British Educational Research Journal

Vol. 32, No. 1, February 2006, pp. 7794

Topicality and the structure of

interactive talk in face-to-face seminar
discussions: implications for research
in distributed learning media
Will Gibson*, Andy Hall and Peter Callery
Institute of Education, University of London, UK

(Submitted 5 December 2003; resubmitted 25 June 2004; conditionally accepted 12 August

2004; accepted 7 October 2004)

This article examines the structure of topic movement within face-to-face postgraduate university
seminar discussion forums through a conversation analytic approach. The analysis of 12 audio
recordings of seminars showed that in spite of clear differences in the management style of sessions
by seminar leaders there were important consistencies in their normative structure of participation.
Previous research has shown that the turn-taking procedures used as a basic organisational feature
of the talk have been seen to result in a regular change of topic within seminars. Although the
research here supports these findings, the data showed that topic change was only one aspect of the
topic negotiation process. The analysis in this article illustrates that topic negotiation was an ever-
present feature of the talk and that, in addition to frequent successful changes of topic, there were
also innumerable unsuccessful topical interjections. One prominent source of such failure was the
presence of overlap in the seminar talk. In addition to being of value to educationalists wishing to
understand educational processes, this analysis is viewed as having significant relevance for the
development of alternative distributed media for hosting interactive seminars as it shows the
implications of the interactional affordances of learning environments for the achievement of
interactive talk. This article suggests, therefore, that research and development in this field would
benefit from detailed studies of the affordances of these alternative hosting media.

Introduction
The examination of talk within seminars is not a new enterprise: Discourse analysis
of conversational structures (Berrill, 1991; Coultard, 1992; Basturkman, 2002);
conversation analysis of turn-taking patterns (DeKlerk, 1995a, b; Markee, 1995);

*Corresponding author. Institute of Education, School of Culture, Language and Communication,

20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK. Email: w.gibson@ioe.ac.uk
ISSN 0141-1926 (print)/ISSN 1469-3518 (online)/06/010077-18
# 2006 British Educational Research Association
DOI: 10.1080/01411920500402029
78 W. Gibson et al.

studies of studenttutor interaction (Jungwirth, 1993; Viechnichi, 1997); and

comparisons of educational and everyday discourse (Fisher, 1996) have all been
undertaken through a focus on the empirical analysis of seminar talk. However, with
notable exceptions (Stokoe, 2000; Benwell & Stokoe, 2002), there have been very
few studies that focus explicitly on topic development within seminar discourse. In
other words, the actual practices of how people interactionally negotiate the topics of
seminars have remained a subsidiary issue within education. This article suggests
that, as Stokoe (2000) has argued, a conversation analytic approach to the
examination of talk in educational settings can be extremely important for teasing
out the interactional affordances for educational practice.
The term affordance has its origins in Gibsons (1979) examinations of the ways
in which objects are implicated in social life and has come to be a central concept in
the study of material culture (Graves-Brown, 2000). In such use the concept
involves an examination of the physical properties of objects and their cultural usage,
and the ways in which the two features come together in the process of application to
create distinctive use possibilities, or affordances. In this study we are using the
term to describe the ways that normative interactional features (i.e. patterns of
seminar participation) impact on the realisation of specific educational goals: in this
instance, holding interactive discussions. The view that seminars are an intrinsically
important aspect of education (Benwell, 1999) is predicated on the view that
interactive talk is a useful learning tool (Berge, 1999; Quantz, 2001). Within such
discussions, students are expected to talk about issues pertaining to the subjects they
are studying by exchanging, exploring, and interrogating ideas in an interactive
fashion (DeKlerk, 1995a). In this study we are interested in teasing out the specific
interactional characteristics of this process in several face-to-face postgraduate
seminar environments.
Understanding the affordances of normative topic negotiation is of particular
relevance given the current move to utilise, develop and evaluate alternative
technologically mediated education environments. The process of conducting
seminars through distance learning media such as discussion boards, chat-rooms,
and video-conferencing has already become a common aspect of mainstream
further education (Salmon, 2000; Comeaux, 2002). The governments explicit
commitment to the continued integration of distributed learning (See the
governments White Paper on education expansion at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/
highereducation/hestrategy/expand.shtml) suggests that the movement to using such
technologies for hosting seminar discussions is likely to increase quite rapidly.
Because of this there is a growing push for the development of methods for
evaluating online learning (Berge, 1999) in order that appropriate methods of usage
can be specified which are sensitive to the interactional affordances of the various
technological features being employed (such as synchronous and asynchronous
discussion tools). It is therefore becoming increasingly important to understand
how the various technologies can be used in distributed learning in order to create
effective learning environments and to understand how they impact on the
discussion processes (Spaturiu et al., 2004). However, as we have suggested, there
 Topicality and the structure of interactive talk 79

