Language in Action: Psychological Models of Conversation (International Series in Social Psychology)

249 Pages·2003·0.62 MB·English

by  W. Turnbull

Language in Action
‘The organization is excellent and I very much liked the insistent use of real talk,
collected and properly transcribed by the author. This gives the book not only a
cohesion and immediacy, but also applies the strong (and, to my mind) entirely
appropriate test of real-world exchanges to approaches which sometimes slip
by on armchair examples. A real plus.’ Charles Antaki, Department of Social
Sciences, Loughborough University
Face-to-face conversation between two or more people is a universal form, and
perhaps the basic form, of social interaction. It is the primary site of social
interaction in all cultures and the place where social and cultural meaning takes
shape. Face-to-face conversation between children and parents can also be an
important context for social and cognitive development. Given the universality,
frequency and importance of conversation in social life, a psychological model of
conversation is required for an understanding of central issues in social and
developmental psychology. This book provides such a model.
Language in Actionpresents a critical examination of four models of conversation:
the Code model based on Chomsky’s linguistic views; the Speech Act model of
Austin and Searle; the Inferential model of Grice and the Conversation Analytic
model of Sacks and Schegloff. It also considers the Brown and Levinson model of
politeness in conversation. Using many examples from natural talk and drawing
on the positive aspects of the reviewed models, Turnbull proposes a new Social
Pragmatic model of conversation as social interaction. He also describes the research
paradigm of Social Pragmatics that experimental psychologists can use to study
conversation. This book will be invaluable for advanced students in psychology,
sociology, language and linguistics and communication. It will also make fasci-
nating and lively reading for anyone wanting a greater understanding of this
fundamental form of social interaction.
William Turnbull is Professor of Psychology at Simon Fraser University in
Canada. He is an expert in the field of social interaction and conversation.
International Series in Social Psychology
Edited by W. Peter Robinson
University of Bristol, UK
This series provides a showcase of original contributions of the highest quality, as
well as thorough reviews of existing theories suitable for advanced students and
researchers. Many will be useful as course texts for higher level study; applied
topics are well represented and social psychology is defined broadly to include other
psychological areas like social development, or the social psychology of abnormal
behaviour. A reflection of contemporary social psychology, the series is a rich
source of information for dissertations, new research projects and seminars.
Recent books in the series:
Adjustment of Adolescents
Cross-cultural similarities and differences
Ruth Scott and W. A. Scott
Adolescence: From Crisis to Coping
A thirteen nation study
Janice Gibson-Cline
Personal Relationships across the Lifespan
Patricia Noller, Judith A. Feeney and Candida Peterson
Children as Consumers
A psychological analysis of the young people’s market
Barrie Gunter and Adrian Furnham
Understanding the Older Consumer
The grey market
Barrie Gunter
The Economic Psychology of Everyday Life
Paul Webley, Carole B. Burgoyne, Stephen E. G. Lea and Brian M. Young
Changing European Identities
Social psychological analyses of social change
Glynis M. Breakwell and Evanthia Lyons
Making Sense of Television
The psychology of audience interpretation (2nd edition)
Sonia Livingstone
Social Groups and Identities
Exploring the legacy of Henri Tajfel
Edited by W. Peter Robinson
Stereotypes During the Decline and Fall of Communism
György Hunyady
Language in Action
Psychological Models of Conversation
William Turnbull
First published 2003
by Psychology Press
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Psychology Press
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Psychology Press is part of the Taylor & Francis Group
©2003 William Turnbull
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Turnbull, William, 1946–
Language in action: psychological models of conversation /
William Turnbull.
p. cm.—(International series in social psychology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–415–19867–4 (alk. paper—ISBN 0–415–19868–2
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Conversation—Psychological aspects. I. Title. II. Series.
BF637.C45 T86 2003
153.6—dc21
2002012280
ISBN 0-203-36085-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-37341-3 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–19867–4 (hbk)
ISBN 0–415–19868–2 (pbk)
Contents
Preface vii
1 Introduction: The Conversing Organism 1
2 The Code Model 20
3 The Speech Act Model 44
4 The Inferential Model 75
5 The Interpersonal Dimension 105
6 Conversation Analysis 140
7 Social Pragmatics 177
8 Summary and Conclusions 211
References 218
Name index 229
Subject index 233

