Adjournments during TV watching: A closer look into the organisation of continuing states of incipient talk

Abstract

This article examines how participants collaboratively achieve projection of adjournments in TV audience interaction in Turkish. Adjournments are lapses in continuing states of incipient talk (CSIT) when the participants are not just talking but engaged in another activity. Adjournments during CSIT are neither attributable silences nor are they treated as accountable by the participants. Adopting the ethnomethodological tool of conversation analysis, the article reveals two types of episodes of talk in TV audience interaction: (1) adjacency pairs and (2) extended sequences. In adjacency pairs, an adjournment is projected through absence of mutual gaze and providing minimal agreements. In extended sequences, however, gaze aversion and demonstrable establishment of mutual alignment (e.g. using proverbial expression) are employed by the participants to hold the transition relevance place and project adjournments.

Keywords

Adjournments continuing states of incipient talk conversation analysis TV audience interaction

Introduction

This study explores the management of lapses in talk, which are defined as ‘adjournments’ (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973), by specifically focusing on the gaze orientation of the participants in order to explicate the systematic alterations of gaze orientation in projection of adjournments while people are watching a reality TV show together. While watching the show, the viewers do not sustain talk continuously. Talk that takes place intermittently when the speakers are engaged in another activity is defined as ‘continuing states of incipient talk’ (CSIT) (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973). It can therefore be argued that social TV watching involves at least two tasks: (1) watching television and (2) interacting with others. This creates some interactional troubles for the participants as they have to organise their talk in such a way that there are lapses which allow them enough time to watch the TV show in silence without being accountable. The participants also have to manage their gaze orientation in a way that they can alter their orientation between the TV set and the other participants incipiently.

Organisation of ordinary talk has been the focus of much conversation analytic research. Studies investigating ordinary talk have taken their data mostly from phone conversations (e.g. Antaki, 2002; Arminen, 2005; Arminen and Leinonen, 2006; Drew and Chilton, 2000; Hopper, 1990, 1992; Houtkoop-Steenstra, 1991, 2003; Lee, 2006; Lindström, 1996; Luke, 2002; Schegloff, 1979, 2002; Szczepek, 2009; Ten Have, 2002; Wright, 2011) or dinner table talk (Mondada, 2009; Sterponi, 2009).

However, the context of this research adds a very significant and intriguing aspect to the analysis of ordinary talk as the talk is mediated by the TV show. Mediated conversations have been mostly focused on by researchers in computer-mediated communication (Hutchby, 2001, 2003; Jenks, 2009a, 2009b; Jenks and Brandt, 2013). Talk that takes place on television shows has also gained consideration from conversation analytic research (e.g. Bovet, 2009; Butler and Fitzgerald, 2010; Clayman, 1988; Poulios, 2010). Talk that is mediated through the TV, on the other hand, has not gained much attention from conversation analytic researchers except for a handful of studies. Therefore, talk among the TV audience during TV watching still remains an under-investigated but a very widespread and intriguing context as watching television is a huge part of the daily lives of millions of people around the world. Recent statistics suggest that 99% of households have at least one TV set in the United States,¹ and the average number of TVs in a household in the United Kingdom is 1.83.² When we watch television at home, we very often we watch it with other people, with our families or with friends. While watching television with other people, we tend to talk to each other at the same time. Watching television with others is very commonly done as a social activity during which people share their understanding of what they are watching, create bonds with others or just talk about their lives. As such, it can be argued that

the television set is the centrepiece of most living-room geographies and it is at the heart of domestic social action. Therefore it seems rather obvious that television should be bound up with our everyday interactions. (Wood, 2009: 1)

By investigating talk during social TV watching, this study will broaden our understanding of organisation of CSIT while providing insights into the organisation of ordinary talk.

CSIT and adjournments

In their seminal paper on conversational closings, Schegloff and Sacks (1973: 325) defined two different forms of talk: CSIT and continuously sustained talk (CST). In CST, a state of talk has clear starting and closing points. Examples include phone conversations, psychotherapy sessions, interviews and so on. CSIT, on the other hand, refers to the encounters when turn-by-turn talk is followed by lapses that are not accountable and resumes again. In such cases, participants are not ‘just talking’, but usually they are engaged in another activity, such as open-plan workplaces, which involves different types of multi-activity, for example working while chatting with a colleague (Mondada, 2008), engaging sporadically in talk while a couple is watching television together (Couper-Kuhlen, 2010) or passengers travelling in the same car (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973). Schegloff (2010) notes that ‘the dichotomy between “continuously sustained talk” and “continuing states of incipient talk” is a highly relevant dimension of overall structural organisation of interactional episodes’ (emphasis added), and it needs to be further investigated.

