ABSTRACT
Conversation analysis is a part of conversational structure that manages people’s communication. It dealt with pragmatics. Conversational structure consists of three features: turn taking, adjacency pairs, and overall organization. The natural conversation draws human being’s interaction through its conversations in daily activities.
This research was intended to analyze how the conversational structure was applied in the English conversations between tour guides and foreign visitors in Mangkunegaran Palace of Surakarta on April 1st up to April 15 th, 2005. This research design was a qualitative approach. The data consist of eight conversations. They were reported in conversational text orthographically. The data were collected through the following steps: recording, transcribing, identifying, and selecting. Then, they were analyzed by conversational analysis described.
After applying the conversational structure, the writer found an overlap and a gap as the feature of turn taking between the participants. The features of adjacency pairs are greeting-greeting, summon-answer, question-answer, and farewell-farewell. The last one is overall organization, which commonly has typical components consisting of opening section, topic slot, and closing section. The process of conversation involves ensuring that intended messages have been communicated and some corrections of unsuccessful attempts where necessary.
The repairs refer to efforts by the speakers or the hearers to correct trouble spots in the conversation. It consists of self-repair and other-repair. They were arranged in preference rankings, namely Preference 1 for self-initiated self-repair in opportunity 1 (own form); Preference 2 for self-initiated self-repair in opportunity 2 (transcript space); Preference 3 for other- initiation by NTRI (Next Turn Repair Initiation) in opportunity 3 (next turn of self-repair in the turn after that); and Preference 4 for other-initiated in opportunity 3.
Based on the result of this research, it was concluded that the conversations are structured and have a pattern for each of the participants. Then, it was suggested for the readers and whoever learn about conversational structure, that they should pay attention not only the linguistic components, but also the pragmatics in which the English conversations take place, including the participants, the contexts, and the topic of the conversations.
