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context as the environment of text that include environments, both verbal and situational, where the text is spoken.
In addition to context of situation, Holmes 2001: 8 put forwards that in any situation, linguistic choices represents the influence of one or more of the
following components in general, namely the participants, the setting or social context of interaction, the topic, and the function. The participants can be the ones
who are uttering as well as to whom they are uttering. The setting or social context of interaction refers to the situation where they are speaking physical
setting and the psychological situation where they are speaking psychological setting. Meanwhile, topic is what is being discussed, whose function is why they
are speaking. Those elements become the fundamental components in pragmatics that describe the reason of everybody to not speak in the same way every time.
b. Cultural or Social Context Another context that gives impacts to the way people state something is
the cultural or social context. It also influences the linguistic features chosen by the speaker. In this case, Malinowski in Halliday and Hasan 1986: 6 put
forwards context of culture as the institutional and ideological background that provides a certain value; it also contains an interpretation. For example, somebody
tells X which is considered as an insult in a conversation of a group that occurs in a certain place, but X may be considered not an insult in the other conversation
group in another situation, too. This phenomenon occurs since the parties in each conversation belong to different cultures.
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Furthermore, any linguistic interaction includes both the immediate sight and sound surrounding the event, as well as the whole cultural history of the
participants and the type of practices that they engage in. Thus, it is not proper if someone only considers the context of situation while neglecting the context of
culture when communicating.
3. Language and Conversation
Conversation plays a pivotal role in human life as it links the inner relationship between the first and the second speaker. Language contains more complex meaning
than the utterances do. It is reflected from one type of conversation or dialogue. According to Hornby 1995: 320, dialogue is conversation in the spoken or
written form, talk or discussions between people where opinions are exchanged. In human communication, talking becomes the basic form of speech. It is a
type of speech where two or more participants freely alternate in speaking. Conversation among participants occurs almost in communication every day.
Sinclair and Coulthard 1975 argue that there are three characteristics of conversation,
namely performing
act, response,
and reclassification.
In categorizing an utterance as performing a certain act, the questions asked are
whether it is intended to invite a response, whether it is a response itself, whether it is designed to mark a boundary in the discourse, and etc. An elicitation can
solicit a response and take place before the initiating move. In the same move, the concept of continuous classification depends on the type of response.
Conversation is a cooperative achievement which involves at least two
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participants in reclassification. One participant makes an initiating utterance in order to soliciting a particular response from the others.
A whole conversation usually contains three parts: the opening, the body and the closing; among which, the opening and the closing affect greatly on the
structure of conversation than the body which may be often varying in the content of a conversation. When someone needs to conduct a conversation with another,
he or she always starts the conversation in a particular linguistic or nonlinguistic form, for instance, mentioning the name or title of the addressee, c. g. Jean,
Mr. Paul , Prof. Tou , Excuse me-, Pardon me, tapping the addressee on the shoulder, waving a hand, or making a dry cough to him. The act is followed with
the conversation’s body that may vary in content. It looks there is no certain rule in formulating the patterns of the body.
The closing means the ending of a conversation. To end a conversation, some forms of linguistic or non-linguistic signals are used to show the ending of a
conversation. Because a conversation is regarded as a cooperative social activity, it is quite rude to close a conversation abruptly before the speaker
completes his speech, and it is also inappropriate not to close the conversation after the speaker ends what he intends to tell.
4. Adjacency Pairs
a. Definition When one speaker makes an utterance, it is mostly responded by another
utterance from another speaker. When the expected response is not yet
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forthcoming, interlocutors will show an account of why the response is not forthcoming. This form of conversational organization is well defined by
Schegloff and Sacks in their concept of adjacency pairs. Two adjacent utterances made by different speakers are connected to each other in such a way. Through
adjacency pairs, participants are allowed to start conversation, negotiate deal, relate facts, change topics, and end the conversation Schegloff and Sacks
1973:296. The utterances are connected to set pair types, thus, a certain first pair part
forms the expectation of a certain second pair part Schegloff and Sacks 1973:296. For example, a question will always expect a reply, and an offer also
will always expect an acceptance or decline. The kinds of response may be in the form of a bound interactional unit among participants. It will raise a problem in
the conversation when the second part response does not happen,. This will result in a significant absence and hence unmeaning.
In a book entitled Spoken Discourse, Edmondson 1981:46 mentions that Schegloff and Sacks 1973 have categorized adjacency pairs into five features,
which are: 1 two utterance length, 2 adjacent positioning of the component utterances, 3 different speakers producing each utterance, 4 relative ordering
and 5 discriminative relations the pair type of which a first pair part is a member and this appropriates the choice among second pair parts.
There are a number of possible areas of difficulty that has a relation with adjacency pairs. First, a certain utterance may be intended as one among several
first pair parts of adjacency pairs. Second, when answering the telephone, Hello
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may be regarded as a greeting, or summon. Third, questions can contain information questions or requests for action “would you like do that for me?” or
criticism “why did you kill that?”, etc. Jack C. Richards and Richard W. Schmidt’s words ,2010:12.
b. The Types of Adjacency Pairs
Adjacency pairs take place when an utterance from one speaker leads to a particular kind of response very likely. Schegloff and Sacks 1973:297 divide the
adjacency pairs into nine parts, such as greeting-greeting, question-answer, request-refusal,
command-compliance incompliance,
blameaccusation- admissiondenial, offer-acceptance or refusal, assertion-agreement, disagreement,
summons-answer, and farewell-farewell. The types of adjacency pairs can be seen below.
1 Greeting - Greeting Tom
: Hey. Good morning
Clerk : Good morning, Tom.
Schegloff and Sacks, 1973:297 The utterances above indicate adjacency pairs with the first part of the
conversation is a greeting and the response of the greeting 1
st
part is a greeting, too. This type of adjacency pairs is mostly used when starting a conversation.
2 Question - Answer Tom
: What are this, people kissing or something?
Olivia : John says they might get married.
Schegloff and Sacks, 1973:298
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The first turn shows a question. Tom asks Olivia about the people he sees kissing it is probably done in the waiting room. The second pair part provides a response
to the question, the answer. 3 Request - Refusalacceptance
John : Sweetie, youre going to go with Daddy, okay?
The daughter : Okay.
Schegloff and Sacks, 1973:298 In the uterrances above, the first pair part indicates a request from the father
Tom to his daughter. He orders his daughter to go with him somewhere. As the response, in the second pair part, the daughter says her acceptance.
4 Command – Compliance Incompliance Olivia
: Now we can go through the cave.Duck
John : All right, going into the cave. Thats a big, beautiful cave were
in. Schegloff and Sacks, 1973:298
Olivia initiates the utterances above by giving a command to the group of people. She orders to go through the cave, but they all have to duck first. In the second
pair part, John, a member of the group, gives a response to the command with compliance as the response.
5 Blame Accusation – Admission Denial
Olivia : Man, youre crazy John : I am not crazy
I want my goo-gaa Schegloff and Sacks, 1973:298
In the conversation above, Olivia makes accusation to John. Olivia accuses John as a crazy man due to something described earlier. As the response, in the
