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Article published In: The Joint Production of Conversational Turns
Edited by K.K. Luke and Mei Fang
[Chinese Language and Discourse 12:1] 2021
► pp. 6–34

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Parties and voices

On the joint construction of conversational turns

 | Nanyang Technological University
Published online: 19 April 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cld.00035.luk
Abstract
Since Harvey Sacks’ early observations on collaborative sentence-making, the joint production of turns has become a topic of abiding interest amongst conversation analysts. This paper offers a thematic review of the literature by looking into a number of issues surrounding joint productions, including their forms and interactional uses, major types and sub-types, syntactic and pragmatic contributions, unity and variation across languages, and reasons for its inherent fascination as a conversational practice. By re-examining a number of key concepts and distinctions, including completion, extension, projection, continuation, collaboration, and affiliation/disaffiliation, the paper offers a critical assessment of their perspicuity and usefulness for our understanding of joint production as a general phenomenon (which includes both co-completions and increments). In the second part of the paper, it is suggested that two further concepts be added to the analyst’s toolbox, namely, ‘parties’ (Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1995. “Parties and Talking Together: Two Ways in Which Numbers Are Significant for Talk-in-Interaction.” In Situated Order: Studies in the Social Organization of Talk and Embodied Activities, ed. by Paul ten Have and George Psathas, 31–42. Washington, DC: University Press of America.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and ‘voices’ (Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. by Michael Holquist. Trans. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). It is argued that with these notions, one would be better placed to explain the curious status of joint productions as at once collaborative and yet at the same time potentially transformative or even subversive. The overriding goal is conceptual clarification of this field, which hopefully will help place further research on firmer ground.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Concepts, distinctions, issues
    • 2.1Completion vs. extension
    • 2.2Projection and projectability
    • 2.3Self vs. other continuations
    • 2.4Collaboration: Broad and narrow senses
    • 2.5Affiliation vs. disaffiliation
  • 3.Parties and voices
  • 4.Conclusion
  • References
References (59)
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