remain outstanding questions about the ways in which the interactional character-
istics of face-to-face seminar participation impact on the process of holding
interactive discussions. Given this context, the move to a detailed look at the
affordances of the normative conduct of face-to-face seminars for the achievement of
interactive talk seems extremely timely.
This article starts by providing a brief overview of the relevant literature that deals
with the examination of normative topic negotiation. This is intended to act as a
summary of a very specialised research area and to make it accessible to other subject
specialists such as educationalists and distributed learning designers. Following this,
we provide an outline of the method of the research. The subsequent data section
uses detailed transcripts to display the interactional processes that were found within
the analysis of the seminar material, and the final section discusses some of the
implications of these findings for the development of distributed learning media.
The central theme running through the analysis is that the investigation of
interactional process within discussion environments is key to understanding the
educational processes involved.

Conversation analysis and the exploration of topic

The literature overview provided here is intended to offer a context for the
subsequent analysis and for the theoretical position of this article. The research is
based on conversation analysis and its concern with addressing the ways in
which societal members produce a sense of social order through orientation
to normative, intersubjectively recognisable features of talk (Heritage, 1984a).
The interest therefore is in describing the methods that interactional participants
utilise in the production of socially organised action. With very few exceptions
this has not involved an analysis of how topicality is negotiated within talk, but
rather a focus on the sequentiality of turn-taking (e.g. Schegloff & Sacks, 1973).
Harvey Sacks, the recognised innovator of conversation analysis, observed
that; people can rely on the natural course of the conversation to bring them to
remember things they wanted to say (Jefferson 2000, p. 299), and postulated that
conversational structure may be used by discussion participants as a resource for
bringing up things to discuss. In Sackss view, people orientate towards
conversations by relating their own topic agendas towards the unfolding flow of
topics within a given conversational setting. He proposed that the observation that
conversational topics become connected through members orientation towards
topic relevancies could be operationalised into a research method by examining the
ways in which apparently unconnected utterances are linked. However, the
interpretive nature of social action means that this connectivity is potentially
limitless as any given topic can, in principle, be linked to any other (Heritage,
1984b) and, because of this, Sackss observations have proven difficult to pursue in a
detailed manner.
The most successful attempt to do so came from Button and Caseys (Button &
Casey, 1984, 1985, 1988/89) analysis of dyadic speech patterns (involving two
80 W. Gibson et al.

conversational participants). In a series of three articles the authors conducted a