One of the main distinguishing features of CSIT is the fact that there are long lapses which are not attributable silences or a termination, but rather adjournments in talk. There are some features of adjournments which enable the researcher to identify a lapse as one. First, no matter how long an adjournment lasts, it is always broken by resumption of talk. That is, an adjournment is not the termination of talk, but rather it is the suspension of talk during CSIT. Second, specific to the TV-watching context, during all adjournments in the corpus, the speakers orient towards the TV through their gaze and body and they treat the adjournment as a time for watching the TV show in silence. In CST, however, long lapses will be accountable and there will be conversational closings instead of adjournments. Schegloff and Sacks (1973) argued that organisation of conversational closings would be different from the organisation of adjournments, as people who are engaged in sporadic spates of talk do not need to close segments with closing sections and terminal exchanges. However, no empirical evidence has been provided to demonstrate how these adjournments are done differently than closing segments in CST.

Turn-taking machinery and the organisational features of talk-in-interaction create certain problems for closing a conversation. In order to close a conversation, it is not sufficient for speakers to just stop talking as this will make any first prospective speaker be heard as ‘being silent’. Instead the speakers have to suspend the transition relevance place and arrive at a point during their conversation where ‘one speaker’s completion will not occasion another speaker’s talk, and that will not be heard as some speaker’s silence’. That is, closing a conversation requires the coordination of the suspension of the transition relevance of possible utterance completion (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973: 295).

In their analysis of how closings are achieved in phone calls, Schegloff and Sacks (1973) reveal that adjacency pair formats are employed in closing sequences which they refer to as ‘terminal exchanges’. They propose that by using an adjacency pair format, the first speaker can propose a first part of a terminal exchange which can then be appreciated and agreed by the second speaker in the second-pair part of a terminal exchange. By revealing an agreement to the first-pair part of a terminal exchange, the second-pair part can lift the transition relevance after its occurrence.

For a terminal exchange to achieve a closing, however, it should be placed following a properly initiated closing section: ‘utterances of the form “well, O.K.” etc. operate as possible pre-closings when placed at the analysable (once again, to participants) end of topic’ (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973: 305). To signal the end of a topic, speakers can (1) use the pre-closings collaboratively, or (2) they can offer a proverbial formulation of conventional wisdom.

When a possible pre-closing is offered by one of the speakers, it does not always necessitate the closing to take place, as after a possible pre-closing, such as well, OKAY, a new topic might be introduced by one of the speakers. It is only when none of the participants in a conversation initiate a new topic after a possible pre-closing that the possible pre-closing can actually initiate a closing section.

The following example demonstrates a case where a possible pre-closing succeeds in initiating a closing section. In this example, the end of the topic is signalled by the use of a proverbial formulation in line 2. The next speaker agrees this formulation in the next turn, which signals the end of the topic. The speakers then initiate a closing section collaboratively and close the conversation with a terminal exchange in lines 5 and 6:

Example 1 (from Schegloff and Sacks, 1973: 307)

1 Dorrinne: Uh-you know, it’s just like bringin

the- blood up.

2 Theresa: Yeah well, THINGS UH ALWAYS WORK OUT

FOR THE//BEST

3 Dorrinne: Oh certainly. Alright// Tess.

4 Theresa: Uh-huh,

5 Dorrinne: G’bye.

6 Theresa: Goodnight

Conversational closings have been given consideration since the very early studies of Schegloff and Sacks (1973). Markman (2009) examined closings in chat-based virtual meetings. More recent studies have also examined the embodied production of closings. Broth and Mondada (2013) investigated how walking away can be employed as a resource to signal closings. Laurier (2008) has analysed how people can signal closings with their body movements at a cafe. Button (1990) provided a more detailed analysis of how closing sections unfold in talk-in-interaction. Liddicoat (2007) also investigated the closing sections in talk-in-interaction.

Research on adjournments, however, has remained scarce. When engaged in another activity, in this case TV watching, how participants manage getting out of the framework for talk-in-interaction to orient to something else has been under-investigated.

Data set and method

This study adopts a conversation analytic approach to investigate talk-in-interaction among TV viewers. The data for this study consists of 12 hours of video recordings of women watching a reality TV show in Turkey. There are 15 participants in total, the ages of whom range between 18 and 65. In each recording, there are at least three women watching the show together. To understand the research context fully, it is important to provide an overview of the TV show that the participants are watching. For this study, the participants are recorded while they are watching screen marriage shows that have become very popular in Turkey since the beginning of the 2000s. The main stated objective of marriage shows is to help people find a marriage partner. Unlike the dating shows, such as Blind Date, Dinner Date or Take Me Out, in the marriage shows in Turkey thousands of weddings have already resulted from people meeting on the shows.

