Turn-taking In Multiparty Conversations

Turn-taking is the basic form of organization for conversations where interlocutors take turns alternately and adopt turn-taking strategies to take the turn,to hold the turn,and to yield the turn.Previous studies indicate that conversations are organized on a turn-by-turn basis and observe turn-taking rules.They focus principally on dyadic communication,leaving multiparty conversations largely unexamined.The reason why this thesis studies turn-taking in multiparty conversations is that with several auditors to compete for the next turn,multiparty conversations are more complex than dyadic communication and are more likely to give rise to interruptions,collaborative completions,and overlaps.This thesis selects 21 episodes of panel discussions in Meet the Press and adopts conversation analysis as the method.The following questions are to be answered in the thesis:(1)What is the turn-taking organization of multiparty conversations?(2)What are turn-taking strategies used by the anchorperson and participants respectively in multiparty conversations?Specifically,the study not only clarifies the turn-taking organization in multiparty conversations and strategies used by interlocutors to take,hold,and yield turns,but also elucidates similarities and differences in adopting turn-constructional components,turn-allocation components as well as turn-taking strategies between the anchorperson and participants.The results are as follows.Firstly,as to turn-taking organization for multiparty conversations,a turn can be constructed by lexical,phrasal,clausal as well as sentential constructions,and can be allocated through 'current speaker selects next'technique as well as self-selection.The former is mainly adopted by the anchorperson to control the process of the program,while the latter renders conversations interactive.Besides,not all turn-takings happen at the transition-relevance place.Rules governing turn-taking at the non-transition-relevance place are generalized to demonstrate the regularities of turn-taking in multiparty conversations.Secondly,as for turn-taking strategies,interlocutors can take the turn by means of clean start,silence filler,uptake,link,interruption,overlap,and collaborative completion.There is no significant difference in strategies adopted to take the turn between the anchorperson and participants.As far as turn-holding strategies are concerned,turn-holding strategies consist of silence filler,prestructuring the discourse,paired sequence,incompletion marker,strategically placed silent pause,utterance incompletor,repetition,activity-type specific device,among which prestructuring the discourse is mainly adopted by participants,and activity-type specific devices by the anchorperson.As to turn-yielding strategies including giving up directly,prompting others to speak,and the other party self-selecting,prompting is principally taken by the anchorperson to yield the turn.