Delay

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Delay
Author(s):	Bogdana Huma (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands) (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0482-9580)
To cite:	Huma, Bogdana. (2023). Delay. 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: []

Within conversation analysis, “delay” refers to the placement of a unit of talk or embodied conduct later than projected within a turn-constructional unit (TCU), turn, sequence or conversation. Delay qualifies the progressivity of the ongoing conversation and thus is treated as accountable by interactants. The characterization of a unit of talk as “delayed” is made possible by the sequential and contiguous organization of social interaction, whereby: “[s]hould something intervene between some element and what is hearable as a/the next one due – should something violate or interfere with their contiguity, whether next sound, next word, or next turn – it will be heard as qualifying the progressivity of the talk, and will be examined for its import, for what understanding should be accorded it” (Schegloff 2007: 15). Delay can be accountably accomplished by deferring the projected conduct through staying silent, keeping immobile, or by replacing it with non-projected conduct ranging from barely audible clicks to full sequences of action.

Conversation analysts have documented the delayed positioning of various units of talk and embodied conduct within their respective sequential environments and the practices through which the displacement is accomplished. These phenomena will be reviewed and exemplified below.

First, interestingly, the organization of repair was found to be the only organization that can defer any other conduct. This means that when a speaker initiates repair on their own or an interlocutor’s talk, resolving the trouble thus signaled takes precedence over the ongoing course of action (Heritage 2007; Schegloff 2000).

Delay can also occur within the sequential environment of repair. For example, interactants can retrospectively be seen to have momentarily “withheld” other-initiated repair which usually occupies the next turn after the one in which the ostensible trouble source is located. This is accomplished by either starting a turn after a slight gap or by deferring the repair initiation within the next turn (Schegloff 2000; Schegloff, et al. 1977). This delayed production of other-initiated repair provides interlocutors with additional opportunities to self-repair (Schegloff, 2000; Schegloff, et al. 1977). The extract below features, in line 3, an other-initiated repair delayed by a receipt of the prior turn. In line 1, Bee asks Ava to confirm the marital status of a mutual acquaintance which the latter does in line 2. In line 3, Bee first receipts the response with a “no” and then checks her understanding that the acquaintance’s decision to not marry is definitive.

[Schegloff 2000: 231]

01  Bee:    Still not gettin married,
02  Ava:    hhh Oh no. Definitely not [married.
03  Bee: ->                           [No he’s decided [definitely?]
04  Ava:                                               [hhh   Oh   ] no.

Other forms of delayed other-initiated repair have also been documented. For example, interactants may defer initiating repair when they are not the addressees of the turn in which the trouble source is located and when the trouble source is located early within larger units of talk, such as a shopping list or a telling (Schegloff 2000). Additionally, in some institutional settings the delay of specific types of other-initiated repair may serve the accomplishment of institutional goals. For example, Rolin-Ianziti (2010) documents that and how, in language classes, the instructor’s other-correction of students can occur after they complete a particular communicative activity. In this institutional environment, the delayed other-correction is constituted as a distinct instructional activity with its own pedagogical value.

Not only other-initiated, but also self-initiated repair can be delayed. Specifically, the repair solution can be deferred through pauses and/or hesitation markers, also called “delay tokens” (Lerner 2013: 99). We see an example of this in the extract below. In line 3, Al initiates self-repair with a 0.4 seconds pause. This is followed by the hesitation marker “u:mm” and another 0.4 seconds pause. Note that the delayed production of the repair solution “this fa:lsehood” marks it as a delicate formulation (Lerner 2013).

[Lerner 2013: 104] 

01  Al:    We’re trying to find out (.) why you came up with
02         this decision, why you came up with this idea of
03      -> (.) using this (0.4) u:mm, (0.4) this fa:lsehood,

Speakers can also delay the completion of an in-progress turn constructional unit in the absence of self-repair. When the completion is placed after an interactant’s intervening turn, the phenomenon, is termed “delayed completion” (Lerner 1989). As such, the first speaker produces one turn constructional unit, across two turns at talk. A delayed completion is illustrated in the extract below. Dan’s turn in line 4 completes his prior turn in lines 1-2. Note that and how the delayed completion syntactically and pragmatically fits with the “host” turn (Vatanen 2017: 154) and how it deletes the sequential implicativeness of the intervening turn.

[Lerner 1989: 169]

01  Dan:    as a matter of fact we may not have a group going after
02          [the uh
03  Rog:    [maybe you're screening 'em too hard
04  Dan: -> next couple of weeks

Delay also frequently occurs within the sequential environment of adjacency pairs. Here, delaying either a first- or second pair part often constitutes an indication of dispreference (though see Kendrick & Torreira 2015; Robinson 2020; Stokoe, et al. 2020 on delayed preferred responses). Dispreferred first pair parts can be retrospectively seen to have been delayed by, for example, a pre-sequence (such as a pre-request) or by ostensibly unrelated actions. For instance, requests, which according to Schegloff (2007) are dispreferred in relation to offers, appear later in a conversation (though see Kendrick and Drew [2014] for an alternative account).

Not all delayed first pair parts are marked as dispreferred. For example, in Russian, the particle -ta can be used to mark a first pair part, such as a clarification request, as delayed, meaning that it is seeking a clarification of a non-immediately prior turn-at-talk (Bolden 2009).