rigorous examination of the structural features of topic negotiation through turn-
taking procedures, dealing with a variety of issues such as how topics are introduced;
methods of responding to new topics; and the raising of contingently important
issues. The limitations of space afforded here mean that a thorough discussion of
these ideas is not possible. It should be emphasised, however, that although their
data was derived from dyadic telephone conversations as opposed to face-to-face
group talk, their work serves as a key resource for this article and will be periodically
referred to throughout the discussion.
Stokoe (2000) and Benwell and Stokoe (2002) use Button and Caseys ideas to
discuss the organisation of topic talk within the context of university seminars. In the
first of two articles, Stokoe (2000) explores the opening sequences of seminars in
order to examine the types of subjects that students treat as educationally legitimate.
A significant part of the argument of her article involved suggesting that conceptions
of topicality in terms of on or off topic talk are simplistic, arguing that such
descriptions are far too crude for gaining a detailed understanding of the nature of
seminar dialogue. Rather than trying to externally provide value judgements about
effective and non-effective talk, it is, Stokoe argued, far more appropriate to examine
the methods used for producing and addressing topics.
Stokoe (2000) pursued this argument by drawing on Sackss concept of false firsts
(Jefferson, 2000) in order to describe the way that topicality is constructed within the
opening sections of seminar discourse. False first topics are discrete topic areas
that are not related to a central topic interest but deal with some organisational or
practical issue. Stokoe suggested that discussions around the presence or absence
of particular people from the seminar and the manner in which a specified discussion
task is to be performed are two common false first topic areas in seminar openings.
She demonstrated, however, that such talk is often necessary for the discussion to
be completed appropriately, and that although the central interest of the seminar
may not be about such sub-issues, they are nonetheless organisationally relevant
matters.
In a similar vein Benwell and Stokoe (2002) explored the patterns of task setting
sequences within university seminars, arguing that they can be seen to follow a three-
part sequence through which tutors control the dialogue of seminar talk by defining
the discussion task, justifying the limits of the talk, and orientating to the immediate
context of the talk. The authors demonstrate that such structural features serve to
define the ways that topicality is achieved by displaying how talk on a given subject is
negotiated between speakers. This article views these works by Stokoe and Benwell
and Stokoe as extremely valuable contributions to the study of face-to-face seminar
talk which are entirely consistent with the aims of this article: explicating the
normative features of topic talk.
This brief overview demonstrates the minimal extent of research in this area.
While Button and Casey (1984, 1985, 1988/89) have produced some important
insights into dyadic interactional exchange, very little is understood about the
normative aspects of seminar interaction and its implications of the achievement of
 Topicality and the structure of interactive talk 81

the educational aim of discussing. Further, while the work by Stokoe (2000) and
Benwell and Stokoe (2002) is of importance, their findings relate to very specific
pedagogic strategies. We suggest that a more full understanding of topicality can be
achieved through the examination of topicality in a variety of seminar formats. Our
analysis attempts to provide some contribution to increasing the knowledge of this
process. Given the extent of the issues, however, this can only be a very small step
and will require much more research.

Study context
The data for the following discussion comes from the evaluation of an online
postgraduate Research Methods course in a university in the North of England.
Part of this evaluation involved the examination of face-to-face seminar
participation. Seminars are an integral feature of this course as they are the only
direct contact that students have with teaching staff. Many of the students are
skilled health care workers who have extensive professional experience that they are
used to sharing in seminars. For both of these reasons this module provides a
particularly interesting case study of seminar interaction. The course delivery
involved accessing online audio lectures and video case studies, as well as
participation in weekly seminars. At the beginning of the module students opted for
either online or face-to-face seminar participation, with 39 out of the 60 students
opting for face-to-face. The course had a much higher representation of females
than males (44 females against 16 males): while half of the females chose online
participation, only two out of the sixteen males opted for online seminars. Most of
the seminars had at least one male student in them. Four groups of students had
two seminars per week, each with a different seminar leader. Six seminar groups
participated in the study (see Table 1). All seminars involved discussing pre-
specified questions, but the group leaders adopted very different approaches to
organising this activity: for example, one tutor sectioned the class into distinct
segments, using each to address a different question, while another allowed a
completely free organisation approach in which topics simply emerged (see
Table 1).
Sometimes the tutors would appoint or invite the group to select a chairperson
from the students to manage the discussion (there were no groups in which this was
done every week, however). Although there were differences in the particular
methods of organising the groups, there were also general features of the dialogue
that were common to all seminars.

Method
There were 12 seminar recordings in all, which comprised two recordings each from
six different seminar groups, each group led by a different tutor with between five
and eight students in each group. The data analysis involved coding the audio
recordings as digital files in Atlas.ti qualitative data analysis software. Sections of the
82 W. Gibson et al.

