The phonetic design of turn endings, beginnings, and continuations in conversation

This thesis presents a series of exploratory studies of how participants engaged in everyday conversation utilise linguistic resources in managing entry to and exit from talk. For each study a data-set is constructed from audio recordings of telephone calls; this data-set is then analysed in terms of interactional organisation and linguistic design. Analysis of interactional aspects of the talk is conducted according to the principles of Conversation Analysis; analysis of linguistic design focuses on phonetic details, employing both impressionistic and acoustic techniques. Throughout the studies, an attempt is made to relate the linguistic (and particularly the phonetic) design of talk to its function in interaction. The first two studies deal with some of the design features associated with the signalling of transition relevance, i.e. how participants produce and identify points at which a change in speakership can occur in an orderly fashion, and with some of the design formats available to participants for starting up talk following the issuing of a request. Two further studies outline the linguistic design and interactional function of two practices which are related to themarking of the beginnings and endings of units of talk. The first practice to be described involves speakers marking out a junction between components of the turn; the second involves the production of talk which, at both phonetic and grammatical levels, functions simultaneously as the end of one unit of talk and the beginning of another. Taken as a whole, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between the phonetic design of talk and its interactional function; it also demonstrates a methodology which can be used to more fully understand participants’ linguistic competences, as displayed and deployed in talk-in-interaction.