A CONVERSATION ANALYSIS OF

ADJACENCY PAIRS APPEARED IN THE LATE

SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT

Presented by:

SYAFIA TASYA KAMILA

180511100098

AS A PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE COURSE OF

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

ENGLISH STUDY PROGRAM

FACULTY OF SOCIAL AND CULTURAL SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF TRUNOJOYO MADURA
6nd SEMESTER A.Y. 2020/2021
INTRODUCTION

Conversation is a communication activity that involves two or more

people. In conducting a conversation, there will be a speaker and a listener (or
more). According to Levinson (1983), conversation may be taken to be that
familiar predominant kind of talk in which two or more participants freely
alternate in speaking, which generally occurs outside specific institutional settings
like religious services, law courts, classrooms and the like. Almost same as stated
by Levinson, Brennan, S. E. (2010) also stated that conversation is a joint activity
in which two or more participants use linguistic forms and nonverbal signals to
communicate interactively, and dialogues are conversations between two
participants (although the terms dialogue and conversation are often used
interchangeably). As we know that a conversation is an activity of communicate
or talk between two or more people. This activity can be in the form of face to
face or also, by text, or by electronic technology that exist in this era.

In a conversation, there are adjacency pairs as argued by Brennan (2010)

“a conversation is not simply a sequence of messages expressed as speaking turns,
produced by speakers, and received and decoded by addressees. Conversations are
structured in adjacency pairs.”

Adjacency Pairs is one element of the field of linguistics which is also part
of Conversation Analysis. An adjacency pair consist of two utterances of two
speakers or more that speak alternately. The first utterance are spoken by the first-
pair part (first turn), and the second-pair part (second turn) deliver the answer or
response of the previous speaker. While according to Anthony J. Liddicoat in his
book An Introduction to Conversation Analysis, “in conversation we notice that
many turns at talk occur sa pairs. A greeting is conventionally followed by
another greeting, a farewell by a farewell, a question by an answer.” (Liddicoat,
2007).

Also mentioned in Anthony’s book that continues his definition, the

statement of Schegloff and Sacks (1973) called these sorts of paired utterances
adjacency pairs and these adjacency pairs are the basic unit on which sequences in
conversation are built. They divided adjacency pairs into some features such as
(1)consist of two turns, (2) by different speakers, (3) which are placed next to
each other in their basic minimal form, (4) which are ordered, and (5) which are
differentiated into pair types.

This paper is part of conversation analysis that conversation analysis itself

is an approach to studying social interactions include the verbal and non-verbal
behavior in everyday life situations. Conversation analysis originated as a
sociological method, but since that time it has spread to other fields. And it began
to focus on casual conversation, but its methods were later adapted to embrace
more task and institutional centered interactions, such as that which occurs in
doctor’s offices, courts, law enforcement, helplines, educational environments,
and the mass media.

This paper analyze about the adjacency pair that appeared in The Late
Show with Stephen Colbert with a guest star of a famous actor—Jackie chan. This
talk show is an American late-night show that hosted by Stephen Colbert. This
talk show was chosen as the object of analysis because it is such an interesting
show with the famous guest star. As we know that a talk show is an event where a
host will ask some questions to the guest stars, and it definitely relates to the
adjacency pairs that we will analyze. To analyze this research, we need research
questions to make the goals of this article achieved clearly. And the research
question of this article (1) what kind of adjacency pairs appears in The Late Show
with Stephen Colbert between Stephen Colbert and Jackie Chan? (2)how many or
frequency of using adjacency pairs in each type? And the objectivity of this article
is clear that it is to find out the kinds of adjacency pairs and to find out the
frequency of it uses that appear in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
THEORITICAL REVIEW

This research is a conversation analysis which is part of the field of study

Discourse Analysis. And this article uses the theory of Schegloff and Sacks who
are the founder of conversation analysis.

Emanuel Abraham Schegloff is the creator of the field of Conversation

Analysis who was born in New York, in 1937. He studied journalism at the
Hebrew Teacher’s College from 1953 to 1957 and was awarded a Bachelor of
Journalism at the end of his study.

Another founder of conversation analysis is Harvey Sacks who was born

on July 19, 1935. He was an American sociologist influenced by the
ethnomethodology tradition.

METHODS

This research uses qualitative method as the research design. This research
will be more conducted in description to answer the research question from the
data sources which is the conversation in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. It
also relates to the statement delivered by Crocker (2009) that qualitative research
entails collecting primarily textual data and examining it using interpretive
analysis.

The data of this research was collected by accessing the internet. The data
is the form of video that was downloaded in youtube with the youtube channel
named The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. We analyzed the video by collecting
the conversation text in the video. Firstly, we watched the video and wrote the
utterances delivered both from the host and the guest. After that we determine
which parts are adjacency pairs in the utterances and in what form or types the
adjacency pairs are. In this research we discuss and present the results of the
research by lot of descriptions, therefore we use qualitative as a research method.
RESULT & DISCUSSION

This research of adjacency pairs is the part of conversation analysis. The

conversation analysis itself is the study of social interaction includes the verbal
and nonverbal conduct in our daily life. Using conversation analysis, we can
easily understand what has delivered in the conversation. Adjacency pair is one of
the aspects of conversation analysis. According to Schegloff & Sacks (1973) there
are many examples of adjacency pairs including Questions-Answers, Offering-
Acceptance/Refusal, Complaint-Excuse/Remedy and Compliment-Response. And
these examples of adjacency pairs will be the types that will be the object of the
analysis.

1. COMPLIMENT-RESPONSE
JACKIE : “What a lovely audiences!”
STEPHEN : “They love you too.”
This conversation is a compliment delivered by Jackie Chan after seeing
the enthusiasm of the audience and responding/answered by Stephen.