Table 1. Seminar group characteristics

Group Tutor Use of nominated student Characteristics of discussion

chairperson

1 A Occasionally Rather than being segmented into parti-

1 B
2 C
2 D
3 E
3 F
cular discussion tasks, discussions were
loosely centred on the specified weekly
topics.
Yes (most weeks) Tutor enabled discussion leaders to take
a very dominant role. Talk tended to be
structured by the discussion tasks.
No Tutor adopted a leadership role in guid-
ing the students through the discussions,
but allowed the topics to be addressed as
they emerged from the talk rather than in
a pre-specified manner.
Yes (most weeks) Discussions were usually ordered around
the weekly topics, with the chair specify-
ing the agenda of the discussion at the
beginning of the seminar.
No The tutor organised the group into pairs
who worked on distinctive questions. The
group re-formed towards the end of the
seminar for a larger discussion.
Yes (most weeks) Similar to group 2.

recording were selected using an iterative coding strategy to identify particular

themes in the data. The data were transcribed using a modified version of
conversation analysis transcription techniques (see Jefferson [1984] and the
transcript explanation at the end of this article). This detail of transcription
was necessary to capture the minutiae of conversational sound that is used in the
process of negotiating talk sequence. As we shall see, the cues for conversational
topic moves are very subtle (Schifrin, 1987), and require transcription that is
sensitive to this detail (Jefferson, 1984). Each transcript extract has an anonymised
label identifying which group it came from. The confines of space mean that
providing large amounts of this type of qualitative data is not feasible. The reader
should be aware that for each example provided there were many others which
displayed the same point but which could not be inserted because of the limitations
of space.

Analysis
The following analysis involves an examination of, firstly, the performative nature
of seminar talk and, secondly, of the impact of overlapping talk as a charac-
teristic of the dialogue. A key theme within the analysis is that the interaction
itself is a constitutive feature of the learning process in the face-to-face discussion
forums.
 Topicality and the structure of interactive talk 83

Topic negotiation and performative talk

The turn-taking and selecting process is the basis from which topicality in seminars
is mutually constructed (Stokoe, 2000). Through close examination of selected talk
sections it became obvious in the course of our analysis that each speech turn could
be seen to be implicated within topic construction. To borrow Austins (1975)
terminology, any section (or turn) of the speech could be interpreted as
performative in achieving some interactional action as regards topic development.
Extract one helps to demonstrate the point.
The dialogue in Extract 1 comes from the start of a seminar and begins with
student 1 introducing the topic of complaints (line 12) by describing to the tutor
the discussion they had been having before they arrived. At line 13 the tutors
A[bo:ut] can be seen to accept this topic and encourage its elaboration. This
coincides with student 3s contribution (line 14), which provides an elaboration of
the issue highlighted by student 1. The tutors response (line 15) clarifies the source
of concern (that they had not been previously taped) and provides a solution to the
highlighted concern (turning off the tape recorder). In terms of the topic, this
contribution maintains the topic as a discussion item. The elongated No: in line 17
and the pause following the I serve to close the topic of tape-recordings and are
followed by a move to a new topic, which relates to the issue of a general moan
highlighted by student 1 (line 12). Within this short example, every turn
demonstrates an interactional role in the construction of the discussion topicality
as they each perform a discernibly distinct action as regards the negotiation of the
topics under discussion. The next example (Extract 2) shows the continuation of the
dialogue.
In Extract 2 student 1 continues to outline her problem of dealing with the
learning materials (lines 1722). Student 4s Mmm and the intake of breath (line
23) can be heard as an unsuccessful attempt to delineate a speech turn as student 1
continues her talk: So Im feeling a bit frustrated (line 24). Student 4 then uses the
break point that this turn provides to initiate an embedded question sequence
(Button & Casey, 1984), which results in an apparent attempt to shift topic to his

