Selecting next speaker: The context-sensitive operation of a context-free organization

Abstract

This report extends earlier context-free treatments of turn-taking for conversation by describing the context-sensitive operation of the principal forms of addressing employed by current speakers to select next speakers. It first describes the context-specific limitations of gaze-directional addressing, and the selective deployment and more-than-addressing action regularly accomplished by address terms (most centrally, names). In addition to these explicit methods of addressing, this report introduces tacit forms of addressing that call on the innumerable context-specific particulars of circumstance, content, and composition to select a next speaker.