This article investigates two types of preference organization in
interaction: in response to a question that selects a next speaker in
multi-party interaction, the preference for answers over non-answer
responses as a category of a response; and the preference for selected
next speakers to respond. It is asserted that the turn allocation rule
specified by Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson (1974) which states that a response is relevant by the
selected next speaker at the transition relevance place is affected by
these two preferences once beyond a normal transition space. It is argued
that a “second-order” organization is present such that
interactants prioritize a preference for answers over a preference for a
response by the selected next speaker. This analysis reveals an observable
preference for progressivity in interaction.Thank you to Nick Enfield, Steve Levinson and Manny Schegloff
for useful discussions about the phenomena discussed in this article, and
to John Heritage for his careful reading and comments on earlier drafts.
Portions of this article were presented at the 2002 Western States
Communication Association convention, Long Beach, California, and at the
Workshop on Feedback in Interaction at the Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, in February 2004.