TOPIC 5

ORAL COMMUNICATION. ELEMENTS AND RULES GOVERNING ORAL

DISCOURSE. ROUTINES AND FORMULAE. ORAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES.

TEMA 5

LA COMUNICACION ORAL, ELEMENTOS Y NORMAS QUE RIGEN EL DISCURSO

ORAL. RUTINAS Y FORMULAS HABITUALES. ESTRATEGIAS PROPIAS DE LA

COMUNICACION ORAL.

1. INTRODUCTION
2. ORAL COMMUNICATION: DEFINITION AND FEATURES
3. ELEMENTS AND RULES THAT GOVERN SPOKEN LANGUAGE
4. ROUTINES AND FORMULAE OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE
5. STRATEGIES OF ORAL COMMUNICATION
6. CONCLUSION
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY

1
 1. INTRODUCTION

We live in a literate society. That means that we have two main forms of communication:
oral and written. It is obvious that written communication is not only the written form of oral
communication; we speak in a different way than we write.
Oral and written communication have different features. On the one hand, written
language is permanent, because it consists of marks on a surface, and it is space-bound. Besides,
it does not receive immediate feedback. On the other hand, spoken language is non-permanent
and it is usually spontaneous and unplanned. It is time-bound, and speakers receive immediate
feedback, because they interact face to face. It can be considered as a kind of social relationship.
In this sense, we will focus on oral language and its main features in the development of
this topic. To do this, in the first place, we will analyse the conversation as a social activity. To
continue, we will explain the elements and rules that govern spoken language. In the third place,
the routines and formulae of spoken language will also be considered. Next, we will analyse the
different strategies of oral communication. Finally, we will finish with a brief conclusion of this
topic and the bibliographical references on which this study is based.

2. ORAL COMMUNICATION: DEFINITION AND FEATURES

To begin with, a definition of ‘oral communication’ should be provided. According to R.

Scott (quoted from Johnson et al., 1981): “Oral communication is typified as an activity involving
two (or more) people in which the participants are both hearers and speakers having to react to
what they hear and making their contributions at high speed”. We are therefore dealing with an
interactive situation constituted by six basic elements: speaker, hearer, message, channel, noise
and feedback. The speaker is the person who initiates the process by choosing the topic to be
encoded and the channel for transmitting the resultant message to the hearer. We understand
‘encode’ as the translation of information into spoken language. The hearer is the person to
whom the communication effort is intended. S/he is supposed to decode or make out the
meaning of the sentence. If so, s/he will produce some feedback (i.e. answer) that ensures that
mutual understanding has taken place. Noise is anything that interferes with the communication
between speaker and hearer.
Brown and Yule (1973), considering other parameters of communication, drew useful
distinction between two basic language functions. These are the transactional function,

2
where the primary concern is the transfer of information, and the interactional function, in
which the primary purpose of speech is to maintain social relationships. Therefore, we are faced
with a two-sided phenomenon: on the one hand, communication as the exchange of meaning,
and on the other, communication as a means of social interaction.
In a communicative event both speaker and hearer perform highly complex processes.
They must encode and decode messages under time pressure always bearing in mind their
purposes for interaction. As stated by R. Scott, the complexity of the process results in syntactic
alterations, the need for tags to negotiate the intended meaning as well as a misuse of links and
the use of time fillers such as “err” or “um” to hold the channel. In contrast to written language,
where sentences are carefully structured and linked together, oral language is characterised by
incomplete and even ungrammatical utterances, and by frequent repetitions and overlaps.
Taking all these features into account, it might seem that oral communication is somehow
chaotic. On the contrary, it is easily decipherable thanks to our shared knowledge of
paralinguistic codes (i.e. body language) and conversational rules and strategies, which are
essential aspects of oral communication and will be analysed further on.

3. ELEMENTS AND RULES THAT GOVERN SPOKEN LANGUAGE

In spontaneous speech, we do three things at once: planning what to say next, saying what
we have already planned and monitoring what we are saying. If we are not expressing the
meaning we intended to express, we will self-correct. All these actions, performed at the same
time, influence and, to some extent, govern our speech. In this section, we are going to analyse
the main elements and rules of spoken language, which are governed by the above-mentioned
aspects.

