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action is initiated, for instance, a question in a question-answer pair. Furthermore, an SPP is a turn following an FPP where a particular next action is established in
response to the FPP, such as an answer in a question-answer pair. Liddicoat 2007: 106 informs that the production of an SPP is dependent
on the type of the FPP produced. The SPP should be of the appropriate type for the action launched in the FPP since not any SPP is acceptable to a particular type
of FPP. For example, an FPP of question must not be followed by a farewell or a greeting although these are possible SPPs for other types of FPP. The question
should be followed by an answer SPP to constitute a complete sequence. This consideration is based on the notion that sequences in conversation are formed
from a number of coherent actions. In this sense, a set of actions performed in adjacency pairs are organized into sequences in a sensible way.
There are many forms of adjacency pairs in conversation mentioned by linguists via their writing. Some of the forms are presented below as examples.
The first three examples are taken from Yule 1996: 77, whereas the rest are quoted from Liddicoat 2007: 107.
1 Question-answer
A: What time is it? B: About eight-thirty.
4 Summons-answer
Terry: Hey, Paul. Paul: Uh yeah.
2 Thanking-response
A: Thanks.
B: You’re welcome.
5 Greeting-greeting
Amy: Hello. Jean: Hi.
3 Request-accept
A: Could you help me with this? B: Sure.
6 Telling-accept
John: I’ve just finished
my last exam.
Betty: That’s great.
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In the examples, it can be recognized that each of the adjacency pairs accomplishes a complete coherent action where the first pair part FPP introduces
an initiating action and the second pair part SPP completes the action initiated by eliciting an appropriate response. A question is replied with an answer, a
thanking by a response, a request by an acceptance, and so on.
b. Preference Structure
In relation to the notion of adjacency pairs in which the second parts of the pairs called SPPs constitute responses to the first, Schegloff in Sidnell 2010: 77
points out that an SPP can be made up of some alternative responses. A request, for example, may not necessarily be accepted. For a particular reason, it can be
rejected. That is to say, in an FPP of request, there are two possible responses for realizing its SPP, namely an acceptance and a rejection. Nonetheless, not all types
of FPPs produce more than one possible realization for the SPPs. A few types of them only have a single type of SPP, including greeting and farewell Liddicoat,
2007: 109. The term preference refers to a pattern in which a certain type of response
is counted more preferred than the others in an adjacency pair Yule, 1996: 79. In this way, an acceptance is a typical expected response to a request while a
rejection is the unexpected one. Sidnell 2010: 77, furthermore, reports that preference is closely associated with the success of an action projected in an FPP.
A request is judged successful when the recipient grants the request, and thus an acceptance instead of a rejection must be the preferred response to it. In essence,
preference structure deals with a system which distinguishes between preferred
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and dispreferred second parts of adjacency pairs. The preferred second parts involve utterances which are expected as responses to the first parts, whereas the
dispreferred second parts, by contrast, include responses which are unexpected Yule, 1996: 79.
In addition, according to Liddicoat, the occurrences of dispreferred acts in conversational sequences are often problematic for personal relationships between
participants 2007: 111. Therefore, as he notes, a next speaker who will project a dispreferred act is supposed to create the response in different ways. She must not
make a direct and explicit response to the first part as in the preferred act since it will be seen as rude and hostile. Several elements might be necessary to include in
a dispreferred response, such as a silence, a doubt expression, a statement of apology, an account, etc. Yule, 1996: 81. Hence, preferred and dispreferred
responses can basically be differentiated by means of their features. Levinson asserts that preferred acts are likely to be direct and simple in their production,
while dispreferred acts are rather delayed and composed of complex structures 1983: 308. The realization of a preferred and a dispreferred act can be seen in
the following examples adapted from Liddicoat 2007: 117.
1 Invitation-accept
Amy : Would you like to come over tomorrow night?
Jane
: Yeah, that’d be nice.
2 Invitation-decline
Harry : I dont have much to do on Wednesday. .
Would you like to get together then? 0.3
Joy : Huh, well, I dont really know if
—
you see
—it’s a bit hectic for
me on Wednesday, you know.
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The two examples above are similar in terms of the FPP projected, that is, an invitation. The difference between those examples is laid on how the second
speaker responds to the invitation. In the first example, Jane as the second speaker
uses a preferred structure to reply to Amy’s invitation. She states an acceptance
immediately and her words contain a simple structure. On the contrary, the second example shows a different case. Joy, as the person invited, performs a dispreferred
act of rejection to Harry’s invitation by delaying the response with a short silence
and arranging it with structurally complex components. To design the response, Joy employs a hesitation marker huh, an expression of doubt
well, I don’t really
know, statements for understanding you see; you know, and an account
it’s a
bit hectic for me on Wednesday to explain the reason why he may not be able to accept the invitation.
c. Sequence Organization
In sequence organization, adjacency pairs are regarded as the basic forms of sequences at talk since they are only constructed of two turns each of which
establishes an FPP and an SPP Wilkinson and Kitzinger, 2011: 26. With respect to this, sequences of talk can have more complex forms than adjacency pairs.
They may be expanded into comprising more than two turns. A sequence expansion can occur in a range of different places. It can come before an FPP of
an adjacency pair, between an FPP and an SPP of an adjacency pair, or after an SPP of an adjacency pair. In their technical terms, these three possibilities of the
production of a sequence expansion are generally called pre-expansions, insert- expansions, and post-expansions Liddicoat, 2007: 125. Since expansions can be
