A CONVERSATION ANALYSIS OF INTERRUPTION IN HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL MOVIE SERIES

Abstract

This research focuses on attaining two objectives, i.e. to reveal the types and the functions of interruption in High School Musical movie series. As the research design, a mixed-method design was applied where a qualitative approach was employed as the primary method supported by  a quantitative approach as the secondary method. In this research, the researcher played a role as the key instrument while a data sheet, a movie player and transcripts of the dialogues served as the secondary instruments. The data were collected through note-taking technique. In analysing the data, the researcher conducted a textual analysis. The results of the research are as follows. Four types of interruption are found, i.e. simple, overlap, butting-in, and silent interruption. The highest number of occurrence is achieved by simple interruption, whereas the lowest one is equally possessed by butting-in and silent interruption. Furthermore, there are 10 functions of interruption derived from three categories of function. The first category, namely intrusive, contains five functions which consist of disagreement, rejection, floor-taking, topic-change, and tangentialization. The second category, which is cooperative, has four functions, viz, agreement, assistance, clarification, and collaborative completion. The third category called neutral only comprises one function, i.e. neutral function. The findings show that floor-taking is mostly performed in the movie series while assistance, in contrast, is the least frequent function carried out by the characters in the movie series. Based on the findings, it can be inferred that the characters in the movie series are inclined to share their own ideas by taking each other’s floor and are less likely to help each other when they experience problems of speaking.

Keywords: conversation analysis, interruption, High School Musical movie series