Talk:Turn-taking

Merge with Conversation analysis?
This page, in addition to being an orphan, has incorrect capitalization in the title. The correct version, Turn-taking, redirects to the "Conversation analysis" article. The material here is slight and could be incorporated into that article. Monado (talk) 18:18, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Redirect for discussion
I have suggested at Redirects for discussion/Log/2013 July 22 that this article should be moved to Turn-taking and the uppercase name redirect there, the opposite of the current status. Editors may be interested to comment at that discussion. Cnilep (talk) 02:36, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I had already filed a technical RM, which has been done now, so that discussion is moot. Dicklyon (talk) 03:19, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Editing and Expansion?
The article offers an interesting and enlightening introduction to the topic of 'turn-taking' for the casual reader with various references to scholarly material that deal with everyday instances of 'turn-taking.' In doing so the article becomes more inviting, more appealing with at the same time educating, as it allows the reader the feel more personally involved and interested. However, the quality of the prose could be significantly improved. There are many statements of opinion in the prose. Even though 'backed up' by references, they are still opinion, statements that paraphrase academics' opinions. References to scholarly articles should be presented in a more neutral manner, such that it is clear that findings are what they, findings and not absolute fact. For instance, prose under “Turn Taking & Gender” section could be reevaluated to express its idea in more a partial and unbiased manner. Material could also be expanded to refer to scholar Paul Grice, whose 1975 publication of his Principle of Cooperation would be most relevant to this topic of 'turn-taking.'

LeKevin1919 (talk) 20:02, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

The writing and overall transitions could improve in some sections such as the “Overview” where most of the sentences begin with “Turn taking [. . .]”. The “Turn-taking and gender” section, was unbalanced and mostly devoted to one idea of the influence of gender with men dominating conversations. It was only mentioned in passing about work that contradicts this finding on gendered influences of turn-taking, which instead looks at status. This section also mentioned that culture differences in gender influences turn taking, but was lacking specific studies on these different cultures. I enjoyed the section on cultural variation about Japanese and American conversation etiquette, but again, it would help having other cultures and add more comments on the universal similarities. Overall, it is an interesting article and it provided a good overview of an unfamiliar topic, but the sections could benefit from expansion and relying on other references. At the moment, they seem unintentionally biased and presenting some ongoing research as fact. Abi.manuel (talk) 07:44, 18 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Since both commenters are new Wikipedians, I'm going to guess that you are here as a result of some school project or the like. In any case, welcome to Wikipedia. If you have not specifically been assigned to comment on talk pages before editing articles, you may want to read Be bold. Cnilep (talk) 00:02, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Pursue the floor?
"This interruption, however, is not due to female interlocutors’ failure to pursue the floor."

What does "pursue the floor" mean? I tried looking it up in dictionaries but found no explanation of what that phrase means. Similar phrases come later in the article: "floor management", "maintain the floor". Can someone explain? What does "floor" mean in this context? It should be mentioned that English is not my primary language. --Jhertel (talk) 20:06, 24 April 2015 (UTC)


 * When someone "has the floor" it means that they are given the ability/privilege to speak and others know they are supposed to listen. Imagine a large congressional hearing, and as the next speaker on the schedule "X" walks up to the podium, the moderator says "and now we yield the floor to X" which indicates to the crowd that X will now be speaking and they need to pay attention slash listen to X. Jm-amb-151 (talk) 05:13, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Neutrality
"Male interlocutors systematically interrupt females"

Oh boy, I guess this page fell victim to one of those US universities from the news, where Gender Studies professors gave course credits to students for editing feminist dogma into Wikipedia articles... x-D

Seriously though, stating a contentious theory like the sentence I quoted, as a fact - and what's more, as a universal fact as if it applies across the board to all male and female persons in the world - is not what I'd expect from an encyclopedia.

