sequential) context in which a given utterance (uiting) occurs play a
decisive role.
Intonation is also relevant
Turns are themselves constructed out of units turn-constructional units.
A single turn-at-talk can be built out of several TCU’s.
Potential next speakers do not wait for the completion of a turn-at-talk.
Rather, they project its possible completion and coordinate their own
contributions with what that projection allows them to anticipate.
Transition relevance place (TRP) = at the completion of each unit,
transition to a next speaker may but not need to occur. Thus, unless
,special provisions have been made, at the possible completion of a current
turn unit, transition to a next speaker is relevant TRP
Transfer of speakership is coordinated by reference to such transition-
relevance place.
Hearers monitor talk not only to find possible points of completion but to
project and anticipate them before they actually occur.
A point of possible unit completion is a place for possible speaker
transition transition relevance place (TRP)
Speaker transition at such TRP’s is organized by a set of rules:
Rule 1 – applies initially at the first TRP of any turn (C= current speaker,
N= next speaker)
A) If C select N in current turn, then C must stop speaking and N must
speak next, transition occurring at the first possible completion after N-
selection.
B) If C does not select N, then any party may self-select, first speaker
gaining rights to the next turn.
C) If C does not select N, and no other party self-selects, then C may
continue.
Rule 2 – applies at all subsequent TRP’s
When rule 1 (c) has been applied by C, then at the next TRP rules 1 (a)-(c)
apply, and recursively at the next TRP, until speaker change is effected.
The rules are ordered, and this ordering is crucial to the way in which they
organize the distribution of turns-at-talk.
Next speakers often start before the actual completion of a turn because
when there are more than two parties involved, one other potential
speaker may target the same TRP and therefore start before the actual
completion of a turn.
Overlap vulnerable locations: post-positioned address terms and
lengthened final words.
Als er geen spatie staat betekent dit dat iemand express de mogelijkheid
van self-selectie verhaalt door direct door te praten.
Selecting a next speaker: techniques whereby a current speaker selects a
next speaker.
Such techniques can be questions, complaints, requests etc. Such
sequence-initiating actions set constraints on what should be done in a
next turn.
How does a speaker show that they are addressing what they say to some
specific co-participant?
A technique can be: the use of an address term (name, you etc.). Adress is
often signalled by gaze.
There are also more tacit (stilzwijgend) and context-tied methods. For
example, by eliminating all but one co-participant.
, As analyst, you have to be attentive to whatever features of context a
speaker might invoke in order to achieve next-speaker selection in some
particular situation.
There are ways in which the transition space can be obscure or even
eliminated so as to prevent speaker transition via self-selection.
Alternatively, the transition space can be extended and exaggerated so as
to invite or re-invite speaker transfer. The transition space has boundaries
and can be manipulated. The system is locally managed and participant
administrated.
Openings sequences: in openings talk is directed to the accomplishment of
several distinct tasks such as the identification and recognition of the
parties, greetings and initial inquiries such as “how are you?”.
Callers often use the position right after the opening sequence to display
why they are calling. reason for the call/anchor position
Anaphor = a substitute for a noun that is already mentioned
Anything that occurs in the slot after a question may be inspected by a
recipient for how it accounts for not answering the question.
Compressed transition space = never letting the transition space occur
door direct door te praten
Each point of possible completion is a place where certain things may
relevantly happen. People talk in such ways so as to prepare a possible
completion – and the transition space associated with it – for certain things
to happen there or not happen there.
Conversationalists talk in ways that obscure, eliminate or highlight the
possible completion of a turn so as to compress or extend the transition
space. A point of possible completion then is something that a speaker
constructs and prepares for the recipients as a discrete place within the
ongoing course of talk.
Overlapping talk tends to occur in a highly restricted set of places in
conversation. Most overlap appears to be a product, rather than a
violation, of the system of turn-taking. Extended episodes of overlapping
talk provide some of the most remarkable displays of fine-grained
orderliness in conversation.
Most cases of overlap occur in the transition relevance space.
Overlap can also occur when rule 1b (next speaker self-select) and rule 1c
(current speaker continues) happen together. This happens when a co-
participant’s incipient turn-starts occur at points of possible, not actual,
completion within the current speaker’s turn.
