The turn-taking system of buying and selling conversation in Sicily: Analysis of shop and market talk

Buying and selling conversation occurs only in specific contexts (mainly shops and markets), deals with a main topic (the action of selling and buying a product), and is carried out by speakers who are assigned two precise roles: ‘shopkeeper’ and ‘customer’. This paper seeks to examine to what extent the context in which buying and selling transactions in Sicily are carried out affects the structure of turn-taking.