Extract 1. seminar group 2

84 W. Gibson et al.

Extract 2. seminar group 2

own experiences. The question Di did you read !every single thing or? (line 25)
involves an orientation towards the preceding speakers topic and displays that his
dialogue is aimed at the sequence of the preceding dialogue (which, Button and
Casey [1985] suggest, is itself a normative feature of interactive talk). This leads to a
self-contained answer section that is resolved with the response No (lines 2628),
and serves to close this topic orientation section. Student 4 uses this closure to
move the focus of the topic to a report on his own experiences (line 29: You see
what I:: do. I mean [its a learning style]) but is interrupted by student 1, who
continues to outline the nature of the experience which forms the basis of her
complaint.
The example again demonstrates the performative nature of the constitutive
speech turns, and that each one serves as an action which has repercussions for the
unfolding talk. The notion that all talk plays an interactional role within speech is a
well-accepted feature of the conversation analytic perspective (Jefferson, 2000). The
relevance of the observation in the current context is that through it we can begin to
see the extent to which the content of the seminar talk analysed here was shaped by
the interactional work of the speech participants. As we have noted, Stokoe (2000)
has emphasised that topic movement is a common feature of the seminar discussion
process. The above transcripts bear this out: at lines 14, 17, 29 and 30 of the last two
examples we can see attempted topic shifts, all of which (with the exception of the
last one) do so within the normative structure of topic movement. However, this
data suggests further that such topic delineation may be merely one manifestation of
a continual process of topic negotiation which may have just as many topic
movement failures as it has successes (these terms are not intended to be value
laden, but merely to denote places at which topics do and do not move). The point
 Topicality and the structure of interactive talk 85

being emphasised, therefore, is that topic change is a part of a much wider process of
topic negotiation in which non-delineations may play an equally important role in
defining the dialogue.

Overlap and the non-delineation of topic movement

The observation that conversation is organised on a turn-taking basis essentially
involves suggesting that speakers will orientate to the rule that one person speaks at
any one time as a basic practical feature of their talk (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973).
That such a rule is in operation does not mean that it is always achieved, but merely
that it is used as a means of guiding behaviour (Garfinkel, 1967). Thus, although
neatly demarcated turns might be the intention, overlapping talk is nonetheless a
normal feature of seminar talk. The point can be made with reference to the seminar
material analysed here.
Extract 3 shows two contributors (students 1 and 6) disagreeing with a statement
by a fellow student (student 5). (Throughout the examples used here square
brackets are used to indicate overlapping talksee the transcription notation at the
end of this article.) There are several overlaps in this short dialogue section: at lines 6
and 7 the tutors Ye[ah] overlaps with the start of student 5s dialogue; the end
of this dialogue overlaps with the start of the beginning of the next students
contribution at line 9 ([!Thats] not necessarily true); student 5 then reiterates her
commitment to the idea which overlaps with contributions from student 6 (lines 10
12). Student 6s contribution (lines 11 and 13) also involves a disagreement with
student 5s comments, which is backed up by student 1 in line 14. Within this
example all except the last overlap (which can be heard as a punctuation point and
therefore subject to a different set of organisational principles [Jefferson, 2000])
occurred at turn swapping points, i.e. the ends of other peoples turns (Schegloff &
Sacks, 1973). Of course, overlap can occur at any point, but the principle of waiting
your turn (or more accurately, waiting for a chance to take a turn) means that

