Scribd
Upload
33 views7 pages

Turn-Taking: Feeling Better!

The document discusses the concept of turn-taking in conversations, highlighting how speakers alternate their turns even when one participant cannot speak. It also addresses the occurrence of repairs in dialogue, where speakers correct misunderstandings or mistakes, often in a polite manner. Additionally, it briefly mentions different syntactic forms for making offers in speech acts.

Uploaded by

Salam Neamah Hakeem
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
33 views7 pages

Turn-Taking: Feeling Better!

The document discusses the concept of turn-taking in conversations, highlighting how speakers alternate their turns even when one participant cannot speak. It also addresses the occurrence of repairs in dialogue, where speakers correct misunderstandings or mistakes, often in a polite manner. Additionally, it briefly mentions different syntactic forms for making offers in speech acts.

Uploaded by

Salam Neamah Hakeem
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Turn-taking

Mother: And how’s my pretty little darling then?


Baby: Ugh … Ugh.
Mother: O what a nice bit of wind that was! You must be
feeling better!
Baby: Goo, goo.

This brief snatch of ‘conversation’ illustrates one important

fact about human speech: people take it in turns to talk. Even

if one of the participants cannot speak, the other one pretends

that the non-talker has taken their turn.


Turn-taking
 But we can go further than simply noting the phenomenon of turn-taking.
We can, in addition, describe how a typical conversation might proceed.
The speakers are taking part in a social ritual partially prescribed by
convention. In a dialogue, utterances often occur in pairs:
 Question: What’s the time?
 Answer: Ten past three.
 Greeting: Hi, Jo.
 Greeting: Why hallo, Bill.
 Offer: Would you like a cup of coffee?
 Acceptance: Yes, please.
 Apology: I’m terribly sorry.
 Minimization: Please don’t mention it.
Turn-taking

Paired utterances are not, of course, inevitable, and triple


utterances are also frequent:

Question: What’s the time?


Answer: Ten past three.
Acknowledgement: Thanks.
Repairs

Conversations do not necessarily run smoothly:


People can not always explain things properly. Or
they make a mistake. Or
the person they are talking to makes a mistake.

These minor breakdowns, if noticed, have to be ‘repaired’. So


called repairs can give additional insights into the way in which
humans comprehend one another.
Repairs

Repairs sometimes involve self-repair, when a speaker


spontaneously notices a problem and solves it:
Could you hand me a spoon? A teaspoon, that is.
Marion arrived on Saturday – sorry, I mean Sunday.

Sometimes they involve other-repair, when someone is not quite


sure about what has been said, or suspects that the other person
has made a mistake:
I assume you mean a teaspoon.
Did Marion really arrive on Saturday? Wasn’t it Sunday?
Repairs

However, humans do not usually confront one another directly, a


listener mildly queries the speaker, who then repairs the original
utterance:
Speaker A: Alan’s taken a course in deep-sea diving.
Speaker B: Alan? Has he really?
Speaker A: Sorry, I don’t mean Alan, I mean Alec.

As this example suggests, humans tend to be polite to one


another, so politeness can radically affect the structure of
conversations.
Speech acts

Someone needs to make a phone call. Make an offer using


different syntactic forms?
1.Declarative
2.Interrogative.
3.Imperative

You might also like