Solot Sirisai. A study on turn-taking and floor management in Thai TV talk . Doctoral Degree(Linguistics). Mahidol University. : Mahidol University, 2006.
A study on turn-taking and floor management in Thai TV talk
Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to explore the turn taking system with special
emphasis on three main issues: 1) the ‘Turn Constructional Units’ (TCU) and their
relationships to speaker change, 2) floor management from Thai TV mediators, and 3)
the interviewee’s response to the interviewer’s question.
The results of this study reveal that the size of TCU in Thai conversation is not
fixed. It can be a single word or multi-complex sentence in length. The single unit
type of TCU is identified in terms of Syntactic TCU and Pragmatic TCU. The
combined unit type of TCU is identified in terms of Syntactic-Pragmatic TCU,
Pragmatic-Prosodic TCU and the Complex TCU. The single unit types occur higher
than the combined unit types of TCU in the two data sets but the single unit type is not
a strong indicator of floor-taking speaker change. On contrary, the combined unit
types of TCU occur less than the single unit types of TCU in the two data sets but the
combined unit types of TCU, the Complex TCU in particular, is the strongest
indicator of speaker change in the two data sets. The evidences of non-floor taking
speaker change, for example, back channel, reactive token, occurring after the single
unit type of TCU and the syntactic TCU in particular, indicate the preference of Thai
conversational participants not to be interrupted, but to be attended and supported to
continue to speak until the completion of conversational action. In the aspect of turn
taking management, the Thai TV mediator actually does at least three things: 1)
allocating back channel support or a reactive token to signal the current speaker to
continue to speak, 2) using an intentionally pause to signal the turn, 3) allocating
immediate interruption at the ‘non-transitional relevant place’ to draw the current
speaker to the topic, and, dominating the current speaker by using question or
inference repair. In the aspect of the interviewee’s response, the interviewees employ
a number of strategies to respond to the mediators’ questions, for example,
constructing a direct answer with the explicit yes/no, using filled pause. Encountering
a face threatening question, the interviewees choose to respond by using a rhetorical
question to challenge the presupposition of the question, hedging and refusing to give
the answer.