Vatanen2014
| Vatanen2014 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | PHDTHESIS |
| Key | Vatanen2014 |
| Author(s) | Anna Vatanen |
| Title | Responding in Overlap: Agency, Epistemicity and Social Action in Conversation |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Overlap, Epistemics, Responding |
| Publisher | |
| Year | 2014 |
| Language | English |
| City | |
| Month | |
| Journal | |
| Volume | |
| Number | |
| Pages | |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | |
| ISBN | |
| Organization | |
| Institution | |
| School | University of Helsinki |
| Type | |
| Edition | |
| Series | |
| Howpublished | |
| Book title | |
| Chapter | |
Abstract
his study examines overlapping talk in naturally occurring interaction by focusing on the social actions that are accomplished through both the overlapping and the overlapped turns with the aim of determining the motivation for early turn-onset. The focus is on the agreeing non-minimal responding turns that start up in overlap at a point that is not a transition relevance place, that is, in the middle of a turn, where not all projected elements have yet been produced. The data consist of such responding turns from seven hours of monolingual everyday face-to-face conversation in Finnish and Estonian. This study adopts the framework of conversation analysis, which is supplemented by interactional linguistics.
The early-onset responses are rather uniform in the social action types they implement. While they affiliate and align with the overlapped initiating action, they all convey an aspect of independence in their epistemic access. Three different response types are attested in the data: (1) claims of similar knowledge and experience, (2) independent agreements and (3) demonstrations of understanding. The participants do not orient to these overlapping responses as being interruptive.
The overlapped initiating actions belong to a previously understudied turn type, assertion. In assertion turns, the speaker asserts something concerning a rather general state of affairs, often attaching an evaluative, personal stance to it. Comparing the early-onset overlaps to other turn-onset types, it is shown that early response-onset is due to an aspect of epistemic independence in the turn rather than to the turn being in agreement with the prior one. In other words, epistemic factors are crucial in explaining the early response-onset. The motivation for this turn-onset type lies in the recipient s expression of equal commitment to the assertion being made. The recipient thus strives for a more balanced, symmetrical relationship between the participants with regard to both time (turn-onset point) and agency (rights to make the assertion).
Early-onset overlap is shown to be a patterned practice for indicating strong agreement with an independent stance. The data suggest that in everyday conversations, participants do not invariably aim for no-gap-no-overlap; instead, the social action type also affects turn-taking practices. Patterned and legitimate turn transfer does not occur solely around transition relevance places but also elsewhere. The lack of completion of the prior/ongoing turn is exploited for the interactional purpose of implementing the responsive social action types that are attested here. The research results show no differences between the Finnish and Estonian conversations in terms of the phenomenon investigated here.
Notes
