When Someone Other than the Addressed Recipient Speaks Next: Three Kinds of Intervening Action After the Selection of Next Speaker

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although speakers in conversation have ways to indicate which one of their recipients ought to speak next, who actually comes to speak next is not an automatic result. There are circumstances in which a participant other than the addressed recipient of a sequence-initiating action speaks next. Here, practices aimed at allocating turns at talk form a local, moment-to-moment normative sequential environment for other-than-addressed participant intervention. Other participants can intervene: to implement the implicated sequence-responding action, to intercede on behalf of the addressed recipient by blocking the continued relevance of a response, or to interject a supplemental action that expands the sequence before a response is produced. These sequence-organizational practices both underpin and expose such culturally prescribed grounds for intervention as personal entitlement, social obligation, and group solidarity among others. Data (happen to be) in several varieties of English found in the United States.