I won't edit it because I'm not a Wikipedian and I don't know the rules of this place, and I'm not even a native speaker. Just someone have a look at it, will you? ;) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.180.74.206 (talk) 23:57, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that the text seems to be written in an imprecise manner, almost like a bad journalist would write it. Of course males do not *systematically* interrupt females. But I do not have access to the source, so it is hard to correct - except for trying to make the sentence less overstated. Do you have a suggestion? --Jhertel (talk) 00:58, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Lead Section and Overview
Edits: -Lead Section: revised topic definition for clarity I felt the previous definition (" the process by which people in a conversation decide who is to speak next") was inaccurate; turn-taking refers to a collection of processes and ordering rules. Also added information about major areas of variation or dispute (culture and gender)

-Overview: Revised and expanded previous commentary on turn-taking structure. Many sentences started with "Turn-taking..."; changed some to vary the style. Also added general information on the history and structure of turn-taking.

Kmt0715 (talk) 20:55, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Specificity Issue?
Page was recently revised; do we agree that the tag can be removed? Kmt0715 (talk) 20:56, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I removed the tag. Thanks to Kmt0715, Shteveno, and Mnrszk the article is coming together nicely. Cnilep (talk) 00:39, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Missing information
I have tagged the section 'Overview' as missing information. While Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974 is without doubt the most significant work inaugurating the study of turn and sequence, there is subsequent scholarship that is not directly, or at least not only within the CA tradition. I am thinking of scholars such as Herbert Clark, Jen Coates, or Hiroko Itakura. That list is nothing like exhaustive – it's just off the top of my head. Cnilep (talk) 00:31, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Suggestions for "Gender" Section
Points for clarification: I agree with a previous user's suggestion that the phrase "pursue the floor" may be unclear. It may help to provide a definition or elaborate on the idea. Additionally, in the sentence about deep interruption, I wasn't sure what the last word ('them') was referring to. Is it referring to the interruptions, the conversations with men in general, or something else? I also felt the main point of this section was to show the inconsistencies across studies of gender and turn-taking, that there is not a single answer and findings from various studies can conflict with one another. I think this point could be made stronger by editing the sentence "Rates of interruption are a widely researched area of turn-taking that has elicited various results."

Grammar: These are two really small changes could add to consistency: (1) add a hyphen between 'same' and 'sex' in the sentence "One study of radio shows, television programs, and casual conversation finds that in same sex conversations, participants spoke evenly." (2) add a hyphen between 'opposite' and 'sex' in the sentence "For opposite sex pairs, male interlocutors interrupt much more, and interruptions are much more widely distributed – that is, most men did it."

Other suggestions: Add a citation for this sentence? "Krupnick observes that these conversations maintain a “gender rhythm” which cannot be separated from the academic and authoritative contexts." Based on the discussion of dominance in this section, one could add a link to the page “Expressions of dominance” in the “See Also” section of this page; the "See Also" section is currently empty. Cal 2016 (talk) 23:25, 24 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your suggestions! I took them all into account. Shteveno (talk) 23:31, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Cultural Variation
"For instance, Japanese culture is largely group-oriented and highly focused on the importance of social structure and ritual harmony in interaction. This is reflected in the negotiation of turns in Japanese discourse, specifically with the use of backchannel, or reactive tokens (“aizuchi”)."

As someone that knows nothing about Japanese culture, I feel like the above statements (or even possibly just the first) could use a citation. Not specifically related to turn-taking, granted, but I'd appreciate a source for umbrella statements about a culture.

"It has been found that Japanese speakers make use of backchannel far more than American English speakers."

Is it Wiki etiquette to only link a word/phrase to its Wikipedia article the first time that it occurs? If not, then 'backchannel' again.

Is it on purpose that the two conversation examples are in different languages? As a person that does not speak Japanese, a more in depth translation of that second conversational example would be appreciated.

Last thing: it feels a little off that there's a full section on "Cultural Variation" and then a sub-section on it within "Overlapping." I'd possibly suggest a restructuring in that either both info on turn-by-turn and on overlapping within a cultural variationist standpoint be one section, or that the section on Cultural Variation be renamed so that it reflects not being in regard to both tendencies but rather just turn-by-turn. Just a thought, because when I finished reading Cultural Variation, and moved onto the section of Overlapping, my first thought was "really? overlapping is universal cross-culturally?"

