The model designed by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson provides an empirically grounded account of what happens when more than one persons talk at once in a conversation. It undertakes to specify when such occurrences are problematic for the participants and for the organization of the interaction, and which are the features of such overlapping-talk.

Several classes of overlapping talk appear to be treated in a conversation and they do not correspond to an account of overlap management or overlap resolution. Overlapping talk from separate conversations is not a departure from a constraint to have one speaker at a time in a single conversation. There are four configurations of simultaneous talk:1. Terminal overlaps when a speaker finishes his turn and there starts the next turn, but overlaps a bit of its end;

2. Continuers (such as uh huh) which offer the opportunity to take a full turn, while the current speaker produces an extended turn or discourse unit that is not yet complete;

3. Conditional acces to the turn in which the intervention of a recipient of a not-yet-complete turn is accommodated within the turns space as long as that talk furthers the project of the turn-in-progress;

4. Choral phenomena such as laughter, congratulations, are either mandated or allowed to be produced in concert.

Schegloff explains the importance of such a device, as they are part of turn-taking organization, to be able to resolve cases when turn-taking practices fail to ensure the orderly distribution of opportunities to participate in social interaction, following a principle of one party speaking at a time, which is important for the social organization.

Schegloff identifies two types of resources and a set of rules for turn-taking organization between participants to ensure a perfect transition between the end of the current speaker and the occupation of the next talking turn by the different parties. The first resource is a turn-constructional resource which are types of units of talk called turn-constructional units. These are recognizable by participants as a signal when the current party speaking is about to finish his turn, allowing a new speaker to begin, and they happen in sentential, clausal, phrasal and lexical forms. The second resource is a turn-allocational resource which would allocate the next speaking turn to the part of the preceding speaker or for the participants at the conversation to claim the turn space. In other cases, when a speaker has ended and there is no deploying of the turn-allocational resource, the original speaker may continue.There are several major outcomes of such competitions. Firstly, many overlaps are resolved after a single beat by one or both parties at the first evidence that simultaneous talk is in progress . Secondly, overlaps that survive the first beat, a great many end within one beat after one of the speakers upgrades the talk to competitive production, the resolution being implemented by a cutoff by the recipient of the upgrade. Often, the first move to competitive production occurs in the second or third beat of the overlap. A consequence of these observations is that, by the third beat, the vast majority of overlaps have been resolved to a single speaker. Many such episodes represent turn-taking miscues, by involving little interactional investment by the parties.

There are also other orientations to manage overlaps:

1. Persistence in completion by continuing to speak regardless of other participants use of resources. This form is powerful due to the non-recognition of the rules and intends of the strategies of the overlap resolution management.2. Projecting a thrust into a turn in order to change the topic of conversation.3. Use of sequential strategies to achieve ones motives, such as withdrawing then restarting after another speaker to orient the conversation to ones own way.

The system of resources and practices, together with the overlap resolution device and alternative orientations thus serve as a guide for participants to establish a temporal order for talk-in-interaction. In the instances of overlaps, participants take on different modes of production (e.g. single, competitive, resolution/normalizing) and take on contingent strategies to negotiate for turn space for achieving their motives.Adult Romanian Women

Age group: 20-25

Iulia: Have you been at the dressmaker?

Maria: u:h I was hell

Iulia: why? [we:ll didnt you say ] that youll go today

Maria: [we:ll ( ) ]

Iulia: [when you've given her the materials?

Maria: about a month or so ago

Iulia: o::h ( )

Maria: so before Saint Dumitru =

Iulia: = look Im very curious cuz yesterday she took my me::asures

Maria: =uhum=

Iulia: =Im curious to see when shell gonna call me for the fitting, cuz if she calls me for fitting and it gets cool immediately after its gonna be you knowready =

Maria: = uhummm

Iulia: well Ive told you to Hele- she has made a suit:: to Helena jacket and skirt with lining in three days

Maria: ( )

Iulia: it was ready it three days and she already gave it to her

Maria: oh but she knows

Iulia: very well, yes =

Maria: = uhum

Romanian Adult Men

Age group: 20-25 tefan: = see how many we go, man :

If we go few::er

Radu: but who said that certainly comes?

tefan: cert::ain cert::ain dan will come

Radu: uhum

tefan: now cert::ain cert::ain will mary come too if dan comes

Radu: thats it::

tefan: me, another babe that you dont know

Radu: from you?

tefan: uhum, the one that-

Radu: roxana wont come?

tefan: and Roxa:na will come, yes

Radu: she comes with rex?

tefan: I dont know if she comes with or without rex

I dont know for sure, but she said she will come.

Radu: tell tell her to come without cuz I come too. The separate left brackets one above the other on two successive lines with utterances by different speakers, indicate the point of overlap onset. Equal signs come in pairs: one at the end of a line and another at the start of the next line or one line shortly thereafter. They are used to indicate the following:

1. If the two lines connected by equal signs are by the same speaker, then there was a single continuous utterance, with no break or pause, which was broken up in order to accommodate the placement of overlapping talk.

2. If the lines connected by two equal signs are by different speakers, then the second followed the first with no discernable silence between them or was lathed to it.

Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the sound just preceding them. The more colons, the longer the stretching. On the other hand, graphically stretching a word on the page by inserting blank spaces between the letters does not indicate how it was pronounced; it is used to allow alignment with overlapping talk.

Empty parentheses indicate that something is being said, but no hearing, or in some cases speaker identification, can be achieved.

The up arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch than would be indicated by combinations of colons and underlining, or they may mark a whole shift or resetting of pitch register at which the talk is being produced.

According to Lakoff, a list of sentences was devised to incorporate the features which distinguished mens and womens speech styles. On the one hand, there are some distinctive features of womens language which include womens preference for euphemism, hypercorrect forms, adjectives, small talk, tag-questions and which emphasize their lack of self-confidence. On the other hand, men are said to be self-confident, direct and objective. The way they use language has no impact on their public image and consequently they can freely choose to be either polite or vulgar. It is obvious from the list that women use to overlap and to interrupt the interlocutor much more than men.

To conclude, this empirical research on language and gender grounded account of the different way in which women and men use language. By identifying these feminine and masculine features of language use whose existence is supported by empirical evidence, sociolinguists and discourse theorists a distinction between some of the gender-related stereotypes and linguistic facts. . It undertakes to specify when such occurrences are problematic for the participants, and for the organization of interaction; what the features of such overlapping talk are; and what constraints an account of overlapping talk should meet.Bibliography: Schegloff Emanuel, Account of Conduct in Interaction, Chapter 15, Interruption, Overlap, and Turn-Talking, pages 285-3165