Lesson4: Conversation

Analysis: PART 1.

The nature of spoken discourse:

Speaking tends to be:
Transient: time bound (temporary: only
for a short period of time).
Dynamic: (energetic, constantly
changing and evolving) face to face,
phone...
Interactive: two way flow
information/close/influencing each other,
as it involves feedback and back channels
(facial expressions and body language
communication/ interruption..).
Phatic: suitable for establishing and
maintaining relationships.
Spontaneous: fast, which makes
planning difficult.
Informal: it can be informal SOMETIMES
as it is used to convey less important
messages compared to writing.
Example: institutional speeches are often
rehearsed and planned (not
spontaneous + Not interactive:
delivered by one person + formal
register).
The nature of spoken discourse:
stereotype vs. Reality:
Stereotype:
• people speak in complete sentences.
• people take well defined turns.
• people carefully listen to each other.
•people produce balanced amounts of
speech.
Reality:
• people often share in the sentences they
produce.
• people interrupt each other.
• people do not pay attention to everything
that is being said.
• people produce a discourse where the
contributions of the participants are wildly
asymmetrical (unbalanced).
---> Yet all of this produces a perfectly,
normal, successful conversation.

The distinctive features of

spoken discourse:
1. Fragmentation:
We speak in utterances (short stretches
of language).they can be complete or
incomplete meaning fragmented due to
unclear boundaries and overlaps between
participants.
2. Non-fluency:
•Unfilled pauses => silent.
•Filled pauses => usage of er, em, mm,
a-ha, like, I mean...
•Repetition, rephrasing-response
tokens/signals (minimal or supportive
comments).
•Hesitation, false starts.
3. Ellipsis:
The omission of words, both grammatical
and lexical => "Can you call him?" "Will
do".
4. Fronting/ tails:
Putting the object, complement or
adverbial at the beginning of the
sentence or clause (fronting) or by putting
the subject at the end (tailing), we
can shift the focus and emphasis in an
utterance.
Examples: Mike, he is so nice./ Great
place, Rome.
5. Deixis:
the use of general words and phrases
to refer to a specific time, place, or
person in context, e.g., the words
tomorrow, there, and they. Example: I
told her./See you tomorrow.
6. Vague language and lexical
creativity:
Vague expressions: We should go there
or something.
Invented or non-sense expressions: slay
Obscenity: usage of obscene words and
foul language. Example: curse words.
7. Prosody (Paralanguage):
The patterns of rhythm, intonation, and
stress in a language.
The main prosodic features are:
A. intonation: rising or falling. Details:
Rising in yes/no questions, and rising then
falling in wh- questions, and falling in
statements.
B. Rhythm: which depends on stress.
Example: What did you say? What did
you say?
C. Pitch: louder or softer speech.
D. Pace: slower or faster speech.

Side note: prosodic features are quite

difficult to convey in writing.

What is a conversation?
Definition: a conversation is using
language in social context to interact and
communicate with others that involves two
or more participants.
•The number of participants and length of
contributions can vary.
•It is open-ended (have no determined
limit) and can develop in any way.
•There is no thing such as a correct
conversation, but this latter is not
unruled.
•It is a series of speech acts : greetings,
inquiries, comments, congratulations,
invitations, requests, refusals, denials,
accusations, promises, and farewells.
•To accomplish these speech acts, some
organization is essential:
taking turns when speaking,
answering questions, marking the
beginning and end of a conversation,
and making corrections when needed.

What is Conversation Analysis?

Definition1: it is the study of talk
produced in the course of ordinary human
interactions. Sociologist Harvey Sacks is
the founder of this discipline (1935-1975).
Definition2: it is an approach to the
analysis of spoken discourse that studies
how people manage their every day
conversational interactions. Details: it
examines how spoken discourse is
organized and developed as
speakers carry out interactions.
How does it work? Using recordings
(audio and video of naturally occurring talk
and interaction) of data and analyses
these recordings.
•Conversation Analysis studies real life
situations to determine turn taking,
organization, silence and repairing
problems, sequence of utterances and
transcription.
•Conversation Analysis aims to
describe, analyze, and understand talk as
a basic constitutive feature of human
social life.
•The term interaction/conversation can
be applied in many social encounters for
example: professor talking to a
student/ a doctor asking a patient/ a
woman chatting with a shop keeper...

Conversation Analysis
Objectives:
C.A aims to:
• discover how participants understand
and respond to one another in their turns
at talk.
• uncover the unmentioned reasoning
procedures and sociolinguistic
competencies underlying the production
and interpretation of talk in organized
sequences.

