An Overview of “Turns” in Conversation Analysis

Conversation Analysis (CA) derives from the 1970s, which was put forward by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson for the sack of analyzing institutional talk, e.g., business negotiation discourse, and doctor-patient communication discourse and telephone conversations. Currently, it has become the most favorable and effective method to analyze interactive discourse. As the essential part of CA, the “turn” is the foundation of all the research, carrying talk information and social rules in interaction that plays an essential role in guiding the outcome of conversations in social communication. The thesis made classification, summaries and reviews on studies of “turns” in conversation to explores the orientation of “turn” in conversation by specifying the aspects of turn-taking, allocating, and repairing to make an overview of turn in conversation analysis and provide a spark for further study in the field. The overview helped to recognize current status and make a new attempt. It was revealed that studies of “turns” in conversation analysis are widely applied in healthcare, patient-to-doctor interaction in particular; during analysis of conversation, timespan and manners of participants were mainly focused. The thesis discovered a fact that studies of “turns” on on-line interaction is insufficient, which is significant under the current situation.