3.1 Elements of the spoken language

a. Linguistic elements
Linguistic elements are particular speech properties that confer sense to oral discourse,
namely EMPHASIS, RHYTHM and INTONATION. These particular properties did not adjust to the
traditional approach to spoken language, and are therefore studied by a branch in socio-
linguistics called prosody.

3
 The first one is Emphasis. It occurs when speakers give more intensity to the important
parts of the utterance in order to make them stand out over the rest and facilitate the hearer’s
understanding. E.g. I don’t like football.
The second prosodic element is Rhythm. It is understood as the relationship between
accents and pauses. Contrasts in rhythmical pattern are very important since they confer sense
and expressiveness to what we say.
The last prosodic element is Intonation. It is the variation of pitch during speech. For
instance, speakers may rise their intonation when asking a question. Some languages, including
English, use pitch semantically so as to convey secondary meanings such as surprise, irony and
enthusiasm. For this reason, it is advisable for L2 students to take this feature into account to
avoid misunderstandings in a real situation.

b. Extra-linguistic elements
Extra-linguistic features are, basically, the facial and body gestures by which a person
manifests various physical, mental and emotional states and communicates non-verbally with
others. It cannot be obviated that the whole body takes part in oral communication. Sometimes,
we can even transmit more meaning with our bodily expressions than with words. Without
speaking, we can communicate sympathy, hostility or indifference so as to reinforce or illustrate
what we say.
Generally speaking, body language is characterised by its universality, with the exception
of certain types of non-verbal behaviour which are culture specific. For instance, smiling is a
common gesture of content easily recognisable worldwide. Nonetheless, there are other
gestures, such as rotating your index finger tip in your cheek with your finger tip, that are
exclusive of some cultures. In this case, this gesture is used to express that a dish is delicious in
the Italian culture.
In order to be effective, body language has to be spontaneous. For this reason, we do not
have a set of concrete rules to govern gestures, since they would affect the spontaneity and
naturalness in oral communication. Nevertheless, there are some rules that can be applied to
oral communication in general, and will be analysed below.

4
3.2 Rules that govern spoken language

a. Rules of usage
These refer to the language user’s knowledge of linguistic or grammatical rules. Language
can be viewed as the ability to speak and be understood by others who know that same language.
The language user has the capacity to produce sounds with certain meanings and is also able to
interpret the same sounds when uttered by others. Traditionally, the rules of usage fall under the
following headings:

▪ Phonetic/Phonological. These are the rules which make it possible to produce

sound in meaningful sentences and to recognise it when produced by another speaker.
Recognising a foreign accent; adding the appropriate phonetic segments to form, for
instance, plural and past tenses; to produce voiced and voiceless sounds belong to this group.

The phonological component is useful in language learning because it makes the sound
system of the language explicit. It must give us information concerning three aspects:

- what is and what is not a sound in the language ( /r/ */ř/ )

- what is and what is not an acceptable sequence of sounds ( /tri:/and */tfi:/ )

- the way different sounds and sequences of sounds are related.

In British English there are 44 phonological segments or phonemes. As Bloomfield states, the
phoneme is seen as the minimal sound unit by which we differentiate meanings. These
segments can be analyzed in terms of features such as voicing, muscular energy, manner and
place of articulation, aspiration…

▪ Morphosyntactic. A morphosyntactic analysis of language uses criteria from both

morphology and syntax to study language. Morphology is concerned with the forms of
words. The internal structure of words in subject to morphological rules (uneaten * eatenun
; boy * sboy ) either for derivation or inflection. Syntax is concerned with the way words
combine to form phrases and sentences that express our thoughts and knowing a language
also includes that ability.

In English –and in every language- every sentence is a sequence of words, but not every
sequence of words is a sentence. In this line, sequences of words that conform to the rules of
syntax are said to be well-formed or grammatical (My tailor is rich) whereas those which

5
 deviate from syntactic rules are therefore ill-formed or ungrammatical (*Rich my is tailor).

