‘A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation’: Commentary on Sacks, Scheglof, & Jefferson 1974

The publication of ‘A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation’ by Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson in Language in 1974 marked the beginning of what was to be a major shift in the way social interaction was to be conceived of and how it was to be studied across the social sciences and linguistics. Widely regarded as the foundational paper of CONVERSATION ANALYSIS (CA), it remains the most cited article in Language. While the authors had published CA studies previously (for example, Sacks 1967, 1972, 1973, Schegloff 1968, Jefferson 1972, 1973, 1974, Schegloff & Sacks 1973), ‘A simplest systematics’ was to bring this new approach to a different and, as it turned out, a more receptive audience in linguistics. At its heart the paper demonstrated both THAT routine interaction or ‘conversation’ was highly organized and locally managed and HOW this could be studied systematically and in detail across forms of interaction and interactional contexts. Initiating a new research direction within an established field is difficult enough, but this achievement is made even more impressive coming from a group of sociologists working in connection with Harold Garfinkel's ETHNOMETHODOLOGY (EM; see Garfinkel 1967), who were at the time finding it difficult to publish in their own discipline (Watson 1994).