Airstream mechanism refers to the mechanism by which air pressure or airflow is created in order to power speech production. The most basic and universal is the pulmonic airstream mechanism, whereby the lungs power an egressive airflow that produces both an airstream and a heightened air pressure when the vocal tract is blocked. The glottalic airstream mechanism involves vertical movement of the larynx with closed glottis, pushing air upward or drawing air in. This mechanism produces ejectives (glottalized consonants) and implosives. The velaric airstream mechanism produces clicks and is powered by tongue movements. Esophageal speech is produced by a controlled release of air from the esophagus (i.e., belching) in which the vibration of the esophageal sphincter substitutes for the vibration of the vocal folds.

This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the resources Southeast Asian and Caribbean speakers of English use to claim or hold a turn at talk. Four larger strategy groups are described and compared: latches and overlaps, phonetic resources, lexical resources, and syntactic strategies. The chapter describes how these are realised by the individual speaker groups and compares this to previous research on Inner Circle Englishes. It can be shown that speaker groups essentially have access to the same set of resources but exhibit different preferences with respect to which strategies they prefer for organising turn-taking in conversational interaction.