Rein Ove Sikveland

Negotiating towards a next turn: phonetic resources for 'doing the same'.

This paper investigates hearers’ use of response tokens (back-channels), in maintaining and differentiating their actions. Initial observations suggest that hearers produce a sequence of phonetically similar responses to disengage from the current topic, and dissimilar responses to engage with the current topic. This is studied systematically by combining detailed interactional and phonetic analysis in a collection of naturally-occurring talk in Norwegian. The interactional analysis forms the basis for labeling actions as maintained (‘doing the same’) and differentiated (‘NOT doing the same’), which is then used as a basis for phonetic analysis. The phonetic analysis shows that certain phonetic characteristics, including pitch, loudness, voice quality and articulatory characteristics, are associated with ‘doing the same’, as different from ‘NOT doing the same’. Interactional analysis gives further evidence of how this differentiation is of systematic relevance in the negotiations of a next turn. This paper addresses phonetic variation and variability by focusing on the relationship between sequence and phonetics in the turn-by-turn development of meaning. This has important implications for linguistic/phonetic research, and for the study of back-channels.

Using prosodic cues to identify dialogue acts: methodological challenges

Abstract This paper addresses the role of prosodic and phonetic features in talk, focussing on how to identify competitive overlaps in conversations. It has previously been claimed that turn competition may be distinguishable from non-competitive overlaps, based on phonetic/prosodic features alone. We test this hypothesis on recordings from a UK-based call center, combining a conversation analytic approach with quantitative methods using a coding scheme. Our long-term aim is to develop large-scale methods operationalizing what we know about conversational sequence and social actions into speech technological applications. Our findings show that, although there is a tendency for competitive overlaps to be more prominent in terms of loudness and pitch features than non-competitive overlaps, this difference is not sufficient to reliably identify turn competitions from the speech signal itself. We discuss the findings in relation to observations made in individual examples, and conclude by highlighting some of the methodological challenges of applying findings from the linguistic and conversation analytic literature to speech technologies.

Enquiry calls to GP surgeries in the United Kingdom: Expressions of incomplete service and dissatisfaction in closing sequences:

This article examines patients’ calls to three different GP services in the United Kingdom. Using conversation analysis, combined with coding of 447 calls, we studied the role of thank you in closing sequences, focusing on their timing and order in relation to service outcome. We show first how patients withhold thank you in orientation to an absent summary or specification of service: patients are more likely to initiate thank you if the receptionist volunteers such a summary. Second, we show there is variation in how appropriately participants project the termination of calls using thank you. Finally, while thank you serves a primary role in managing the termination of calls, the timing, order and design of thank you can also display patient (dis)satisfaction. We discuss our findings in terms of service encounters more generally, including implications for larger scale analysis.