A Case Study of Conversational Interaction among EFL High School Students

This paper aims to explore the complexity structures of conversational interaction among participants based on the theory of cooperative principles, turn-taking and topic shifts theoretically to justify the potentialpossibility of handling the complexity of structures of conversational interaction among participants.Grice’s conversational maxims determines the possibility of cooperative principles in conversational interaction, the unpredictability of the turn-taking and the uncertainty of the topic shifts in negotiating topicsmake the conversational process complex. If speakers probe to develop the awareness of the complexity ofstructures of conversational interaction among participants in conversational situation, the possibility andunpredictability in spontaneous speech can be realized. However, the paper didn’t touch the process of the role analysis, the process of turn-taking analysis, the process of conversational maxims analysis and the topic-shifts in actual conversations based on the transcription

Keywords:

complexity of structures , conversational interaction , conversational maxims , turn-taking , topic shifts