The transcriptions in this study involve three lines: the first line in bold presents the original Turkish data that the transcript is based on; the second line is a word-by-word gloss, which provides word-by-word translations as well as grammatical information in some cases; the third line provides an idiomatic translation (in italics) that aims to translate the overall meaning of the original sentence into English as closely as possible.

Transcripts also include numbers which indicate the connection with the figures. Representation of multimodal aspects of data, such as body posture, gaze and gesture, in transcription has been a great challenge for conversation analysts. The first question to be addressed in the representation of multimodal data is what to include in the transcripts, and the second one is how to represent multimodality in the transcripts. In this study, static images of video data have been included in transcripts to represent the exact sequences when there is a change in participants’ body posture, gaze orientation or gestures. As these multimodal aspects of data have been found to be highly relevant to overall organisation of turns at talk, static images of all changes in participants’ body posture, gaze orientation and gesture have been included in transcripts. To overcome the difficulties of representing multimodal aspects of data in relation to sequential unfolding of spoken data, sequencing of static images has been used which is ‘useful in capturing the unfolding of several nonverbal movements and/or positions’ (Jenks, 2011: 86).

Analysis

An initial analysis of the general organisational features of talk during TV watching revealed that one of the main interactional features salient to CSIT in audience interaction is adjournments. This phenomenon will be investigated in the following excerpts by focusing on how adjournments are projected in talk during TV watching. After making a collection of adjournments in the corpus, some patterns have been identified based on the types of sequences prior to adjournments. The types of sequences include (1) an adjacency pair or (2) an extended sequence. How adjournments are projected in adjacency pairs and extended sequences will be investigated consecutively:

The first pattern is the simplest configuration, in which an adjacency pair is followed by an adjournment. The speakers establish alignment and display intersubjectivity in an adjacency pair without projecting further talk. The speakers manage this by (1) lack of mutual gaze and (2) minimal responses. As no further talk is projected, an adjournment is projected and silent TV watching becomes the next relevant action for the participants.

In the second pattern, an adjournment is initiated following extended sequences. During the extended sequences, participants might be primarily orienting towards (1) the TV set or (2) towards each other. In the latter case, happenings on the TV show close the topic and initiate an adjournment (see ‘When the participants are orienting towards each other’, later). In the first case, however, as the primary engagement is with the TV show, a sequence is initiated, as seen in the first pattern above, and extended sequences might include (1) response pursuit and (2) clarification requests (see ‘While orienting towards the TV set’). In such cases, an adjournment is initiated when the intersubjectivity and alignment are achieved. This is usually performed through (1) minimal responses, (2) gaze and body orientation towards the TV set and (3) concluding remarks/proverbial expressions.

Adjournments following an adjacency pair

The first type of adjournment which occurs systematically in the corpus is when an adjournment is broken by an adjacency pair and resumed following the second-pair part of the adjacency pair. In such cases, the adjacency pair mostly follows the pattern assessment–minimal agreement–adjournment.

The following excerpt takes place while a participant is being invited to the show to meet a new candidate who wants to marry her. While the participant is walking towards the stage, audiences in the show also appear on the screen:

Excerpt 1

Figure 1

1 (6.2)

2 S: burda oturanla: >gelenleden< guzel ha[::

here sit+they: >come+they< beautiful oh[::

‘ the ones in the audience are more beautiful than the participants ’

3 Z: [°he::°

‘ye::ah’

4 (7.4)

This excerpt starts with an adjournment in the first line while the participants are orienting towards the TV (Figure 1, Excerpt 1). In line 2 S offers an assessment of the appearance of the audiences in the show, suggesting that ‘the ones in the audience are more beautiful than the participants’. While offering the assessment, S keeps orienting towards the TV without any gaze shift towards the other participants, and also she does not select a next speaker. She offers her assessment as an ‘undirected aside’ which is produced in a lower voice without selecting the next speaker during TV watching (Ergül, 2014). This assessment is responded to by Z in line 3 with a minimal agreement. The minimal agreement is delivered in a lower voice and in overlap with the assessment. The response in line 3 does not project further talk, and it is followed by an adjournment (line 4).

