Margret Selting

The construction of units in conversational talk

The notion of Turn-Constructional Unit (TCU) in Conversation Analysis has become unclear for many researchers. The underlying problems inherent in the definition of this notion are here identified, and a possible solution is suggested. This amounts to separating more clearly the notions of TCU and Transition Relevance Place (TRP). In this view, the TCU is defined as the smallest interactionally relevant complete linguistic unit, in a given context, that is constructed with syntactic and prosodic resources within their semantic, pragmatic, activity-type-specific, and sequential conversational context. It ends in a TRP unless particular linguistic and interactional resources are used to project and postpone the TRP to the end of a larger multi-unit turn. This suggestion tries to spell out some of the assumptions that the seminal work in CA made in principle, but never formulated explicitly. (Conversation Analysis, turn construction, utterance design, linguistic resources in interaction, interactional linguistics.)* The basic unit of talk suggested by Conversation Analysis (CA), the TurnConstructional Unit (TCU) has been the focus of much research interest. Although the notion of the TCU as introduced by Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974 is now widely accepted, the details of its interpretation are far from clear. The TCU still seems to be very much an intuitive and holistic notion, awaiting deconstruction (or decomposition) and reconstruction of the possible components and of the constitutive practices or signaling resources that participants deploy in order to make TCUs interpretable. Recently, uncertainty has arisen as to what precisely a TCU is, and how it can be recognized in conversational talk:

Emphatic speech style mdash; with special focus on the prosodic signalling of heightened emotive involvement in conversation☆

Abstract After a review of previous work on the prosody of emotional involvement, data extracts from natural conversations are analyzed in order to argue for the constitution of an ‘emphatic (speech) style’, which linguistic devices are used to signal heightened emotive involvement. Participants use prosodic cues, in co-occurrence with syntactic and lexical cues, to contextualize turn-constructional units as ‘emphatic’. Only realizations of prosodic categories that are marked in relation to surrounding uses of these categories have the power to contextualize units as displaying ‘more-than-normal involvement’. In the appropriate context, and in co-occurrence with syntactic and lexical cues and sequential position, the context-sensitive interpretation of this involvement is ‘emphasis’. Prosodic marking is used in addition to various unmarked cues that signal and constitute different activity types in conversation. Emphatic style highlights and reinforms particular conversational activities, and makes certain types of recipient responses locally relevant. In particular, switches from non-emphatic to emphatic style are used to contextualize ‘peaks of involvement’ or ‘climaxes’ in story-telling. These are shown in the paper to be ‘staged’ by speakers and treated by recipients as marked activities calling for displays of alignment with respect to the matter at hand. Signals of emphasis are deployable as techniques for locally organizing demonstrations of shared understanding and participant reciprocity in conversational interaction.

Prosody in conversational questions

Abstract My analysis of question-word questions in conversational question-answer sequences results in the decomposition of the conversational question into three systems of constitutive cues, which signal and contextualize the particular activity type in conversational interaction: (1) syntactic structure, (2) semantic relation to prior turn, and (3) prosody. These components are used and combined by interlocutors to distinguish between different activity types which (4) sequentially implicate different types of answers by the recipient in the next turn. Prosody is only one cooccurring cue, but in some cases it is the only distinctive one. It is shown that prosody, and in particular intonation, cannot be determined or even systematically related to syntactic sentence structure type or other sentence-grammatical principles, as most former and current theories of intonation postulate. Instead, prosody is an independent, autonomous signalling system, which is used as a contextualization device for the constitution of interactively relevant activity types in conversation.

Einheitenkonstruktion im Türkendeutschen : Grammatische und prosodische Aspekte

Abstract Our article investigates grammatical and prosodic aspects of turn construction in ‘Türkendeutsch’ (Turkish German), a new ethnic variety of German that is spoken mainly by Turkish adolescents. In our approach, Turkish German is regarded as a style of speaking that is systematically used as a resource for the organization of natural conversational interaction. On the basis of interactional linguistic theory and conversation-analytic methodology, we investigate pre-positionings and post-positionings of turn constructional units, short prosodic units, and principles of accent placement on word and utterance level. In Turkish German, pre-positionings of temporal adverbs – with following V2-clauses – are often packaged in separate prosodic units with primary accents. Such prosodically exposed pre-positionings are used as focusing devices in narratives. Some kinds of post-positionings are formated according to particular rules of Turkish German which are influenced by Turkish principles of accentuation. They are deployed to shift the focus to the very end of the turn-constructional unit and thus create suspense and/or focus each bit of information separately. Accentuation principles on both word and utterance level have been found to differ from Standard German accentuation rules in specific contexts. A speaker may playfully shift a word accent (word stress) to create ironic distance; in other instances, primary accents of utterances are shifted to constitute rhythmic coherence with prior utterances rather than to signal the focus of the utterance. To sum up, grammatical and prosodic resources are shown to be systematically used for the organization of talk-in-interaction.

Sprech- und Gesprächsstile

A collection of papers on styles of spoken communication. In this text, contributions on methodology are complemented by empirical studies exemplifying styles in different genres and activity-types in natural exchange.

Fremdkorrekturen als Manifestationsformen von Verständigungsproblemen

Fremdinitiierte Fremdkorrekturen werden dargestellt als Manifestationen von Fonnulierungsoder Verstehensproblemen, die dem Partner zugeschrieben werden. Es werden verschiedene Typen von Fremdkorrekturen analysiert, die sich formal durch ihre syntaktische und/oder prosodische Struktur unterscheiden und für die je typspezifische Gemeinsamkeitsunterstellungen und Problemzuschreibungen rekonstruierbar sind. Bei einigen nicht eindeutig zuordenbaren Fremdkorrekturen lassen der Typ der Fremdkorrektur im Kontext oder die Abfolge von Elementen verschiedener Korrekturtypen darauf schließen, daß die Interaktionspartner die Korrekturtypen untereinander in einer Präferenzstruktur ordnen. Diese Präferenzstruktur unter den Fremdkorrekturen unterscheidet sich jedoch von der an anderer Stelle beschriebenen Präferenzstruktur bei der Manifestation und Bearbeitung sich selbst zugeschriebener Verstehensprobleme durch die weitergehendere Aufrechterhaltung von Gemeinsamkeitsunterstellungen.