However, the rules of syntax do not only account for the grammaticality of sentences, they
also account for the double meaning or ambiguity of a number of expressions (fresh orange
juice).

It is also the syntactic rules that permit speakers to produce and understand an unlimited
number of sentences never produced or heard before, which has been termed by linguists as
the creative aspect of language use.

▪ Semantic. The semantic component specifies the meaning of each sentence by

identifying the basic units of meaning and the rules for their combination. The
understanding of these basic units of meaning enables us to understand sentences and to
derive implications about other sentences (John mows the lawn and *The lawn mows John).

Having dealt with the grammatical rules that speakers of a language use to make
grammatically correct sentences, we will move now onto another set of rules used in order to
produce effective communicative texts. By this, we mean that when we speak or write we need
to take into consideration other parameters beyond the grammatical. We need to learn how to
construct texts according to rules of appropriateness. This includes the observance of coherence
and cohesion.

b. Rules of use

▪ Appropriateness: Not all members of a linguistic community write or speak in the

same way. Each person chooses the language variety and the appropriate register according
to the situation. He or she must consider such factors as the topic, the channel of
communication, the purpose or the degree of formality.

▪ Coherence: When we speak to people, we sometimes become aware that there is

often a certain amount of information that is irrelevant or, on the contrary, omitted. The
meaning of a communicative exchange should be relevant and clear. There is no need to
repeat information or use extra words as this prevents the conversation from flowing freely.

Apart from selecting the relevant parts and avoiding repetition, a speaker also needs to
structure the content of his message. If we do not organise information in a logical and

6
 comprehensible our meanings might not get across.

Coherence, then, could be defined as the way of selecting relevant information and
organising it in a certain way so as to aid understanding. If this is done correctly then
cohesion will naturally follow.

▪ Cohesion: It refers to the way in which structural elements of a text function so as to hold
together the items contained therein.

There are four devices in English by which cohesion is created (Halliday):

▪ Reference. An element introduced at one place in the text can be taken as a reference
point for something that follows or has gone before (Jack built a house. It...)

▪ Ellipsis. A clause or part of a clause may be understood by the device of positive

omission. (A: Will you go and get it? B: No, not me)

▪ Conjunction. This is device which links two sentences or grammatical units. It can
add different shades of meaning: time, condition, cause, addition, clarification and
opposition.

▪ Lexical cohesion. Continuity may be established in a text by the choice of words. This
may take the form of word repetition, or the choice of a word that is related in some
way to a previous one either semantically or collocationally (Fish and chips * Chips
and fish).

Man’s ability to be creative with language is something obvious. Yet there are times when
he chooses how, when and why not to be creative, to repeat what has been heard and said many
times, often in exactly the same form. It is in these situations that he uses linguistic routines and
within them, formulaic language.

7
 4. ROUTINES
• AND FORMULAE OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE

These terms describe language which is in some way pre-formulated or prefabricated, that
is, language forms which have been routinised and patterned. A significant proportion of
language comes into this category, and, indeed, speakers would find it difficult to communicate if
everything they said had to be inventive and original. These fixed expressions play an important
role, particularly in spoken language. They help speakers to maintain and stabilise relationships
and reinforce shared knowledge about cultural and social conventions.
According to Seaville and Troike linguistic routines are fixed utterances which must be
considered as single units, because meaning cannot be derived from the consideration of any
segment apart from the whole. The routine itself fulfils the communicative function, and in this
respect is performative in nature.
Routines may vary in length, from single syllables as in ‘Hi!’ to phrases such as ‘as far as
I’m concerned’, and even an entire sequence of sentences, as in the well-rehearsed discourse of a
politician. For this reason, some are learned at an earlier stage than others. For instance, “Please!”
and “Thank you!” are usually the first routines taught to English-speaking children, and in fact
they don’t know at first what they are really saying. Routines are memorised as fixed forms. The
process through which we acquire ritual competence is perhaps the most fundamental
socialisation we make of language.
Closely related to this issue is what Malinowski called phatic communion. It could be
defined as the use of formulaic language to break uncomfortable silences in social interaction.
One of the most common examples is the small-chat about the weather that we tend to initiate
when we meet a neighbour in the lift. Some of these conventional utterances are universal,
whereas others are culturally related. For example, non-native speakers of English often
complain that native speakers do not really care about the state of their health when they ask
them “How are you?”. They not realise that this question is part of a greeting routine, which by
nature, has no meaning apart from its phatic function in communication. Applying this to L2
learners, the teacher must give information about these linguistic features, so that they can
manage in a real communicative situation. Culture is an important aspect to take into account
when learning a language. Understanding routines require a certain degree of L2 cultural
knowledge since they are generally metaphorical in nature and must be interpreted at a non-
literal level.

