Chapter 6 - Speech and Conversation Terms Flashcards
Pause
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
Voiced pause (filler)
Words that do not mean a great deal and fill time in the speech.
Example: er, um
Stress
Speaker puts emphasis on a particular syllable of a word.
Repair (false start)
When speaker begins an utterance and either repeats or reformulates it.
Backtracking
When speaker interrupts themselves to include information, which should have been included beforehand.
Discourse marker
Words or phrases that introduce, a new topic or signal connections between utterances.
Example: well, right, first, now, on the other hand
Embedded speech
Words the speaker, says which were said by somebody else. This is the spoken word equivalent of direct speech.
Interjection
Words that express an emotion. They often precede a sentence.
Example: ow (pain), oh (realisation), hey (surprise), god, damn (taboo)
Non-verbal utterance
Sounds said by speaker that are not actual words.
Example: argh, weee and ohhh
Paralinguistic feature
Non-verbal communication, in the form of posture, facial expressions.
Example: laughter, gasps
Elipsis
Omitting whole words from an utterance, which can be understood from context.
Example: Coming?, Where you been?
Deictic
Words or phrases which indicate something in the shared context.
Example: this, that, these, there, here
Hedge
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
Elision
Omitting a syllable, or a part of the word.
Example: cos (because)
Cliche
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
Idiom
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
Colloquialism
Words or phrases which are more likely to be heard in more informal circumstances.
Taboo
Word or phrase which may cause offence to certain people (may not be used deliberately to offend).
Topic shift
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.
Address (term of address)
Words or phrases the speaker uses to refer to the person that they are talking to.
To hold the floor
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.
Adjacency pair
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
Tag question
Little questions added to the end of a declarative to turn them into a question.
Example: don’t you?, isn’t it?
Marker of sympathetic circularity (monitoring talk)
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