Extract 3. seminar group 1

86 W. Gibson et al.

when those turn selecting points arise, there is more chance of such overlap
occurring. The disagreement which arises from student 1s statement in lines 15
seems to result in an increased competitiveness for conversational space. In less
animated sections of dialogue where turn-taking is less competitive (in the sense of
being in demand) overlap and interruption was much less common.
In Extract 4 the students and tutor are talking about their assessment for
the course. We see that there is a considerable amount of overlap in the talk (lines
5, 6 and 7; lines 8 and 9; lines 10, 11 and 12; lines 12, 13 and 14), all of which
stems from the participants attempts to use or create space to comment. The
increased frequency of verbal interaction then created a greater competitiveness
over the use of participation slots, which resulted in more overlap in the talk. One
of the consequences is that there are sections of speech which are difficult to
hear (e.g. lines 7 and 11). It should be recognised that as visual cues are integral
to the process of interpreting spoken dialogue (Merleau-Ponty, 1962), participants
in the setting are likely to be better placed to make sense of this type of
highly interactive dialogue. Notwithstanding this, however, such inaudibility is
perhaps an expected outcome of highly interactive talk, which can create problems
even in the sensory-rich environment of the seminar itself. Furthermore, inaudibility
is only one consequence of this kind of interactivity: in terms of topicality, another
key characteristic of the overlapping talk was that it could act as a mechanism for
failed topic delineation. Extract 4 demonstrates this: in the overlap that occurs in
lines 1012 student 1 fails to complete her comment. When overlap like this
occurred, the mutual orientation to the one turn at a time rule meant that, sooner
or later, at least one of the participants stopped talking. There may be numerous
factors which came into play in providing a preference for which speaker this was
(such as status, authority, personality, level of previous contribution, etc.) but,
whatever the contextual reasons, in such situations one of the parties was likely to
lose their turn. One of the common responses to such loss of turn was the
reiteration of a comment.

Extract 4. seminar group 5

 Topicality and the structure of interactive talk 87

Extract 5. seminar group 3

At lines 45 and 46 of Extract 5 student 6s interjection overlaps with that of a tutor

as they both use a speech end section to take a turn (lines 4546). The tutor
continues talking and student 6 stops, but respecifies his question at the next turn
point (line 47). The presence of overlap then could be easily rectified by undertaking
interactional work to reproduce an opportunity to make a point. However, on other
occasions participants had to wait considerable lengths of time for another
opportunity to participate.

Extract 6. seminar group 3

88 W. Gibson et al.

In Extract 6 the overlap involves a student attempting to interject a comment on

her personal experiences which is lost within the turn-taking exchange. Student 1 is
talking about a client with a particular medical condition and student 5 attempts to
make a point about her sisters experiences with a similar condition (it only becomes
apparent that this is what she was trying to do some time later). Student 5 attempts
to make the point twice (lines 22 and 24) but, in both cases, the interjections overlap
with student 1s utterance and she fails to complete the turns. Student 5 finally
succeeds in implementing her turn about 10 minutes later in the discussion following
an interactive talk section between three other students. The point nicely
demonstrates the practical nature of the task of holding interactive discussions in
these face-to-face forums in terms of negotiating space for participation. The
interactional business at hand (Garfinkel, 1967) of negotiating talk and of
attempting to implement or reimplement speech turns can be seen to constitute
much of the interactional work. The organisational strategies of the seminar may, of
course, have a bearing on the ways in which overlapped talk is managed: for
example, seminar leaders or chairpersons could intervene to manage such overlap
sections (although it is interesting to note that, contrary to our expectations, we
found no examples of this within any of the recordings). The point we wish to
emphasise here is that, regardless of their organisational features, all of the seminars
were characterised by overlap.
Further, the success or failure of an attempt to achieve a re-delineation was itself
contingent on the development of the interaction. In Extract 5, for example, student
6s turn is overlapped with a comment from student 1 (lines 49 and 50) with the
result that it is unclear whether he had covered the central point or was moving on to
another issue. In Extract 6, student 5s comment on the issue of sufferers with this
condition lost its topic relevance as it was produced at a point at which the
discussion had moved to a new topic.
In Extract 7 a tutor asks a direct question which, while stemming from agreement
with a particular student, can be heard as an invitation to the group (lines 23). The

Extract 7. seminar group 4

 Topicality and the structure of interactive talk 89

student in question (student 1) provides a clarification question (line 4), which

