VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Faculty OF Post-graduate STUDIES

o0o
NGUYEN THI OANH
A STUDY OF DISPREFERRED SECOND TURNS USED
IN PART A – LISTENING SECTION OF TOEFL PBT
(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ CÂU ĐÁP KHÔNG ĐƯỢC ƯU TIÊN
TRONG PHẦN A – NGHE HIỂU TOEFL PBT)

Field: MA in English Linguistics
Code: 60.22.02.01
Training Program: Type 1 Hanoi – 2013
VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Faculty OF Post-graduate STUDIES o0o
own research for the Minor Degree of Master of Arts in English Linguistics at
University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National
University, Hanoi. The thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other
universities or institutions.
I agree that the origin of my thesis deposited in the library can be
accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the
normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan and
reproduction of the paper.

Hanoi, October 1
st
, 2013
Signature Nguyen Thi Oanh

II

III

ABSTRACT The main objective of this thesis is discovering the general patterns of dispreferred
second turns and the common linguistic features indicating them in part A – Listening
Comprehesion Section of TOEFL PBT based on the theoretical frameworks of
pragmatics and conversation analysis.
The corpus of the study consists of 50 dialogs containing dispreferreds in Part A. Both
quantitative and qualitative methods have been used to find out the answers to the
research questions.
There are some findings in the research. In the first place, the five patterns of
dispreferreds, namely assessment-disagreement, invitation-refusal, proposal-
disagreement, offer-declination and request-refusal, are all used in Part A and the
pattern assessment-disagreement is the most common one. Also, there are eight
common linguistic elements indicating dispreferreds among which ‗give an account‟
ranks the most. The data analysis also points out that each linguistic feature is priorly
used in one or some certain patterns of dispreferreds.
1.2.1. Definition 6
1.2.2. Turn-taking 7
1.2.3. Adjacency pairs 7
1.3. Preference structure 9
1.3.1. Definition 9
1.3.2. General patterns of preference structure 10
1.3.3. Dispreferred second turns 11
1.4. Dispreferreds in Part A - Listening Comprehension of TOEFL PBT 14
1.5. Previous works 17
CHAPTER II: THE STUDY 19
2.1. Database 19 V

2.2. Methodology 19
2.3. Procedure 20
2.4 Findings and discussion 21
2.4.1. General patterns of dispreferreds 21
2.4.2. Common linguistic features of dispreferreds 22
PART III - CONCLUSION 34
1. Recapitulation 34
1.1. The common patterns of dispreferreds 34
1.2. The linguistic features signaling dispreferreds 34
2. Suggested tips for TOEFL PBT learners or potential test-takers 36
3. Implications for English language learning and test taking 37
4. Limitations of the research 39
5. Suggestions for further research…….…………………………………………40

REFERENCES
CONTENTS
Table 1 - Correlations of content and format in adjacency pair seconds
Table 2 - The general patterns of preferred and dispreferred structures
Table 3 - Linguistic elements indicating dispreferred second turns
Table 4 - Listening Comprehension Format in Standard Form
Figure 1 - Common patterns of dispreferred second turns
Figure 2 - Linguistic features indicating dispreferreds

PAGE
10

 // Point at which the current utterance is overlapped by that
transcribed below
 Q1 Question 1
 & And

VIII

 (( )) ―some phenomenon that the transcriber does not want to
wrestle with‖ or some non-vocal action, etc.
 hh an audible out-breath, .hh an in-breath
 S Speaker
 H Hearer

1

PART I
INTRODUCTION

1. Statement of the Problem
Since 1986, after having launched its open-door policy ―Doi Moi‖, Vietnam has gone
through remarkable changes to be a market economy and set up relations with more
than 200 countries and regions in the world. It also became a member of many
important organizations such as ASEAN, AFTA, APEC, ASEM, WTO and so on. In
this converging trend, Vietnam is becoming more and more involved in international
trade and investment.
To keep track of this globalization trend, the Vietnamese government has encouraged
its citizens to learn English. As a result, English has become the most popular foreign


3. Objectives of the study
More obviously, to solve the research question, the study is conducted to:
 Provide readers with basic knowledge of speech acts, conversation analysis,
adjacency pairs and preference structure.
 Find out the general patterns of dispreferred structures used in Part A -
Listening Section of TOEFL PBT.
 Examine the linguistic features signaling dispreferred responses in Part A -
Listening Comprehension of TOEFL PBT.
 Provide potential test-takers with practical knowledge to deal with TOEFL PBT
questions containing dispreferred-second-turn questions.

