“Studies in the organization of conversational interaction” by J. Schenkein

This book opens with the ground-breaking paper by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson on the systematics for the organization of turn-taking.

The striking thing about this paper is that it really prepares the ground for following research in Conversation. As such, it should be read before studying subsequent articles about the same topic.

Honestly, however, I can tell you it would have been almost impossible for me to understand these authors’thinking without having previously attended a course in linguistics and conversation analysis.

Hence I here pay tribute to Daniela Zorzi‘s course in applied linguistics at the advanced school for interpreters and translators (University of Bologna), which made this groundbreaking reading possible and fruitful.

And I of course recommend this extraordinary systematics for turn taking, one which paved the way to the study of naturally occurring conversations, and which explored the turn-taking organization of conversation and its 14 recurrent elements.

It stated, in particular, that conversation can be brought under the jurisdiction of the “recipient design” principle, which collects “a multitude of respects in which the talk by a party in a conversation is constructed or designed in ways which display an orientation and sensitivity to the particular other(s) who are the coparticipants” (1978: 43)

Worth reading are also the papers by Schenkein on identity negotiation, by Jefferson on storytelling, and above all by Sacks on dirty jokes.

Not only are these papers interesting for their content, but they also give you the opportunity to read some very good English and to pick up expressions you may use in your writings, too.

Sacks H. & E. Schegloff & G. Jefferson (1978). “A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation”. In J. Schenkein (a cura di), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction. New York: Academic Press. 1-55

Schenkein, J. (1978). “Identity negotiations in conversation”. In J. Schenkein (eds.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction. New York: Academic Press. 57-78

Jefferson, G. (1978). “Sequential aspects of Storytelling in Conversation”. In J. Schenkein (eds.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction. New York: Academic Press. 219-248

Sacks, H. (1978). “Some technical considerations of a dirty joke”. In J. Schenkein (eds.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction. New York: Academic Press. 249-269