Discourse Approach to Turn-taking

Turn-Taking Behavior and Role-Relationships Between Participants

The relation between turn-taking behavior and gender differences in terms of

dominance is discussed by Talbot (1998: 112ff). She refers to a comparative study of

two broadcast interviews by Joanne Winter about the interviewers’ management of

turn-taking and their questioning strategies, and draws attention to the finding that

turn-shifts were more frequent when the interviewer was a male. In the interview with

a male interviewer and a male interviewee, turns were very short and featured fast

tempo and loudness. Also the male interviewer competed for turns, using interruptions

as a way of seizing turns, and dominated the talk. On the other hand, in the other

interview with a female interviewer and a male interviewee, the male interviewee

interrupted. Regarding the questioning strategies, it seems to be natural for the

interviewer to elicit a quantity of talk using wh- questions; however, in both

interviews, there were not many of them. Instead, the male interviewer used

declarative statements as questioning strategies, whose effect was abrupt and

challenging. On the other hand, the female interviewer did not use any challenging

declaratives. The study seems to suggest the relation between turn-taking behavior and

the participant who has control in the society, not only specific to gender difference.

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3  RESEARCH

This research looks at the tone choice of speakers in turn-taking. The analysis is

mainly concerned with the relation between the first tone choice of the next speaker’s

or the listener’s utterance and the last tone choice of the speaker’s statement-form

utterance in turn-taking, with respect to the meaning of the tone choice. Through a

comparison between the turn-end and turn-beginning tones, it is believed that attention

should be paid not to the tone appearance but to the listener’s attention to and

interpretation of the speaker’s tone and the listener or the next speaker’s message

reflected in his/her tone choice for a response. Brazil’s (1994a, 1994b, 1997) account

of the intonation system is used for the description because his approach refers to the

context of interaction and the role-relationship between the participants. The material

used for this research is a detective film called ‘The most crucial game’ from the

Columbo™ series. The film is on CD-ROM and it is one of the series of DRAMA

TALK

©

 1997 which are devised and created by Softrade International Inc. in USA.

And the version used for this research is published in Japan as a study kit of English

conversation. There is no change in content, but a lesson mode is added, which

includes transcription, translation in Japanese, and the shape of the mouth for

pronunciation practice; it does not deal with intonation, though.