Forgive any suggestions that are out of place due to Wikipedia etiquette, and the article is looking super decent! Jm-amb-151 (talk) 05:34, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Overall Grammar Suggestions
(all of these are just suggestions I believe would ease readability and help with cohesion and may not actually be better. Accept suggestions at your own discretion)

In intro: delete "fundamental" and add strategy so it reads "turn-taking is a type of organization strategy in conversation" to have less abstractions. Combine the second clause of the first sentence " participants speak one at a time in alternating turns." In second sentence of intro maybe clarify what "transitioning between speakers" means, I was a little unsure what you meant by that. Combine the last and second to last sentences " . . . responding to previous comments, and transitioning between speakers using a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic cues to accomplish these tasks." delete the first "turn-taking" in the second paragraph and replace with "the". In the last sentence replace "and" with "or". Maybe clarify the first sentence of the third paragraph, I generally understand what you meant but the wording is a bit awkward especially the "differently valued and competed for." It seems that you had two different meanings in the same sentence (that should really be two separate sentences (roughly meaning): "conversation turns are highly valued because they are a means to communicate and participate in social life" and "people compete for turns in conversation and place different values on turns based on different contexts". In the second sentence of the third paragraph delete "and convention violations" to keep the intro uncomplicated and clear and go into detail in later sections.  Maybe delete the example in same sentence ("for example, men . . . believed to talk more than men.") to keep the intro short and use this example later on.  Combine the second and third sentence in the third paragraph "It is often thought that turn-taking strategies differ by gender, consequently, turn-taking has been a topic of intense examination in gender studies."  In the last sentence delete "these" and add "gender" and maybe insert the example here: ("While early studies have supported gender stereotypes, such as women talking more than men and men interrupting more than women, recent findings have shown mixed evidence of. . .".) to explain what stereotypes you are talking about, instead of having the reader reference two sentences previous. Overall a good intro with just enough information without bogging the reader down with excessive wordage or information.

Overview: In the first sentence, after "allocate turns" add "within cultures that use turns as a key conversation strategy" (Personally I feel like it would be a good qualifier so it doesn't seem that every culture uses turn-taking but that's just me). In the second sentence delete "with" and just added a comma between "Harvey Sacks" and "Emanuel Schegloff" unless Harvey Sacks was the main researcher because the current structure ("with") suggest Harvey Sacks was the main and Schegloff and Jefferson assisted. For the three part intro rephrase the second part to "turn-taking structure has three components:" to parallel your titles of the three sub parts.

1. I'm not sure what you mean in part 1 "the main content of the utterance, which can be built from various unit types" it seems like your missing the second part of the clause (I'm not quite sure, maybe restructure to "conversations are broken up into various unit types called Turn-Construction Units or TCUs.") Second sentence delete "At" and delete the parentheses and say ". . . new speaker may begin, known as a transition-relevant point or TRP. 2. Clarify the first sentence "This refers to techniques that are used to select the next speaker".  Add "There are two types of turn allocations:" and add "to speak next" to the end "speaker selects themself".  (By the way themself and themselves are both okay in this context and themselves is considered more formal but themself seems to fit better within this context) 3. move govern to the end of the first sentence "turn construction and options to designate the next turn-taker to minimize gaps and overlap are governed by rules in the following order:" to clarify and combine sentences (I also think it helps with the flow).

1. delete the one if you can. Keep the content "Once a TRP is reached" but either add this to the previous paragraph or make it an un-numbered paragraph. Spell out TRP since the concept was just introduced. (after spelling it out here though use abbreviations for the rest of the section. In every new section though the first time you use the concept spell out the acronym just to remind people are people can deduce if they skip to that section).

1.-3. rules are good

Change "the steps" to "these steps". Delete "involved in the conversational process" so its "These steps occur". Calrify if you mean "these steps occur in this particular order to maintain the two . . ." or "these steps occur to maintain the two . . . ". Delete "the" so it's "at a time and minimized space where one person . . ." to parallel. In the second sentence the two clauses are not related but you connect them with "but", maybe delete the second clause and combine this sentence with the last sentence along the lines of "Because turn-taking varies depending on the number and type of participants and because the system is not optimized for fairness or efficiency there is variation in how turn-taking occurs." Overall the content in this section is good!