Dispreferred second-pair parts can be delayed by, among others, gaps, pre-beginning behaviour, such as clicks, in- or out-breaths and hesitation markers, discourse markers or hedges in turn-initial position, or other actions that precede the dispreferred action, such as anticipatory accounts and expressions of appreciation (Heritage 1984; Schegloff 2007). Several of the above features of a dispreferred turn design are illustrated in lines 3-4 of the extract below. Bea designs her refusal of Ros’s invitation for coffee to start with a hesitation marker “Uhh-huh”, an outbreath, a turn-initial “well” (Heritage 2015), and a display of appreciation “that’s awfully sweet of you”. All these elements delay the delivery of her refusal “I don’t think I can make it this morning”.

[SBL:10:14] (Heritage 1984: 266; Kendrick & Torreira 2015: 257)

01  Ros:    And uh the: if you’d care tuh come ovuh, en visit u
02          little while this morning I’ll give you cup of coffee.
03  Bea: -> Uhh-huh hh Well that’s awfully sweet of you I don’t
04          think I can make it this morning,

The delayed production of a responsive action is not always a marker of dispreference. In interactions between first and second language speakers, the former have been found to sometimes defer their responses to turns that are in some respect problematic, for example by being syntactically incomplete or grammatically wrong (Wong 2004). Also, Stokoe, et al. (2020) documented how, after prior resistance to a course of action, interlocutors can produce delayed preferred responses to mark their change in position as arrived at independently.

Larger components of activities can also be delayed. Broth and Mondada (2019) examine how, in mobile interactions, like guided tours of cities or museums, individuals can defer “walking away” and thus delay the closing of the conversational episode. Two mechanisms for delaying “walking away” have been identified: participants can either expand the sequence-in-progress or they can initiate a new course of action, both of which momentarily stop co-present individuals from “walking away”.

Finally, a note on the meanings interlocutors ascribe to delays. A delay is always treated as done “for cause”. Often, delaying a next projectable unit of conduct marks that conduct as possibly out of sequence (Bolden 2009; Broth & Mondada 2019; Lerner 1989), displaying independence (Stokoe, et al. 2020), or delicate/sensitive (Kendrick & Torreira 2015; Lerner 2013; Schegloff 2000).

Additional Related Entries:

• Affiliation
• Alignment
• Gap
• Pause
• Preference
• Progressivity
• Repair

Cited References:

Bolden, G. B. (2009). Implementing delayed actions. In J. Sidnell (Ed.), Conversation Analysis. Comparative Perspectives (pp. 326–353). Cambridge University Press.

Broth, M., & Mondada, L. (2019). Delaying moving away: Place, mobility, and the multimodal organization of activities. Journal of Pragmatics, 148, 44–70.

Heritage, J. (2007). Intersubjectivity and progressivity in references to persons (and places). In N. J. Enfield & T. Stivers (Eds.), Person Reference in Interaction: Linguistic, Cultural and Social Perspectives (pp. 255–280). Cambridge University Press.

Kendrick, K. H., & Drew, P. (2014). The putative preference for offers over requests. In P. Drew & E. Couper-Kuhlen (Eds.), Requesting in Social Interaction (pp. 83–109). John Benjamins.

Kendrick, K. H., & Torreira, F. (2015). The timing and construction of preference: A quantitative study. Discourse Processes, 52(4), 255–289.

Lerner, G. H. (1989). Notes on overlap management in conversation: The case of delayed completion. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53(2), 167–177.

Lerner, G. H. (2013). On the place of hesitating in delicate formulations: A turn-constructional infrastructure for collaborative indiscretion. In M. Hayashi, G. Raymond, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), Conversational Repair and Human Understanding (pp. 95–134). Cambridge University Press.

Robinson, J. D. (2020). Revisiting preference organization in context: A qualitative and quantitative examination of responses to information seeking. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 53(2), 197–222.

Rolin-Ianziti, J. (2010). The organization of delayed second language correction. Language Teaching Research, 14(2), 183–206.

Schegloff, E. A. (2000). When “others” initiate repair. Applied Linguistics, 21, 205–243.

Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press.

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.

Stokoe, E., Humă, B., Sikveland, R. O., & Kevoe-Feldman, H. (2020). When delayed responses are productive: Being persuaded following resistance in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 155, 70–82.

Vatanen, A. (2017). Delayed completions of unfinished turns: On the phenomenon and its boundaries. In R. Laury, M. Etelämäki, & E. Couper-Kuhlen (Eds.), Linking Clauses and Actions in Social Interaction (pp. 153–175). Finnish Literature Society.

Wong, J. (2004). Some preliminrary thoughts on delay as an interactional resource. In R. Gardner & J. Wagner (Eds.), Second Language Conversations (pp. 114–131). Continuum.

Additional References:

Oloff, F. (2018). Revisiting delayed completions: The retrospective management of co-participant action. In A. Deppermann & J. Streeck (Eds.), Time in Embodied Interaction: Synchronicity and Sequentiality of Multimodal Resources (pp. 123–160). John Benjamins.

Tanaka, H. (2008). Delaying dispreferred responses in English: From a Japanese perspective. Language in Society, 37(4), 487–513.