This paper describes the development of a new system for classifying interruptions and simultaneous speech, entitled the Interruption Coding System (ICS). The system is organised in the form of a binary flow-chart, and a clear distinction is drawn between interruptive and non-interruptive speech. Interruptions are further divided into single and complex forms, and the flow-chart terminates in a total of 17 empirically discriminable events. In contrast to previous scoring systems, ICS is thus both comprehensive and easy to use.
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