DA Module 07 Doing Things with Words
DA Module 09 Relationship Talk and Task Talk
Discourse Analysis Module 08: The Architecture of Conversation
⚡ Adjacency pairs, turn-taking, and conversational coding
Conversation is organized through recognizable patterns. A question normally expects an answer, a greeting expects a greeting, and a request creates a space for acceptance or refusal. Speakers also coordinate when to speak, when to continue, and when to give another person the floor. This week, learners examine these patterns and code short transcripts for speech acts, adjacency pairs, and turn-taking signals.
Essential Understandings
- How do speakers organize conversation turn by turn?
- How do adjacency pairs and turn-taking help participants understand what should happen next?
Guiding Questions
- How do first-pair parts create expectations for second-pair parts?
- How do speakers know when a turn may be complete?
- What signals help speakers take, hold, or give up the floor?
- How can a transcript be coded for speech acts, adjacency pairs, and turn-taking?
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the week, learners will be able to:
- Identify common adjacency pairs in conversational transcripts.
- Distinguish first-pair parts from second-pair parts.
- Identify turn-taking signals and possible transition-relevance places.
- Recognize pauses, overlap, and speaker selection.
- Code a short transcript for speech acts, adjacency pairs, and turn-taking features.
- Support coding decisions with evidence from the conversation.
Key Vocabulary
| Term | Simple definition |
|---|---|
| Adjacency pair | Two related conversational actions, such as question–answer. |
| First-pair part (FPP) | The first action that makes a response relevant. |
| Second-pair part (SPP) | The expected response to the first action. |
| Conditional relevance | The expectation that one action makes another action appropriate next. |
| Turn | One speaker’s contribution to a conversation. |
| Turn-taking | How speakers organize who speaks next. |
| Transition-relevance place (TRP) | A possible point where another speaker may begin. |
| Overlap | Two speakers talking at the same time. |
| Pause | Silence within or between turns. |
| Repair | Fixing a problem in speaking, hearing, or understanding. |
Key Readings
Paltridge (2022), Chapter 5
- §5.2: transcription and coding
- §5.3.3: turn-taking
- §5.3.4: adjacency pairs
Celce-Murcia & Olshtain (2000), Chapter 9, pp. 172–173
- turn-taking rules
- transition points
- getting the floor
- pauses and overlap
- adjacency pairs
Celce-Murcia and Olshtain specifically explain that conversational participants manage transitions, pauses, overlap, and ways of getting the floor, while adjacency pairs organize related actions such as questions and answers or greetings and responses. Celce-Murcia (2000)_Discourse a…
⚡️ Adjacency pairs, preference organization, turn-taking, overlap, and repair
Conversation can feel spontaneous and unpredictable, yet participants rely on a finely organized set of expectations. A greeting makes another greeting relevant; a question projects an answer; an offer creates a space for acceptance or refusal. Speakers monitor possible completion points, enter turns, yield the floor, overlap, pause, and repair trouble. These practices are not rigid rules imposed from outside; they are methods participants use to produce recognizable social actions together. This week introduces adjacency pairs, preferred and dispreferred responses, transition-relevance places, overlap, silence, and repair. You will annotate transcripts and reconstruct exchanges to see how meaning emerges sequentially. The analyst’s central principle is that a turn is understood partly through what preceded it and through the next participant’s displayed interpretation.
Essential understanding(s)
How do participants collaboratively organize conversation turn by turn?
What can sequence, timing, and repair reveal that isolated sentences cannot?
Guiding Questions
How do first-pair parts project relevant second-pair parts?
How does preference organization shape the design of acceptances, refusals, agreements, and disagreements?
How do participants recognize possible turn completion and manage overlap or silence?
How does repair locate and resolve problems of speaking, hearing, or understanding?
Learning outcomes
Identify adjacency pairs and embedded or expanded sequences in transcripts.
Distinguish preferred from dispreferred response design without equating preference with personal liking.
Annotate turn boundaries, pauses, overlaps, and transition-relevance places.
Analyze self-initiated and other-initiated repair.
Use sequential evidence to justify interpretations of conversational action.
Key concepts and vocabulary
| Term | Working definition |
|---|---|
| Adjacency pair | A pair of ordered, type-related turns produced by different speakers, such as greeting–greeting or question–answer. |
| First-pair part | The initiating action that makes a class of responses conditionally relevant. |
| Second-pair part | The responsive action projected by a first-pair part. |
| Conditional relevance | The expectation that a recognizable first action makes a relevant next action due. |
| Preference organization | The structural tendency for some responses to be produced more directly and others with delay, mitigation, or explanation. |
| Turn-constructional unit | A possible unit from which a conversational turn can be built. |
| Transition-relevance place | A possible point at which speaker change may appropriately occur. |
| Overlap | Simultaneous talk by two or more participants. |
| Repair | Practices for addressing problems in speaking, hearing, or understanding. |
| Insertion sequence | A sequence placed between the first and second parts of another adjacency pair. |
Main chapter content
-
Sequence creates meaning
Conversation is sequential: each turn is shaped by prior talk and creates expectations for what may come next. A question does more than request information; it makes an answer relevant. A greeting invites a return greeting. An accusation may invite denial, justification, or apology. These relationships are captured by the concept of adjacency pairs.
The turns need not be physically adjacent. An insertion sequence can intervene. “Can you help me with the transcript?” “When is it due?” “Tomorrow.” “Okay.” The clarification sequence occurs between request and acceptance. Pre-sequences can test conditions before a main action: “Are you busy?” may precede a request. Post-expansions can acknowledge or evaluate a response.
