Dialogue in and between Different Cultures - International ...

6 Jagdish Kaur
In this extract, both participants produce a repeat of their prior turns after an
instance of overlapped talk. In line 4, V begins a new turn with the obvious
intention of summing up the discussion thus far and possibly moving on to
another topic as indicated by the turn initial ‘so’ which, according to Schiffrin,
acts as “a marker of potential transition” (1987:227). However before V is able to
complete his utterance, L begins his turn in line 5, resulting in a slight overlap.
L’s move to repeat his utterance in its entirety is very likely prompted by the
overlap. V who similarly appears to be orientating to the potential problem in
hearing or understanding that the overlap could engender repeats his stillincomplete
turn as well (line 6). He however pushes the start of his turn a little too
far up as a result of having already projected the end of L’s repeat, resulting thus
in a slight overlap.
Example (4) below illustrates yet another instance of repeat after overlap:
(4) [T5/SA/C3-S(KOR):D(IND):T(THA)/93-101]
01 S: yeah yeah yeah I’m going to talk about [that so huhhuhhuh er er so
02 I-I-I found that people like to copy
03 D: [huh
04 uhhuh
05 S: and copying is taken that it’s not a bad sin.
06 D: uhhuh [uhhuh
07 S: [I find as well they like [to copy
08 D: [uhhuh uhhuh
09 S: and I saw that this might [be the same thing for students
10 D: [like er photostating
11 and then also we have to focus to the student
12 S: → so yeah this might be the same thing for the students
13 D: a:::::h
In the extract above, S (Korean) and D (Indonesian) are discussing the issue of
plagiarism for a paper they have to jointly write. While S has been talking about
plagiarism as committed by people in general, D has been trying to get him to
confine the discussion to plagiarism in the academic context. It appears that S is
in fact trying to draw similarities between the two as his segment of talk in line 9
suggests. This segment of S’s turn however partially overlaps with D’s example
of an act of plagiarism (as he sees it), i.e. ‘photostating’ (line 10). D’s utterance in
line 11, which reiterates an earlier call to focus on the academic context, clearly
indicates that S’s attempt to link plagiarism as committed by people generally to
that committed by students (line 9) has been lost in the overlap. S addresses D’s
display of non-hearing and/or non-understanding of his prior turn by producing a
slightly modified repetition of it in line 12. This provides D with a second hearing
of that turn which appears to have the desired effect as reflected by his response
in line 13. This example evidences the very real threat that overlap poses on the
recipient’s hearing and understanding of talk that is produced in overlap.