Conversation as Gestalten: the Use of Pre Term Insertions (PTI),

The study of overlapping and conversational interruptions has captured the interest of many researchers since the seventies. Although a great number of interpretations have been given and numerous taxonomic proposals put forward in order to classify these event, the debate on this subject can, as of today, be basically summed up as follows: a) the consideration of these events in terms of anomalies with regard to the normal course of conversations; b) the evaluation of the interruptions as phenomena solely attributable to the interlocutor; c) recognition of the dichotomy between supportive and competitive interventions. My work sets out to present the most important results of a research conducted on a corpus of 50 natural ordinary conversations using the phenomenological method of observation (analytical-global). The re-reading of the above conversational phenomena led me to introduce the concept of Pre Term Insertions (PTI) and to define the different functions they absolve.