VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULITY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES
  
NGUYỄN THỊ MAI HỮU

TURN-TAKING STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE
CONVERSATIONS

(Chiến lược lượt lời trong hội thoại thông thường Tiếng Anh
và Tiếng Việt) M.A Combined Programme Thesis
Field: English Linguistics
Code: 602215 Hanoi – 2010

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents ………………… …………………………………………………… i
Abstract …………… ………………………………………………………… iv
Acknowledgements …………………………………… …………………………… v
List of Tables …………………………………………… …………………………… vi
List of Figures …………………………… ………………………………………… vii
Transcription Conventions …………………………………….……………………….viii
Chapter 1: Introduction ………………………………………………………………… 1
1.1 Rationale ……………………………………………………………………… 1
1.2 Objectives and significance of the study …………………………………… 2
1.3 Scope of the study …………………………………………………………… 3
1.4 Organization of the study …………………………………………………… 4
Chapter 2: Literature Review ………………………………………………………… 5
2.1 Conversation Analysis ………………………………………………………… 5
2.2 The Organization of Turn-taking ………………………………………………7
2.2.1 Definitions of Turn ……………………………………………… 7
2.2.2 Turn-taking Organization ………………………………………….8
2.3 Turn-taking strategies in English conversations …………………………… 10
2.3.1 Verbal turn-taking strategies …………………………………… 11
2.3.1.1 Adjacency pairs ……………………………………… 11
2.3.1.2 Name nomination ……………………………………… 12
2.3.1.3 Recompleters ……………………………………… 12
2.3.1.4 Appositionals ……………………………………… 13
2.3.1.5 Syntactic cues ……………………………………… 13
2.3.1.6 Overlaps and interruptions ……………………………… 13
2.3.2 Non-verbal turn-taking strategies ……………………………… 14
2.3.2.1 Paralanguage ……………………………………… 15



3 4.3.1 Similarities ……………………………………… 60
4.3.2 Differences ……………………………………… 62
Chapter 5: Conclusion and Implications ……….………………………………… 65
5.1 Summary ……………………………………… 65
5.1.1 Turn-taking strategies in English conversations …………….…………65
5.1.2 Turn-taking strategies in Vietnamese conversations …………… …….66
5.1.3 Similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese turn-taking
strategies …………………………………………………………………… 68
5.2 Implications ……………………………………………………………… 69
5.3 Limitationa and suggestions for further studies ……………………………………71
References ……………………………………………………………… 73 4 ABSTRACT

Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) stated that “the organization of taking turns
to talk is fundamental to conversation, as well as to other speech-exchange systems.”
Since these scholars developed a systematic mechanism of turn-taking in English
conversations in 1974, much research has been conducted on the field and turn-
taking has become a central issue in pragmatics and conversation analysis. Under
the scope of conversation analysis, this M.A thesis is conducted to discuss the turn-
taking mechanism in general and the turn-taking strategies in particular in casual
Vietnamese conversations. Video ethnography and stimulated recall were applied to
8 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Sample picture of one recorded conversation
Figure 2: Measurements of intensity, duration, tempo, and pitch with Nuendo
3.0
Figure 3: Measurement of intensity with Nuendo 3.0
Figure 4: Sound of low intensity as turn-end signal
Figure 5: High intensity as turn-acquiring signal
Figure 6: High intensity as turn holding signal
Figure 7: Measurement of pitch with Nuendo 3.0
Figure 8: Rising contour as turn-beginning signal and Falling contour as
turn-end signal
Figure 9: High tempo as turn-end signal
Figure 10: Adobe Audition 1.5 – Time Length Measurement
Figure 11: Hand raise to self-select a turn
Figure 12: Gesturing to select a next speaker
9
Indicates utterances of lower tempo than surrounding talk
☺
Smiley voice
X___G1
The gaze of the speaker is marked above an utterance and that of
the addressee below it. An unbroken line (___) indicates that the
party marked is gazing towards the other (girl 1 in this case);
absence indicates lack of gaze. Dots (. . .) mark the transition
from nongaze to gaze and the point where the gaze reaches the
other is marked by X. Commas (, , ,) indicates the moment when
gaze is shifted.
((raise hand))
Non-verbal actions or editor’s comments
(hhh)
Laughter tokens
(unintelligible)
Indicates a stretch of talk that is unintelligible to the analyst
(comment)
Single parentheses indicate unclear or probable item 10 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, the following parts are presented:
- Rationale – reasons for choosing the research topic
- Objectives and significance of the study

