TY - JOUR
T1 - The Timing and Construction of Preference
T2 - A Quantitative Study
AU - Kendrick, Kobin H.
AU - Torreira, Francisco
N1 - © Taylor & Francis Group. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
U2 - 10.1080/0163853X.2014.955997
DO - 10.1080/0163853X.2014.955997
M3 - Article
SN - 0163-853X
VL - 52
SP - 255
EP - 289
JO - Discourse Processes
JF - Discourse Processes
IS - 4
ER -