3

4. Significance of the study
First and foremost, this paper can be used as a useful reference source for teachers as
well as learners who have been teaching and studying TOEFL PBT. It enables them to
understand conversation analysis, adjacency pairs, preference structure, dispreferreds,
their general patterns and the linguistic units signaling them more deeply. Good
understanding and full consciousness can help them deal with listening questions in
Part A - TOEFL PBT more easily. At the same time, deep knowledge can let them
communicate in English in a more natural and effective way, particularly when giving
an indirect decline, refusal or disagreement.
Secondly, teachers and learners of TOEFL PBT can use the paper as a handbook to
seek some tips to cope with questions that contain dispreferred-second-turn responses
in Listening Comprehension Section.
Last but not least, researchers of related fields can also use the paper for reference and
5

PART II
DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1. Speech Acts
1.1.1. Definition
It goes a broad consensus that of all the issues in the general theory of language usage,
the speech act (SA) theory has probably aroused the widest interest. After Austin‘s
initial investigation into SAs a few decades ago, the notion of SAs has become one of
the most exciting notions to take a close look at.
In linguistic pragmatics, SAs have remained the central phenomena that every general
pragmatic theorist must take into account. That is the reason why there have been a
great number of works on SAs carried out by many philosophers and linguists such as
Grice (1957, 1975), Searle (1969), Levinson (1983), Thomas (1995) and Yule (1996).

talks produced in ordinary human interactions. Levinson does not see conversation as
a structural product as the sentence but the outcome of the interaction of two or more
independent, goal-directed individuals, with often divergent interests.
The approach used to analyze conversations is called conversation analysis (CA)
which, at its core, in Sidnell‘s words (2010), is a set of methods for working with
audio and video recordings of talk and social interaction. It is regarded as a social-
science approach that has the primary purpose of describing, analyzing and
understanding talk as a basic and constitutive feature of human social life.
Also discussing CA, Hutchby & Wooffitt (2008) calls it ‗the study of recorded,
naturally occurring talk-in-interaction‘ that aims to discover how speakers understand
and respond to one another in their turns at talk. CA serves as a central focus on how
sets of action are generated. In other words, the aim of CA is to uncover the often tacit
reasoning procedures and sociolinguistic competencies underlying the production and
interpretation of talk in organized sequences of interaction. 7

The purpose of CA, according to Levinson (1983: 287), is to discover the systematic
properties of the sequential organization of talk, and the ways in which utterances are
designed to manage such sequences. CA has to satisfy two requirements. First, its
methods need to be inductive - search is made for recurring patterns across many
records of naturally occurring conversations. Second, the emphasis should be put on
the interactional and inferential consequences of the choice between alternative
utterances.
When it comes to the analytic studies on English data, local management organizations
in conversation, namely turn-taking and adjacency pairs, cannot be omitted.
1.2.2. Turn-taking
According to Levinson (1983: 296), it can be easily seen that conversation is
characterized by turn-taking: one participant, A, talks, stops; another, B, starts, talks,

complaint-denial; offer-accept; request-grant; compliment-rejection; challenge-
rejection, and instruct-receipt. According to Thornbury & Slade (2006), adjacency pairs
typically have three characteristics: they consist of two utterances; the utterances are
adjacent, i.e. the first immediately follows the second; and different speakers produce
each utterance.
In addition, adjacency pairs, in Yule‘s perspective, are not simply contentless noises in
sequence. They represent social actions, and not all of social actions are equal when
they occur as second turns of some pairs.
Levinson (1983: 306-07) states that there is a problem that arises with the notion of an
adjacency pair concerns the range of potential seconds to a first part. The problem here
is that a first part may, in fact, receive a great many acceptable responses rather than the
fixed one in its pair. For instance, a question can have some proper responses other than
an answer such as protestations of ignorance, re-routes, refusals to provide an answer,
and challenges to the presuppositions or sincerity of the question:
A: What does John do for a living?
B: a. Oh that and this.
b. He doesn‟t.

