Conversations are the ideal form of communication in some respects, since

they allow people with different views on a topic to learn from each other. A
speech, on the other hand, is an oral presentation by one person directed at a
group. For a successful conversation, the partners must achieve a workable
balance of contributions.
A successful conversation includes mutually interesting connections
between the speakers or things that the speakers know. For this to happen,
those engaging in conversation must find a topic on which they both can relate
to in some sense. Those engaging in conversation naturally tend to relate the
other speaker's statements to themselves. They may insert aspects of their lives
into their replies, to relate to the other person's opinions or points of
conversation.
Fairclough (2001:9) states “conversation is systematically structured, and
that there is evidence of the orientation of participants to these structures in the
way in which they design their own conversational turns and react to those of
others.” Conversation consists of two or more participants taking turns and
only one participants speaking at any time.
In most conversations, the responses are a spontaneous reaction to what
has previously been said.
Eggins and Slade (1997:19-20) classify conversation based on:
1. Pragmatic purpose: whether a conversation has a clear pragmatic or not.

2. Number of Interactants Involved: whether multilogue or dialogue.

3. Degree of Formality: whether a conversation employs colloquial expression
and humor or conducted in serious tone involving various expression of
politeness. The approach to the analysis of spoken interactions known as
Conversation Analysis (CA).

Conversation Analysis (CA)

Conversation analysis is a linguistic discipline that mainly handles
coherence and sequential organization in discourse. Paltridge (2000:83) says
ordinary conversation is the most basic form of talk and the main way in which
people come together, exchange information and maintain social relations.
Most of the time, conversation consists of two, or more participants taking
turns. A turn is seen as everything one speaker says before another speaker
begins to speak, and the term is called turn – taking, which is the basic form of
organization for conversation. Aspects of CA are: Adjacency pairs, topic
management, preference organization, and turn taking.

Adjacency pairs
Partridge (2000) says that: “Adjacency pairs are utterances produced by
two successive speakers in such a way that the second utterance is identified as
related to the first one as an expected follow up”.
 There are other kinds of adjacency pairs carried out by Paltridge:
1. Requesting - Agreement

Requesting is asking someone to do something which can be responded with acceptance or

refusal.
e.g.:
A: “Would you mind to close the door?”
B: “Of course.”

2. Assessment-agreement

Assessment can be formed into opinion seek or comment, which is asking another‟s
opinion or agreement. It is responded with agreement or called opinion provide.
e.g.:
A: “What do you think about that kitten?”
B: “So cute.”
3. Question-answer

Question can be formed into information seek, clarification seek, etc. It is about asking
something to someone. It is responded with information provide, clarification provide, etc.
e.g.:
A: “Where do you live?”
B: “I live in London.”
4. Compliment-acceptance

Compliment is the way of praising another person about something he or she has. It is
responded with acceptance.
e.g.:
A: “What a nice cloth?”
B: “Oh, thanks

5. Greeting-greeting
The way of saying hello and salutation

e.g.:
A: “Hi!‖
B: “Hello!‖
6. Leave taking adjacency pair
The utterances which is have purpose to end the conversation.

e.g.:
A: “See you.‖
B: “See you‖

7. Complaint-apology
Complaint is utterances which indicate feeling unsatisfied about something. However,
apology is the way to response the complaint, which expresses regretfulness.
e.g.:
A: “This food is too salty.‖
B: ―I‘m sorry, sir. I‘ll give you another one.‖

8. Warning-acknowledgement
Warning is utterances to warn someone about something. While acknowledgement is
statements which show that the warning is already acceptable.

e.g.:
A: “Beware of the hole in the street.‖
B: ―Okay. Thank you.‖

9. Blame-denial
Blame is utterances that express that someone is responsible about the mistake. Denial is
statement to say that something is not true.
e.g.:
A: ―You lose the key, don‘t you?‖
B: ―No. I don‘t.‖

10. Threat - counter-threat, etc

Threat is utterances that indicate the intension of harm. However, counter threat is
utterances that express the defeat of someone‟s threat.
e.g.:
A: ―You got to get out of here or I‘ll call the security.‖
B: ―No, I won‘t.‖
11. Offer-Acceptance
Offer is utterances which giving something to someone, it may be in the form of goods or
services. Acceptance is response indicates that the offer is accepted.
e.g.:
A: ―Here is your book.‖
B: ―Thanks a lot.‖

Topic Management
Topic management is one of the important aspects of conversation. In doing the
conversation, how the speaker maintain the topic is related to the social culture where the
speaker appears. There is an effort to maintain the topic so it won‟t change easily before
another speaker follows the previous topic. Different cultures talk about different things in
their everyday lives. Native speakers are very aware of what they should and should not
talk about with specific categories of people in their own language, but the rules may be
different in a foreign language.
According to the explanation above, it can be concluded that different countries
represent different cultures, also different styles of their speech. For example; if A country
talks with older people in their way and they take them for granted. Perhaps the case will
be different for the state B, if they use the language of country A to talk to older people, it
be very rude.
“Topic management also includes an awareness of how speakers deal with changes in
a topic, how they maintain a topic, and how they repair the interaction when a
misunderstanding occurs”.

