Cut-off

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Cut-off
Author(s):	Marina N. Cantarutti (University of York, UK) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1688-0896)
To cite:	Cantarutti, Marina N. (2023). Cut-off. In Alexandra Gubina & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: []

The term cut-off refers to an abrupt articulatory closure which results in an audibly-incomplete word or sound and stops a “next sound due” (Schegloff 1979). This closure or stop may be of a glottal (i.e., at the larynx) or oral (in the mouth cavity) kind, or a pulmonic stop of the flow of air.

Cut-offs are normally represented in Jeffersonian transcription with a hyphen (-) and in GAT-2 with a superimposed glottal stop symbol (ˀ) where the closure is glottal.

The following line transcribed below from the CallFriend corpus (Canavan & Zipperlen 1996) and its acoustic visualization illustrate two glottal cut-offs during self-repair operations - in this case, with the glottal closure held during the silence (see Local & Kelly 1986). The areas of silence in the spectrogram and the straight lines with limited perturbation demonstrate how cut-offs block the flow of air, creating momentary silence.

Jeffersonian

I me:an i- (0.3) even if you’re no- (.) even if it starts_                     

GAT-2

i ˉME:AN iˀ (0.3) ˀEven if you’re ˉNOˀ (.) ˀEven if it ˉSTARTS                  

Figure 1: Waveform, spectrogram, and f0 trace of [CallFriend_4889_l232]

Cut-offs have been treated as one of the “non-lexical perturbations” in speech (Schegloff, et al. 1977) that signal the initiation of self-repair in the same turn, and tend to be placed after the trouble source (Jasperson 2002).

Jasperson (2002) specifies that the articulatory features of cut-offs, in particular their blocking of the flow of air (rather than depletion), and their opportunistic use of certain articulations fit for next articulations make it possible for both resumption and repair to happen at the soonest point possible. These articulatory closures used as cut-offs are interactional resources in themselves irrespective of their phonological status in a particular language. An example is the use of glottal cut-offs for self-repair in Thai (see Moerman 1977), a language where final glottalization is part of the systematic phonological organization of stress and tone; whereas in English the glottal stop is only tied to sociolinguistic variables and yet deployed for self-repair (and other interactional processes, see Local & Kelly 1986) irrespective of dialect.

Additional Related Entries:

• Period intonation
• Question intonation
• Comma intonation
• Try-marking
• Intonation contour
• Self-initiated self-repair

Cited References:

Canavan, A., & Zipperlen, G. (1996). CALLFRIEND American English-Non-Southern Dialect. Linguistic Data Consortium, Philadelphia, 10(1).

Jasperson, R. (2002). Some Linguistic Aspects of Closure Cut-Off. The Language of Turn and Sequence, 257.

Local, J., & Kelly, J. (1986). Projection and “silences”: Notes on phonetic and conversational structure. Human Studies, 9(2-3), 185–204.

Moerman, M. (1977). The Preference for Self-Correction in a Tai Conversational Corpus. Language, 53(4), 872–882.

Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The Preference for Self-Correction in the Organization of Repair in Conversation. Language, 53(2), 361–382.

Additional References:

Hepburn, A., & Bolden, G. B. (2017). Transcribing for Social Research. Sage.

Hepburn, A., & Bolden, G. B. (2012). The Conversation Analytic Approach to Transcription. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The Handbook of Conversation Analysis (pp. 57–76). Wiley-Blackwell.

Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. Lerner (Ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation (pp. 13–31). John Benjamins.

Local, J., & Walker, G. (2004). Abrupt-joins as a resource for the production of multi-unit, multi-action turns. Journal of Pragmatics, 36(8), 1375–1403.

Local, J., & Walker, G. (2005). Mind the gap: further resources in the production of multi-unit, multi-action turns. York Papers in Linguistics, 3, 133–143.

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). The simplest systematics for the organization of turntaking for conversations. Language, 50(4), 696–735.

Schegloff, E. A. (1979). The Relevance of Repair for Syntax-for-Conversation. In T. Givon (Ed.), Syntax and Semantics 12: Discourse and Syntax (pp. 261–288). Academic Press.

Selting, M., Auer, P., Barth-Weingarten, D., Bergmann, J., Bergmann, P., Birkner, K., Couper-Kuhlen, E., Deppermann, A.,  Gilles, P.,  Günthner, S., Hartung, M., Kern, F., Mertzlufft, C., Meyer, C., Morek, M., Oberzaucher, F., Peters, J., Quasthoff, U., Schütte, W., Stukenbrock, A., Uhmann, S. (2011). A system for transcribing talk-in-interaction: GAT-2. Gesprächsforschung: Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion, 12, 1–51