Managing Third-Party Interruptions in Conversations: Effects of Duration and Conversational Role Adrian Bangerter, 1 Eric Chevalley, 1 and Sylvie Derouwaux 1 Abstract Dealing with interruptions in collaborative tasks involves two important processes: managing the face of one’s partners and collaboratively reconstructing the topic. In an experiment, pairs were interrupted while narrating personal stories. The duration of the interruption and the conversational role of the target were manipulated. Listeners were more polite than narrators, and longer suspensions caused more effort in reinstatement than short suspensions, but participants were not more polite when suspensions were long. Keywords interruptions, collaborative tasks, conversation, narrative Interruptions of conversations by third parties are commonplace. For example, people conversing in a restaurant might be interrupted by the waiter. In such situations, people manage their original conversation and the interruption. They typically suspend the original (primary) conversation, deal with the interruption (initiating a secondary conversation), and reinstate the primary conversation. This involves two processes: reconstructing the primary topic and managing partners’ face (C hevalley & B angerter, in press). The present study explores how the conversational role of the person inter- rupted (the target) affects these processes. 1 University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland Corresponding Author: Adrian Bangerter, Institut de Psychologie du Travail et des Organisations, Université de Neuchâtel, Rue de la Maladière 23, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland Email: adrian.bangerter@unine.ch Published in Journal of Language and Social Psychology 29, issue 2, 235-244, 2010 which should be used for any reference to this work 1