SA Informal-Spoken Discourse

Question 1

Features of Spoken Discourse (IDOONA)

Answer 1

-Interrogative Tags
-Discourse Particles
-Openings and Closings
-Overlapping Speech
-Non fluency features
-Adjacency Pairs

Question 2

Strategies in Spoken Discourse
(TTFM)

Answer 2

-Topic Management
-Turn Taking (taking, holding and passing the floor)
-Minimal responses/back channeling

Question 3

Openings

Answer 3

-they are ritualistic and expected
*Greetings=’Hi,how are you”, “Hey mate”
*Protocols/Scripted=”Hello and welcome to Insurance Life”

Question 4

Adjacency Pairs

Answer 4

-Greeting structures:
eg. ‘Hi Amy’
‘Hi, how are you’
‘Good thanks’
-2/3 part exchanges:
*Question and Answer
*Offer and Refusal/ Acceptance
*Statement and Acknowledgement

Question 5

Features that indicate Turn Taking

Answer 5

-Rising and/or falling pitch direction/intonation.
-Altered volume and pay.
-Direct signals:
*vocatives (names when used to direct)
*interrogative tags (‘Shall we’)
*pragmatic particles (‘eh’)
-Discourse Marker/ Particle

Question 6

Taking the Floor

Answer 6

-Increased volume
-Stress
-Intake of breath
-Discourse particle/ marker
-Vocatives
-Overlap

Question 7

Topic Management

Answer 7

-signalling change in topic
*eg. “by the way”, “that reminds me..”
*discourse markers (‘well’)
*pauses
*inhalation of breath
*interrogative,dec. and imperatives
-topic loops:
*eg. “what you were saying before..”

Question 8

Holding the Floor

Answer 8

-Fillers (‘uh’) and voiced hesitations (‘Ah’)
-Prosodics-elongation,slow/fast tempo and rising int.
-Linking elements:
*Parataxis=the use of coordination (usually in recounts)
-SOMETIMES pauses.

Question 9

NF features -spontaneity

Answer 9

-indicate unscripted and spontaneous nature of a text
*pauses
*repetition
*apologies
*false start (beginning of an utterance)
eg.’Where… What time is it?’
*Running repair eg.’ His birthday is in Nov… December.’
*fillers, voiced hesitations

Question 10

Backchanneling

Answer 10

-Minimal responses
*eg.’yep’,’right’,’I know’
-Listening sounds (NOT same as voiced hesitation)
eg.’mm’, ‘aha’,’ah’
(communicates encouragement, agreement, support and understanding)

Question 11

Silence and Accomodation

Answer 11

-close tenor= silence is comfortable and not awkward
-silence can be use for many purposes (eg. teacher silent to get attention)
-Accomodation:
*matching linguistic and style features of another speaker. eg. lexis and accent

Question 12

Closings

Answer 12

-Also ritualistic and expected
eg. ‘ok then see ya’
-Protocols and scripted
eg. “Thank you for choosing…”
-Must be socially acceptable
eg. “better let you go”, “I’d better get going”

Question 13

Discourse Particles

Answer 13

‘like’ ‘you know’

Question 14

Pragmatic Tags/ Particles

Answer 14

‘eh’,’No’, ‘innit’ (end of speech)

Question 15

Discourse Markers

Answer 15

‘well’ ‘right’

Question 16

Fillers/ Voiced Hesitations

Answer 16

Voiced Hes= start of utterance eg. ‘ah’,’umm’
Fillers= in the utterance eg. ‘uh’