CONVERSATIONAL STRUCTURE AND TURN-TAKING MANAGEMENT IN INTERACTIONS BETWEEN CLIENTS AND OFFICERS AT A DRIVERS LICENSING OFFICE IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This study examines conversational structure and turn management in interactions between clients and officers of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) at a Nigerian drivers licensing office in order to unveil how sociocultural nuances shape the structure of conversations in this context. The data comprised 21 samples of interaction sequences which were purposively selected from over 13 hours of tape-recordings and analysed using Conversation Analysis. The findings reveal that the interactions are organised in adjacency pairs and expanded most of the time with insertion sequences. Also, turns are shared between the officers and clients through self-selection, current-speaker-selects-next and sustained-turns procedures, which are largely within the control of the officers. There are various cues of silence and pauses, socio-centric sequences, adjacency pairs, drawls, pitch, overlap and interruptions, which are turn-taking and turn-giving cues in the interactions. These features reveal the interactions as institutional talk, which is peculiar to this social environment.