Towards a model of turn-taking in conservation.

A central feature of conversation is that people take it in turns to speak. Typically
speaker-listener roles are exchanged in a smooth and orderly fashion, with little or no
gap or overlap.
To date, within psychology only one comprehensive model of turn-taking has been
proposed (Duncan, 1972). This model is cue based and suggests that discrete cues
are responsible for the smooth management of conversation. There are, however, a
number of fundamental shortcomings in the methodological and conceptual analysis
that underpins this model. The aim of this thesis was to address these shortcomings
for they have broader implications for our understanding of the turn exchange process.
The methodology employed involved both the qualitative and quantitative
micro-analysis of conversational data. To test the general significance of this analysis
a more experimental approach, involving subjects judgements about particular
sections of conversation, was employed. In order to put the generality question to the
test, the investigations were based on different types of conversations - face-to-face
conversations involving agreement and disagreement and telephone conversations
involving travel enquiries and directory enquiries.
The research carried out in this thesis has demonstrated that a wider range of
information is exploited for turn-taking purposes than previously thought. The
turn-taking cues Duncan identified could not provide an adequate explanation of how
a smooth exchange of turns was actualised at a particular location. Two judgement
studies demonstrated that whilst some conversations were managed by discrete cues
as Duncan had suggested, others were not. Further investigations provided evidence
that certain aspects of verbal content provide higher order and local information that is
important for turn-taking. These investigations thus demonstrated that a cue based
model of turn-taking is inadequate and emphasize the need for future work to provide
precise explanations about how contextual factors are exploited in this process.