Turn-Claiming System Of Casual Friends' Talk With Reference To The American Sitcom Friends

In line with the development of conversational analyses, this paper is trying to do some tentative researches on the structure of causal conversations between friends. The material I have chosen is one of the most successful sitcom in American history: Friends, which contains stories of ten seasons. In this paper, I make detail analyses on all the turn-claiming samples in the 38 scenes selected from the first season, in which all conversations are going on among the six main characters. However, my analyses are not independent of theoretical backgrounds. I have resorted to some theories of sociolinguistics such as Austin's speech act theory, Grice's cooperative principle, the framework of turn-taking analyses, and other related studies of conversational structure. The purpose of the study lies in but beyond the conversational structure, and the final result of my research is to summarize a system of turn-claiming reflected by the material in the hope of providing some inspirations on the studies of casual conversations.