Preface
People spend a lot of their time talking: they chat, joke with one another, exchange
recipes, ask for and receive directions and advice, discuss politics, negotiate the
terms of a mortgage, and praise their friends, spouses and children, just to name a
few of the activities that take place in talk. Talking is also the main way in which
people get to know one another, become more or less intimate with one another,
attain domination over others or become submissive with others, and enter into
and out of long- and short-term relationships, just to name some of the many
interpersonal activities that take place in talk. Indeed, if an extra-terrestrial
anthropologist were to visit Earth, talking would certainly stand out as a frequent
and universal activity of human kind.
The present book is about talk. For many years, in attempting to understand the
nature and role of talk in human life, I equated talk with spoken language. Talk
(conversation), then, seemed to be centrally a linguistic or psycholinguistic phenom-
enon. This turned out to be a serious mistake for reasons that I discuss in this book.
Eventually, I came to the conclusion that talk is best understood as social interaction.
From this perspective, talk is very much a psychological and sociological
phenomenon. Once talk is recognized to be a form of social interaction, it is possible
to construct a psychological model of talk that fits the data of everyday talk or
conversation. Further, since the major way people interact is by talking, a model
of talk can be used to study social interaction in, for example, personal relationships,
psychological therapy, education, or child development. The book presents an
argument for viewing talk as social interaction. I also explore how the model of
talk developed in the book can be used to study issues in social interaction that
interest psychologists.
The book is based on over fifteen years of teaching a psychology course on
conversation. From the many hundreds of students I taught, I received lots of
feedback. Often, the feedback showed me that I had not been clear about the points
I was trying to make. At other times the feedback showed me that there is an
ingrained way of thinking about conversation – it is nothing more than spoken
language – that is very difficult to dislodge. Both types of feedback forced me
to be clearer about the argument, to relate it to the taken-for-granted view, and to
back up the argument at every point with examples from natural conversation. I
viii Preface
owe a great deal to student feedback. I also thank those who allowed me to use
their tape-recordings of natural conversation.
My research and the book have been supported with funding from Simon Fraser
University and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada. I thank them. Over the years I have been most fortunate to have supervised
some superb students. They have taught me a great deal and they deserve credit
for many of the merits of this book. In particular, I thank Sherrie Atwood, Shannon
Gifford, John Kerkhoven, Peter Muntigl and Karen Saxton. Special thanks go to
my colleague Jeremy Carpendale who has been supportive of the ideas presented
here.
W. Turnbull
Vancouver, BC
August 2001
1
Introduction
The Conversing Organism
Who Is the Audience for This Book?
When preparing to write anything, it is important to know who is the intended
audience. The title of this book may lead readers to assume the book is about
language. Perhaps, then, the intended audience consists of psycholinguists and
perhaps also linguists and sociolinguists. It may come as a surprise to learn, then,
that in an important sense the book is not about language as one normally thinks
of that term. In the course of the book the argument is made that conversation is
social interaction. Thus, the book focuses on social interaction, not language.
To see how conversation could be considered social interaction, consider an
example of a conversation in which the wife of a colleague asked him how he
liked her new reading glasses. My colleague reported, and this was the point of
him telling me the story, that he had paused too long before answering. What he
meant by this is that his wife had taken his silence as indicating that he did not like
her new glasses, an interpretation that was confirmed when his wife next expressed
displeasure over her husband’s negative evaluation of her glasses. In this situation,
silence or failing to speak was a crucial part of the conversation: the husband used
it to carry out a particular action, and the action was recognized as such by his
wife. Silence is not part of the structure of English, nor of any natural language,
but silence is relevant to an understanding of this conversation. Further, it was in
and through conversation that the husband and wife carried out an episode of social
interaction; and it was in and through conversation that interpersonal effects were
produced. In other words, their conversation constituted a form of social interaction.
In this book, through the careful consideration of the positive and negative
attributes of various models of talk, a model of talk-as-social-interaction is devel-
oped. In addition, a methodology for analysing talk-as-social-interaction, including
a set of analytic categories, is also presented. The usefulness for psychological
research of the model of talk-as-social-interaction is illustrated through research
on important psychological phenomena, including mother–child interaction and
couples counselling. Finally because conversation is centrally about meaning-
making, implications of a model of talk-as-social-interaction for theories of action,
meaning and representation are briefly discussed.