Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
adjacency pair [Lat. adiacens ‘lying beside, neighboring’]
Coined by Sacks and Schegloff, the term refers to a particular instantiation of the turn-by-turn organization of conversations (
sequential organization, turn). It is the affiliation of two utterance types into a pair type, where, upon production of the first pair part by the current speaker, the production of the second pair part by the addressee is relevant or expectable ( conditional relevance). Such adjacency pairs are, for example, greeting—greeting or question—answer. First pair parts have identifiable, conventional properties, such as syntactic devices and sequential positioning (cf. Schegloff 1984). The second pair part can be identified primarily by its position, which is implied sequentially by the occurrence of the first pair part, that is, the second pair part is understood in regard to how it relates to the first pair part. Deviations offer evidence for this ‘normative requirement’ (Heritage 1984:262f.). If a second pair part fails to occur, its absence will be noticed: (a) the first pair part will be repeated until the second is provided; or (b) the absence of the second will be accounted for (e.g. ‘I don’t know’) preserving the normative framework of the adjacency-pair format; or (c) the delay of the second will be accounted for, for example, where another adjacency pair is inserted to supply the necessary information for the production of the second pair part:
| Q1 | S: | What color do you think you want? |
| Q2 | C: | Do they just come in one solid color? |
| A2 | S: | No. They’re black, blue, red, orange, light blue, dark blue, gray, green, tan [pause], black. |
| A1 | C: | Well, gimme a dark blue one, I guess. |
| (Merritt 1976:333) |
Additional evidence is provided by adjacency pairs with preferred second parts ( preference). ( also discourse analysis)
References
Heritage, J. 1984. Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge.
Levinson, S. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge.
Merritt, M.
1976. On questions following answers in service encounters. LSoc 5. 315–57.
Schegloff, E. 1968. Sequencing in conversational openings. AA 70.1075–95. (Repr. in J.J.Gumperz and D.Hymes (eds), Directions in sociolinguistics. New York. 346–80.)
——1984. On some questions and ambiguities. In J.M.Atkinson and J.Heritage (eds), Structures of social action. Cambridge. 28–52.
Schegloff, E. and H.Sacks. 1973. Opening and closing. Semiotica 8. 289–327.
conversation analysis
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