hold onto and relinquish the floor. The strategies will then be compared with those used
by English speakers in their native language, and some pedagogical implications for
teaching conversation in English classes will be discussed.
From a sociologist‘s stance, the following is worth mentioning. The 21
st
Century is
marked as the information era or the computer age, in which Internet is conceived as a
distributed network that could connect computers together and with the invention of
World Wide Web, Internet truly became a global network. Internet today has become the
ultimate platform for accelerating the flow of information and is the fastest-growing form
of media. With the ease and convenience of exchanging information via Internet, people
are more and more reliable on Internet and less on direct communication. ―Staff sitting
next to each other send email rather than speak‖ (Gascoigne, 2004). People find it easier
to chat via Internet than meet in person. These cause serious problems to direct
communication in general, and to communication skills in particular. Therefore, one
purpose of this study is to improve learners‘ communication ability with the awareness of
some turn-taking signals used in Vietnamese and English casual conversations.
From the viewpoint of a technocrat, the study of a systematic turn-taking may make a
little contribution to the robotic industry, which is to develop the turn-taking system in
Vietnamese so as that the robot designers may find it useful in their creating robots closer
to human beings, the new version of robots with ability to interpret both verbal and
nonverbal languages.

1.2 OBJECTIVES AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Turn-taking actually plays important role in everyday communication. For the
Vietnamese studying English and the people of other languages studying Vietnamese to

12 1.4 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
The paper is divided into 5 chapters as below:
Chapter 1: Introduction, introducing the research topic, its rationale, aims,
significance, scope, and the organization of the research.
Chapter 2: Literature Review, discussing the theoretical background in the light
of which the research matters will be discussed.
Chapter 3: Methodology, describing the methods applied to investigate the
research matters.
Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion, presenting the outcome of the study and
providing answers to the research questions.
Chapter 5: Conclusion and Implications, summarizing the overall study,
proposing some recommendations with regards to turn-taking in practice, and
suggesting some forms of further studies on the field.

14 CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter discusses the theoretical framework of the study which explores the
below:
o Conversation analysis
o Definitions of turn and of turn-taking organization
o Turn-taking strategies in English conversations
o Turn-taking strategies in Vietnamese conversations

2.1 Conversation Analysis

another way, the objective of CA is to uncover the tacit reasoning procedures and
sociolinguistic competencies underlying the production and interpretation of talk in
organized sequences of interaction. The upshot of this all is that CA seeks to ―uncover the
organization of talk not from any exterior, God‘s eye view, but from the perspective of
how the participants display for one another their understanding of what is going on.‖
(Hutchby and Wooffitt, 2001:15)
With such aim in mind, CA researchers have developed its characteristics, among which
the ones set by Markee (2000:28) are mostly cited:
 CA is profoundly agnostic about the value of explanations that are derived from
ethnic theories of social action because these explanations are not grounded in
members‘ constructions of their own naturally occurring behaviors.
 CA does not develop arguments about the structure of conversation on the basis of
quantitative analysis of frequency data.
 Conversation analysts use prototypical examples which give discursive form to
phenomenon being analyzed.
 Analyses must be subject to critical falsification. That is, analysts must
demonstrate that potential counterexamples and different accounts for the same
data set have been anticipated and that other researchers can replicate findings
with different transcripts.