2. QUESTION-ANSWER
STEPHEN : “Can you go anywhere in the world without somebody
saying, ‘hey’, ‘do’?”
JACKIE : “I remember a long time ago. Time we were filming in
Africa, in the middle of the jungle. I came back with about 100 children,
and everybody do this (act like people taking picture). I said ‘how they
know me? In the middle of nowhere. Three years ago, I was on an island
where they have only 20.000 people there. When I driving by the street,
the whole island is ‘Jackie.. Jackie…’ I asked the driver, why they know
me?”
This conversation is part of Question-Answer because it is only a question
that is usually asked on talk shows about things related to guest stars, and
answered by the guest star based on his experiences.
3. OFFERING-ACCEPTANCE
STEPHEN : “Are you going to make a movie with Stallone?”
JACKIE : “Sure, I hope so!”
This conversation is an offering because the host asks about a parable of
an offer.

4. QUESTION-ANSWER
STEPHEN : “When you were young, you studied at Drama Academy
which is the Peking Opera. What is that mean ‘Ooooooo….’ In Peking
Opera?
JACKIE : “A long time ago, in China, there was evolution. So many
people escaped from China to Hong Kong. So in our school, in the
morning, we were learning singing, aaaaa, then afternoon punch and
kicking. All kind of the teacher, they come to our school.

5. QUESTION-ANSWER
STEPHEN : “How old were you at this point?”
JACKIE : “Seven!”

6. QUESTION-ANSWER
STEPHEN : “What kind of training? Like, was it tough training?”
JACKIE : “Ohh, you just don’t believe it. In the morning, with a cup
full of tea, water, we run like this. You cannot spill the water. You spill the
water, they’ll hit you. We’re just walking like this, and 1000 punch and
500 kicks.”

7. QUESTION-ANSWER
STEPHEN : “And singing?”
JACKIE : “And singing, summersault!”
8. COMPLIMENT-RESPONSE
STEPHEN : “You’re literally a triple threat, actor, singer, and punch
you in the face”
JACKIE : “And doing the same thing at the same time”
STEPHEN : “Wooww”

9. QUESTION-ANSWER
STEPHEN : “And, was this meant to train you to go into martial arts
movies or just a..?”
JACKIE : “No, I just. I don’t know. Because my father was, at that
time, was in the American embassy. And I was in Hong Kong in a
boarding school, we stayed there for ten years. I don’t know what. I just
training every day.”

10. QUESTION-ANSWER
STEPHEN : “So, ten years means 7 to 17?”
JACKIE : “Yeahh, one day the director came to our school, then
choose some child actors. Then from that time, I keep filming 57 years
until now.”

11. COMPLIMENT-RESPONSE
STEPHEN : “I just found this out, you revealed ‘Rush Hour 4’ is in the
works.”
JACKIE : “Finally. Finally, in 7 years after Karate Kid, then I have
so many scripts. And they sent to me scripts police from Hong Kong,
police from China, C.I.A from Hong Kong, C.I.A from China. I said, can I
have something different like ‘Mamma Mia!’ or like ‘La-La Land’”

12. COMPLAINT
STEPHEN : “Stop casting me as a Chinese guy, not fair!”
 JACKIE : “Yes… always comedy. I said I wanna change. If by the
time I cannot fight anymore, I cannot comedy anymore. If I change to
actor, nobody accept it. So for the last 20 years, I keep changing, let
audiences know I’m the actor who can fight, not a fighter who can act.”
This conversation is a Complaint because it is complaining about Jackie’s
condition at that time.

13. QUESTION-ANSWER
STEPHEN : “Who do you play in ‘The Foreigner?’”
JACKIE : “I’m the ordinary people hiding in London. Open a
Chinese Restaurant. Suddenly, my daughter gets killed. I let the police
department help me, but they say ‘Yeahh..Yeahh’. but nothing happened.
It takes a long time. Then I just, find him by myself. Later on, they find
out, who is this gentlemen. Then they find out I have special background, I
train for the special forces, navy seal and I just find out who killed my
daughter.”

After analyzing the existing data based on the video, it can be found 13
conversations which are adjacency pairs. And in the conversation, there are
adjacency pairs in the form of Question-Answer, Offering-Acceptance,
Complaint-Excuse, and Compliment-Response. From the 13 conversation,
Question-Answer is the most commonly used adjacency pairs in The Late Show
with Stephen Colbert with Jackie Chan, that is 8 data (61%), then Compliment-
Response with 3 data (23,07%), Offering-Acceptance 1 data (7,69%), and
Complaint-Excuse 1 data (7,69%).

CONCLUSION

Conversation is an activity that we often do and is attached to social

activities in human life. In a conversation, there can appear or there must be
adjacency pairs. In the conversation that occurred in The Late Show with Stephen
Colbert with Jackie Chan as the guest star, several adjacency pairs were found in
the form of Question-Answer, Offering-Acceptance, Complaint-Excuse, and
Compliment-Response. The frequency of using the adjacency pairs in this video
has different frequencies. There are 8 data (61,5%) of Question-Answer, 3 data
(23,07%) of Compliment-Response, 1 data (7,69%) of Offering-Acceptance, and
also 1 data (7,69%) of Complaint-Excuse. From the data above, we can make a
conclusion that Question-Answer is the most commonly used in adjacency pairs
in the conversation in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert with Jackie Chan.

REFERENCES

Liddicoat, A. J. (2007). An Introduction to Conversation Analysis. London:

Athenaeum Press Ltd.

Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press

Schegloff, E.A, (2006). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in

Conversation Analysis I. New York: Cambridge University Press.