A note on conversational interruptions

• Autor(a) principal: Deyes, Anthony F.
• Data de Publicação: 1984
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Ilha do Desterro
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/desterro/article/view/10878

In their seminal article, Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974) examine procedures for turn-taking in conversation. Sometimes, they note, a s peaker will select who has the next turn, but more frequently a "self-select" system operates, whereby the participants in a conversation themselves determine when they wish to speak. But how, ask Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, do the interlocutors secure a turn in the ongoing flow of another speaker's utterance? To answer this question the authors introduce the notion of "transition relevance place", that is, a point in the turn-holder's utterance where another speaker is most likely to take up a turn. Clearly the most obvious transition relevance place occurs at the end of an utterance sentence, where a pause may be made. However, clause or thersyntactic boundaries also offer opportunities for other speakers to interrupt. As Sacks et al point out, if conversational participants do not take up a turn at a transition relevance place the turn holder will normally continue.