How do we know when it is our turn to talk? Normally we tend to communicate on a turn-by-turn basis, for instance, asking and answering questions. But when we are dealing with a dominant speaker, we may have to take the floor by interrupting. However, in a conversation, we do not always ask each other questions or listen to one person speaking – we somehow know when it is our turn to talk. This leads to the conclusion that there have to be certain rules or signals that indicate when a turn-change would be appropriate. My aim with this paper was to try to find out what these signals are, and in order to investigate this, I used two different British television Shows (BBC). My survey shows that there are many signals that can be used as indicators of turn-taking, for instance, adjency pairs, pauses, opening- and closing sequences, one word answers, etc. However, these results rely on the theory “One person at a time”, i.e. there is just one person talking at a time. Interruptions tend to be brief. Other signs that have been found are connected to phonology (intonation) and body language, for instance, we tend to raise our voices at the end of a question or when we nod with our heads. To summarize, there are many signals that are used when it comes to turn-taking. However, in order for a conversation to run smoothly, we have to be active listeners and speakers in order to see these signals. By being active listeners or speakers we can use the signals in order to improve our communicative techniques. For a politician, for example, it might be very useful to be able to keep the turn as long as possible, to be a dominant speaker, and for the rest of us this knowledge can be used in order to get our conversations to run smoothly.

How do we know when it is our turn to talk? Normally we tend to communicate on a turn-by-turn basis, for instance, asking and answering questions. But when we are dealing with a dominant speaker, we may have to take the floor by interrupting. However, in a conversation, we do not always ask each other questions or listen to one person speaking – we somehow know when it is our turn to talk. This leads to the conclusion that there have to be certain rules or signals that indicate when a turn-change would be appropriate. My aim with this paper was to try to find out what these signals are, and in order to investigate this, I used two different British television Shows (BBC). My survey shows that there are many signals that can be used as indicators of turn-taking, for instance, adjency pairs, pauses, opening- and closing sequences, one word answers, etc. However, these results rely on the theory “One person at a time”, i.e. there is just one person talking at a time. Interruptions tend to be brief. Other signs that have been found are connected to phonology (intonation) and body language, for instance, we tend to raise our voices at the end of a question or when we nod with our heads. To summarize, there are many signals that are used when it comes to turn-taking. However, in order for a conversation to run smoothly, we have to be active listeners and speakers in order to see these signals. By being active listeners or speakers we can use the signals in order to improve our communicative techniques. For a politician, for example, it might be very useful to be able to keep the turn as long as possible, to be a dominant speaker, and for the rest of us this knowledge can be used in order to get our conversations to run smoothly.