The Timing and Construction of Preference: A Quantitative Study

Kobin H. Kendrick, Francisco Torreira

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Conversation-analytic research has argued that the timing and construction of preferred responding actions (e.g., acceptances) differ from that of dispreferred responding actions (e.g., rejections), potentially enabling early response prediction by recipients. We examined 195 preferred and dispreferred responding actions in telephone corpora and found that the timing of the most frequent cases of each type did not differ systematically. Only for turn transitions of 700 ms or more was the proportion of dispreferred responding actions clearly greater than that of preferreds. In contrast, an analysis of the timing that included turn formats (i.e., those with or without qualification) revealed clearer differences. Small departures from a normal gap duration decrease the likelihood of a preferred action in a preferred turn format (e.g., a simple “yes”). We propose that the timing of a response is best understood as a turn-constructional feature, the first virtual component of a preferred or dispreferred turn format.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)255-289
Number of pages35
JournalDiscourse Processes
Volume52
Issue number4
Early online date30 Aug 2015
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015

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