Turn―taking System in Leaders’ Debate.docVIP

Turn―taking System in Leaders’ Debate 　　Introduction The study of turn-taking system is pioneered by Sacks，Schegloff Jefferson（1974） （1974）. They analyzed turn-taking system in informal conversation which lay foundation for a host of studies about turn-taking system in different institutional settings. Based on turn-taking system informal conversation， turn-taking system in news interview （Greatbatch， 1988）， classroom （Mchoul， 1978； Ingram Elliott， 2014）， chaired political meeting （LarrueTrognon， 1993）， workplace meeting （Ford， 2008）， court （Atkinson Drew， 1979）， counselling （Per?kyl?， 1995）， mediation （Garcia， 1991） and parliamentary debate （Shaw， 2000） have been studied. The main findings for these studies reveal that turn-taking system varies according to different institutional settings. A new form of televised political debate - leaders’ debate has become popular in the UK in recent years， and its turn-taking system has not been studied yet. This paper aims to fill the gap and investigates how turn-taking system works in leaders debate. Data The data for current study comes from five leaders’ debates， with main political party leaders debating about issues concerning the UK and running up for 2015 general election. They are： The ITV Leaders Debate， BBC Election Debate 2015， The Leaders Debate - Scotland （8 April）， The Leaders Debate - Scotland （3 May）， Welsh party leaders debate （1May）.The data is accessed through online video sources. Each debate video is between 60 and 120 minutes long. The videos are transcribed first， and then turns are analyzed and categorized. Extracts used as examples to demonstrate results of analysisare transcribed in Conversation Analysis （CA） format. Results The leaders debates consist of four parts： opening statement， question?Canswer，controlled leader- leader contest and closing statement. 1.1 Turn-taking for opening statement and closing statement Turn-taking foropeningstatementand closing statement are th