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c. I have no idea.
d. What‟s that got to do with it?
(Levinson, 1983: 293)
We have another case in which the response to a question is not an answer but a
promise to provide an answer at a later date, together with an account that explains the
deferral:
A: Yes // how many tubes would you like sir? ((Q1))
B: Er, hh I‟ll tell you what I‟ll just eh eh ring you back I have to work
out how many I‟ll need. Sorry I did- wasn‟t sure of the price you see.
(Levinson, 1983: 305)

dispreferred turns we can then correlate the content and the sequential position of such
turns with the tendency to produce them in a preferred or dispreferred format‖. And
we can find recurrent and reliable patterns, for example, a disagreement of an
assessment or a proposal are nearly always in a dispreferred format while an
agreement is certainly in a preferred format. The following table indicates the sort of
consistent match between the format and the content found across a number of
adjacency pair seconds.
(Levinson, 1983:336)
Table 1 - Correlations of content and format in adjacency pair seconds
FIRST
PARTS
Request
Offer/ Invite
Assessment
Question
Blame
SECOND
PARTS

Preferred
Acceptance
Acceptance
Agreement
Expected answer
Denial
Dispreferred
Refusal
Refusal
Disagreement
Unexpected

Table 2 - The general patterns of preferred and dispreferred structures
(following Levinson 1983)
From the table we can see that it comes to considering request or offer as first parts,
acceptance is the preferred second act and refusal is the dispreferred one. We can have
some illustrations below:
First Part
Second Part

Assessment
Offer
Request

Isn‟t that dish delicious?
Want some tea?
Can you help me?
Preferred
Dispreferred
Yes, it is.
Yes, please.
Sure.
I don‟t think so.
No, thanks.
I‟m busy now.

1.3.3. Dispreferred second turns
Yule (1996) states that silence in the second part is always a dispreferred response,
often leading the first speaker to a revision of the first part in order to get a second part

12


I'm not sure; I don't know
that's great; I'd love to
I'm sorry; what a pity
I must do X; I'm expected in Y
you see; you know
everbody else; out there
too much work; no time left
really; mostly; sort of; kinda
I guess not; not possible
Table 3 - Linguistic elements indicating dispreferred second turns

13

We can take one dialog to analyze:
Becky: Come over for some coffee later
Wally: Oh - eh - I'd love to - but you see - I - I'm supposed to get this
finished - you know.
(Yule, 1996: 81)
In this conversation, such linguistic elements as a hesitation ‗oh – eh‘, preface/token
Yes ‗I'd love to‘, stumbling repetition ‗I - I'm‘, account ‗I'm supposed to get this
finished‘ and an invocation of understanding ‗but you see, you know‘ are used to
create dispreferred second turns.
Still discussing the linguistic features that signal dispreferred second responses, but
Levinson (1983: 334) presents them in a different way as we can see below:
(a) delays: (i) by pause before delivery, (ii) by the use of a preface, (iii)
by displacement over a number of turns via use of repair initiators or
insertion sequences
(b) prefaces: (i) the use of markers or announcers of dispreferreds like
Uh and Well, (ii) the production of token agreements before
disagreements, (iii) the use of appreciations if relevant (for offers,

(Rogers, 2000: 14)
Table 4 - Listening Comprehension Format in Standard Form

The first part of TOEFL PBT Listening Comprehension Section consists of
conversations in which two Ss interact with each other. A third S poses a question
about what was said or implied in the conversation. There are four answer choices for
each dialog. Test-takers are required to choose the best answer to the question he/she
listens to and then mark the choice on their answer sheet.
15 Most of the dialogs in Part A of TOEFL PBT involve a man and a woman each of
whom usually speaks one or two sentences. The topics of the dialogs in Part A are
about facets of life at American universities (taking tests, talking to professors, writing
research papers or attending classes) or about more general activities (shopping,
looking for houses, taking vacations, etc).
According to Rogers (2000: 23), some of the items tests test-takers‘ ability to
understand various language functions (my emphasis). For example, test-takers must