Choral co-production
| Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Choral co-production | |
|---|---|
| Author(s): | Makoto Hayashi (Nagoya University, Japan) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4613-8238) |
| To cite: | Hayashi, Makoto. (2023). Choral co-production. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/BE8N5 |
Choral co-production refers to a form of participation whereby participants aim to co-produce part or all of a turn-constructional unit (TCU) more or less in unison with one another, designedly matching words, voicing, and tempo (Lerner 2002; Pfänder & Couper-Kuhlen 2019). Examples are found in lines 2-6 of the following extract, from Lerner (2002):
(Lerner 2002: 234) 01 A: You have too many white friends. You don’t know 02 -> how to be with (.) your p[eople. 03 B: -> [people 04 A: -> Why are you not proud of (0.2) [you:r [peo:ple. 05 C: -> [you:r [peo:ple 06 B: -> [°people°
Choral co-production is similar to anticipatory completion in that both practices involve a speaker making conditional entry into another speaker’s turn space to co-construct a TCU-in-progress. However, there is a fine distinction between the two practices; while with anticipatory completion a speaker aims at taking over or co-opting the voicing of the final part of a TCU initiated by another speaker, with choral co-production a speaker aims at voicing the same words in the same way at the same time as another speaker. Note, though, that one cannot always tell whether a second speaker’s contribution is designed to co-opt or co-produce a turn component (Lerner 2002: 228).
Choral co-production can be brought off in at least two different ways. First, recipients of an emerging TCU may co-produce part of it without specific elicitation on the part of the current speaker. In such cases of unelicited “chiming in” (Pfänder & Couper-Kuhlen 2019), choral co-production overwhelmingly takes the form of co-producing the terminal item of an emerging TCU. A recipient makes use of the unfolding trajectory of an emerging TCU, along with its position in a sequence of actions and the ongoing speaker’s concurrent bodily conduct, as resources to anticipate what will come next and to co-produce it.
Second, choral co-production may be elicited by the speaker of an emerging TCU. One method for such elicitation is initiating a shared reminiscence, as seen in line 1 of the following extract from Lerner (2002) (the participants are reminiscing about a line from a well-known movie):
(Lerner 2002: 232) 01 MIC: -> Remember that?= 02 SHA: =Yeah 03 MIC: [I kne:w you were co:ming so I ba:ked a ca:ke. 04 SHA: [You knew I you coming, so I baked a cake 05 VIV: [I knew you were coming so I ( ) ca(h)ke heheheh
Another method for co-production elicitation is initiating a word search (Lerner 2002: 235).
Choral co-production can be used to achieve various interactional ends. It provides participants with a method for performing an action in a conjoined fashion addressed to a third party, such as explaining something together, issuing a joint complaint, and making a conjoined request (Lerner 2002). When employed by the addressed recipient of an emerging TCU, co-producing part of that TCU along with the current speaker can serve as a way to demonstrate agreement with what is being said. In addition, it has been suggested that, while elicited choral co-production can be a method for displaying a shared affective stance towards something being talked about by another speaker, unelicited choral co-production can be used by a recipient to make an epistemic claim to know as much about what is being talked about as the current speaker (Pfänder & Couper-Kuhlen 2019).
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Cited References:
Lerner, G. H. (2002). Turn-sharing: The choral co-production of talk-in-interaction. In C. E. Ford, B. A. Fox, & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), The Language of Turn and Sequence (pp. 225-256). Oxford University Press.
Pfänder, S. & Couper-Kuhlen, E. (2019). Turn-sharing revisited: An exploration of simultaneous speech in interactions between couples. Journal of Pragmatics, 147, 22-48.
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