Lapse
Elliott M. Hoey (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3220-8119)
To cite: Hoey, Elliott M. (2023). Lapse. 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:
A lapse is a period of non-speech that emerges when all participants forgo the opportunity to speak at a place where speaking is a relevant possibility. It is a silence of relatively great duration that is said to consist of ‘rounds of possible self-selection’.
Lapses were proposed by Sacks, et al. (1974) to account for the fact that conversations could be continuously maintained but could also be discontinuous and separated by lapses in talk. The authors illustrated such discontinuity with an extract of a couple entering a car while chatting, after which turn-by-turn talk lapses as they start to drive (see also Schegloff 2007: 116). This illustration treats lapses as more or less synonymous with the silences that appear in ongoing states of incipient talk (Schegloff & Sacks 1973).
The significance of a lapse for participants is interactively negotiated. Hoey (2015) identifies three general ways by which participants come to a place where a lapse emerges. First, lapses may come about via the projection of a non-talk activity. For example, students in group work may, through the sequential developments of talk, implicate a ‘return’ to individual work—this implicates lapsing out of talk (Szymanski 1999; cf. Sutinen 2014). Second, conversation may lapse in contexts where discontinuous talk is readily accounted for by reference to the ongoing relevance of other activities. This is seen, for instance, when watching television together (Ergül 2016) or in massage therapy (Nishizaka & Sunaga 2015). And third, a lapse’s occurrence may be treated as the conspicuous absence of talk. These may be felt as ‘awkward silences’, a palpable sense of no one speaking in the place where someone should be (Hoey 2020).
Lapses are associated with non-conversational activities. Participants routinely take up other engagements during lapses, both in copresent and remote interactions (Szymanski, et al. 2006). Indeed, the membrane between ‘this conversation’ and other possible engagements might be understood as the collection of practices for entry into and out of lapses. For this reason, Hoey (2020) argues that lapses provide participants the opportunity to display their understandings of the relevance of continuous turn-by-turn talk for organizing their current circumstances.
Additional Related Entries:
Cited References:
Ergül, H. (2016). Adjournments during TV watching: A closer look into the organisation of continuing states of incipient talk. Discourse Studies, 18(2), 144-164.
Hoey, E. M. (2015). Lapses: How people arrive at, and deal with, discontinuities in talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 48(4), 430–453.
Hoey, E. M. (2018a). How speakers continue with talk after a lapse in conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 51(3), 329–346.
Hoey, E. M. (2020). When Conversation Lapses: The Public Accountability of Silent Copresence. Oxford University Press.
Nishizaka, A., & Sunaga, M. (2015). Conversing while massaging: Multidimensional asymmetries of multiple activities in interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 48(2), 200–229.
Pillet-Shore, D. (2018). How to begin. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 51(3), 213-231.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation. Language, 50(4), 696–735.
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8, 289–327
Sutinen, M. (2014). Negotiating favorable conditions for resuming suspended activities. In P. Haddington, T. Keisanen, L. Mondada, & M. Nevile (Eds.), Multiactivity in Social Interaction: Beyond Multitasking (pp. 137–166). John Benjamins
Szymanski, M. H. (1999). Re-engaging and dis-engaging talk in activity. Language in Society, 28(1), 1–23.
Szymanski, M. H., Vinkhuyzen, E., Aoki, P. M., & Woodruff, A. (2006). Organizing a remote state of incipient talk: Push-to-talk mobile radio interaction. Language in Society, 35(3), 393-418.
Additional References:
Berger, I., Viney, R., & Rae, J. P. (2016). Do continuing states of incipient talk exist?. Journal of Pragmatics, 91, 29–44
Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. The Free Press.
Goodwin, C. (1981). Conversational Organization: Interaction between Speakers and Hearers. Academic Press.
Hoey, E. M. (2017). Sequence recompletion: A practice managing lapses in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 109, 47–63.
Hoey, E. M. (2018b). Drinking for speaking: The multimodal organization of drinking in conversation. Social Interaction: Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality, 1(1).
Hoey, E. M. (2021). Sacks, silence, and self-(de) selection. In R. Fitzgerald, R.J. Smith, & W. Housley (Eds.), On Sacks: Methodology, Materials, and Inspirations (pp. 130–142). Taylor & Francis.
Jefferson G. (1983b). Notes on a possible metric which provides for a ‘Standard Maximum’ silence of approximately one second in conversation. Tilburg Papers in Language and Literature, 42, 1–83.
Maynard, D. W. (1980). Placement of topic changes in conversation. Semiotica, 30(3-4), 263–290.
Maynard, D. W., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1984). Topical talk, ritual and the social organization of relationships. Social Psychology Quarterly, 47(4), 301–316.
McLaughlin, M. L. & Cody, M. J. (1982). Awkward silences: Behavioral antecedents and consequences of the conversational lapse. Human Communication Research, 8(4), 299–316.
Philips, S. U. (1985). Interaction structured through talk and interaction structured through “silence.” In D. Tannen & M. Saville-Troike (Eds.), Perspectives on Silence (pp. 205–214). Ablex.
Robinson, J. D. (2013). Overall structural organization. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The Handbook of Conversation Analysis (pp. 257–280). Wiley-Blackwell.
Thomason, W. R., & Hopper, R. (1992). Pauses, transition relevance, and speaker change. Human Communication Research, 18(3), 429–444.
