A Turn-taking Based Analysis Of Cross-generation Conversation And Same Generation Conversation

In1960s, conversation analysis as the systematic study appeared. Harvey Sack (1974)has considered “turn” as basic unit of conversation. He and his colleagues, Schegloff andJefferson (1974) proposed the theory of conversation analysis and they also gave thepioneering research on the model of turn-taking. Many other scholars abroad investigated theturn-taking system in daily and institutional conversation, such as telephone dialogues,clinical dialogues, interviews, classroom conversations, courtroom conversations and so on.But in the aspect of family conversation, few systematic studies have been conducted it. So inthis research, the author will analyze the family conversation with the theoretical frameworkof turn-taking.Data of this study is collected from Modern Family, which is an interesting TV series ofthree different types of family talk. The author coded the corpus into categories and analyzedit by using quantitative and qualitative approaches with the framework of turn-taking. TheStatistic results are displayed in the form of table. And the author tries to answer the followingquestions in this thesis.1) What are the features in cross-generation conversations from theaspects of turn-constructional component and turn-allocation component?2) What are thesimilarities and differences between cross-generation and same generation from the aspects ofturn-constructional component and turn-allocation component?3) What are the similaritiesand differences in cross-generation conversation in the aspect of turn-taking strategies?4）What are the similarities and differences of turn-taking strategies used by cross-generationand same generation?5) What are the possible reasons for those differences?Data analysis reveals the following findings:1) In cross-generation conversation, the percentage of phrases, clauses and sentences used by children are higher than that of parents.As for turn-allocation component, parents prefer to do current-speaker selection andself-selection than children.2) Same generation applies much more sentence groups thancross-generation. In terms of turn-allocation component, same generation is more likely to docurrent-speaker selection than cross-generation.3) Turn-initiating strategy, turn-holdingstrategy, turn-yielding strategy, turn-responding strategy and turn-claiming strategy are thebasic devices of turn-strategies. Generally speaking, in cross-generation conversation, parentsare more likely to apply these turn-taking strategies than children.4) Same generation preferto use turn-initiating strategy, turn-yielding strategy and turn-responding strategy thancross-generation.5) Parents are more likely to instruct children in daily life. They always givesome advice to children. Thus, parents are the main speakers in the cross-generationconversations. As for the same generation, generation gap does not exist, that is to say theyhave common words. Thus, turn-initiating strategy, turn-yielding strategy and turn-respondingstrategy are used in the conversation of the same generation to show the respect to each other.The Thesis analyzed the features of turn-taking in cross-generation conversations andsame generation conversations. For English learners, this thesis can help them improve theiroral English abilities.