Turn-taking
Turn-taking is a type of organization in conversation and discourse where participants speak one at a time in alternating turns.
In practice, it involves processes for constructing contributions, responding to previous comments, and transitioning to a different speaker, using a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic cues.
In many contexts, conversation turns are a valuable means to participate in social life and have been subject to competition.
[6] In conversation analysis, turn-taking organization describes the sets of practices speakers use to construct and allocate turns.
[1] The organization of turn-taking was first explored as a part of conversation analysis by Harvey Sacks with Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson in the late 1960s/early 1970s, and their model is still generally accepted in the field.
Due to the very nature of turn-taking and that it is dependent on the context, timing varies within a turn and may be subjective within the conversation.
Vocal patterns, such as pitch, specific to the individual also cue the hearer to know how the timing will play out in turn-taking.
[12] Kobin H. Kendrick argues that rules and constraints that are established within a turn-taking system are done so to minimize the amount of time spent transitioning between turns.
[16] Sacks, one of the first to study conversation, found a correlation between keeping only one person speaking at a time and controlling the amount of silences between speakers.
Rapport interruptions contribute to the conversation in that they ultimately cooperate and collaborate with the speaker in order to reach a mutual goal of understanding.
This suggests that overlapping questions, while interruptive in the fact that they demand attention away from the speaker, are cooperative in nature in that they significantly contribute to achieving mutual understanding and communication.
During a conversation, turn-taking may involve a cued gaze that prompts the listener that it is their turn or that the speaker is finished talking.
As other researchers have shown, eye gaze is an important signal for participants of a conversation to pay attention to.
[20] Turn-taking is developed and socialized from very early on – the first instances being the interactions between parent and child – but it can still be thought of as a learned skill, rather than an innate attribute.
In recorded conversations between pairs of same-sex college-age friends, Maynard (1990) found that English-speaking students used backchannel expressions such as uh-huh or right, mainly at grammatical completion points.
The form of backchannels was similar: both Japanese and American subjects used brief utterances and head movements to signal involvement.
The Japanese interlocutors, however, produced backchannels earlier and more often throughout conversation, while the Americans limited their responses mainly to pauses between turns.
[22] Additionally, turn-taking can vary in aspects such as time, overlap, and perception of silence in different cultures, but can have universal similarities as well.
Stivers et al. (2009) cross-examined ten various indigenous languages across the globe to see if there were any similar underlying foundation in turn-taking.
Studies of turn-taking in male-female interactions have yielded mixed results about the exact role of gender in predicting conversational patterns.
Such analyses of turn-taking have analyzed conversations in various contexts ranging from verbal exchange between two romantic partners to scripted dialogue in American sitcoms.
[27] This interruption, however, is not due to female interlocutors' lack of desire or initiative to speak and be heard in a conversation.
[21] In another study done by Krupnick, in a classroom setting, the gender of a conversation moderator, namely the instructor, will affect the turn-taking of male and female speakers.
