The turn-taking system of buying and selling conversation in Sicily analysis of shop and market talk文档.pdfVIP

THE TURN-TAKING SYSTEM OF BUYING AND SELLING CONVERSATION IN SICILY: ANALYSIS OF SHOP AND MARKET TALK Barbara M.G. SETTINERI Abstract Buying and selling conversation occurs only in specific contexts (mainly shops and markets), deals with a main topic (the action of selling and buying a product), and is carried out by speakers who are assigned two precise roles: ‘shopkeeper’ and ‘customer’. This paper seeks to examine to what extent the context in which buying and selling transactions in Sicily are carried out affects the structure of turn-taking. 1. Introduction The turn-taking model taken for the analysis of customer-seller talk in Sicilian shops and markets is that devised by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974). This model not only regulates the interaction between two or more participants in a conversation, but also operates within different kinds of social activities. This means that the order, number and application of turn-taking techniques vary according to the context of negotiation. Moreover, in conversations between, for example, friends, family members, teachers and pupils, shopkeepers and customers, etc. the order and allocation of turns is not fixed in advance, while within other speech-exchange systems (e.g., debates, interviews, lectures, etc.) turns are pre-allocated and often limited to only one speaker. The aim of the present study is to demonstrate how the turn-taking structure of buying and selling conversation in Sicily varies according to to three basic factors: 1. the place of the transaction (i.e., market or shop); 2. the ‘biographies of interlocutors, e.g., specific trade or profession, geographical and class origins, educational standard, interrelationship, etc.’ (Mitchell 1975: 168); 3. the qua