Collocation is a habitual combination of words within language, while an adjacency pair is a two-turn conversational structure in which one speaker’s turn makes a particular kind of response expected. They belong to different levels of analysis: collocation is lexical, adjacency pairs are interactional.[ladal.edu][studocu]
Core difference
| Feature | Collocation | Adjacency pair |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Words that commonly occur together | Two related turns by different speakers |
| Level | Lexis / phraseology | Conversation / discourse |
| Focus | Word combinations | Social interaction and turn-taking |
| Example | make a decision, heavy rain | Question → answer; greeting → greeting |
| Relation | One word predicts another word | First turn creates an expectation for the second turn |
Collocations are recurrent word partnerships, such as strong tea rather than normally powerful tea, or make a decision rather than do a decision. They may be adjacent, but they can also occur with words in between.[ladal.edu][files.eric.ed]
Collocation
A collocation is a combination of two or more words that co-occur more frequently than chance would predict. It is about which words naturally go together.[ladal.edu][ucrel.lancs.ac]
Examples:
- heavy rain — not usually strong rain
- make a decision — not usually do a decision
- fast food
- take medicine
- commit a crime
In text analysis, you might identify provide information as a collocation; it can even appear non-adjacent, as in “provide some of the information.”[files.eric.ed][site.uottawa]
Adjacency pair
An adjacency pair is a sequence of two conversational turns: a first pair part and a second pair part. The first turn creates an expectation that the next turn will perform a related action.[studocu]
Examples:
- Question → Answer: “Where do you live?” → “In Salatiga.”
- Greeting → Greeting: “Good morning.” → “Good morning.”
- Invitation → Acceptance/declination: “Would you like coffee?” → “Yes, please.”
- Complaint → Apology: “You arrived late.” → “I’m sorry.”
- Compliment → Response: “I like your presentation.” → “Thank you.”
The two turns are linked by their conversational function, not by word frequency.[studocu]
Quick illustration
A: “Could you close the window?”
B: “Sure.”
Here, request → acceptance is an adjacency pair. Within A’s utterance, close the window is a natural word combination, but the key interactional pattern is the request followed by an appropriate response.[studocu]
In short: collocations link words; adjacency pairs link speakers’ turns.[ladal.edu][studocu]
