Unfinished Turns in French Conversation: How Context Matters

The facework of unfinished turns in French conversation

“…Here, I only sketch out the key features of unfinished turns (see Chevalier, 2008, for their sequential environment of occurrence). Unfinished turns tend to occur in the environment of talk that can be characterized as delicate or problematic.…”

“…Unfinished turns refer to the fact that, on occasions, speakers do not complete their utterances in interaction, as in excerpt [1] at line 30. Despite their syntactic incompleteness, they are treated as having accomplished particular actions and are responded to accordingly (lines 31-2) (Chevalier, 2008). They will be described further later.…”

Linking Clauses and Actions in Social Interaction

“…the appropriate responses after unfinished turns in Chevalier 2008 andChevalier &Clift 2008). 17 The practice of completing a turn in a delayed fashion after an intervening response thus typically occurs in argumentative talk, even in disagreements.…”

“…The assertion here begins to summarize the point of the prior telling, and it ends with slight markers of hesitation (on hesitation and delayed completions, see Oloff 2014a; cf. also Chevalier 2008;Chevalier & Clift 2008). The intervening response comes right after the host and is not totally in alignment with the host, as it goes slightly beyond just-responding (cf.…”

Constructions inachevées et transfert du tour de parole

“…Ce sont Selting (1998b), Chevalier 2008ou Schmale (1995ou 2004, en prêtant une attention particulière à la prosodie, qui apportent la preuve que les « fragments d'UCTs » peuvent intervenir dans la construction du tour de parole sans que ce dernier ne soit traité par les interactants comme incomplet car « …the fact that it is not units or fragments as such that are signalled by participants suggests that it is not the units themselves that are relevant for participants, but the activities related to the construction and delimitation of units in turns and of making recognizable the state of their production process within turns, i.e. the practices of turn of beginning new units, of projecting or holding and continuing begun units (…), and of possibly ending units and yielding turns.…”