Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T20:52:46.845Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Floors, talk and the organization of classroom activities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2004

ROD JONES  and
JOANNA THORNBORROW
ROD JONES
Affiliation:
Centre for Speech and Language Therapy, School of Health and Social Studies, University of Wales Institute Cardiff, Cardiff CF5 2SG, Wales, U.K., rmjones@uwic.ac.uk
JOANNA THORNBORROW
Affiliation:
Centre for Language and Communication Research, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University, CF10 3XB, Wales, U.K., thornborrowj@cardiff.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article addresses the issue of the conversational floor. Using data from classroom discourse, covering a wide range of floor related phenomena, the authors propose a concept of the floor that ties it to the activity in hand, and the local flexible organization of talk within that activity. After beginning with a short review of current work relating to the conversational floor, discussion turns to extracts from data as examples of various types of activities requiring different structures of participation. The aim is to move from binary definitions of the floor, particularly the opposition between one-at-a-time and collaborative, and toward a conceptualization of the floor as a continuum between “tighter” and “looser” organizations of talk in the activity.

Keywords

Floorone-at-a-timecollaborative activityclassroomdiscourseorganization of talk
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , July 2004 , pp. 399 - 423
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Coates, Jennifer (1989). Gossip revisited: language in all-female groups. In Jennifer Coates & Deborah Cameron (eds.), Women in their speech communities: New perspectives on language and sex, 94–122. London: Longman.
Coates, Jennifer (1996). Women talk. Oxford: Blackwell.
Coates, Jennifer (1997). One-at-a-time: The organization of men's talk. In Sally Johnson & Ulrike Hanna Meinhof (eds.), Language and masculinity, 107–29. Oxford: Blackwell.
Coates, Jennifer, & Sutton-Spence, Rachel (2001). Turn-taking patterns in Deaf conversation. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5:507–29.Google Scholar
Edelsky, Carole (1981). Who's got the floor? Language in Society 10:383–421.Google Scholar
Egbert, Maria M. (1997). Schisming: The collaborative transformation from a single conversation to multiple conversations. Research on Language and Social Interaction 30:1–51.Google Scholar
Hall, Sarah (2002). Outside court Naomi Campbell shuns the limelight. Inside her life is laid bare. The Guardian, 12 February 2002, p. 1.
Lerner, Gene H. (1993). Collectivities in action: Establishing the relevance of conjoined participation in conversation. Text 13:213–45.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. (1979). Activity types and language. Linguistics 17:365–99.Google Scholar
Mehan, Hugh (1982). The structure of classroom events and their consequences for student performance. In Perry Gilmore & Allan A. Glatthorn (eds.), Children in and out of school: Ethnography and education, 59–87. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Philips, Susan U. (1972). Participant structures and communicative competence: Warm Springs children in community and classroom. In Courtney B. Cazden et al. (eds.), Functions of language in the classroom, 370–94. New York: Teachers College Press.
Sacks, Harvey (1995). Lectures on conversation. Vol. 1. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRef
Sacks, Harvey; Schegloff, Emanuel A.; & Jefferson, Gail (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation. Language 50:696–735.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (2000). Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language in Society 29:1–63.Google Scholar
Selimović, Meša (1999). The fortress. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.