Speech Terms

Question 1

Stress

Answer 1

the emphasis placed on certain words, through volume, significant pauses beforehand, or inflexion.

Question 2

Intonation

Answer 2

• the rise and fall of an individual’s natural speaking voice or the variation or ‘tune’ to keep listeners interested. These naturally differ from nation to nation as different languages have different intonation qualities.

Question 3

Pitch

Answer 3

• the rise or fall of the voice. High pitch is squeaky and low pitch is deep.

Question 4

Turn taking

Answer 4

• co-ordinated and rule governed co-operation between two or more participants of a conversation

Question 5

Adjacency pair

Answer 5

• a moment in turn taking where one utterance constrains the response in some way, e.g. a question leads to an answer; a suggestion leads to an acceptance or declination.

Question 6

Back channelling

Answer 6

• the process of giving feedback through encouraging noises and positive comments when a speaker is talking to encourage them

Question 7

Running repair

Answer 7

• the process of socially organising a conversation if two people find that they have been talking simultaneously

Question 8

Topic marker

Answer 8

• an utterance that establishes the topic of a conversation

Question 9

Topic shifter

Answer 9

• an utterance that moves a conversation on to another topic, e.g. “Anyway…

Question 10

Interrupted construction

Answer 10

The breakdown of an utterance where half way through the speaker will completely change tact, focus or even topic and move onto something else, sometimes abandoning the original utterance mid word

Question 11

False starts

Answer 11

The speaker realises the beginning of an utterance isn’t working and so effectively re-starts by rephrasing.

Question 12

Hesitation indicators

Answer 12

• moments in discourse that indicate that the speaker is in some way playing for time. This can be seen in certain forms of stuttering and in fillers such as um, err and ahh when the speaker is thinking of the next thing to say

Question 13

Fillers

Answer 13

• the insertion of words, phrases or noises into a speaker’s discourse, e.g. like, y’know, sort of, right. These can be due to the individual’s own idiolect or convey some subliminal conversational purpose, depending on the context.

Question 14

Latch-ons

Answer 14

when a speaker takes their turn immediately after the preceding speaker has finished speaking leaving no, or little, pause. This can be due to an attempt for conversational dominance or a degree of familiarity between the speakers, among other reasons.

Question 15

Overlaps

Answer 15

• when one speaker speaks over another

Question 16

Glottal stops

Answer 16

G - the omission of (usually) dental sounds in the middle of words like butter, letter, better etc, in pronunciation. Occasionally these can occur at the ends of words like ‘what’

Question 17

Non-fluency features

Answer 17

• any feature which would indicate that the speaker is not speaking with fluency for whatever reason, e.g. someone might stammer if they are under severe pressure, or a foreign speaker may invert syntax or elide certain words from their utterances

Question 18

Tag question

Answer 18

• a question tagged onto the end of an statement, e.g ‘It’s cold, isn’t it?’

Question 19

Vocative

Answer 19

• a direct reference to another speaker in discourse, e.g. “Bob, can you…”

Question 20

Elision

Answer 20

• the omission of a vowel or syllable in the pronunciation of a word… OR the omission of a vowel at the end of a word when the subsequent word begins with a vowel (as apparent in northern pronunciation), e.g. “it’s either one or t’other.”

Question 21

Code switching

Answer 21

• the ability of a speaker to alter the register or clarity of their speech to suit a different social situation

Question 22

Received Pronunciation

Answer 22

• the typical pronunciation associated with the social elite of Britain. The Queen’s English etc.

Question 23

Regional Dialect

Answer 23

• the actual words used and the spoken grammar which is particular to a certain geographical region.