CONVERSATIONAL INTERACTIONS

Conversational Interactions

Conversational Interactions

Introduction

Conversations are a vital part of human life. Every day, we indulge in conversations with our parents, siblings, colleagues, friends, peers, teachers, supervisors, strangers and others. During these conversations, people consciously or subconsciously follow certain patterns or rules. These conventions vary with the situations in which the interaction is taking place. These conventions result in learning, which is an ongoing process in one's life. During this learning discourse, participants are also responsible for producing interpretable messages and should also acknowledge the messages received; so as to create a successful conversation. Whereas, conversation analysis is applied to both institutional and, casual conversations and it also describes the structure, pattern and, organization of the interaction. A branch of sociology is ethno-methodological sociolinguistics which is called Conversation Analysis Applied linguistics is not restricted by traditional boundaries of discipline and etiquettes. They intrude in the disciplines of others to incorporate theories in their own domain.

Interactive Conversational Structure

Interactive conversations can clearly be said as a process of exchanging and conveying knowledge. The power and influence of a conversation highly depends on its sequential pattern also called as the 'Structure'. The structure has turned out to be a valuable mechanism through which managing a conversation is now very convenient. The conversational interactions demand a structural analysis of conversations. However, the implications of non-verbal communications may not apply here.

Turn Taking

Turn taking structure, as the name suggests, is where people turn by turn proceed with the conversation and agree on each section of the complete course of conversation. The concept of turn taking is one of the preoccupations of conversation analysis as turn-taking is a common feature of everyday conversations and interactions. “Thinking in terms of turn-taking may appear innocuous. This is, first, because it fits the schooled individual's bias that conversations are "essentially" trains of word-based forms” (Cowley, 1998, p. 544).

Sequence organization

Sequence organization focuses on the actions that keep the conversation in sequence and in a logical order. This exercise is aimed at finding out recurring patterns of interactions.

Adjacency Pairs

It is one of the common conversational structures. Adjacency pairs refer as a part of functional turn of conversation in a sequence. The best example of adjacency pairs is a question-answer or greeting-greeting session. In this case, the second utterance is followed soon after the first is spoken.

Preference Organization

Preference organization is the ranking of alternatives in a sequence, according to the extent of their preferences. It refers to the actions initiating sequence in a conversation. Agreement in a conversation is just a common example of preference organization.

Conversation Sequences

The conversation sequence comprise of pre-expansion and expansion parts. In the pre-expansion part, a sequence is added in the beginning of the first part of base sequence. In the expansion part, a sub-sequent part is added in between the first and the second part of the base sequence.

Repair

Repair is a mechanism of conversation analysis. It deals with fixing the troubles in the conversation that may occur. It is an organized process through which a person rectifies his problems during ...