CONVERSATION ANALYSISto indicate that a dispreferred action would be
forthcoming without ever having to perform that
action. Additionally, because ‘‘pre’’ actions them-
selves engender sequences by making some re-
sponse to them a relevant next action, they consti-
tute the first part of a ‘‘pre-sequence.’’ It follows
that since these and other features of preference
organization together maximize the likelihood of
preferred actions and minimize the likelihood of
dispreferred ones, they serve as important struc-
tural resources for maintaining social solidarity
and ‘‘preserving face.’’
These interrelated observations on the organi-
zation of sequences were generalized outward in
conversation analytic research from the relatively
simple adjacency pair organization by the recogni-
tion that virtually every utterance occurs at some
sequentially relevant, structurally defined place in
talk (see especially Atkinson and Heritage 1984,
pp. 5–9). Moreover, it is this placement that pro-
vides the primary context for an utterance’s intelli-
gibility and understanding. Put another way, utter-
ances are in the first place contextually understood
by reference to their placement and participation
within sequences of action, and it is therefore
sequences of action, rather than single utterances
or actions, that have become the primary units of
analysis for the conversation-analytic enterprise.
Accordingly, researchers in this tradition have not
restricted themselves to studying only especially
‘‘tight’’ sequence units, but have instead broad-
ened their investigations to (mentioning just a
few) the sequencing of laughter, disputes, story
and joke telling, political oratory, and the initia-
tion and closing of topics. In addition, the sequen-
tial organization of gaze and body movement in
relation to turns at talk has been the focus of some
truly pathbreaking research using video record-
ings (see, for example, Goodwin 1981, 1994;
Heath 1986).
Now let us consider the organization of turn
taking, surely a central feature of virtually all talk-
in-interaction. Recall that the prior discussion on
the organization of sequences frequently made
reference to sequence parts as ‘‘turns,’’ implicitly
trading on the understanding that talk in conversa-
tion is produced in and built for turns, with recur-
ring speaker change and a consequent serial or-
dering of utterances. In conversation, this turn
ordering, as well as the size and content of each
turn, is not predetermined or allocated in ad-
vance. Instead, it is locally determined, moment-
by-moment, by the coparticipants in the talk. In
fact, this completely local determination of who
speaks when, how long they speak, and what they
might say or do in their turn, is what provides for
talk being hearable as a ‘‘conversation,’’ rather
than as, say, a debate or a ceremony of some kind.
But this does not tell us just how—methodically—
speaker change is achieved such that, ordinarily,
one party talks at a time and there is little or no
silence (or ‘‘gap’’) between turns. Clearly, this
requires close coordination among coparticipants
in any conversational encounter. The systematic
practices by which this is accomplished are ana-
lyzed by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson in a 1974
paper that remains one of the most important in
the conversation-analysis literature.Basic to the accomplishment of turn taking is
the practice of changing speakers at possible utter-
ance completion places, what Sacks, Schegloff,
and Jefferson term transition relevance places. How
are such places, where speaker change may relevantly
occur but is in no way guaranteed or required,
discernable by members? A key feature of the
units by and through which turns are constructed
offers one resource here: For an utterance to be
usable as a turn constructional unit, it must have a
recognizable completion, and that completion must
be recognizable prior to its occurrence (Sacks,
Schegloff, and Jefferson [1974] 1978, p. 12). That
is to say, its completion is projectable, and a
coparticipant in the conversation who wishes to
speak next can therefore begin his or her turn just
at the place where the current speaker projects
completion.Of course, this does not preclude this
coparticipant, or any other, from starting to speak
elsewhere in the course of a current speaker’s
turn. (Indeed, what actually constitutes a ‘‘turn at
talk’’ is as locally and mutually determined as any
other aspect of conversation’s organization, even
as the resources for doing so are general ones.)
There are various interactional moves that could
involve, as one way they might be accomplished,
this sort of action. At the same time, however,
research on turn-taking has revealed that turns
beginning elsewhere may well be met with proce-
dures systematically designed to enforce the prac-
tice of starting at possible completion places. Fur-
ther, features of the turn taking system such as that