Co-construction of turns at talk: Active listening or disruptions in conversation with persons who stutter?

The present study applies conversation analysis in order to describe the form and function of co-constructed turns in conversations involving one or more persons who stutter. Co-constructed turns are turns at talk that are produced by more than one speaker in such a way that the turn is initiated by one speaker and completed by another. Examples in the data are classified according to an existing taxonomy distinguishing between slot fillers, extensions and completions. All these types are found in our data, albeit to different extents. External as well as internal reasons for this distributional variation are discussed. The main aim of the study is to illustrate the need for qualitative, context-sensitive approaches to research on verbal interaction in the field of fluency disorders and to focus on some clinical implications of such research findings.