Article published In: Spoken Interaction Studies in Australia
Edited by Rod Gardner
[Australian Review of Applied Linguistics. Series S 11] 1994
► pp. 153–172
A very delayed acceptance to an invitation in a French conversation
Published online: 1 January 1994
https://doi.org/10.1075/aralss.11.08bar
https://doi.org/10.1075/aralss.11.08bar
Abstract
Many studies have been concerned with sequence organisation, adjacency pairs and preference organisation in English conversations. However, there is a need to investigate how these structures apply to other languages, and this paper undertakes such a task in analysing a French telephone conversation. In the conversation analysed, the two base parts of an invitation sequence, the invitation and its acceptance, are separated by 113 turns of talk. The methodology uses the Jeffersonian transcription system and Conversation Analysis techniques. What is remarkable about the data analysed in this study is its striking similarities to an English conversation examined by Schegloff (1990). The parallels with Schegloff’s single case analysis constitute evidence of a phenomenon equally occurring in French, with a massive delay between the first pair part (FPP) and the second pair part (SPP) and the complex local organisation and expansion sequences that result from it.
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