In a period given to emphasizing diversity among humans, we would do well to explore diversity among forms of discourse and among forms of talk-in-interaction in particular. Among the speech-exchange systems, ordinary conversation has been claimed to be distinctive and fundamental, but questions have been raised about both claims. The resources for discriminating among speech-exchange systems are located in such generic organizations of practice as turn-taking, sequence organization, the organization of repair and the overall structural organization of episodes of interaction. I try to show that `conversation' as a distinctive speech-exchange system is real and is not only a residual category, and that it is to be understood as the `basic' speech-exchange system, in part by reference to the distinctive turn-taking organization (among others) through which it is implemented. The `motivation' for having developed a formal account of this turn-taking organization is recounted, and that formal account is defended for its usability in the analytic explication of singular, contexted episodes of talk. The remainder of the article is given over to such an exemplary account - an examination of an episode of interaction during a testing session between a man whose brain hemispheres had been surgically separated and a researcher.
Atkinson, J.M. and Drew, P., eds (1979) Order in Court: The Organisation of Verbal Interaction in Judicial Settings. London: Macmillan.
2.
Bernstein, B. (1964) `Elaborated and Restricted Codes: Their Social Origins and Some Consequences', American Anthropologist66(6/II): 55-69.
3.
Bernstein, B. (1972) `Social Class, Language and Socialization', in P. P. Giglioli (ed.) Language and Social Context, pp. 157-179. New York: Penguin.
4.
Boyd, E. (1998) `Bureaucratic Authority in the “Company of Equals”: The Interactional Management of Medical Peer Review', American Sociological Review63(2): 200-224.
5.
Button, G. (1987) `Answers as Interactional Products: Two Sequential Practices Used in Interviews', Social Psychology Quarterly50(2): 160-171.
6.
Clayman, S.E. and Whalen, J. (1988/89) `When the Medium Becomes the Message: The Case of the Rather-Bush Encounter', Research on Language and Social Interaction22: 241-272.
7.
Drew, P. and Heritage, J. (1992) `Analyzing Talk at Work: An Introduction', in P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds) Talk at Work, pp. 3-65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
8.
Goffman, E. (1981) `The Lecture', in Forms of Talk, pp. 160-196. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
9.
Goodwin, C. (1981) Conversational Organization: Interaction Between Speakers and Hearers. New York: Academic Press.
10.
Goodwin, C. (1994) `Professional Vision', American Anthropologist96(3): 606-633.
11.
Goodwin, C. (1995) `Co-Constructing Meaning in Conversations with an Aphasic Man', Research on Language and Social Interaction28(3): 233-260.
12.
Goodwin, C. (in press a) `Conversational Frameworks for the Accomplishment of Meaning in Aphasia', in C. Goodwin (ed.) The Situation of Language in Brain Damaged Patients: Conversation in Language Impairment. New York: Oxford University Press.
13.
Goodwin, C. (in press b) `Gesture, Aphasia and Interaction', in D. McNeill (ed.) Language and Gesture: Window into Thought and Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
14.
Goodwin, M.H. (1997) `By-Play: Negotiating Evaluation in Story-Telling', in G. R. Guy, C. Feagin, D. Schiffrin and J. Baugh (eds) Towards a Social Science of Language: Papers in Honor of William Labov, Vol. 2: Social Interaction and Discourse Structures, pp. 77-102. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
15.
Goodwin, M.H. (1998) `Games of Stance: Conflict and Footing in Hopscotch', in S. Hoyle and C. T. Adger (eds) Kids' Talk: Strategic Language Use in Later Childhood, pp. 23-46. New York: Oxford University Press.
16.
Greatbatch, D. (1988) `A Turn-Taking System for British News Interviews', Language in Society17(3): 401-430.
17.
Heath, C. (1986) Body Movement and Speech in Medical Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
18.
Heeschen, C. and Schegloff, E.A. (1999) `Agrammatism, Adaptation Theory, Conversation Analysis: On the Role of So-called Telegraphic Style in Talk-in Interaction', Aphasiology13(4/5): 365-405.
