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Part of
Lexical Priming: Applications and advances
Edited by Michael Pace-Sigge and Katie J. Patterson
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 79] 2017
► pp. 93–117

Can lexical priming be detected in conversation turn-taking strategies?

| University of Eastern Finland

Turn-taking strategies in spoken communication have been widely researched and discussed in recent literature (see, e.g. McCarthy, 1998; Myers 2009; Archer et al. 2012). Moving on from the non prosodic, non-lexical pointers (cf. Yngve 1970; Duncan Jr. 1972), corpus-based research has focussed on lexical items (see McCarthy 1998; Tao 2003; Myers 2009; Evison 2012).

Following the tenets of psychological priming that form the basis of Hoey’s lexical priming theory (2005), some kind of trigger item should be in evidence, showing a listener that a turn is given up. Consequently, recognisable turn-final and turn-initial lexical items – as well as evidence of speaker alignment – should be in evidence. This chapter will describe (a) some salient signals used that become apparent when monologues are directly compared with dialogues; and (b) highly frequent (sets of) words found employed in conversational exchanges. Consequently, an argument will be made that language users appear to be primed in their turn-taking word choices to follow a structured, recognisable pattern, thus facilitating fluency in their conversation.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1The pragmatics of turn taking
    • 2.2Hoey’s lexical priming
  • 3.Data and corpus analysis
    • 3.1Previous investigations in the light of the lexical priming theory
    • 3.2Corpora and method
  • 4.Comparing monologues with dialogues
    • 4.1Keywords
    • 4.2Keywords in positional context
    • 4.3Preferred and dispreferred items for speakers and respondents in conversations
      • 4.3.1Turn-initial items
      • 4.3.2Turn-final items
      • 4.3.3Alignment between speaker’s turns
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Author query
Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.79.04pac
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