Sequential analysis cautions against interpreting a turn in isolation. “Fine” can accept, close a disagreement, display annoyance, or signal reluctant compliance. The next turn may show how it was understood. Analysts examine how participants themselves make actions recognizable through sequence, timing, intonation, and response. -
Preference is structural, not psychological
Preference organization refers to how alternative responses are designed, not which option a person privately prefers. Acceptances and agreements are often produced promptly and directly. Refusals and disagreements may include delay, hesitation, appreciation, explanation, apology, or a partial agreement. “Would you like to present first?” “Um, thanks, but I haven’t finished organizing my notes” displays a dispreferred design.
The additional work reflects the social delicacy of the action. A refusal can threaten affiliation or reject another participant’s project, so speakers often manage it carefully. Yet context can reverse expected patterns. In an institutional assessment, disagreement may be required; in an emergency, a direct refusal may be safer.
Analysts should code observable features: pause length, prefaces, accounts, softeners, and alternatives. Avoid saying the speaker “did not want” to answer unless the interaction supports that claim. Preference organization provides evidence about the social relationship being managed through turn design. -
Turn-taking as an interactional achievement
Participants normally manage speaker change with remarkable precision. Turns are built from possible units—words, phrases, clauses, or sentences—that can project completion. At a transition-relevance place, the current speaker may select the next speaker, another participant may self-select, or the current speaker may continue.
Projection is imperfect, so overlap occurs. Some overlap is competitive, but much is affiliative or produced because two participants recognize the same completion point. A listener may begin an agreement just before the current speaker finishes. Repetition and cut-offs can show a struggle for the floor or an attempt to repair timing.
Transcripts should represent timing selectively. Mark pauses, overlap, lengthening, emphasis, and cut-offs when they matter for the analytical question. Overly detailed notation can make a short assignment unreadable; under-detailed transcription can erase the very evidence needed. The principle is analytical relevance. -
Repair and intersubjectivity
Repair addresses trouble in speaking, hearing, or understanding. The speaker may initiate and complete repair: “I met her on Thursday—sorry, Friday.” Another participant may initiate repair with “Who?” “When?” or a repeat with questioning intonation, allowing the original speaker to fix the problem. Other-correction occurs when a recipient supplies the correction directly, though interaction often favors opportunities for self-repair.
Repair is not limited to grammatical error. Participants repair names, reference, word choice, hearing, factual claims, and action interpretation. “Are you asking me to resubmit it?” repairs the perceived action, not merely the wording. Repair practices demonstrate intersubjectivity: participants continually check and restore a workable shared understanding.
For language learners, repair is a communicative resource rather than evidence of failure. Teaching clarification requests, confirmation checks, reformulation, and self-correction supports participation. A fluent interaction is not one without trouble; it is one in which participants can manage trouble effectively. -
Transcript analysis and ELT applications
Begin analysis by numbering turns and identifying the action of each turn in relation to the previous one. Mark adjacency pairs, expansions, pauses, overlaps, and repairs. Then explain how the sequence develops. Do not merely list features. A pause before a refusal matters because of its position and the action it helps design.
In ELT, learners can reconstruct a transcript from separated turns, predict likely responses to first-pair parts, and compare direct and delayed refusals. They can listen for possible turn completion and practice entering without relying on a teacher-assigned order. Role-plays can include planned trouble that requires clarification and repair.
Materials should represent natural variation. Textbook dialogues often eliminate overlap, hesitation, and repair, giving learners little preparation for real interaction. Teachers can pair a simplified model with a short authentic sample, helping students notice that conversational organization remains systematic even when the surface language is incomplete or messy. -
Sequential reconstruction workshop
Take a transcript of twelve to twenty turns and remove the turn numbers. Separate the turns, then reconstruct the most plausible sequence using adjacency-pair expectations, reference, and response design. Several arrangements may be possible at first. Require each placement to be justified by evidence: a pronoun needs an antecedent, an answer needs a question, and a repair solution needs a prior trouble source.
After reconstruction, compare the result with the original transcript. Identify where the sequence was predictable and where timing, overlap, or contextual knowledge was necessary. Mark all first-pair parts and their second-pair parts, including any insertion sequences. Then locate at least one possible transition-relevance place and explain how the next speaker entered.
Extend the transcript by writing two alternative responses to one first-pair part: a preferred design and a dispreferred design. Include timing and mitigation where relevant. Discuss how each version changes the social relationship without assuming that the preferred form is morally better. This exercise helps transform abstract sequence terminology into a practical account of how participants display understanding and manage affiliation. -
Reading silence and overlap carefully
Silence and simultaneous talk are analytically powerful but easy to overinterpret. A pause after a question may display difficulty, resistance, searching for a word, or simply normal processing. Its meaning depends on length, position, surrounding prosody, and what happens next. Likewise, overlap can compete for the floor, complete another speaker’s turn supportively, display enthusiasm, or arise from a projected completion point.
When annotating these features, begin with description: note where the pause or overlap occurs and which turns are involved. Then identify the action underway. Finally, use the next turn to test the interpretation. If a speaker restarts more loudly after overlap, competition may be relevant; if both laugh and continue smoothly, affiliation may be more plausible.
This disciplined sequence prevents the transcript from becoming a psychological diagnosis. It also has pedagogical value. Learners can compare several examples of overlap and discover that “do not interrupt” is an incomplete rule. Competent participation includes recognizing when overlap supports the interaction and when it threatens another speaker’s turn.
📄 Tuesday, September 29, 2026 - LIPFUE Analysis
Quiz
Record 15-minute conversations
Introducing adjacency pairs and turn-taking: Thursday.