Adjacency Pairs in English Textbooks Entitled Bright: An English Course and When English Rings A Bell: A Comparative Study

Abstract

In either spoken or written conversation, the utterances come in pairs to indicate topic’s relatedness. The pairs of utterances are known as adjacency pairs. This study analyzed the adjacency pairs within two English textbooks entitled Bright: An English Course and When English Rings A Bell. The objectives of this study were (1) revealing the types of adjacency pairs in Bright: An English Course, (2) revealing the types of adjacency pairs in When English Rings A Bell, and (3) revealing the comparisons of adjacency pairs between both textbooks. This study used a qualitative descriptive method. The main theory used is conversation analysis theory proposed by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1978). Written conversations in two English textbooks were collected and analyzed as the data. The findings reveal that five types of adjacency pairs were found in the first textbook, and seven types of adjacency pairs emerged in the second textbook. The comparisons between two textbooks show that the first textbook has greater numbers of adjacency pairs. In addition, types of adjacency pairs in the first textbooks are less varied than the second textbook. Furthermore, the most frequent adjacency pairs in both textbooks is Question-Answer with 64% emergence in the first textbook and 43% in the second textbook. It can be concluded that the use of adjacency pairs in conversation does not have strict rules. A talk-in-interaction may apply any adjacency pairs type without minimal or maximal amount. A conversation may have more than one type of adjacency pairs during a particular time.