The article is the first Russian translation of the most well-known piece in conversation analysis, written by the founders of CA Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. It has become a milestone in the development of the discipline. The authors offer a comprehensive approach to the study of conversational interactions. The approach is based on the analysis of detailed transcripts of the records of natural conversations. The authors show that in the course of the conversation co-conversationalists use a number (...) of techniques to organize the turn-taking. These techniques are combined in four rules: the first option is the transfer of speakership via allocation of the next speaker by the current speaker; if this first option is not realized, turn-taking may happen via the self-selection by one of the participants; if the second option remains unrealized too, the current speaker continues speaking, with all three options being recurrently provided at all next transition relevant places. The result of the operation of these rules is an orderly conversation based on the principle “one speaker at a time.” According to the authors, this model is compatible with obvious observations concerning conversational practices that they make. The authors show that in every conversation there is a turn-taking system in operation, which provides for a flexible adaptation of the every conversation’s structure to any possible topics and any possible speakers’ identities. Such approach considers how the participants in social interactions order their communication with each other, achieving a sense of normally occurring interaction. (shrink)

The article investigates a multimodal practice for self-selecting observed in a video-taped corpus of work meetings: the use of pointing gestures predicting possible turn completions and projecting the emergence of possible next speakers. This practice is analyzed in various sequential positions, namely at turn beginnings and at pre-beginnings. It displays recipients' practical online turn parsing, and their orientation to transition spaces, and to TCU, completions in a visible, recognizable, public way. It shows the emergent and progressive establishment of speakership, exploiting (...) both systematic features of turn-taking and specific features of the interactional space. The article explores the emic, locally situated and contingent definition of speakership by considering not only where pointing gestures begin but also where they end: pointing does not only end in pre-completion positions, projecting turn end, but can also persist through sequences, showing speaker's orientations to her turn's sequential implicativeness. Thus, by observing a particular multimodal practice within a specific interactional setting, the article explores participants' orientations to the rights and obligations associated with talk-related categories such as `non current speaker', `possible next speaker', `incipient speaker' and `current speaker'. (shrink)

We investigate the timing of pre-answer inbreaths in order to shed light on the time course of response planning and execution in conversational turn-taking. Using acoustic and inductive plethysmography recordings of seven dyadic conversations in Dutch, we show that pre-answer inbreaths in conversation typically begin briefly after the end of questions. We also show that the presence of a pre-answer inbreath usually co-occurs with substantially delayed answers, with a modal latency of 576 vs. 100 ms for answers not preceded by (...) an inbreath. Based on previously reported minimal latencies for internal intercostal activation and the production of speech sounds, we propose that vocal responses, either in the form of a pre-utterance inbreath or of speech proper when an inbreath is not produced, are typically launched in reaction to information present in the last portion of the interlocutor's turn. We also show that short responses are usually made on residual breath, while longer responses are more often preceded by an inbreath. This relation of inbreaths to answer length suggests that by the time an inbreath is launched, typically during the last few hundred milliseconds of the question, the length of the answer is often prepared to some extent. Together, our findings are consistent with a two-stage model of response planning in conversational turn-taking: early planning of content often carried out in overlap with the incoming turn, and late launching of articulation based on the identification of turn-final cues. (shrink)