The following excerpt occurs while the presenters of the show and the audiences are singing a song during the opening of the show:

Excerpt 2

1 (15.0)

2 S: seda sayan gibi olmus bu::

Seda Sayan like happen thi::s

‘this (the presenter) looks like Seda Sayan’

3 (1.0)

4 A: ²°hmmm:°³

‘hmmm:’

5 (15.3)

After watching opening of the show for 15.0 seconds, S makes a comment about the female presenter of the show in line 2: ‘Seda Sayan gibi olmus bu::’. Seda Sayan is a famous female singer and talk show presenter in Turkey, and in line 2, S suggests that she looks like Seda Sayan. While producing her assessment, S does not select a next speaker, nor does she shift her gaze and body orientation. In the following 1.0-second pause, the viewers keep watching the show while the female presenter can still be seen on the screen. In line 4, A responds to S’s assessment with a minimal agreement which is hardly hearable. A shifts her gaze very quickly towards S at the beginning of her turn (Figure 2, Excerpt 2), and she orients back towards the TV at the completion of the turn (Figure 3, Excerpt 2). The viewers then keep watching TV in silence for another 15.3 seconds until a new participant appears on the show. In this excerpt, there is a very quick shift in gaze orientation of one of the participants, and this gaze is not reciprocated by other participants.

This pattern is found very frequently in the corpus. While all participants are orienting towards the TV, an adjournment is broken by one of the participants. It has been found that in such cases, the first speaker might offer an assessment/noticing related to an assessable in the TV show. Such assessments present an offer to talk; however, when mutual gaze is not established, what happens usually in a second assessment is provided in the form of a minimal agreement ‘hee, evet or a nod’, usually in a lower voice. When the second speaker responds with a minimal agreement, in a lower voice and without the establishment of mutual gaze among the participants, this is treated as projection/announcement of another adjournment.

Extended sequences

The second pattern found in initiating adjournments is following the extended sequences. In extended sequences, the first pattern to be investigated is when participants are orienting towards each other while talking. In such cases, talking is the primary engagement of the participants, and watching television is secondary. However, happenings on the show are still relevant for the participants, and if new information or a new participant becomes available on the TV screen, ongoing talk among the participants might be suspended. Excerpt 3 will demonstrate an example of such cases when participants are orienting towards each other while talking and talk are adjourned by the happenings in the show. The second pattern is when the participants are mainly orienting towards the TV set. These sequences include (1) response seeking and (2) clarification requests. Excerpts 4–7 will demonstrate how different extended sequences while the participants are orienting towards the TV set are adjourned.

When the participants are orienting towards each other

Excerpt 3 starts while the viewers are all engaged in talk about a participant who A has seen on the show before (Figure 1, Excerpt 3). A has been telling S that this participant on the show has been married a few times before that and now she is single with no money and living in a hostel:

Excerpt 3

1 Z: e hic bi adamdan↓

e none of the guys

2 bisey [dusmemis ↑↓ mi buna:?

something taken QM to this?

‘so has this ((she)) not taken anything from any of the guys?’

3 A: [e onu diyorum yani hic bisey dusmedi mi bi maas

e this saying I mean nothing left QM a salary

4 dusmedi mi↓ bi ev² dusmedi mi↓

left—>not QM a house left—>not

‘yeah this is what I mean. Has she not been left a pension↓. Has she not been left a house↓ (0.5) Look!

this one is really nice, this one’.

5 (0.5)

6 ³aha su⁴ cok hos su

ahh that very nice that

7 (8.7)

In lines 1–2, Z is asking whether this woman inherited anything from any of her previous four husbands. In lines 3–4, A is telling that this is what she wonders and continues her turn asking a rhetorical question ‘Has she not been left a pension↓. Has she not been left a house↓’. At the end of her turn in line 4, A shifts her gaze towards the TV (Figure 2, Excerpt 3).

Upon seeing a participant on the screen, A starts her turn in line 6 by pointing to the TV with a slight head movement and at the same time Z shifts her gaze towards the TV (Figure 3, Excerpt 3). Right after A starts her turn with ‘aha’, which is used to direct attention and point to something, S shifts her gaze towards the TV too (Figure 4, Excerpt 3). When A is producing her assessment ‘look! this one is really nice, this one’ about the woman on the show, all three viewers are orienting towards the TV already (Figure 4, Excerpt 3). The change in gaze orientation of the viewers signals that the previous talk before the assessment has been closed or suspended and that they are all engaged in TV watching at that moment. The viewers treat A’s turn in line 6 as a projection of an adjournment during which they will be watching the new participant.

Excerpt 3 provides an example of an assessment which closes/suspends an ongoing topic and opens a trajectory for the initiation of a new topic by redirecting the viewers’ attention to the TV show. However, the viewers do not provide any second assessment (which would initiate a sequence relevant to what is being assessed), but instead they treat this as a projection of an adjournment by shifting their gaze orientation back towards the TV set and watch the TV show in silence.

