Abstract
This cross-language study aims to examine both expected and unexpected communication phenomena of silence intervals and overlapping speech events, respectively. Specifically, we investigate these interaction patterns in relation to speakers' self-pauses, considering their relative frequency and duration. Our research holds significance in offering cross-linguistic insights, which we accomplish by analyzing the behavior of politicians and TV hosts during political interview panels in four languages: Brazilian Portuguese, German, Hebrew, and Italian. Our findings reveal linguistic (and potentially cultural) differences in the timing of turn taking in the interviews. Notably, Israeli and Italian politicians exhibit quicker responses and comments compared to their counterparts in German and Brazilian Portuguese languages, who demonstrate a tendency for larger gaps before a turn is taken. Moreover, Hebrew and Italian speakers engage in more frequent overlapping speech, interrupting their interlocutors' turns, in contrast to German and Brazilian Portuguese speakers. Building upon these results, we propose silence-based definitions for two conversational styles: "high involvement" languages and "high considerateness" languages (Tannen, 1994), also conceptualized as "word cultures" and "silence cultures" by Agliati et al. (2005).