overlapped with the tutors answer (lines 56). There then follows a quick exchange
in which the contributions between students 1 and 2 and the tutor become jumbled.
Student 2 starts a contribution which overlaps with student 1s turn as well as the
tutors clarification of the reason for the question (lines 810). However, student 1
then interrupts this explanation to provide her own turn. This is a rich example which
captures both the regularity of such overlaps and the confusions that can arise from
them. The overlap between the three speakers at lines 810 result in student 2 losing
her speech turn (student 2 subsequently remains silent for several minutes on the
recording). The tutors explanation for the question is also lost through deferring the
speech turn to student 1 (lines 10 and 11). These types of incompletions were
regular features of this kind of interactive dialogue. The following two examples in
this section clearly display the interactional implications that arose from overlapped
talk.
In Extract 8 student 1 is the nominated chair of the discussion and asks a question
on data collection to the group (line 1). Student 2 clarifies the focus of this question
(line 6) which student 1 does (line 7); following a pause, students 2 and 3 start an
answer to the question at the same time (lines 9 and 10), which results in a brief
negotiation over who will proceed (lines 1012). In such negotiations the
participants attempt to re-establish the turn-taking process by solving the problem
of conversational overlap through an explicit delineation of a turn. Extract 9 shows a
similar process.
Here a tutor comes to the end of quite a lengthy explanation of a theoretical point
(lines 14). Following a pause (line 5), the tutor and the student both start talking at
the same time (lines 6 and 7) and, in trying to solve the problem, again overlap. The
sorry is deferential and can be heard as an attempt to pass the turn to the student.
It is important to be clear, however, that although overlap could be a source of
trouble which participants needed to resolve, the data here suggests that it may be an

Extract 8. seminar group 6

90 W. Gibson et al.

Extract 9. seminar group 2

inevitable aspect of ordinary interactive dialogue. The central point of the analysis,
therefore, is not that overlap is a problem for interactive talk but that, given its
presence in such a variety of discussion settings, it might be a general feature of the
phenomenon of face-to-face seminar dialogue. Such overlap results in failures to
delineate turns and, consequently, topics in the process of discussing. One of the
conclusions to be drawn from this is that group interaction in face-to-face seminars
may be characterised by a continual negotiation process in which not only does the
topic move regularly, but participants often fail to implement their turns and topics
within the discussion.
We stated earlier that investigating the interactional characteristics of learning
environments is important for understanding the educational processes involved.
While much more research may be needed to understand in detail how the
peculiarities of discussion setting and discussant characteristics may influence the
basic aspects outlined in this article, the above conclusions demonstrate the extent to
which the interactional affordances of face-to-face discussion environments can
impact on the pedagogic aim of discussing. We will now turn our attention to the
implications of this point for the examination of alternative distributed discussion
environments.

Discussion and conclusions

The purpose of this analysis has been to identify common features of topic
negotiation in six postgraduate seminars. The gender representation across the
groups meant that it was not possible to analyse the impact of gender on discussions:
systematic examination of gender and seminar discourse might be an interesting area
for further research. Further, while there were differences in the organisation of the
seminars analysed here, we have not examined the effects of this or other power
relations on the organisation of talk in the seminar groups. We have documented
characteristics of talk that were features of all the groups in spite of their differences
in organisation. Further research could develop these findings with reference to
specific organisational characteristics.
The continual negotiation of turn-taking as a basic organisational feature of
topic negotiation was seen to result in regular overlap in the talk. This
 Topicality and the structure of interactive talk 91

