Encyclopedia of Sociology

CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

described just above account for a great deal of the
overlapping speech that can occasionally be ob-
served. For instance, a speaker might append a tag
question like ‘‘you know?’’ to his or her turn, while
a coparticipant, having no resources available to
project such an action, starts to speak just prior to
or at the beginning of that appended tag, at the
place that was projectably the ‘‘first possible com-
pletion’’ of the turn. This would result in overlap-
ping speech, with both parties talking simultane-
ously. This was just one example; studies of ‘‘more
than one party at a time’’ speech have uncovered
massive evidence that its occurrence and its resolu-
tion (the restoration of one party at a time), as well
as the solution to the problem of which overlap-
ping action should then be consequential for next
action, is methodically organized.

Having described the function of turn con-
structional practices in turn taking, Sacks, Schegloff,
and Jefferson still faced the issue of how
coparticipants, at possible completion places, de-
termine just who will be the ‘‘next speaker’’ (note
in this regard that conversation can involve more
than two parties) or even if there will be a next
speaker, given that a current speaker might want
to continue talking. They discovered that to deal
with this problem, members have available a ‘‘turn
allocational component’’ for the system. This com-
ponent consists of a set of ordered rules that come
into play at transition relevance places and which
provide for the methodic allocation of the right to
produce a next turn, or more accurately, a turn
constructional unit. In related research, methods
for securing the temporary suspension of turn-
taking procedures (to tell an extended story, for
example) and for coordinating exit from the sys-
tem (to end the conversation) have been documented.

Finally there is the entire set of procedures by
which any troubles in speaking, hearing, and un-
derstanding talk are systematically handled and
‘‘repaired.’’ As Schegloff (1979, p. 269) points out,
insofar as ‘‘any of the systems and contingencies
implicated in the production and reception of
talk—articulatory, memory, sequential, syntactic,
auditory, ambient noise, etc.—can fail,’’ any piece
of talk is susceptible to, or can reveal, troubles in
speaking, hearing, or understanding. As a conse-
quence, members of society must have some sys-
tematically organized set of methods for manag-
ing such trouble when it arises. Further, in order
for interaction to serve as a primary site for the

coordination of social activity, any such troubles

must be located and dealt with as quickly as possi-

ble to avoid whole stretches of talk developing on a

problematic basis. Finally, this set of methods

must provide the opportunity to discover and

display trouble in speaking, hearing, or under-

standing by any of the ratified coparticipants to

the interaction, while simultaneously managing

such trouble from the variety of quarters from

which it might arise, whether the trouble is noticed

or produced by the current speaker or her recipi-

ent, and whether its source is endogenous to the

interaction or impinges on it from outside.

When Schegloff, Sacks, and Jefferson (1977)

began examining the related set of practices

through which speakers managed such troubles

they discovered two important features. First, they

noticed that participants in interaction treat the

initiation of repair as a separate matter from the

actual accomplishment of a solution. That is, they

distinguish between the various practices for locat-

ing a trouble source and making it the focus of the

interaction and the set of practices for implement-

ing a solution. Second, they observed that these

two activities were not distributed evenly among

the parties: The organization of repair exhibited a

preference for self-repair and a preference for self-

initiation of repair. And they went on to show that

this latter feature is primarily a product of the way

that the organization of repair relies on, and is

fitted to, the system for distributing turns.

The organization of repair initiation operates

in a restricted ‘‘repair initiation opportunity space’’

that is organized around the trouble source or

‘‘repairable.’’ Within this repair initiation oppor-

tunity space each party to an interaction moves

through a series of discrete opportunities to locate

and indicate potential and actual troubles. In turn,

these discrete opportunities to initiate repair shape

where (relative to the trouble source) a repair is

effected, and by whom. The current speaker has

the first opportunity to initiate repair on any

trouble source within his or her own turn while

still in the midst of it, or just after it is complete but

before a next speaker starts. If they do initiate

repair during (or immediately following the possi-

ble completion of) their own turn, such speakers

also have the first opportunity to effect repair as well.

Of course, as we noted above, conversation is

characterized by the alternation between current