19.
Heritage, J. (1984) `A Change-of-State Token and Aspects of its Sequential Placement', in J.M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action, pp. 299-345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
20.
Heritage, J. (1985) `Analyzing News Interviews: Aspects of the Production of Talk for an Overhearing Audience', in T. A. van Dijk (ed.) Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Vol. 3, pp. 95-119. New York: Academic Press.
21.
Heritage, J. and Greatbatch, D. (1991) `On the Institutional Character of Institutional Talk: The Case of News Interviews', in D. Boden and D. H. Zimmerman (eds) Talk and Social Structure, pp. 93-137. Cambridge: Polity Press.
22.
Heritage, J.C. and Maynard, D.W. (in press, a) `Introduction: Analyzing Interaction between Doctors and Patients in Primary Care Encounters', in Practicing Medicine: Talk and Action in Primary Care Encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
23.
Heritage, J.C. and Maynard, D.W. (in press, b), Practicing Medicine: Talk and Action in Primary Care Encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
24.
Heritage, J.C. and Roth, A.L. (1995) `Grammar and Institution: Questions and Questioning in the Broadcast News Interview', Research on Language and Social Interaction28(1): 1-60.
25.
Jefferson, G. (1972) `Side Sequences', in D. Sudnow (ed) Studies in Social Interaction, pp. 294-338. New York: Free Press.
26.
Jefferson, G. (1973) `A Case of Precision Timing in Ordinary Conversation: Overlapped Tag-Positioned Address Terms in Closing Sequences'Semiotica9: 47-96.
27.
Levelt, W.J.M. (1983) `Monitoring and Self-Repair in Speech', Cognition14: 41-104.
28.
[Reprinted in P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds) (1992) Talk at Work, pp. 66-100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.]
29.
Levinson, S.C. (1983) Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
30.
Maynard, D. (1991) `The Perspective-Display Series and the Delivery and Receipt of Diagnostic News' in D. Boden and D. H. Zimmerman (eds) Talk and Social Structure, pp. 164-192. Berkeley: University of California Press.
31.
Maynard, D. (1997) `The News Delivery Sequence: Bad News and Good News in Conversational Interaction, Research on Language and Social Interaction30(2): 93-130.
32.
Moerman, M. (1988) Talking Culture: Ethnography and Conversation Analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
33.
Ochs, E. (1992) `Indexing Gender', in A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds) Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, pp. 335-358. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
34.
Ochs, E. and Schieffelin, B.B. (1986) Language Socialization across Cultures. New York: Cambridge University Press.
35.
Ochs, E. , Schegloff, E.A. and Thompson, S. (eds) (1996). Interaction and Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
36.
Perkins, M.R. (1998) `Is Pragmatics Epiphenomenal? Evidence from Communication Disorders', Journal of Pragmatics29: 291-311.
37.
Robinson, J.D. (1998) `Getting Down to Business: Talk, Gaze, and Body Orientation During Openings of Doctor-Patient Consultations', Human Communication Research25(1): 98-124.
38.
Robinson, J.D. and Stivers, T.J. (forthcoming) `Achieving Activity Transitions in Primary-Care Consultations: From History Taking to Physical Examination', Human Communication Research.
39.
Sacks, H. (1974) `An Analysis of the Course of a Joke's Telling in Conversation', in R. Bauman and J. Sherzer (eds) Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, pp. 337-353. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
40.
Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation, Vols 1 and 2, ed. G. Jefferson; introductions E. A. Schegloff. Oxford: Blackwell.
41.
Sacks, H. and Schegloff, E.A. (in press) `Home Position', in G. Lerner (ed.) Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation. Washington, DC: University Press of America.
42.
Sacks, H. , Schegloff, E.A. and Jefferson, G. (1974) `A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation', Language50: 696-735.
43.
Schegloff, E.A. (1968) `Sequencing in Conversational Openings', American Anthropologist70: 1075-1095.
