Turn-taking mechanism

The concept of turn taking is central to Conversation Analysis। Turn taking organizes the distribution and the flow of speech between the two participants of interaction thereby keeping speech continuous। Turn-taking has been described as a process in which one participant talks, then stops and gives the floor to another participant who starts talking, so we obtain a distribution of talk across two participants। The time gap between one person stopping and the other starting being just a few fractions of a second, yet the co-ordination is achieved with some rapidity and turns are appropriated in orderly fashion। Overlaps can occur, though it is estimated only in about five percent of interaction, but even, there is a level of systematicity involved. Moreover, turn taking regularities are observable in instances where there are more than two participants and in cases where participants are not face-to-face, as in the phone conversation. Thus, the organization of conversation must be controlled by some kind of mechanism which facilitates the orderly distribution of turn and governs the progress of talks in a Variety of contexts and for a variety of purposes (Herman, pp78-79).

The description of this mechanism has been the objective of many linguists. Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson are considered to be the pioneers in this area who propose the turn-taking mechanism in their seminal review "The Systematics of turn-taking in conversation". They examine a variety of recorded, natural conversations. They conclude that the turn-taking seems a basic form of organization for conversation. They found out the following facts:

1. Speaker change recurs, or at least occurs.
2. Overwhelmingly, one party talks at a time.
3. Occurrences of more than one speaker at a time are common but brief.
4. Transitions (from one turn to a next) with no gap and no overlap are common. Together with transitions characterized by slight gap or overlap, they make up the vast majority of transitions.
5. Turn order is not fixed, but varies.
6. Turn size is not fixed, but varies.
7. Length of conversation is not specified in advance.
8. What parties say is not specified in advance.
9. Number of parties can vary.
10. Relative distribution of turns is not specified in advance.
11. Turn- allocation techniques are obviously used. A current speaker (as when he addresses a question to another party), or parties may self-select in starting to talk.
12. Talk can be continuous or discontinuous.
13. Various turn-constructional units are employed e.g., turns can be projectedly 'one word long' or can be sentential in length.
14. Repair mechanisms exist for dealing with turn-taking errors and violations; e।g। if two parties find themselves talking at the same time, one of them will stop prematurely, thus repairing the trouble।

(Sacks, Schegloff, Jefferson PP 700-701)


As this list show, the study includes extensive observation on turn taking, such as turn order, length of conversation, turn allocation and repair mechaanism.