Psycholinguistics 09 Conversational Interaction

Conversation is a complex process of language use and a special form of social interaction with its own rules and dynamics. Conversation is a joint action: two participants jointly follow the rules. Conversation rules: with powerful influence of social and cultural context.

Structure of Conversation Fillmore (1981): the language of face-to- face conversation is the basic and primary use of language, all others being best described in terms of the derivation from that base. Table-9-1 comparison of four forms of discourse

Aspects of Turn Study Simultaneous turn vs. simultaneous talking Turn order Turn length—Jaffe (1970): the length of a particular speaker’s turn was a stable individual characteristic. Pause between vocalization matches the pause of other participants. The net effect: rhythm of the conversation.

Opening Conversation Scheglogg (1972): We have only a limited number of ways to open a conversation. e.g. address another person and request or offer information use stereotyped expressions or topics The opening conversation is to establish the alternations of turns: ABABAB

Closing Conversation We use preclosing statement to signal a readiness to end the conversation. Alber’s ways to end conversations (1978) ◎ summarizing the content of the conversation ◎ justifying ending contract at this time ◎ expressing pleasure about each other ◎ making reference to ongoing relationship ◎ wishing each other well These ways are used in the indicated order.

Taking Turns Turn taking follows three implicit rules. 1. The current speaker is allowed to select the next speaker, often by directing a question to another person. 2. Self-selection: If the first rule is not used, another person will speak up. 3. The current speaker can continue.

Nonverbal Signals Nonverbal behavior also facilitates an orderly transition from one speaker to another. Duncan (1972): six cues of turn-yielding 1. a drop of pitch 2. a drawl on the final syllable or final stressed syllable of a final clause. 3. the termination of hand gestures 4. the use of stereotyped expressions such as you know, or something. 5. a drop in loudness 6. completion of a grammatical clause

Cue and Listener’s Turn Relationship between the number of the cues and the probability of the listener’s attempt to take a turn. Cures Probability 0 10% 3 33% 6 50%

Topics in Conversations Topics in conversation can be defined in terms of the intersection of propositions across sentences. A: John bought a red car in Baltimore yesterday. Propositions: John bought a car. The car is red. John bought it in Baltimore. John bought it yesterday.

Topics in Conversations B can respond to any of these propositions. Only conversations, not individual sentences or even speaker turns, have topics. B can add a new topic while responding to A’s proposition (You mean he’s not going to buy my car?)

Topics in Conversations A has three options: 1. respond to the new topic directly: No, he didn’t like your car. 2. refer back to that part of the original topic: Well, John needed a car in a hurry. 3. make a more general response: It’s always difficult to sell a car.

Conversational Participants Common ground: shared understanding of those involved in the conversation. Some of the common grounds is culturally based, such as cultural values, commonly held beliefs. Other types of common ground are more personal.

Conversational Participants Planalp (1993): Friends were more likely to use profanity, laugh more often, express negative judgments, argue with one another and make joint references to themselves (we, us). Acquaintances were more likely to use filled pauses and talk about only one topic. Homstein (1985): Friends used more implicit openings, talk about more topics, asked more questions, used more complex closings. Acquaintances were generally similar to strangers.

Gender differences Zimmerman (1975): 96% of the interruptions were by male speakers. Many of the responses by males to female topics were delayed minimal responses. Men deny equal status to women as conversational partners with respect to the rights to the full utilization of their turns and support for the development of topics.

Gender differences Lakoff (1975) Women’s speech differs in a number of respects from men’s speech: more linguistic expressions of uncertainty. Women tend to use tag questions and hedges (sort of, I guess). They also tend to use more question intonation patterns in declarative sentences than men. Fishman (1978): women used more questions, attention-getting devices (this is interesting), and minimal responses than men. More recent work has a somewhat different explanation for the phenomena found.

Conversational Settings Personal setting: a free exchange of turns takes place among the two or more participants. Institutional setting: one participant is considered the authority figure.

Therapeutic Discourse Three tasks during therapy 1. the therapist listens carefully as the client reports experiences, issues, and concerns. 2. the therapists interprets the client’s experiences and symptoms. 3. the therapist collaborates with the client regarding potential courses of action.