Pragmatics of overlapping talk in therapy sessions

Abstract

Cooperation in conversation is usually managed by the turn- taking mechanism where the interlocutors’ turns are done according to certain rules the most important of which is that ‘one and only one speaker speaks at a time’. Since talk can be used as a cure for people who have troubles in their life, psychotherapy uses the field of conversation analysis as a procedure to deal with such troubles. Conversation analysis with all its essential facts helps therapists find out the reasons behind their patient's difficulties and predict the solutions for them. One of such essentials is that of the turn taking system and more specifically the ‘overlapping talk’. The aim of the present research paper is to show what types of overlap mostly overwhelm the therapy session and how the overlap is managed and resolved. To do so, two scripts taken from two psychological therapy sessions are selected and examined using Sacks et al’s model (1974) and Jefferson’s model (1983). The study has come to the conclusion that the overlapping talk usually occurs because of the misjudgment of the transition relevance places (TRPs) due to its type whether transitional or progressional. It has also been noticed that the terminal overlap is used more frequently than the other types. Continuers such as ‘yeah’, ‘ok’, ‘alright’, ‘aha’, ‘umm’ are used by the therapist to encourage the patients to continue in their turns.

Keywords

• overlapping talk
• recycling
• resolving, therapy session, turn-taking system

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