44.
Schegloff, E.A. (1984) `On Some Gestures' Relation to Talk', in J. M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action, pp. 266-296. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
45.
Schegloff, E.A. (1986) `The Routine as Achievement', Human Studies9: 111-151.
46.
Schegloff, E.A. (1987) `Between Macro and Micro: Contexts and Other Connections', in J. Alexander, B. Glesen, R. Munch and N. Smelser (eds) The Micro-Macro Link, pp. 207-234.
47.
Schegloff, E.A. (1988) `On an Actual Virtual Servo-Mechanism for Guessing Bad News: A Single Case Conjecture', Social Problems35(4): 442-457.
48.
Schegloff, E.A. (1988/89) `From Interview to Confrontation: Observations on the Bush/Rather Encounter', Research on Language and Social Interaction22: 215-240.
49.
Schegloff, E.A. (1990) `On the Organization of Sequences as a Source of “Coherence” in Talk-in-Interaction', in B. Dorval (ed.) Conversational Organization and its Development, pp. 51-77. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
50.
Schegloff, E.A. (1991) `Reflections on Talk and Social Structure', in D. Boden and D. H. Zimmerman (eds) Talk and Social Structure, pp. 44-70. Cambridge: Polity Press.
51.
Schegloff, E.A. (1992a) `On Talk and Its Institutional Occasions', in P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds) Talk at Work, pp. 101-134. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
52.
Schegloff, E.A. (1992b) `Repair after Next Turn: The Last Structurally Provided Place for the Defence of Intersubjectivity in Conversation', American Journal of Sociology95(5): 1295-1345.
53.
Schegloff, E.A. (1992c) `Introduction to Volume 1', in H. Sacks, Lectures on Conversation, ed. G. Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell.
54.
Schegloff, E.A. (1993) `Reflections on Quantification in the Study of Conversation', Research on Language and Social Interaction26(1): 99-128.
55.
Schegloff, E.A. (1995) `Sequence Organization', unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology, UCLA.
56.
Schegloff, E.A. (1996) `Issues of Relevance for Discourse Analysis: Contingency in Action, Interaction and Co-Participant Context', in E. H. Hovy and D. Scott (eds) Computational and Conversational Discourse: Burning Issues - An Interdisciplinary Account, pp. 3-38. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag.
Schegloff, E.A. (1998) `Body Torque', Social Research65(3): 535-596.
59.
Schegloff, E.A. (1999) `What Next? Language and Social Interaction Study at the Century's Turn', Research on Language and Social Interaction31(1/2): 141-148.
60.
Scherer, K.R. and Giles, H., ed. (1979) Social Markers in Speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
61.
Schiffrin, D. (1984) `Jewish Argument as Sociability', Langauge in Society13: 311-335.
62.
Schiffrin, D. (1987) Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
63.
Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. (1986) Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
64.
Suchman, L.A. and Jordan, B. (1990) `Interactional Troubles in Face-to-Face Survey Interviews', Journal of the American Statistical Association85: 232-241.
65.
Tannen, D. (1981) `New York Jewish Conversational Style', International Journal for the Sociology of Language30: 131-149.
66.
Tannen, D. (1984) Conversational Style. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
67.
Tannen, D. (1990) You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: William Morrow and Co.
68.
Tannen, D. (1994) Gender and Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press.
69.
West, C. and Zimmerman, D.H. (1987) `Doing Gender', Gender & Society1(2): 125-151.
70.
Zaidel, E. (1998) `Language in the Right Hemisphere Following Callosal Disconnection', in B. Stemmer and H. A. Whitaker (eds) Handbook of Neurolinguistics, pp. 369-383. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
71.
Zaidel, E. , Zaidel, D. and Bogen, J.E. (1998) `Disconnection Syndrome', In J. G. Beaumont, P. M. Kenealy and M. J. C. Rogers (eds) The Blackwell Dictionary of Neuropsychology, pp. 279-285. Oxford: Blackwell.
