Speech Acts Fields in Pragmatics

A coherent conversation proceeds in orderly way by a series of interaction moves with each participant having a turn to speak. However, in emotional conversation, one speaker may interrupt another. This interruption is called turn stealing. Furthermore, Sacks, Schegloff Jefferson in Levinson 1983:297 suggest that mechanism that governs turn-taking, and accounts for properties noted, is a set of rules with ordered options which operates on a turn-by-turn basis, and can thus be termed a local management system . A way of looking at the rules is a sharing device, an „economy‟ operating over a scarce resource, namely control o f the „floor‟. Such an allocational requires minimal units over which it operates, such units being the units from which turns at talk are constructed. Further, they explain that these units are, in this model, determined by various features of linguistic surface structure. They are syntactic units sentences, clauses, phrases, and so on which are identified as turn-units in part by prosodic, and especially intonational. A speaker is assigned initially just one of these turn-constructional units although the extent of the unit is largely within the speaker‟s control due to the flexibility of natural language syntax. The end of such a unit constitutes a point at which speakers may change – it is transition relevance place, or TRP. At TRP, the rules that govern the transition of speakers then come into play, which does not mean that the speakers change at that point, but simply that they may do so. Sacks et al. quoted in Levinson 1987:298 give rules of the operating on the turn-units. In this rules, they use C for current speaker, N for next speaker, and TRP for the recognizable end of a turn-constructional unit. The rules are shown below. a. Rule I −applies initially at the first TRP of any turn. 1 If C selects N in current turn, then C must stop speaking, and N must speak next, transition occurring at the first TRP after N-selection. 2 If C does not select N, then any other party may self-select, first speaker gaining rights to the next turn. 3 If C has not selected N, and no other party self-selects under option b, then C may but need not continue i.e. claims to a further turn constructional unit b. Rule II −applies at all subsequent TRPs When rule 1c has been applied by C, then at the next TRP rules 1 a−c apply, and recursively at the next TRP, until speaker change is affected.

5. Turn-taking Irregularities

Sacks quoted in Mey 1994:216 argues that the basic unit of the conversation is the „turn‟, that is a shift in the direction of the speaking „flow‟ which is characteristic of normal conversation. This means that in a normal conversation, there is at least one and not more than one party talking at a time and then there will be another turn for the hearers who reply or answer the speaker. Yule 1996:72 argues that a conversation usually consists of two or more participants taking turns and only one participant is speaking at one time. Consequently, smooth shift from one speaker to the next is important. Moreover, Yule says that transitions with a long silence between turns or with substantial overlap where two speakers trying to speak at the same time seem to be awkward. Cutting 2002:vi gives transcription conventions on turn-taking as follows: Zimmerman West 1975:114 divide the types of turn-taking irregularities in a conversation i nto “interruption and overlap”. Furthermore, overlaps are instances of simultaneous speech where next speaker begins to speak at or very close to a possible transition places in a current speaker‟s utterance i.e., within the boundaries of the last word. It is this proximity which distinguishes overlaps from interruptions. In the other hand, interruption is seen as penetrating the boundaries of a unit-type to the prior to the last lexical constituent that could define a possible terminal boundary of a unit-type. In addition, there are descriptions on types completed by examples. The words with certain marks = or in examples indicate that the utterances contain irregularities done by certain speakers in the conversations. a. = interruption b. overlap c. … lines from original omitted to make example quoted simpler d. 0.5 Pause number of seconds in brackets