16 2.2 The Organization of Turn-taking
2.2.1 Definitions of Turn
The organization of turns has attracted many linguistic researchers as well as researchers
in other fields such as psychology. Accordingly, definitions of turns vary significantly
from study to study and are implicitly and explicitly presented in previous literatures.
Turns can be defined into two types: mechanical definitions and interactional definitions.
Mechanically, turns are viewed as units of talks in interaction and exclude any

(b) the next speaker selects themselves.
The turn-taking organization first of all involves the definition of minimal units out of
which a turn can be formed, referred to as turn-constructional units (TCUs). An important
characteristic of the units is their projectability as a unit, i.e. there are features of the unit
which allow participants to anticipate or predict where an instance of the unit will come
to an end. The first possible point at which a turn-constructional unit is hearably complete
is called a transitional-relevance place (TRP). This is a juncture where turn-transfer or
speaker-change may potentially occur, though it does not need to take place at the first
transition-relevance place.
The following is a set of rules which operate over the transition-relevance places (TPRs)
of turn-constructional units on a turn-by-turn basis to co-ordinate the allocation of turns.
1. Supposing that the current speaker has initiated a current turn, the following rules
apply at the initial turn-constructional unit‘s first TRP, consecutively in the order
listed:
(a) If the current speaker selects the next speaker in the current turn, then the
next speaker has sole rights and obligations to speak next, transfer
occurring at the first TRP after the next speaker has been selected.
(b) If (a) has not been applied, i.e. the current speaker has not selected the
next speaker in the current turn, then any other party may or may not self-
select, with the first starter gaining sights to a turn, transfer occurring at
that place.
(c) If neither (a) the current speaker selects the next speaker nor (b) another
party has self-selected, then the current speaker may, but need not,
continue, thereby claiming rights to another turn-constructional unit.

18 2. At the initial turn-constructional unit‘s first TRP, if rules (1a) and (1b) have not
operated, and (1c) has been applied, then at the next TRP, rules (1a-c) reapply,

adjacency pairs, repair techniques, recompleters, social identities, appositionals, and
supersession. However, Sacks et al. (1974:729) also state that ―different speech exchange
systems lie on a continuum with respect to how turns are allocated to different speakers.‖
Accordingly, the rules for turn-taking may differ from one community to another as they
do from one type of speech event (e.g. a conversation) to another (e.g. an oral test).
Within the scope of this study, the turn-taking techniques studied are those used in casual
(ordinary and informal) English and Vietnamese conversations.

2.3 Turn-taking strategies in English conversations
A large body of research has been conducted to examine the turn-taking strategies applied
in English conversations including Duncan (1973), Sacks et al. (1974), Levinson (1983),
Hayashi (1996), Markee (2000), and others.
According to Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson's seminal framework for English
conversation (1978), turns may consist of various turn-constructional components such as
sentential, clausal, phrasal and lexical units. The end of each turn construction unit, which
can be projected by the participants in the conversation, constitutes a point where
speakers may change. This possible completion point is called a 'transition relevance
place', or TRP (Sacks et al., 1978:12). In order to detect a TRP, participants look out for
changes in the pitch or volume of the voice, the end of a syntactic unit, a momentary
silence, or some sort of body motion. Also in their study (Sacks et al., 1978:13), the
following rules for turn allocation account for a transfer of speakership, which is most
applied by researchers:
 The use of the "current speaker selects next technique" results in a speaker
change. Having reached a TRP, the current speaker chooses the next party
him/herself.
 If the turn-so-far does not involve the use of a "current speaker selects next
technique", any speaker may claim the next turn. This second rule usually compels

20

possible number of responses, and Burns (2001:134) concludes they enable speakers to
―anticipate certain types of forms and meanings from one utterance to the next.‖ Burns
(2001:133) also observes that question-and-answer is one of the most common forms of
adjacency pairs, but recognizes there are many others, such as requesting and granting (or
denying) the request, expressing gratitude and acknowledging it (Sacks et al., 1974). The
most widely used adjacency pairs indicate thanking-response, request acceptance,
apology-minimization, and question-answer sequences. Whilst Richards et al. provide a
narrow definition of an adjacency pair, Craig (1996) observes it can be expanded by an
insertion sequence, which may be of varying complexity and include a number of turns.
The types of adjacency pairs which are most commonly used are greeting-greeting,
invitation-acceptance/ decline, complaint/ denial, compliment/ rejection, challenge/
rejection, request/ grant, offer-accept/ reject, question-answer, and instruct-receipt (Sacks
et al. 1974:716).

