An Analysis of Turn-Taking in English Telephone Conversations

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Flensburg (Englisches Seminar), course: Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis, language: English, abstract: Even though the computer plays a significant role in modern communication, it could not replace the telephone as an communication tool, whose history goes back to the 19th century. In contrast to face-to-face interaction participants do not have the opportunity to involve gesture, facial expressions or eye contact in telephone conversations and therefore have lesser possibilities to manage turntaking within these conversations.

In this paper I will have a closer look at how turntaking in English telephone conversations works. First I will explain the turntaking model, which was developed by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, and analyze examples from recorded telephone conversations. After concentrating on Transition Relevance Places, I will also analyze overlaps, asking for clarification and back-channel-responses. Following this, I will have a look at adjacency pais in telephone conversation. Finally, I will conclude by summarizing my findings.

The data which will be analyzed in this paper, was derived from two telephone conversations, which were recorded and afterwards partly transcribed. In each case one of the participants was a native speaker of English and the other a native speaker of German. The examples found in this paper are taken from this data. However, in most cases only one or two examples are taken from the transcript, as an analysis of more examples would exceed the scope of this paper.