M. A. I english P. C3 & C6 Modern Linguistics title pmd

10.2.3 Turn Taking 
Turn taking is the change of speaker during conversation. Although the kind 
of talk is likely to differ according to the different contexts of interaction such as the 
interaction between a teacher and students in a classroom, doctor and patients in a 
clinic and many such experiences in which there is interpersonal exchange, yet they 
share one characteristic in common, namely the structure of the talk-“I speak – you 
speak-I speak”. 
George Yule compares conversation with a market economy in which there 
is a scarce commodity called the ‘floor’ which can be defined as the right to speak. 
Having control of this scarce commodity at any time is called a turn. In any situation 
where control is not fixed in advance, anyone can attempt to get control. This is 
called turn-taking. 
In conversation many speech acts, direct or indirect come in what has been 
called adjacency pairs. Requests are responded to by promises of compliance, 
questions by answers, offers by acceptances or refusals and assertions by 
acknowledgements. The first half of each adjacency pair is intended to set up its 
response, and the second half, to satisfy the obligations set up. In conversations, it 
is these adjacency pairs that enable the participants to coordinate turn-taking, to 
introduce and change the topics, and to open and close the conversation itself. 

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Principles : 
1. 
Transition: Transition may be indicated through overt syntactic links or covert 
semantic anchorage. Sentences are rooted into a continuous thematic 
pattern.
2. 
Selection: The situation and the thematic scope restrict or determine the 
selection possibilities. 
3. 
Organisation: Turns are bound by some organizational patterning. The most 
obvious is adjacency or sequencing. 
4. 
Alteration: There is alteration in turn-taking. Certain signals are available that 
mark or suggest the approaching end of a turn. Different tactics- nod, focus 
eyes, add a question tag, etc. 
5. 
Chaining: Latching of utterances is chaining 
6. 
Relevance: Semantic relevance-Grice 
Turns could be verbal or non-verbal. Verbal terms can be followed by non-
linguistic turns such as smiles, raised eyebrows, hand movements, dilated pupils 
and so on. . 
Sometimes all the turns taken by one communicator are deceptively 
repetitive. E.g: Othello’s demand for the handkerchief. He utters the word half a 
dozen times. Apparently, there is no cohesion between what Desdemona says and 
what Othello demands. But at the deeper level there are undercurrents that bind 
together the propositions of Desdemona and Othello. There is relevance. (Diabolic 
machinations of Iago and the concocted story of the illegitimate relationship between 
Desdemona and Cassio resulting in the two simple words acquiring a centrifugal 
value and forming a metaphor connoting marital infidelity.) Turns - verbal or non 
verbal, chaotic or orderly- come one after another and it is the broad field of 
discourse that sticks them together. 

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123 
Factors having a bearing on the organisation of turns 
1. 
the situation 
2. 
the purpose 
3. 
the number of people involved in the interaction 
4. 
the status or roles that the participants have 
Turn constructional unit can be words, phrases, clauses or combination of 
clauses.