Languages & Linguistics
Interruption
Interruption in linguistics refers to the phenomenon where one speaker interrupts another during a conversation. This can occur for various reasons, such as to assert dominance, show agreement, or express enthusiasm. Interruptions can impact the flow and dynamics of a conversation, and are often studied in sociolinguistics to understand the social and cultural implications of language use.
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4 Key excerpts on "Interruption"
eBook - ePub- Lia Litosseliti(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
First, we need to be aware of different ways to define (and analyse) Interruptions, e.g. decide whether to include overlapping speech, attempted Interruptions, or silent Interruptions in analysis. In addition to the content of the Interruption, we need to account for the larger context in which it is embedded, the direction and content of the conversation up to that point, the participants' conversational style, their cultural and other background, and the relationships between participants (James and Clarke, 1993). Further, similarly to the discussion of tag questions above, we need to consider the multifunctional nature of Interruptions and simultaneous talk — indeed of all talk. Interruptions need not be interpreted solely as dominance signals, as they can be supportive speech acts (e.g. back-channel utterance), and depend on the particular participants' interactional goals (Bilous and Krauss, 1988 ; Wooffitt, 2005 ; see also Tanaka, 2004, for co-operative Interruptions in Japanese). This last point concerns the biggest criticism of dominance paradigms of gender and language in general: the correlation of attributes, such as gender, with specific forms of speech behaviour, such as Interruptions or minimal responses; and locating the source of domination through such linguistic strategies. Dominance theorists do not really attend to the effects of conversational contexts, topics and genres, objectives, styles and rules for speaking, when examining specific forms (Borker and Maltz, 1989 ; Tannen, 1993). Also, they fail to recognize the possibility that some men may unintentionally dominate a conversation, or that women may, in certain cases, choose not to interrupt. Indeed, dominance theories often over-emphasize the subordination of women, and assume that all men in all cultures are in a position to dominate women
eBook - ePubSocial interaction, Social Context, and Language
Essays in Honor of Susan Ervin-tripp
- Dan Isaac Slobin, Julie Gerhardt, Amy Kyratzis, Jiansheng Guo(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
Listeners' back-channel contributions that do not, and clearly are not intended to, disrupt the speech flow, are usually excluded from the category of Interruptions. Far less consensus exists about accidental turn-final overlaps (MISTIMINGS) and FALSE STARTS, where two or more speakers simultaneously seize the floor after a speaker has relinquished it. The probably strongest arguments in favor of a functional approach come from studies describing cooperative overlaps, which abound in certain kinds of informal interaction (see Edelsky, 1981 ; Tannen, 1984, 1989, 1990). Cooperative overlaps, that is, finishing another's utterance, adding a supportive comment, and so forth, can hardly be considered disruptive or domineering behavior. Yet, they would have to be classified as Interruptions by any purely formal criterion (e.g., one speaker starts talking during another speaker's turn, causing that turn to be discontinued before syntactic and/or intonational closure is reached). We define Interruptions then as attempts by one speaker to disrupt another's utterance in order to gain the floor for a competing turn. To make this definition operational and allow a reliable categorization, we distinguish a number of subcategories, using an adapted version of the Interruption Coding System (ICS) proposed by Roger, Bull, and Smith (1988). This system enables us to distinguish dominance-related interruptive behavior from accidental and cooperative simultaneous speech. Determinants of interruptive behavior Like most aspects of interactional behavior, the use of Interruptions is strongly influenced by contextual factors, specifically the rules and conventions of the interactional activity and the social status and expertise of the participants (Ervin-Tripp, 1987)
eBook - ePubConfrontation Talk
Arguments, Asymmetries, and Power on Talk Radio
- Ian Hutchby(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
5 The Uses of InterruptionA striking feature of talk radio discourse that has been at the heart of this book is its confrontational character. One way in which this confrontation talk is brought off is by the use of “Interruption” as a verbal strategy to package classically argumentative actions such as challenges, rebuttals, and ripostes. The present chapter takes as its theme that use of Interruption in argument sequences, and considers a number of aspects of how the activity of interrupting may be bound up with the accomplishment of confrontation talk on talk radio.This sense of a relationship between Interruption and confrontation has been explored before, notably by Schegloff (1988–1989) in his study of the notorious Bush–Rather encounter on U.S. TV; what was purportedly an interview given by then Presidential candidate George Bush to CBS anchorman Dan Rather turned into what was widely viewed as a confrontation between the two men. Schegloff remarks on how the confrontational trajectory of the encounter seems often to be marked precisely by the interruptive verbal behavior of the antagonists.1In this chapter, I will pursue this theme in depth in relation to argument sequences on talk radio. The chapter begins from a particular standpoint: the idea that Interruptions can be seen as having both a “sequential” and a “moral” dimension. The sequential dimension refers to the feature focused on in most research on the topic: the degree to which an interrupting turn is incursive with respect to ongoing speech. The moral dimension adds to that by focusing also on what Interruption is being used to do in the local interactional context. Following, among others, Talbot (1992), I show how “attention to the occurrence of candidate Interruptions [needs to] be coupled with attention to discoursal indications of interactants’ perceptions of them as
eBook - ePub- Catherine Johns-Lewis(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Taylor & Francis(Publisher)
Types of Interruption: Turn-competitive and non-competitive As we hinted above, the analysis is based upon recordings of multi-party conversations. Simultaneous or overlapping speech is a recurrent feature of these settings. It is clear that such speech may occur for reasons other than a speaker having misjudged the completion point of another’s turn or the timing of his own beginning. Researchers have identified a variety of conversational activities that speakers can perform by timing their speech to begin interruptively (Jefferson and Schegloff, 1975). In analysing Interruptions, reference has been made to the syntactic and segmental characteristics of the interruptive speech (Jefferson and Schegloff, 1975), to the place at which it enters a turn in progress (Schegloff, 1973; Zimmerman and West, 1975; Edelsky, 1981) and to the thematic relation of such speech to a turn in progress (Bennett, 1980). In short, researchers have shown that participants gauge very precisely both when and how to begin their talk relative to an ongoing turn (Jefferson, 1973; Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, 1974). The focus of the present study is rather more restricted than previous treatments of this topic in that it is concerned with only one particular type of overlapping interruptive speech 5 : that in which one speaker comes in clearly prior to the completion of another’s turn and can be heard as directly competing with the other for possession of the turn. We use the term ‘directly competing’ to circumscribe those occasions on which we get a sense that the interrupter has something to say and that he is treating the in-overlap position as an undesirable or unsuitable place to say it. We hear him as wanting the floor to himself not when the current speaker has finished but now, at this point in the conversation
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