Analysis of spoken Language Conversational Analysis.

Question 1

Define conversational analysis.

Answer 1

An approach to the study of social interaction, embracing both verbal and non-verbal conduct, in all situations of everyday life.

Question 2

Outline conversational analysis vs discourse analysis.

Answer 2

Conversational analysis shows that ordinary language can be analysed to look at how we perform interpersonal actions and how these actions are organised socially.

Discourse analysis shows that language is a consequence of pervious accounts and descriptions and cannot be treated as a neutral representation of situation.

Question 3

Define an adjacency pair.

Answer 3

Two utterances by two speakers, one after the other that are linked.

Question 4

Define an overlap.

Answer 4

A speaker who starts speaking before the other ends.

Question 5

Define back-channelling.

Answer 5

A way of showing a speaker that you are following what they are saying and understand.

Question 6

Define an interruption.

Answer 6

A speaker intentionally breaks someone else’s speech to begin theirs.

Question 7

Define a topic shift.

Answer 7

Dominant speakers change the subject matter of the conversation.

Question 8

Define a latch-on.

Answer 8

One speaker picks up a turn with no gap or hesitation.

Question 9

Define fillers/voiced pause.

Answer 9

A sound or word to signal to others a pause to think without giving the impression of having finished speaking.

Question 10

Define deixis.

Answer 10

A reference tot he physical context of the interaction.

Question 11

Define hedging.

Answer 11

Expresses hesitation or uncertainty as well as to demonstrate politeness and indirectness.

Question 12

Define false starts.

Answer 12

When you speak and then realise you said the wrong thing - so start again.

Question 13

Define repairs.

Answer 13

A speaker recognises a speech error and repeats what has been said with some form of correction.

Question 14

Define hesitations.

Answer 14

Where a speaker delays their utterance either with a voiceless pause or with a marker to stop momentarily.

Question 15

Define elision.

Answer 15

These involve the combining of words to form meaningful non-words. Linguistically, the omission of certain sounds often result in the slurring together of others.
E.g. ‘they’d’ for ‘they would/should/could’ or ‘wanna’ for ‘want to’.

Question 16

Define non-fluency features.

Answer 16

False starts.

Question 17

Define adjuncts.

Answer 17

An adjunct is a word or group of words that gives extra information to a sentence; but, when removed makes no harm to its grammar. Examples: I will call you at least by tomorrow.
Here, at least is the adjunct.

Question 18

Define an anaphoric reference.

Answer 18

Anaphoric reference occurs when a word or phrase refers to something mentioned earlier in the discourse.
E.g. Michael went to the bank. He was annoyed because it was closed.
‘It’ and ‘he’, are the anaphoric references here.

Question 19

Define a cataphoric reference.

Answer 19

Cataphoric reference occurs when a word or phrase refers to something mentioned later in the discourse.

E.g. Although I phone her every week, my mother still complains that I don’t keep in touch often enough.

Her refers to my mother.

Question 20

Define an exophoric reference.

Answer 20

Exophoric reference occurs when a word or phrase refers to something outside the discourse.

E.g. “They‘re late again, can you believe it?”
“I know! Well, they’d better get here soon or it‘ll get cold.”

They refers to some people outside the discourse known to both speakers.
It also refers to something that both speakers know about (perhaps the dinner)

Question 21

Define a deictic expression.

Answer 21

“this one“, “over there” or “right now” – typical of face-to-face interaction where speakers can refer to specific characteristics of the context.

Question 22

Define a deictic expression.

Answer 22

“this one“, “over there” or “right now” – typical of face-to-face interaction where speakers can refer to specific characteristics of the context.

Question 23

Define an implicatures.

Answer 23

An implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly saying everything we want to communicate.