The maxims of conversation:

A conversation is governed by
maxims/rules that structures how it works:
1. Openings and closings.
2. Adjacency pairs.
3.Turn takings.
4. Feedbacks.
5. Repair.
6. Response tokens.
7. Discourse markers.
8. Preference organization.

Openings and closings:

It plays a big role which determines how
the conversation will be
started(opener/opening) and
finished(closed/closing), and how the
conversation will be going on.
Adjacency pairs: (nextness)
It is composed of two utterances by two
speakers, one after the other. The
speaking of the first utterance (the first-
pair part, or the first turn) provokes a
predictable responding utterance (the
second-pair part, or the second turn).
Other definition: it is a two-part exchange
where the second utterance depends on
the first. It is a type of turn taking and is
considered the smallest unit of
conversational exchange.
Example/types of adjacency pairs:
•Question-answer.
•Greeting-greeting.
•Invitation-acceptance/non-acceptance.
•Complaint-apology/denial.
•Thanks-acknowledgement.
•Promise-acknowledgement.
Example:
Offer/Refusal:
A: Do you need help in this? B: No, thank
you.
Summon/Answer:
A: Can someone come here? B: I'll be
right there.
==>Characteristics:
1. Consist of two utterances.
2. The utterances are adjacent: one
follows the other immediately.
3. Different speakers produce each
utterance.

Important to note: not all first parts

recieve their second part immediately. It
often happen that in a question-answer,
the second part (answer) is delayed while
another question-answer intervenes. It will
then take the following form => Q1-Q2-A2-
A1.
This is called an insertion sequence.
About this delay:
=> The delay indicates that not all first
parts recieve the expected second
parts.
=> The delay in response marks
potential unavailability of the expected
answer.
=> The delay represents the distance
between what is expected and what is
provided.
=> The delay is interpreted as
meaningful.

Turn takings:
Turn-taking occurs when one person
listens while the other person speaks.
As a conversation progresses, the
listener and speaker roles are
exchanged back and forth.
Other definition: it is a term for the
manner in which orderly conversation
takes place. It's a basic feature of human
conversation where participants don't
converse/talk in a disorderly manner.
---> P1 speaks, P2 listens, P1 stops
speaking, P2 speaks and P1 listens.
This goes on until
the conversation is done.
•A turn (basic small unit of conversation)
may contain many illocutions
(everything a speaker communicates
during conversation/ the speaker's
intention).
==>Characteristics of turn taking:
•Organization of conversation.
•Speaker-change occurs.
•One speaker speaks/talks at a time.
•Transition from one turn to another
without a gap or overlap.
•Turn oder or size is not fixed.
•Length and topic is not specified in
advance.
•Speaker may select other speakers, or
parties may self select in starting to talk.
Turn construction and Turn eliciting
signals:
Turns are made of TCU's {Turn
Construction Units} is the fundamental
segment of speech in a conversation =
utterance.
=> it stands for the different pieces
making up a conversation, and may
have the length of an entire turn( it can
be phrases,
sentences, clauses, or single words).
=> a crucial feature of TCUs is that they
are predictable : a hearer can predict
what it will take for a turn to be
complete.
The completion point of a TCU is a TRP
{Transition Relevance Place}: a point in
speech which marks the end (point of
potential end) of a TCU and declares
that the turn moves to another speaker,
or that the same speaker is about to
make another TCU.

Side note1: the dominant refereeing

tone/ dominant speaker: a speaker using
their tone=> rising tone rather than falling
tone while ending a TCU, expecting not to
be interrupted as this latter is not finished
yet.

Side note2: We able to predict the end

of somebody's speech thanks to:
Adjacency pairs ; change of speed
delivery ; intonation ; word-choice
patterns.
Competitive vs cooperative
overlapping:
Overlapping: simultaneous talk: two
people speaking at the same time.
•Researchers look at how this overlapping
works, meaning how this latter affects
power balance, and the rapport
(relationship) between the speakers.
--->Cooperative overlaps are more
supportive of the main speaker's floor
rights, and the intention is to keep the
attention on the main speaker's point.
--->Competitive overlaps are disruptive
and pose threats to the current speaker's
territory by disrupting the process
and/or content of the ongoing
conversation.
Turn taking and culture:
Cultural differences in turn taking can lead
to: conversational breakdown,
misinterpretation of intention, and
interpersonal intergroup conflict.
Side note: the rules of turn taking in
formal situations (considered rude
behavior/ can lead to canceling
businesses: highlights the importance
of listening and having good manners,
respect, and the willingness to work
together) is not the same as casual
situations (can be regarded as
normal/slightly annoying).

