Time: Arbiter of Continuity

Abstract

In this chapter, we take up the issue of temporal organization that has proven to be relevant for empirical comparisons of empractical and conversational speech in Chap. 4; however, the treatment here is on a more general level. Any genre of spoken language must be gradually articulated in real time. For a psychological approach to spoken dialogue, time enters as a crucial dimension in at least two ways: theoretically in terms of its impact on the mental activity of both speakers and listeners and methodologically as a basic physical dimension in which verbal, nonverbal, and/or nonlinguistic behavioral events occur simultaneously and successively, at a measurable rate and duration. A brief excursion into the history of pause research shows an early limitation of this research to the genre of oral reading and to speech rate. Only the availability of appropriate instrumentation in the course of the twentieth century allowed for the accurate separation of speech from silence and for a gradual development of research interest in dialogical interaction. More recent research on spoken dialogue has focused on silence as a generic term for the absence of vocalization, sometimes with a distinction of marked from unmarked silence, “bad” from “good” silence, and/or silence in its grammatical function as verb or as noun. Conversation Analysis has introduced the further distinctions of pause, gap, and lapse as various types of silence important in the organization of turn-taking and has for the most part insisted on perceptual assessment of the duration of silence. Our own methodological approach has required instrumental measurement of on time and off time, and our theoretical approach to silence in empractical settings is based upon the concept of intersubjectivity as a defining criterion for the initiation of an empractical setting. Accordingly, intersubjective silence in an empractical setting subsists only as long as participants relate intersubjectively to one another. This raises the question as to how to treat silence while participants are involved in nonlinguistic activity. The methodological question of certifying intersubjectivity by means of observable indicators is discussed.