Taking the Turn in Conversation

Fan Zhu

According to Hutchby and Wooffitt （2010：11-12），conversation analysis （CA） is a systematic analysis of peoples everyday talk when they are interacting with others.Thus CA not only means to study about the information conveyed during the speech，but also means to analyze about how people participate in the conversation and how they organize their speeches in order to interact successfully （Saft，2009：137-138）.Under this situation，one of the most important research aspect in CA is to observe the ‘sequential order of talk，in other words，how people take turns at talking （Hutchby，2010：41）.

Sometimes，people will begin their turns by referring to the previous speakers turns.Under this situation，these turns may be topically related.And in some case，the next speakers prefer to take their turns naturally by referring something connected to the previous speakers speeches or evaluating what they said before （Stenstrom，1994：69-71）.Although it is a good strategy to take turn by referring previous speakers speech，yet the turn beginnings are not always in the same position with the previous message.In other words，people could also start their turns which reveal their doubts and objections （ibid：68-69）.

Despite positive response or negative response，not all the turn taking are as ordered as we thought.There are also many interruptions which initiate the taking of the turn.According to Stenstrom （1994：73），there are three most obvious reasons for interrupting： first，one has got the impression that others have nothing more to say； second，one thinks there is no need for others to elaborate the message； third，one wants to speak up at a particular point in the ongoing talk.

In CA there is also a interesting situation called back channels.In the strict sense，backchannels are not proper turns，for they do not involve a speaker shift （Stenstrom，1994：5-6）； in other words，one of the speakers is continuing the speech during which others show their appreciation or disagreement by their oral responding，such as，‘em and ‘yes （ibid）.In general，the functions of backchannels are to encourage speakers to go on and to show listeners attention （ibid）.

According to Richards and Schmidt （2010：613），the roles of speakers and listeners are changed constantly through talking.In other words，most of the participants in conversation could act as speakers in turn.Thus how to talk the turn is one of most significant discussing factors in conversation analysis.Furthermore，in most of the cases，none of the participants in a two-person dialogue could remain passive （Stenstrom，1994：81）.Under this circumstance，people tend to give short responses or backchannels if they have nothing special to say，or if they want to get more information from others.Although there are also many other strategies people can use when they are talking，yet in this article，I mainly focus on these two perspectives.

References

[1]Hutchby，I.andR.Wooffitt[J].ConversationAnalysis，Cambridge：Polity，2010.

[2]Richards，J.C and R.Schmidt Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics[J].London：Pearson，2010.

[3]Saft，S.A practice for avoiding and terminating arguments in Japanese：the case of university faculty meeting； in Nguyen，H.T and G.Kasper（eds）[J].Talk-in-Interaction：MultilingualPerspectives，Hawaii：National Foreign Language Resource Center，2009.

[4]Stenstrom，A.B.An Introduction to Spoken Interaction[J].New York： Longman，1994.

作者簡介

祝帆（1989—），女，漢族，江西南昌人，碩士研究生，江西科技學院，研究方向：英語語言教育。