While orienting towards the TV set

Response pursuit

Excerpt 4

1 ¹(10.0)

2 A: makine yüksek mühen[disi ]

mechanical advanced engi[neer]

‘ he is advanced mechanical engineer ’

3 C: [yedi ] dairesi

[seven] flats

4 varmış adamın

has the man

‘ he has seven flats ’

5 (0.2)

6 M: buna şimdi ne ta:lipler gelir

to this now what candidates come

‘there will be lots of candidates for him’

7 (0.5)

8 M: ²de↑mi ay↑şe

is↑n’t it (name)

‘don’t you think so ayşe’

9 A: ³((nod)) gaze shift first

10 ⁴(22.0) slight head movement

This excerpt demonstrates an episode of talk which takes place while a new participant is being introduced on the show. It has just been announced by presenters that the participant is a 53-year-old mechanical engineer, who has been married only once, has no children and owns seven flats. Following this information, the show’s theme music starts to play and the participant appears at the entrance and starts walking towards the stage.

In line 1, there is a 10.0-second lapse in talk. Following the silent TV watching, in line 2, A repeats the information about the participant which was just provided by the presenters: ‘he is advanced mechanical engineer’. In overlap with A’s turn, C also repeats another piece of information: ‘he has seven flats’. Following a 0.2-second pause, M proffers an assessment of the participant’s eligibility as a candidate marriage partner and suggests that ‘there will be lots of candidates for him’ (Line 6). This assessment does not receive any uptake from the other viewers in the following 0.5 seconds and M pursues a response by asking A ‘don’t you think so Ayşe’ (Line 8). While pursuing a response, M selects A as the next speaker by addressing her by name and shifting her gaze towards her (Figure 2, Excerpt 4). A responds to this question with a slight nod, indicating agreement, while her gaze is still orienting towards the TV (Figure 3, Excerpt 4). Following the nod in line 9, M also shifts her gaze and body orientation back towards the TV (Figure 4, Excerpt 4).

This excerpt demonstrates a common pattern found in the corpus. Although there is talk among the participants, their main orientation is towards the TV set. In this example, only the response pursuit in line 8 is delivered with a gaze shift. However, this gaze shift by M is not reciprocated by her addressee A. Instead, A provides a minimal agreement with a nod but keeps her gaze and body orientation towards the TV set. Following A’s agreement, M also shifts her orientation back towards the TV set, and no further talk is projected. Through minimal agreement and lack of mutual gaze, the viewers collaboratively project an adjournment.

The following excerpt is an extension of the previous example concerning the same TV show participant. While still watching the participant providing information about himself on the show, the viewers have been co-constructing an assessment sequence about his personality and his eligibility as a candidate husband. Prior to this excerpt, the viewers have jointly created a negative assessment about the participant as an eligible candidate husband:

Excerpt 5

1 ¹(5.0)

2 M: >bi sene evli kalmış elli yaşında< (.) ²bu bu

>one year married fifty year old< (.) this this

3 yaşına kadar başka hiç evlenmedi [mi hayatı ]=

to that age other no marriage+NEG [ QM life ]=

4 A: ³[ ya::ni ]

[ i me::an ]

‘Yeah’

5 M: =boyu:nca

during

‘He was only married for a year, he is fifty,

hasn’t he ever married again till that age’

6 (0.2)

7 M: de↓mi

is↓n’t it

‘Don’t you think?’

+TV

8 (1.3)

+ A—-TV

9 M: °bu adam (0.5) sağlam bi ayakkabı değil

This man (0.5) sturdy one shoe not

‘This man is not a reliable person’ ((idiom))

10 (5.0)

In the first line, the viewers are silently watching the TV show with their gaze and body orientation towards the TV (Figure 1, Excerpt 5). In line 2, M starts reporting what has been previously said on the show: ‘He was only married for a year, he is fifty.’ This information is available to the other viewers as they were both present while this information was given in the show. However, reporting what has been talked about in the show, similar to the descriptions, are prevalent ways of resuming talk. M continues her turn with a rhetorical question, ‘hasn’t he ever married again till that age’, which is accompanied by a shift of gaze towards A (Figure 2, Excerpt 5). It can be argued that the rhetorical question is offered as an assessment of the participant’s marriage history, suggesting that this is not what is expected from a 53-year-old man. In an overlap with M’s question, A shifts her gaze towards M (Figure 3, Excerpt 5) and responds to M’s question with ‘ya::ni’ which indicates an agreement. According to next-turn proof procedure, A’s agreement to M’s question demonstrates that A treats M’s previous turn not as a question which requires an answer, but rather as an assessment which is available to be agreed with.

