When Conversation Lapses: The Public Accountability of Silent Copresence

by Elliott M. Hoey

Overview

Silence takes on meaning based on the contexts of its occurrence. This is especially true in social interactions: consider the difference between silence after "lemme think," and silence after "will you marry me?"

This book examines a particular form of silence, the conversational lapse. These regularly appear in conversations when all interactants pass up the opportunity to speak, and are moments when talk seems to falter or give way to matters extraneous to the conversation. What are these silences for the participants who, by virtue of not speaking, allowed them to develop? Elliott M. Hoey here offers the first in-depth analysis of lapses in conversation. Using methods from Conversation Analysis, the author explores hundreds of lapses in naturally occurring social occasions with each chapter focusing on a different aspect of how participants produce and locate order in lapses. Particular emphasis is given to how lapses emerge, what people do during the silence, and how they restart conversation afterwards. This research uncovers participants' methods for organizing lapses in their everyday affairs such that those silences are rendered as understandable periods of non-talk. By articulating participants' understandings of when and where talk is relevant, necessary, or appropriate, the research brings into focus the borderlines between talk-in-interaction and other realms of social life. This book shows lapses to be a particular and fascinating kind of silence with unique relevancies for the social situations of which they are a part.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190947651
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/07/2020
Series:	Foundations of Human Interaction
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Elliott M. Hoey is a postdoctoral researcher in Department of Linguistics and Literature at the University of Basel.

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Preface

1. Silence and social interaction
2. Lapsing out of talk
3. Sequence recompletion: Deflecting speakership in a lapse
4. Drinking for speaking: Integrating bodily activity and talk
5. Lapse resolution: Ending a lapse and continuing with talk
6. Lapses as social objects

Editorial Reviews

"This is a long-awaited and much-needed study, one that provides a 'natural history' of lapses, those extended, often 'awkward' periods of silence in conversation when no one is talking although talk is expected. We are all familiar with lapses, but who would have thought they are so highly organized? Here we learn that they are not inadvertent but are instead achieved and that they serve a clear purpose in the overall structure of ordinary conversation. Hoey's approach, grounded in Conversation Analysis, is compelling in its observational richness. He has given us a book that is eminently readable and deserves a prominent place on the desk of all students of talk-in-interaction." — Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, University of Helsinki

"What happens when people don't talk? It might seem counterintuitive for linguists to think about how longer silences - lapses - arise in talk, what sort of shapes they can take, or how people start talking again after a period of not talking. By looking at the lifespan of lapses, Elliott Hoey's book insightfully shows that lapses are a joint accomplishment of the parties involved, and that they have very particular social functions in conversation. He shows how talk is entwined with other activities of human social life, like drinking or watching TV, or taking leave; and he argues that lapses have much to tell us about how larger courses of social action are organised. Linguists, interactionalists, and anyone who is interested in the study of language as an embodied and social phenomenon will learn much from this book about language, interaction and social life.-Richard Ogden, University of York" —

From the Publisher