Strategies of turn taking
Three types of tur-taking strategies:
1. taking a turn
2. holding a turn
3. yielding a turn
1. Taking the turn
Taking the turn is used to give comment or to answer the current speaker’s
question that has been done by the listener. In other words, taking the turn
involves the participants’ deliberate taking of a turn in conversation.
Taking the turn strategy is further subdivided into four sub-strategies:
A. starting up
B. taking over
c. Interruption
d. overlap.
Starting up involves the speaker’s efforts of starting a conversation in order to
take over the current speaker’s turn.
Some lexical items are identified to function as the signals for the strategy
such as filled pause(uhm and a:m) or verbal fillers (I mean, youk now) to give
a time for the speaker in order to prepare what the speaker is going to speak
next.
Taking over strategy involves the speaker’s effort to take over the current
speaker’s turn in order to respond to the current speaker.
Some common uptakes such as yeah, oh, well, ah, no, yes are usually used to
respond to the current speaker’s utterance ended with you know.
Interruption involves taking over the current speaker’s turn by force and at the
same time not listening to the current speaker.
Stenstrom mentions some reasons for interruption including the interruptor’s
evaluation that the current speaker has no more message to elaborate, and
he/she want to speak up at a particular point in the ongoing talk, before it is
too late.
Interruption can be in the form of:
1. an alert (the interrupter speaking louder to attract attention, with some
lexical items such as look, hey, listen),
2. a meta comment (using more polite devices, usually in formal situation such
as can I just tell.., can I say something about this.., may I halt you.., could I
halt you there.., let me just).
An overlap occurs when two speakers talking at the same time and none of
them shows any signal of giving up their turn to the other until they finish
their points.
2. holding the turn
The second main strategy of turn taking is holding the turn, which involves
the current speaker’s effort to carry on talking.
It happens when the speaker wants to control or holds the turns all the time.
This strategy may be taken to give the speaker some time to plan what to say
and speak.
Holding the turn strategy can be further divided into four substrategies: filled
pause or verbal fillers, silent pause, lexical repetition and new start in a conversation
Filled pause occurs when speakers utter a syllable that consists of a centralized vowel
as a nucleus and an optional nasal coda (uh/um, in English).
Other device is silent pause or unfilled pause. It refers to the interval/duration of
silence within speech. It is syntactically and semantically strategy used by the current
speaker to wait other speakers stop talking.
Lexical repetition is a device that used the same lexical item several times produced
by thecurrent speaker.
To ongoing the talk, the speaker repeats a single word at the time. Moreover, anew
start is the repetition of a sequence of one or more words immediately. It aims to
avoid in getting lost when conducting the conversation.
Yielding to the turn
Yielding to the turn involves submitting a turn to the next speaker. The
speaker appeals to the listener for a response (Stenstrom, 1994:79).
Yielding the turn strategy can be divided into three sub-strategies:
prompting, appealing and giving up.
Prompting is used when the speaker insists the listener to respond the turn,
the respond includes greeting, question, apology, invite, object, offer, and
request.
Appealing is used to give the explicit signal to incite the listener to give
feedback: question tag, all right, right, ok, you know, you see.
Giving up involves turns that are yielded at completion point, if the speaker
cannot say something then there will be pause, and the longer the pause, the
stronger the pressure on the listener to say something.