Following M’s initial assessment, there is a 0.2-second pause (line 6), after which M uses a tag question ‘demi (isn’t it)?’. While asking this tag question, M shifts her gaze back towards the TV before completing her turn in line 6. M’s tag question projects a response by A to demonstrably establish an agreement and alignment. However, during the 1.3-second pause in line 8, no response is provided by A, and also at the beginning of this pause, A shifts her gaze back towards the TV.

In line 8, all three viewers are orienting towards the TV set, and in many cases this is treated as a projection of an adjournment. However, as can be seen in this example, when a mutual agreement is not demonstrably established, the participants might not treat this as an adjournment. In line 9, still orienting towards the TV, M makes another assessment about the participant’s personality and his eligibility as a husband ‘°bu adam (0.5) sağlam bi ayakkabı değil’, which is a commonly used figurative expression in Turkish which literally translates as ‘he is not a sturdy shoe’, meaning ‘This man is not a reliable person’. Previous research on the sequential positioning of the figurative expressions suggests that they occur mostly in topic transitions and act as a summary of the previous topic (Drew and Holt, 1988, 1995, 1998; Holt and Drew, 2005). In this excerpt, using a figurative expression M demonstrably establishes the agreement on the assessment, and only after that is achieved do all viewers treat it as an adjournment.

Clarification requests

In Excerpt 6, there is an episode of talk with an extended sequence. In this example, one of the participants makes a clarification request following an assessment:

Excerpt 6

1 (5.1) ((they are all watching TV))

2 A: su kadin cok hos

this woman very lovely

‘this woman is very lovely’

3 (0.8)

4 S: su kenardaki mi↑

that on this side QM↑

‘is it the one on that side’

5 (.)

6 A: tarih ogretmeni³ymis↓

history teacher

‘she is history teacher’

7 (0.6)

8 Z: 4guzel ((to TV))

‘beautiful’

9 (0.3)

10 A: cok °hos bi kadin°

very °lovely a woman°

‘a very lovely woman’

11 (5.7) ((they are watching TV))

After the women appear on the screen (Figure 5, Excerpt 6), A offers an assessment of one of the women on the screen in line 2, stating ‘su kadin cok hos (this woman is very lovely)’. A starts her turn with a demonstrative pronoun ‘su’, meaning ‘that’ in English, while pointing to the TV screen (Figure 1, Excerpt 6) to indicate which woman she is assessing. After a 0.8-second pause, S asks a clarification question, also pointing to the TV screen (Figure 3, Excerpt 6), ‘su kenardaki mi’, asking whether it is the one on the side that she is pointing to. In line 6, A provides more information about the woman she is assessing and shifts her gaze towards S (Figure 2, Excerpt 6) very briefly. At the end of her turn, A shifts her gaze back towards the TV. Following a 0.6-second pause, S produces a second assessment ‘guzel (beautiful)’ while all the participants orient towards the TV (Figure 4, Excerpt 6). Z’s absence of gestures and way of producing the second assessment do not match A’s animated, enthusiastic production with the use of an intensifier; thus, it can be seen as a downgraded second assessment. A demonstrably orients to Z’s second assessment as a downgrade, by repeating the second assessment ‘hos (lovely)’, with the intensifier ‘cok (very)’.

In this excerpt, the first assessment in line 2 is not immediately responded to by a second assessment, but instead followed by a clarification question–answer. It is only following this question–answer sequence that Z offers a downgraded second assessment in line 8. A, in line 10, reasserts her initial assessment. This is in fitting with Pomerantz’s (1984) argument that speakers often reassert an assessment more strongly when their first assessment is responded to by a downgrade. It is important to note that all participants are orienting towards the TV following the clarification request in line 7; however, they still do not treat this as an adjournment, as Z provides a second assessment in line 10, while orienting towards the TV, which is responded to by A with an upgraded assessment. It is only after A reasserts her first assessment with an upgrade that the participants treat it as a projection of an adjournment. This demonstrates that, as in Excerpt 5, although participants disengage from each other in terms of body and gaze orientation, they might not treat it as an adjournment until an alignment is established. In Excerpt 7, the alignment is established through repetition of an initial assessment following a downgraded assessment:

Excerpt 7

1 ¹(21.8)

2 Z: ²sanki daha yasli gibi

as if more old like

3 gosteriyo biliyon mu

seems+3^rdPS know+you QM

‘You know what she seems older’

4 (0.3)

5 A: otuz ikiden [°demi° ((to Z))

+ Z

thiry-two+than [°isn’t it°

‘You mean more than thirty two, don’t you?’

