Turn-Taking

Abstract

In their informal verbal exchanges people tend to follow the ‘one speaker at the time’ rule posited by Emanuel Schegloff. The use of the term ‘turn-taking’ to describe the process in which this rule operates in human conversation is relatively recent. Especially since the famous 1974 paper by Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, & Gail Jefferson in the journal Language, which marks the birth of the sociological discipline now called Conversation Analysis (CA), turn-taking in conversation has attracted attention from a variety of disciplines. This chapter briefly summarizes the main theoretical approaches and controversies regarding turn-taking, followed by some reflections on different ways it can be studied experimentally.