characteristic was seen to be regularly present regardless of the type of

organisational strategy used in the seminar. One of the affordances, then, of these
face-to-face seminars was that the interactive turn negotiation process placed
topicality in continual flux: the content of the talk was significantly shaped by the
nature of the interaction process. In the context of an increasing push to the use of
alternative media for hosting interactive discussions, these findings have some
important implications.
Some distributed discussion media involve attempts to host discussions using
synchronous discussion environments. There are two basic forums for such
discussions: text-based and talk-based. Text-based environments involve students
logging on to a particular discussion chat room and typing their contributions.
Some of these entail submitting the postings in a similar way to asynchronous
discussion board posts but with an almost simultaneous effect. Others entail a real-
time transferral of data so that the text is seen (transferred) by all participants as it is
typed. Both methods are reliant for their success on the typing and reading skills of
users (Curran, 2002), and perhaps because of this these forums are still much less
common than asynchronous ones (Pena Schaff & Nicholis, 2004). The issue of
typing ability is just one of many variables which can have a tangible impact on the
discussion process: the design of the interfaces through which the exchanges are
undertaken, the speed of data transfer, the methods for identifying individual
participantsall of these are likely to have a strong bearing on the ways in which the
discussion functions. More importantly, the new environment may well involve a
profoundly different type of discussion process to those found in face-to-face
environments. This study has shown that very little is known about the constitutive
features of face-to-face interaction, but that one of the key characteristics identified
in our analysis was a continual negotiation of topic. Whether or not the same
characteristic may be found in online synchronous text-based chat remains an open
question, but one that surely needs to be resolved if the full implications of the use of
distributed media are to be realised. If, for example, the practices of discussing
are substantially different in terms of the processes of exchanging ideas and,
consequently, the outcomes of the talk, this may have implications for the
educational institutions implementing these alternatives as a key part of programme
delivery. Are these alternative discussion forums to be regarded as different but
equally effective, or are they distinct processes to be used for distinct educational
ends? Questions such as this are, of course, well beyond the scope of this article, but
the analysis provided here does provide an empirical base from which these issues
can be pursued.
The second method of hosting synchronous discussions involves using audiovisual
communication features from webcams and microphones to create virtual, real-time,
talk-based environments. Studies of these types of discussion forums have found that
the necessity of specialised technological equipment facilities such as broadband
internet access and webcams has meant that the forums have been less widely used
as educational platforms (Marjanovic, 1999; Candace Chou, 2001). Where it has
been used, the technology has in some cases proved problematic as a method for
92 W. Gibson et al.

hosting large group discussions (see Comeauxs collection, 2002). The observation
that these discussion areas are similar to face-to-face environments in terms of the
basic turn-taking systems has not gone unnoticed (Spaturiu et al., 2004), and yet it
seems that much of the available software is not yet sufficiently developed to enable
the realisation of highly interactive group participation. The findings of this article
may be useful for aiding the development of discussion interfaces. The examination
of processes in face-to-face seminars is particularly important where distributed
learning involves direct transfer of face-to-face discussion practices to online
discussion forums. The data here provide a starting point for such an examination. If
the media is to truly function as a means of achieving the same interaction as is
realised face-to-face, then the systems will need to be sufficiently media-rich to
enable highly interactive, overlapped speech participation in which personnel can be
readily identified. However, as many existing studies on this area suggest (Spaturiu
et al., 2004), the problem of designing interfaces which achieve these aims is hard to
resolve, and it may therefore be that alternative approaches to discussions in these
forums which involve a very different conception of interaction need to be
considered.
Up until now, the problems of synchronous media have made them a much less
popular discussion forum that asynchronous distributed forums (Schaeffer et al.,
2002). In asynchronous environments, messages are posted to discussion boards
that can be accessed by specified users. Although interaction is often the aim of such
environments, the lack of simultaneous participation has posed a barrier to the
creation of interactive talk. As yet, however, clear specification of the type of
interaction that is required/desired from such environments has yet to be provided.
Even quite high-profile interactional models often fail to state what they mean by
interactive discussions (see, for example, Salmon, 2000). The result is that there is
some confusion within the community about how to proceed with the evaluation of
these environments (Berge, 1999). Our study has shown that these types of
questions can be addressed through detailed empirical engagement with student
usage of educational forums. The change of context to an online environment,
particularly an asynchronous one, is very likely to create a new set of discussion
affordances which produce a very different type of discussion environment. If the
distance education community is to be able to realise the implications of the
increasing move to distributed learning environments, then more studies which
focus on these areas will be needed.

Transcription notation
: Elongated syllable. More than one colon signals prolonged elongation.
! Emphasised syllable
(.) Pause for less than half a second
(0.5) Duration of a pause for half a second or more
.Beginning point of rapid speech
,End point of rapid speech
 Topicality and the structure of interactive talk 93

5No break between speech sections

[ ] Text in square brackets indicates overlapping talk
XXXX Blank-out of a name

Acknowledgement
This study was completed with funding from the General Nursing Council for
England and Wales Trust.

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