Turn-Taking

In conversation, there is a situation when a speaker takes the chance to speak

that is turn. Turn-taking gives a chance for speakers to do conversation
smoothly, so there is no dominant speaker in the conversation. First speaker
utters something and is followed by another speaker. It may make a
simultaneous conversation.
This is not an empirical fact because there are obviously many instances of
short pauses and short overlaps.
If more than or less than one party is talking, it is „noticeable‟ and participants
set out to „remedy‟ the situation and return to a state of one and only one
speaker. If the problem is more than one speaker, one of the participants
usually yields the floor quickly,
Lori: But that wz-Then you wentuh Fre:ds
Ellen: We we left-we left-
Ben: No. That‘s the time we left Fre:ds

If the problem is silence, other speakers begin speaking, or indicate their

intention to speak by noises like „er‟ or „mm‟. In other words, turn to speak
typically occurs successively without overlaps or gaps between them.
Overlapping is dealt with by one speaker beginning his turn or simply
indicating that his turn has begun and incorporating the silence into it
(Levinson 1983: 299).

In conversations, there are norms for who talks, when, and for how long. The
basic rule in English is that one person speaks at a time, after which they may
nominate another speaker or another speaker may take up the turn without
being nominated.
There are a number of ways in which we can signal that we have come to the
end of a turn, such as
- the completion of a syntactic unit followed by a pause.
- use falling intonation.
- signals such as „mhm‟, „yeah‟, so‟, „or‟, „anyway‟.
- signal the end of a turn through eye contact, body position and
movement.
- pitch and loudness. For example low pitch may indicate we are willing to
give up our turn whereas maintained pith may indicate we wish to hold it.
Dalton and Seidlhofer in Paltridge (2000: 92)

Preference Organization

Another feature is the preference organization of second pair parts of adjacency

pairs. It is closely related to linguistic markedness. Dispreferred utterances are
structurally more complicated than unmarked or in adjacency pairs preferred
ones. For example:
An invitation may be followed by an acceptance (the preferred second pair
part) or a rejection (the dispreferred second pair part) Paltridge (2000: 90).
When this happens, the dispreferred second pair part is often preceded by a
delay, a preface, and/or an account, as is shown in this extract of conversation:
A: Would you like to come to the movies on Friday? Invitation
B: Uhhh… Delay
I don‟t know for sure. Preface
I think I might have something on that night. Account
Can we make it another time? Rejection
Levinson (1995) observes that dispreferred second parts are
distinguished by the following features:
1. Delays: the use of pauses & fillers.

2. Prefaces:
(i) the use of markers or announcers of dispreferred like Uh and Well;
(ii) the production of token agreements before disagreement: (iii) the
use of appreciations if relevant (for offers, invitations, suggestion,
advice);
(iv) the use of apologies if relevant (for request, invitations, etc);
(v) the use of qualifiers (e.g I don‟t know for sure, but …)

(vi) hesitation in various forms, including selfediting.

3. Accounts: carefully formulated explanations for why the

dispreferred act is being done.
Feedback
Feedback shows how the listener responds to what is talking about by the speaker. Feedback can be
done either verbally or non-verbally which is signaling response. Feedback also varies cross-culturally. For
example, a common feedback token in Japanese is „hi‟ which, taken literally, means „yes‟. However, in
Japanese interactions the use of this feedback token does not necessarily mean agreement as „yes‟ might in
English, but rather, simply, „I am listening to what you are saying‟, much as „uh huh‟ might in English

Repair
Repair is a correction of what has been said by the speaker about the previous statement they said during the
conversation. There are two types of repair, self repairs and other repairs (Paltridge 2000: 95). Self repairs are
repairs done by speaker about what has been said before. Nevertheless, other repairs are repairs done by
another speaker as interlocutor. For example, we might correct what we have said (self repair) as in:
A: I‟m going to the movies… I mean the opera.
Or the other person might repair what we have said (other repair):
A: I‟m going to that restaurant we went to last week. You know the Italian one Ratalui?
B: You mean Ratatui, don‟t you?
A: Yeah. That‟s right Ratatui.
Repair organization describes how parties in conversation deal with problems in speaking, hearing, or
understanding.