Tanya Stivers

Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation

Informal verbal interaction is the core matrix for human social life. A mechanism for coordinating this basic mode of interaction is a system of turn-taking that regulates who is to speak and when. Yet relatively little is known about how this system varies across cultures. The anthropological literature reports significant cultural differences in the timing of turn-taking in ordinary conversation. We test these claims and show that in fact there are striking universals in the underlying pattern of response latency in conversation. Using a worldwide sample of 10 languages drawn from traditional indigenous communities to major world languages, we show that all of the languages tested provide clear evidence for a general avoidance of overlapping talk and a minimization of silence between conversational turns. In addition, all of the languages show the same factors explaining within-language variation in speed of response. We do, however, find differences across the languages in the average gap between turns, within a range of 250 ms from the cross-language mean. We believe that a natural sensitivity to these tempo differences leads to a subjective perception of dramatic or even fundamental differences as offered in ethnographic reports of conversational style. Our empirical evidence suggests robust human universals in this domain, where local variations are quantitative only, pointing to a single shared infrastructure for language use with likely ethological foundations.

Stance, Alignment, and Affiliation During Storytelling: When Nodding Is a Token of Affiliation

Through stories, tellers communicate their stance toward what they are reporting. Story recipients rely on different interactional resources to display alignment with the telling activity and affiliation with the tellers stance. In this article, I examine the communication resources participants to tellings rely on to manage displays of alignment and affiliation during the telling. The primary finding is that whereas vocal continuers simply align with the activity in progress, nods also claim access to the tellers stance toward the events (whether directly or indirectly). In mid-telling, when a recipient nods, she or he claims to have access to the tellers stance toward the event being reported, which in turn conveys preliminary affiliation with the tellers position and that the story is on track toward preferred uptake at story completion. Thus, the concepts of structural alignment and social affiliation are separate interactional issues and are managed by different response tokens in the mid-telling sequential environment.

A preference for progressivity in interaction

This article investigates two types of preference organization in interaction: in response to a question that selects a next speaker in multi-party interaction, the preference for answers over non-answer responses as a category of a response; and the preference for selected next speakers to respond. It is asserted that the turn allocation rule specified by Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson(1974)whichstatesthataresponseisrelevantbytheselectednextspeaker at the transition relevance place is affected by these two preferences once beyond a normal transition space. It is argued that a “second-order” organizationispresentsuchthatinteractantsprioritizeapreferenceforanswersover apreferenceforaresponsebytheselectednextspeaker.Thisanalysisreveals an observable preference for progressivity in interaction. (Interaction, conversation analysis, preference, sequence organization.)*

Introduction: Multimodal interaction

Abstract That human social interaction involves the intertwined cooperation of different modalities is uncontroversial. Researchers in several allied fields have, however, only recently begun to document the precise ways in which talk, gesture, gaze, and aspects of the material surround are brought together to form coherent courses of action. The papers in this volume are attempts to develop this line of inquiry. Although the authors draw on a range of analytic, theoretical, and methodological traditions (conversation analysis, ethnography, distributed cognition, and workplace studies), all are concerned to explore and illuminate the inherently multimodal character of social interaction. Recent studies, including those collected in this volume, suggest that different modalities work together not only to elaborate the semantic content of talk but also to constitute coherent courses of action. In this introduction we present evidence for this position. We begin by reviewing some select literature focusing primarily on communicative functions and interactive organizations of specific modalities before turning to consider the integration of distinct modalities in interaction.

Knowledge, morality and affiliation in social interaction

Introduction In everyday social interaction, knowledge displays and negotiations are ubiquitous. At issue is whether we have epistemic access to some state of affairs, but also how certain we are about what we know, our relative authority and our differential rights and responsibilities with respect to this knowledge. Implicit in this conceptualization is that knowledge is dynamic, graded and multi-dimensional and that our deployment of and reliance on epistemic resources are normatively organized. As Drew puts it, there is a “conventional ascription of warrantable rights or entitlements over the possession and use of certain kinds of knowledge” (1991: 45). As in any normatively organized system, we can and do hold one another accountable for justifiably asserting our rights and fulfilling our obligations with respect to knowledge. It is in this way that we see the epistemic domain as morally ordered. This orientation to and monitoring of the moral order might seem completely different from the moral reasoning used in tasks requiring judgements of whether a given scenario (e.g., about sharing resources or unintentionally killing someone) is morally acceptable or not (e.g., Hauser 2006; Henrich et al . 2004). However, the micro-level moral order can be understood as cut from the same cloth as other forms of moral reasoning. And these micro-interactional moral calibrations have critical consequences for our social relations, most directly through our moment-by-moment alignments and affiliations with others.

Modified Repeats: One Method for Asserting Primary Rights From Second Position

In this article I examine one practice speakers have for confirming when confirmation was not otherwise relevant. The practice involves a speaker repeating an assertion previously made by another speaker in modified form with stress on the copula/auxiliary. I argue that these modified repeats work to undermine the first speakers default ownership and rights over the claim and instead assert the primacy of the second speakers rights to make the statement. Two types of modified repeats are identified: partial and full. Although both involve competing for primacy of the claim, they occur in distinct sequential environments: The former are generally positioned after a first claim was epistemically downgraded, whereas the latter are positioned following initial claims that were offered straightforwardly, without downgrading.

Parent resistance to physicians' treatment recommendations: one resource for initiating a negotiation of the treatment decision.

This article examines pediatrician–parent interaction in the context of acute pediatric encounters for children with upper respiratory infections. Parents and physicians orient to treatment recommendations as normatively requiring parent acceptance for physicians to close the activity. Through acceptance, withholding of acceptance, or active resistance, parents have resources with which to negotiate for a treatment outcome that is in line with their own wants. This article offers evidence that even in acute care, shared decision making not only occurs but, through normative constraints, is mandated for parents and physicians to reach accord in the treatment decision.

Participating in decisions about treatment: overt parent pressure for antibiotic medication in pediatric encounters.

This article examines how parents and pediatricians negotiate antibiotic prescribing decisions in cases where parents overtly advocate this medication. Using the methodology of conversation analysis, this paper examines audio and videotaped acute care pediatric encounters and discusses four primary ways in which parents raise antibiotics in pediatric encounters. These formulations vary in their directness with indirect formulations being more common. The article argues that both parents and physicians are oriented to antibiotics as negotiable in and through their interaction. Finally, in contrast with existing research, this study suggests that overtly advocating for antibiotic treatment is relatively unusual; future research will need to incorporate an understanding of the effect of both explicit and implicit ways parents communicate pressure for prescription treatment.

The morality of knowledge in conversation

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Questioning Children: Interactional Evidence of Implicit Bias in Medical Interviews

Social psychologists have shown experimentally that implicit race bias can influence an individuals behavior. Implicit bias has been suggested to be more subtle and less subject to cognitive control than more explicit forms of racial prejudice. Little is known about how implicit bias is manifest in naturally occurring social interaction. This study examines the factors associated with physicians selecting children rather than parents to answer questions in pediatric interviews about routine childhood illnesses. Analysis of the data using a Generalized Linear Latent and Mixed Model demonstrates a significant effect of parent race and education on whether physicians select children to answer questions. Black children and Latino children of low-education parents are less likely to be selected to answer questions than their same aged white peers irrespective of education. One way that implicit bias manifests itself in naturally occurring interaction may be through the process of speaker selection during questioning.