The quantitative analysis of turntaking in multiparticipant conversations

Sylvie Dubois, Martine Boutin & David Sankoff

Sat. 2:00-3:40 C

The use of turn-initial discourse particles: ah bon, mais oui, etc., the overlapping of speech turns, and interruptions are almost exclusively oral phenomena; indeed they are relatively rare except in genuinely spontaneous conversation. We have constructed a corpus of ten hour- long dinner-table conversations involving from four to eight participants. All conversations are in Quebec French, and have been completely transcribed so as to highlight turntaking behaviour. Though the sociodemographic characteristics of the participants vary from one conversation to another, this accounts for very little of the variation observed in conversational structure among the ten recordings. One aspect was remarkably constant: the proportion of turns headed by a turn-initial particle was very close to 60% in every case, confirming previous results of Vicher for Parisian French, and demonstrating that this is a key characteristic, in quantitative terms, of spontaneous conversation. The rate of overlap activity per turn, in contrast, was very variable, and proved to be highly correlated with the average number of words per turn. Both turn length and overlap thus reflect the intensity of competition for the floor. The prevalence of interruption was not dependent on words per turn, nor on the number of participants, or any of the other gross measures we have tabulated, indicating a sensitivity to the interactional parameters of particular conversations. A finer categorization of the turn-initial particles, the types of overlap and the manner of interruption permits a detailed understanding of the major tendencies governing access to the floor in ordinary conversation.