Chapter 6 - Speech and Conversation Terms

Question 1

Pause

Answer 1

No speech uttered for a period of time - either for a fraction of a second or a number of seconds.

Example: use of a hyphen

Question 2

Voiced pause (filler)

Answer 2

Words that do not mean a great deal and fill time in the speech.

Example: er, um

Question 3

Stress

Answer 3

Speaker puts emphasis on a particular syllable of a word.

Question 4

Repair (false start)

Answer 4

When speaker begins an utterance and either repeats or reformulates it.

Question 5

Backtracking

Answer 5

When speaker interrupts themselves to include information, which should have been included beforehand.

Question 6

Discourse marker

Answer 6

Words or phrases that introduce, a new topic or signal connections between utterances.

Example: well, right, first, now, on the other hand

Question 7

Embedded speech

Answer 7

Words the speaker, says which were said by somebody else. This is the spoken word equivalent of direct speech.

Question 8

Interjection

Answer 8

Words that express an emotion. They often precede a sentence.

Example: ow (pain), oh (realisation), hey (surprise), god, damn (taboo)

Question 9

Non-verbal utterance

Answer 9

Sounds said by speaker that are not actual words.

Example: argh, weee and ohhh

Question 10

Paralinguistic feature

Answer 10

Non-verbal communication, in the form of posture, facial expressions.

Example: laughter, gasps

Question 11

Elipsis

Answer 11

Omitting whole words from an utterance, which can be understood from context.

Example: Coming?, Where you been?

Question 12

Deictic

Answer 12

Words or phrases which indicate something in the shared context.

Example: this, that, these, there, here

Question 13

Hedge

Answer 13

An unnecessary word which is used to soften the force of how something is said, or to slightly distance the speaker from what they are saying.

Example: perhaps, maybe, sort of

Question 14

Elision

Answer 14

Omitting a syllable, or a part of the word.

Example: cos (because)

Question 15

Cliche

Answer 15

Words or phrases that have been overused to the extent that they are more automatic than meaningful or thoughtful.

Example: at the end of the day, better safe than sorry

Question 16

Idiom

Answer 16

The meaning conveyed by a group of words, not deducible from those individual words themselves.

Example: raining cats and dogs, it’s not rocket science

Question 17

Colloquialism

Answer 17

Words or phrases which are more likely to be heard in more informal circumstances.

Question 18

Taboo

Answer 18

Word or phrase which may cause offence to certain people (may not be used deliberately to offend).

Question 19

Topic shift

Answer 19

When the speaker tries to change the topic of the conversation. Might be an indication of an attempt for the speaker to introduce their own agenda.

Question 20

Address (term of address)

Answer 20

Words or phrases the speaker uses to refer to the person that they are talking to.

Question 21

To hold the floor

Answer 21

Great imbalance of length of speaking turns, to the extent that it feels as though, one speaker is denying the others to speak, forcing them to listen to them instead.

Question 22

Adjacency pair

Answer 22

Exchanges between different people which occurs in twos. The speech is closely related, and often the second utterance feels like an expected response.

Example: how are you?, fine thanks

Question 23

Tag question

Answer 23

Little questions added to the end of a declarative to turn them into a question.

Example: don’t you?, isn’t it?

Question 24

Marker of sympathetic circularity (monitoring talk)

Answer 24

Words or phrases used by the speaker, to check that the listener is on the same wavelength, and is being understood.

Example: I think we’ve been here before, you know what I mean

Question 25

Backchannel

Answer 25

Signals from the listener to the speaker, that they understand, agree or want to hear more.

Examples: ok, go on, yes, mmm

Question 26

Response signal

Answer 26

Words or phrases which are only used to indicate a direct response to something in which they have been asked or said.

Example: yes, no thanks, okay

Question 27

Overlapping speech

Answer 27

More than one speaker tries to speak at the same time. This might feel like an interruption but also may not be (usually indicated in key of transcript),

Question 28

Echo

Answer 28

Speaker uses one or more lexemes (the basic unit of Eng language which consists of a word or multiple), that have been previously used by another speaker in their speaking turn.