6 Z: [otuz iki ya- yasindayin diyo ama↑

[thirty two ye-years old say+she but↑

+ A

+A—TV

7 [daha buyuk gozteriyo sanki

+TV

[more old seem+she as if

‘ she says she is thirty-two but she looks as if she is older than that’.

8 A: [hm:: daha buyuk gibi °evet°

9 (9.3)

The viewers’ gaze and body orientation is mainly towards the TV during the silent TV watching in line 1 (Figure 1, Excerpt 7). Along with the TV watching, the viewers also drink tea and S eats sunflower seeds. Their gaze shifts between the tea glasses and the TV screen; however, they do not gaze towards each other at all during this time.

Following this, in line 2, talk is resumed by offering an assessment. Figure 2 (Excerpt 7) demonstrates the shift of gaze in line 2 as soon as Z starts her utterance. Shifting her gaze towards A, Z proffers the assessment ‘you know what she seems older (than what she actually said)’, which ceases the silent TV watching and initiates a new sequence of talk about whether the participant looks 32 years old or older.

The assessment in line 2 is based on the difference between the participant’s actual age and how old she looks. The information about the participant’s age was provided on the show a few minutes before this excerpt started, and the viewers have all been watching the figure of the participant on the screen before the assessment is produced. That is, it is not the information that has just became available which is being assessed. Instead, information which has been available to all of the viewers for a while is oriented to through an assessment. The not-newness of what is being assessed is reflected in the use of ‘biliyon mu (you know what)’ by Z while the assessment is constructed. Following a 0.3-second pause, A says ‘You mean more than thirty two, don’t you?’ which requires a clarification about whether they share the same knowledge regarding the participant’s age. At the end of her turn, A shifts her gaze to Z while asking the tag question ‘demi’, at which point A and Z establish mutual gaze. While answering A’s question, Z also re-constructs her initial assessment in line 2 which was not responded to by A yet: ‘she says she is thirty-two but she looks as if she is older than that’. Soon after Z starts her turn in line 6, A shifts her gaze back towards the TV while Z keeps her gaze and body orientation towards A until the end of her turn. In line 8, all participants are orienting towards the TV when A offers an agreement to Z’s initial assessment: ‘hmm, yeah she looks as if she is older, yes’. While offering her agreement, A also ends her turn with ‘evet (yes)’, which demonstrably establishes the agreement and alignment. As in the previous example, orienting towards the TV itself does not project an immediate initiation of an adjournment as participants prefer to do more interactional work to establish alignment even after they disengage from their orientation towards each other.

Discussion and conclusion

In the corpus, it has been found that during TV watching, talk is not continuously sustained, as assumed by Schegloff and Sacks (1973), but instead there are adjournments to the talk, which are varied in terms of their length. Similar to the closing segments of CST, projecting an adjournment creates some problems with regard to the turn-taking machinery and the organisational features of talk-in-interaction as the speakers have to suspend the transition relevance. That is, to initiate an adjournment, the speakers have to coordinate the suspension of the transition relevance of possible utterance completion successfully, which is similar to what is required for closing segments in CST.

Like closing sections of CSTs, adjournments also have their own systematicity. The analyses demonstrate that pre-closings and terminal exchanges do not occur in CSIT in the same way as they are employed in CST. While examining projection of adjournments in TV audience interaction, initially two types of episodes of talk have been identified: (1) adjacency pairs and (2) extended sequences. While the primary engagement of the viewers is watching the TV show, an episode of talk might be constructed in the form of a single adjacency pair. In such cases, an adjacency pair mostly consists of an assessment followed by a minimal agreement. Excerpts 1 and 2 demonstrate that eventhough there might be a one-party gaze shift, in episodes of talk consisting of an adjacency pair the gaze is not reciprocated. That is, the viewers collaboratively demonstrate that there is no further talk relevant, and project an adjournment by not establishing a mutual gaze and providing answers as minimal agreements.

When an episode of talk consists of an extended sequence, the viewers might be primarily orienting towards each other or towards the TV set. In the first case, as seen in Excerpt 3, there is an ongoing talk among the viewers, and the happenings on the show might take precedence over the ongoing talk. By shifting their gaze and body orientation back towards the TV, the viewers demonstrate the suspension of the ongoing talk, and an adjournment is projected.

When the viewers are already orienting towards the TV set, on the other hand, the two most common actions performed by the viewers after resumption of talk are (1) response pursuit (Excerpts 4 and 5) and (2) clarification requests (Excerpts 6 and 7). In the corpus, when one of the viewers offers an assessment the next relevant action is for another viewer to make a second assessment. When there is no second assessment provided, the first speaker might pursue a response. Two patterns are found in projecting an adjournment when following a response pursuit. In the first pattern, the sequence goes on until a second assessment, which displays agreement by the recipient, is provided. When the agreement is reached demonstrably, gaze shift occurs and an adjournment is initiated. In the second pattern, however, gaze shift back towards the TV set might not be treated as projection of an adjournment by all participants. Instead, while orienting towards the TV set, one of the participants might offer a proverbial expression or repeat the first assessment to emphasize/demonstrate the mutual alignment. It is only after this turn that all participants treat it as a projection of an adjournment.

