Spontaneous Speech Flashcards
Discourse markers
well, oh, like, yeah etc
Interruptions
someone talks over the speaker
Hesitations
pauses (silences or filler)
Overlaps
one speaker talks at the same time as another
Interventions
Attempts to gain the floor (speaker pauses but hasn’t finished what they want to say)
False starts
speaker starts, stops, re-thinks and re-phrases
Hedges
soften what they say e.g using perhaps/could you
Slang
informal / non standard english
Fillers
errr / umm / weeell
Digressions
steer away from the topic
Deletion
missing out a word
Ellipsis
missing out more than one word
Repetition
repeating words or phrases
Phatic communication
socially significant phrases (but meaningless) e.g how are you?
Incompleteness
word / phrase not finished by the speaker
Nicknames / address terms
‘sir’ ‘mate’ ‘our sally’
Replacement of words
Substituting another word with ‘thingy’ or ‘stuff’
Abbreviations
e.g ‘cause’
Courtesy items
e.g ‘please’ ‘thank you’
Contractions
one word is made from two e.g can’t / don’t
Deixis
reader / listener needs context when referring to a place / object e.g ‘place that over there’
Intensifiers
boost s the strength of meaning e.g really / very
Silent pauses
indicated by ‘.’ for a micro pause, and ‘2’ to give a number of seconds in a pause
Self repair
speaker corrects themselves
Elision
missing out letters e.g hangin’ / waitin’
Idiolect
own individual way of speaking
Elliptical constructions
missing out words e.g don’t wanna