Identification of Regional Varieties by Intonational Cues An Experimental Study on Hamburg and Berlin German

Two experiments examined the commonly held belief that regional varieties of German can be identified by intonational features alone. In both experiments, listeners were presented with regional intonational contours of German. In the first experiment, listeners judged contours of Hamburg urban vernacular compared with contours of Northern Standard German. In the second experiment, listeners judged contours of Berlin urban vernacular compared with contours of both Northern Standard German and Low Alemannic German. The performance of listeners was found to vary with their linguistic experience. Listeners who were familiar both with the local variety and with some nonlocal variety by personal contact performed better than listeners who were familiar with the local variety only. Moreover, also listeners not familiar with Hamburg German and Berlin German, respectively, were found to perform the identification test with some success. This led to the conclusion that overall success rates do not only depend on true recognition of local contours but may additionally be enhanced by using some kind of elimination strategy. A second factor that affected performance was the choice of speaker for generating the carrier utterances. In the first experiment, all carrier utterances were produced by a speaker of Northern Standard German. In the second experiment, two sets of carrier utterances were used. The first set was obtained from a speaker of Northern Standard German and the second set from a speaker of Berlin urban vernacular. As expected, Berlin contours were better identified when presented with an utterance that was produced by a speaker of Berlin urban vernacular. However, no uniform effect was found for the different contours that were ex a mined.

Konstruktionen am Satzrand als interaktive Ressource in natürlichen Gesprächen

Ich mochte im Folgenden versuchen, formbezogen-systemlinguistische und konversations- und kontextualisierungsanalytische Fragen zu verbinden. Als Antwort auf die Frage dieses Sammelbandes, “Was determiniert Wortstellungsvariation?”, mochte ich zeigen, das grammatische Kategorien als interaktiv relevante Kategorien verwendet werden, die systematisch auf die Erfordernisse der Organisation der Interaktion zugeschnitten sind. Meine empirische Analyse basiert auf einem Datenkorpus naturlicher Gesprache.1 Konkret mochte ich mich mit syntaktischen Konstruktionen befassen, in denen Konstituenten vor oder nach einen syntaktisch vollstandigen Satz gestellt werden, auf den sie morphologisch und/oder syntaktisch bezogen sind. Ich mochte folgende Punkte zeigen: (1) Die betreffenden Strukturen konnen nicht allein syntaktisch unterschieden werden, sondern z.T. syntaktisch ambige Strukturen ergeben erst in ihrem Zusammenspiel mit der prosodischen Einheitenbildung unterschiedlich verwendete sprachliche Konstruktionen. (2) Diese so unterschiedenen sprachlichen Konstruktionen sind auf die Erfullung unterschiedlicher interaktiver Funktionen in Gesprachen zugeschnitten.

Listen: Sequenzielle und prosodische Struktur einer kommunikativen Praktik – eine Untersuchung im Rahmen der Interaktionalen Linguistik

Abstract I describe the construction of lists in my corpus of conversations in, mostly, Northern Standard German. With respect to the general structure of listing and lists, I will show the following points: (i) Listing is always an embedded practice; lists are normally middle parts of a larger three-component structure that consists of (a) the projection component, projecting more-to-come, i. e. a multiunit turn to be constructed, either a pre-detailing and/or a general formulation; (b) the list itself, preferably three-parted, suggesting the items as part of either a closed or an open number of list items, as a practice of detailing; (c) the gestalt closure, i. e. a post-detailing component, completing the structure around the list. (ii) We should distinguish between (a) closed lists that suggest a closed number of items, and (b) open lists that suggest an open number of items. These classes of lists are produced with different kinds of practices. It seems to be the prosody that is used to suggest the intended kind of list, irrespective of its syntactic embedding. (iii) Lists may be produced with different kinds of, albeit similar, intonation contours. But it is not so much the particular intonation contour that is constitutive of lists, but a variety of similar contours plus the repetition of the chosen contour for at least some or even all of the list items. Furthermore, intonation is deployed to suggest the interpretation of a potential final list item as either a list completer or as another item of the list with some kind of gestalt closure still to come. I will show that intonation is indeed one of the methodically used constitutive cues that makes the production and structuring of lists recognizable for recipients.

Ebenenwechsel und Kooperationsprobleme in einem Sozialamtsgespräch

Anhand der Analyse eines Gesprächs zwischen einem Beamten und einer Klientin im Sozialamt wird gezeigt, daß die Interaktionspartnerauf unterschiedlichen Gesprächsebenen einer formellen und einer informellen handeln und sich diese Ebenen durch diskrete formale und funktionale Indikatoren wie Sprechstile und Stilwechsel und die Signalisierung dominanter Funktionen der Kommunikation wechselseitig anzeigen. Der Wechsel der Ebenen durch den Beamten fuhrt zu Kooperationsproblemen zwischen den Teilnehmern, da die Klientin, die selbst nur auf der informellen Ebene handelt, die Handlungen des Beamten auf der formellen Ebene nicht versteht und nicht mit ihren eher an alltagsweltlicher Kooperativität orientierten Kooperationserwartungen vereinbaren kann.