2.3.1.2 Name nomination
Besides adjacency pairs, the next speaker may be nominated by name (or title), especially
in conversations involving more than two interlocutors who do not have good eye-
contact, name nomination may help to avoid confusion. This social conditioning may find
application in casual conversations as well as formal situations, such as meetings,
lectures, and presentations.

2.3.1.3 Recompleters
Recompleters (also named post-completers in different books) refer to a class that
supplies one major source of the talk done when rule 1c (―if the turn so far is so
constructed as not to involve the use of a current speaker selects next technique, then the
current speaker may, but need not continue, unless another self-selects‖) is applied (Sacks
et al., 1974:704,718). Tag questions like ―You know?” “Don’t you agree?” etc. are
examples. ―The availability of ―tag questions‖ as affiliable to a turn‘s talk is of special

2.3.1.6 Overlaps and interruptions
One way to take a turn is to interrupt the current speaker, which leads to the coining of
the terms ―overlap‖ and ―interruption‖.

23 Overlap occurs when a listener begins speaking before the first speaker completely
finishes his/her turn. The model for turn-taking suggested by Sacks et al. (1074) is
based on an underlying rules in American English conversation, namely that ―(1)
Overwhelmingly, one party talks at a time; (2) Occurrences of more than one speaker
at a time are common, but brief; (3) Transitions with no gap and no overlap are common.
Together with transition characterized by slight gap or slight overlap, they make up the
vast majority of transitions.‖ Thus, in Anglo-American culture, smooth transitions
from one speaker to the next tend to be valued. Although participants generally
conform to the rules of the turn-taking system, brief overlap may occur when two or
more participants compete for the floor. When a self-selecting listener overlaps with
the current speaker at a TRP, for instance, one of them may drop out, thereby
acknowledging the other's right to the turn (Nofsinger 1991:97-98).
While overlap is considered to be supportive and does not violate the turn-taking
norms, interruptions which "refer to simultaneous talk that does not occur at or near a
TRP" (Nofsinger 1991:102) constitute a threat to the speaker's face, the term
interruption often has negative connotations.

2.3.2 Non-verbal turn-taking strategies
All communicative codes have elements that act as turn signals. Listeners who want to
self-select may identify TRPs by analyzing the speaker's utterances for prosodic, syntactic
and semantic cues. Conversely, a current speaker may implement floor allocation
him/herself. Conversationalists employ a wide range of devices in order to negotiate floor
shift, including extralinguistic and paralinguistic activities. One pioneer in studying turn-

simultaneous speech speakers may raise the amplitude level of their utterances in order to
gain or hold the floor. Smooth speaker exchange can also be facilitated by a down-step in
pitch on the part of the speaker. Sacks et al. (1974:721-722) stressed the importance of
‗sound production‘ in turn-taking organization. For instance, recognizing whether a
phrase forms the first part of a longer construction, or a complete utterance, is determined
by intonation. Rising intonation may indicate a question, as opposed to confirmation or
emphasis accompanied by falling intonation. A rising intonation during a turn will

25 indicate that a turn is unfinished, as opposed to a falling intonation to signal its end.
Goshgaria with ―Exploring Language‖ (2003) also pointed out, ―it is also possible to have
a fall-rising pitch and a rise-falling pitch‖, and further explains the importance of
intonation in turn-taking and indicating the speaker‘s attitude. Crucially, intonation
patterns vary from one language to another. Pitch, stress, volume rhythm and tempo most
noticeably changes with strong emotions. In turn-taking, an increase in loudness may be
used to hold onto a turn or interrupt, whereas fading out relinquishes the floor. Rushing
over what would otherwise be a transition-relevant place (e.g. a natural break or end of a
tone group), is recognized as another means to hold onto the floor (Sack et al., 1974; and
Shortall, 1996: 130).

Silence
Hayashi (1996:41) coined the term 'turn utterance space' in order to describe short pauses
during utterances. As for the function of this space, she distinguishes between the
concepts of 'intra-turn space' and 'inter-turn space'. While the latter pauses relate to TRPs
and thus occur at turn exchanges, intra-turn spaces reflect pauses a speaker creates for
some private reason during his or her turn.
Regarding intra-turn space, according to Scollon and Scollon (1981:25-26), English
speakers tolerate inter-turn pauses of one second at most. The English speaking