Repair: (fixing a problem)

Encountering problems of hearing (the
hearer cannot make out what the
speaker is saying), speaking (using the
wrong word or not finding the exact
word the speaker wants), and
understanding (not recognizing a
particular word, not knowing the topic
of the conversation, not being able to
break down and parse the grammatical
structure of an utterance), and aiming to
repair/fix them.
Repair mechanism => dealing with turn
taking errors and violations.
Repair occurs when a speaker needs to
repeat, reformulate the utterance in order
to correct what was being said or to
clarify. It can be self-repair (done by the
speaker of the repairable item) other-
repair (done by the recipient/hearer).
It can be done by:
Pauses, hesitation markers: em, er..
Words: Pardon? Who? Did you say X?
Substituting: using a simpler word.
Cases of repair:
Self-initiated => self-repair.
Other-initiated => self-repair.
Self-initiated => other-repair.
Other-initiated => other-repair.

Discourse markers:
(Discourse connective/pragmatic
marker), is a particle that is used to
direct or redirect the flow of a
conversation and keep it organized.
Discourse markers in spoken discourse:
Oh; like; you know; basically; well;
actually; yeah; really; anyway; ok.

There are two functional classes of

discourse markers:
1. Local markers: "I mean" "well" mark
micro structures, within a topic.
2. Global markers: "anyway" used to
signal transition from one topic to
another.
Some linguistics added two more
classes:
1. Reception markers: signals the
reaction of the recipient to the
information received "oh" "really" "yeah"...
2. Presentation markers: modify
information presented by the speaker
"like" "you know" "I mean"...

Side note: there also other markers that

are non linguistic: rise in pitch => start of a
new topic.
Discourse markers' functions:
Discourse markers are used to:
•Initiate discourse.
•To aid the speaker in holding the floor.
•To mark a boundary in discourse
(shift/partial shift in topic).
•To introduce a response or reaction.
•To serve as a filler or delaying tactic.
•To bracket/enclose the discourse
cataphorically or anaphorically.
•To indicate orientation to what is
happening in the discourse.
Back channels:
Describe feedback that is given by a
hearer in order to indicate that they are
attending to someone else's speech.

Back channels can be:

Non-verbal => nods, gestures or facial
expressions.
Verbal => words like yeah, ok, right...
Vocalizations => mm, uh-huh...
Important to note: It can include a part
where a hearer becomes a potential active
interlocutor by completing a part of a
speaker's turn or giving
acknowledgement such as mhm, I see,
yes, really?, I see which endorse
(approve/support) or query (question)
the speaker's words without actually
interrupting the other's flow.

10 reasons we use discourse markers:

1. To describe something: it's kind
of...how shall I put it...like weird.
2. To show that one's thinking: hang on
a moment I basically...no money?
3. To make a statement less harsh: well
your outfit has a little um spot there.
4. To make a statement stronger:
actually, I think you're gorgeous.
5. To make a statement weaker: well, if
you ask me, she isn't that cute, isn't she?
6. To express a different opinion: To be
frank/
To be honest/in fact.
7. To stall (intentionally cause a delay)
for time: Uhh, um, well, you see, how can
I explain this....
8. To look for words: let me think, um it's
on the tip of my tongue, er..
9. To ask for feedback: omg she killed
her husband, can you believe it?
10. To sound natural and fluent: like
native speakers...

Conversation and culture:

Conversation patterns and organization
vary from one culture to another:
In English => turn taking: A-B-A-B-A-B.
End of talk signaled with intonation,
gestures, stressed or lengthening
syllables, or using expressions like "you
know".
In other languages => it might not apply
(example: Hindi, Japanese, Middle
East...).
Floor: the right to be listened to and
speak. Speakers share the floor by taking
turns to
utilize it.
Floor =>
In America: men tend to demand the floor
more frequently as they are usually
initiating and maintaining topics.
In India: Older participants have the right
to initiate conversation, maintain the floor
and yield it.
In other cultures: older males initiate,
maintain, and control the floor.
Back channelling=> cues that signal
attention and encourage the speaker to
continue.
The duration and frequency of back
channeling behavior varies from one
culture to another. Example: japanese
people use it more and frequently, and for
longer duration.
Simultaneous talk: is normally
considered rude in inner speech
communities.
Rhythmic coordination: patterning of
speech and non verbal body movements.