ABSTRACT
The amount of active engagement and participation in a conversation is related to its nature and how people perceive their role in it. Different types of talk may imply differing interactional responsibilities and rights among participants. In a mundane conversation, the degree of local management suggests that such rights and responsibilities are not allocated in advance, but unfold as the context unfolds. Nevertheless, depending on the development of the conversation, the interactional rights of some participants may become more potent at particular points. For example, if someone proposes to tell a story, this may involve extended rights to talk, involving a greater likelihood of being selected as speaker for several subsequent turns as people dissect the import of the story and seek further testimony from the teller. In more formal situations speaking rights may be preallocated. But whatever the formality or otherwise of the situation, there is a balance to be struck between the prescribed system of turn taking and the inevitable contingencies and unpredictability of talk in progress-as topics develop and are managed and repairs are effected. Even where people operate in highly prescribed settings, the nature of their talk is not and cannot be wholly controlled in advance. Philips (1992), for example, observed in relation to legal talk that although various judges' talk may be routinized, individual judges alter and vary sequences and the sense of what they say to different people. Additionally, as I already suggested, any formal interactive event may permit circumstances where the dominant discourse is temporarily replaced by, for example, parachat, and we may assume that such a development might alter interactional rights and responsibilities.