Cultural Variation: In the first sentence delete "of it it in a person's life are" and replace with "being" and change "skill" and "attribute" to "learned" and "innate" (at least that's what I think you meant, skill and attribute are somewhat ambiguous in this context). Replace "the way in which" with "conversational" and delete "occurs" and combine this sentence with the next with a semicolon (or you can keep them separate sentences, it's just personal taste and less grammatical). In the third sentence "social structure" is a bit ambiguous, do you mean a social hierarchy, or social structure of group identity over individual identity, maybe clarify or use a different term (it's not that important since it's just an example). Definitely define what back channel and reactive tokens is. I had to look up what backchannel is and while the link to the page is nice, you use it as your main example so a brief definition should be included. Second paragraph second sentence add "whereas" between the Japanese and American example "completion points (see dialogue below), whereas Japanese students". If making generalizations of English and Japanese speakers as a whole use present tense "English students use backchannel" but if your only summarizing the study the past tense verbs are fine. (I ran out of time to look over the second part of the section but the example looks good, not sure what the (?) means and what the / means so maybe add a small key for those items and the = in the Japanese section, but I think the parentheses are intuitive. --Isabelbickford (talk) 07:01, 25 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the suggestions! I agreed generally agreed with your comments on the intro and made the proposed changes; for examples, "transitioning between speakers" to "transitioning to a different speaker". I still think the first sentence of paragraph 3 ("In many contexts, conversation turns are a valuable means to participate in social life and have been subject to competition.") could be clearer, if there are any suggestions.


 * For the Overview, suggested were implemented for the most part. I was unsure about using the "cultures" qualifier, as I don't know of any cultures that don't use even basic turn taking. The qualifier seemed possibly overly cautious. Anyone have more detailed knowledge? Additionally, for Component 3, I felt that the suggested "turn construction and options to designate the next turn-taker to minimize gaps and overlap are governed by rules in the following order:" was a bit of a run-on. I did some reorganizing, but would welcome additional opinions. Kmt0715 (talk) 01:36, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Cultural Variation
To Jm-amb-151 and Isabelbickford:

Thank you for your suggestions!

I think I addressed most of them. The only thing that I did not address is the issue of how the page is organized (in response to Jm-amb-151's comment on why there are two "cultural variation" sections--I did not do that section! None of our group members worked on that section. So we will not be messing with it.)


 * Mnrszk (talk) 09:00, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Ghilzai and Baloch
The section Gender currently suggests, "...in same-sex conversations, participants spoke evenly. However, in cross-sex conversations, the women significantly take more turns than men". It cites Ghilzai and Baloch (2016) as a source. I've not read the published article, but Shazia Ghilzai's manuscript of the same title here concludes, "Results indicate  that  women are more likely to take turns in conversation which supports the proposal that women’s greater turn  taking  rates  can  be  attributed  to  interpersonal  sensitivity  rather  than  lack  of  assertiveness" (p. 11).

I take the Wikipedia section to mean 'women interrupt men frequently', as indeed [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Turn-taking&oldid=728718684#Gender this version] explicitly claimed. However, I take Ghilzai's conclusion to mean that the women in the study display not interruption but "interpersonal sensitivity", a term the manuscript does not define.

In short, this seems like a case of 'lying with a literal truth': saying, truthfully, that women take more turns in G&B's data to suggest the false conclusion that women "dominate" the mixed-sex conversations. Cnilep (talk) 01:26, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Linguistics
Turn-taking is a clearly a pertinent topic within the study of linguistics, so there needs to be some link in the lead that suggests this connection. But the technically top-heavy article on discourse analysis doesn't entirely satisfy in this role. Any better ideas? &mdash; MaxEnt 22:08, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Gender? Please no.
An entire paragraph for gender biasing opinion is unpopular. Please edit that away. NK (talk) 06:01, 21 April 2022 (UTC)