[The decision to speak]

The decission "to speak", that is, to begin an utterance in an informal interactive situation, conveys information about decissions of the speaker, but also about those of other participants, especially when the outcome of that act--whether in fact the subject was allowed to "ocupy the channel", etc.--is analyzed. This variable seems to be of relevance for the study of the development of what has been named in the literature on communication the "definition of the relationship". In this paper, the decission to speak is explored both descriptively as well as through the dicussion of the result of a research project on interactional processes.