8
 There are many situations in our lives in which we have to use formulaic language. That is
the case of rituals. They basically consist of routines but these are given far greater cultural
significance for being part of a ritual context. Examples of rituals include funeral condolences,
magical spells and religious ceremonies.
To conclude this point in which we have dealt with formulaic language let us say that
perhaps the most important characteristic of routines and rituals is that literal semantic value is
largely irrelevant. Their meaning is rather based on the shared cultural values of a speech
community coded into communicative patterns; and they cannot be interpreted out of that
context.

5. STRATEGIES
1. OF ORAL COMMUNICATION

When language is produced, a series of communication strategies come into play to solve
the problems involved in making meanings into words. As learners need encouraging in their
attempts at oral interaction, it is important that teachers take into account strategies for keeping
communication going and making pupils use oral language. They take the form of either
avoidance strategies or achievement strategies.
Avoidance strategies make use of various reduction strategies in order to avoid
producing non-fluent or incorrect utterances, and are generally undesirable as they do not
encourage the student to be expressive or experimental with the language. They can in turn be
divided into formal reduction strategies and functional reduction strategies.
Achievement strategies occur when the learner attempts to solve communicative
problems by expanding his/her communicative resources with the use of linguistic or non-
linguistic means. Tarone distinguished the following types of both kinds of strategies:
▪ Paraphrase:
- Approximation: Use of incorrect units sharing meaning or features with the
right form. (e.g., table for desk).
- Word coinage: Use of words invented by the learner. (e.g. air bag for
balloon).
- Circumlocution: Explanation of features or objects related to the item to be
uttered (e.g. It is a sort of chair without a back for bench).
▪ Borrowing:
- Literal translation: Word for word translation. (e.g. Me like the wine for I
like wine).
9
 - Conscious transfer: Avoiding the translation of one of the words. (e.g. Let’s
go to the costa for seaside).
▪ Appeal for assistance:
- Help required on how to produce an item (e.g. How do you say...in English?).
▪ Mime:
- Use of gestures or visual aids.

The spontaneous use of communicative strategies shows the advantage of employing

devices which activate the oral interactive process. Teachers should be conscious of the
usefulness of communication strategies in helping pupils overcome their production problems. A
great degree of tolerance is required to make oral interaction effective.

6. CONCLUSION
1.

In the development of this topic, we have studied oral communication. We have seen that
it is normally more informal and less prepared than written communication. However, it can be
stated that oral speech can also be prepared, as it is the case in political speeches, lectures or
sermons.
In this light, it is important to practise conversation with our students, because it is the
most common means of communication they will have to use in real contexts. Nonetheless,
students, in general, feel uneasy with conversation, and they have a high-risk perception. To help
them feel comfortable, we, as teachers, must offer them plenty of opportunities to practice
language with the objective of communicating by recreating real-life situations.
All in all, in order to make them feel more confident when speaking, it is important to
provide them with useful expressions, key vocabulary, the most common greeting and farewell
formulae and common adjacency pairs. By doing so, they will be more motivated when practicing
oral interaction in the classroom and they will be able to improve their communicative
competence.

10
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Bach & Harnish, 1979 Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts

• Coulthard, Malcolm. 1985. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis. London:
Longman.
• Hockett, C. F. 1960. The origin of speech. C.U.P.

11