Floors, talk and the organization of classroom activities

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.