In clarification requests, an agreement is pursued after the clarification has been made. In such sequences it can be seen that gaze plays a crucial role indicating suspension of talk; however, it is only after an alignment is established that all participants treat it as projection of adjournments.

The analysis has shown that adjournments might occur following an assessment – agreement pair – or after an assessment which is delivered as a proverbial expression displaying an established agreement. However, a close analysis of the exact moment when the speakers orient to an adjournment is usually initiated through a shift in gaze and/or body orientation. It has been found that there is a systematicity in gaze and/or body shift which signals adjournments which are similar to the way talk is resumed in CSIT. That is, the speaker who offers the agreement or offers an assessment in the form of a proverbial expression shifts her gaze back towards the TV before completing her turn, as do the other members of the participation framework at that moment. In some cases, however, the second speaker shifts her gaze back to the TV before the first speaker completes her turn. In such cases, the first speaker shifts her gaze back to the TV before/when she completes her turn. When all of the viewers are orienting towards the TV through their gaze and body, and an alignment is established, an adjournment is demonstrably initiated.

Schegloff and Sacks (1973) identified pre-closing sequences and terminal exchanges in closing segments of talk when talk is continuously sustained. They also claimed that organisation of adjournments would be different from closing segments in CST. I argue that similar to the pre-closings and terminal exchanges in CST, gaze aversion and establishment of alignment form an adjournment segment which enables the participants to hold the transition relevance place and project an adjournment without being accountable.

This is a small study in a very specific context, but it provides us with crucial insights into understanding the organisation of ordinary talk. More research is needed in interactional contexts where talk is not continuously sustained but is (occasionally) coinciding with other social activities. Such interactional contexts, in fact, make up a large part of our social world and yet remain, to some extent, under-researched.

Footnotes

Appendix

Adapted from Hutchby and Wooffitt (2008)

(1.7) Numbers enclosed in parentheses indicate a pause. The number represents the number of seconds of duration of the pause, to one decimal place. A pause of less than 0.2 seconds is marked by (.)

[ ] Brackets around portions of utterances show that those portions overlap with a portion of another speaker’s utterance.

= An equal sign is used to show that there is no time lapse between the portions connected by the equal signs. This is used where a second speaker begins their utterance just at the moment when the first speaker finishes.

:: A colon after a vowel or a word is used to show that the sound is extended. The number of colons shows the length of the extension.

(hm, hh) These are onomatopoetic representations of the audible exhalation of air)

hh This indicates an audible inhalation of air, for example, as a gasp. The more h’s, the longer the in-breath.

? A question mark indicates that there is slightly rising intonation.

. A period indicates that there is slightly falling intonation.

, A comma indicates a continuation of tone.

- A dash indicates an abrupt cut off, where the speaker stopped speaking suddenly.

↑↓ Up or down arrows are used to indicate that there is sharply rising or falling intonation. The arrow is placed just before the syllable in which the change in intonation occurs.

Under Underlines indicate speaker emphasis on the underlined portion of the word.

CAPS Capital letters indicate that the speaker spoke the capitalized portion of the utterance at a higher volume than the speaker’s normal volume.

° This indicates an utterance that is much softer than the normal speech of the speaker. This symbol will appear at the beginning and at the end of the utterance in question.

> <, < > ‘Greater than’ and ‘less than’ signs indicate that the talk they surround was noticeably faster, or slower than the surrounding talk.

(would) When a word appears in parentheses, it indicates that the transcriber has guessed as to what was said, because it was indecipherable on the tape. If the transcriber was unable to guess what was said, nothing appears within the parentheses.

italics English translation

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge Adam Brandt’s in-depth comments which have led to major changes in the structure and content of this article. I would also like to thank my PhD supervisors Alan Firth and Steve Walsh for their support throughout my PhD studies.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research, based on my PhD thesis, was supported by a PhD scholarship granted from the Ministry of Education, Turkey.

Notes

Author biography

Hatice Ergül is an academic and researcher at the Department of Foreign Languages Education, Hacettepe University, Turkey. She has worked as a language tutor at the University of Sunderland and as a teaching assistant at Newcastle University. Her main research interests include media audience interaction and interaction in young learners’ classrooms from a conversation analytic perspective.

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