Schegloffin

Schegloffin is a term used in discourse analysis to describe a proposed micro-pattern in conversational turn-taking. Named in homage to the late sociolinguist Emanuel A. Schegloff, the Schegloffin is presented as a compact, repeatable sequence that helps manage the transition from one speaker to another.

A Schegloffin sequence consists of three elements: a pre-turn cue indicating upcoming transition, a brief pause, and an uptake-ready utterance by the next speaker. The cue may be intonational, lexical, or gestural and serves to align ground rules for the next turn, reducing the likelihood of overlap.

In analytic practice, researchers annotate potential Schegloffins in transcripts to study how people coordinate adjacency pairs, overlap, and repair. Examples include a speaker finishing a clause, a short silent interval, and the next speaker beginning with a corroborating token such as right or indeed.

Reception of the term is mixed. It is not widely standardized and is used primarily in instructional contexts or speculative literature. Critics argue that real conversation exhibits high variability and that applying a Schegloffin pattern can overlook contextual factors and diverse interactional goals.

See also: conversation analysis, turn-taking, adjacency pair, Schegloff.