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In outlining the socio-linguistic implications of turn-taking in conversation analysis, this thesis covers the basic terminology and includes some of the more recent research in the field of applied conversational linguistics. The findings lead to the social implications to be drawn from this schematic for analysis and introduce turn-taking as part of the social language games that form our communication behaviour in our environment. It shows how certain turn-taking strategies are a crucial social lubricant in our day-to-day life, in part because they are so embedded in the way we understand our position within the rules and confines of this social game, how these work and what exactly they achieve.

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Laila Balke earned her Master´s degree in Specialized Translating at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences in 2012. She works as an English teacher, translator and author in Cologne, Germany.

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