Turntaking

Turntaking refers to the organized alternation of speaking and listening that underlies most spoken interaction. It aims to distribute speaking opportunities smoothly, reducing both gaps and collisions, and enabling participants to convey information, negotiate meaning, and sustain social relations.

In conversation analysis, the classic turn-taking model by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson centers on turn construction units (TCUs), transition relevance places (TRPs), and the rules by which turns are allocated. A speaker's contribution constitutes a TCU that ends at a TRP, allowing self-selection or mutual selection by the next speaker. Adjacency pairs, such as question-answer or greeting-reply, create predictable sequences.

Overlaps occur when more than one speaker talks at the same time. They can be collaborative or dispreferred interruptions, and are governed by timing, prosody, and social position. If a turn is cut short or misunderstood, repair mechanisms—self-repair or other-repair—are invoked to restore mutual understanding.

Backchannel behavior, such as "uh-huh" or nodding, provides listening feedback without taking a turn. Prosodic cues (pauses, rising or falling intonation) and social norms guide when a new speaker should begin, how long a pause should be, and whose responsibility it is to speak next. Cultural and individual variation influence these patterns.

Turntaking has implications for language development, sociolinguistics, and human–computer interaction. It informs how children learn conversation norms, how groups manage meetings, and how dialogue systems and conversational agents are designed to model natural floor management.