A Beginners Guide to Talking about Spoken English, Part 2 In Part 1 described the general rules for conversation.

Its time to get down to some of the vocabulary that students might need for discussing the detail of a transcript. Its important to keep in mind the six rules (see Part 1) that are the underlying grammar of this sort of discourse. Three guidelines will help when talking about any conversation: What appears to be the purpose of this conversation (bearing in mind that its true purpose might be something else) What topics are discussed? How are topics introduced

So here we go. Fairly obviously conversation involves at least two people, and everyone will want to have a say, in other words it is interactive. This is called turn taking. One of the commonest forms of conversation consists of adjacency pairs: someone starts up a topic and then invites the other to comment, often by using a tag question that is designed to elicit a response: Nice day, isnt it? About quarter of conversation tend to be question tags. There are strong, implicit expectations of the way that a second speaker may respond. If proffered by the second speaker, they are often non-clausal fragments simply to show that attention is still being paid: really? If they get it right this is known as a preferred response. If they get it wrong, its called a dispreferred response. You could go to my sheet on the English and the Weather if you wanted more exemplification of this. Some examples of adjacency pairs and their function are:

Greeting greeting "Heya!" "Oh, hi!" Offer acceptance/rejection "Would you like to visit the museum with me this evening?" "I'd love to!" Request acceptance/rejection "Is it OK if I borrow this book?" "I'd rather you didn't, it's due back at the library tomorrow" Question answer

"What does this big red button do?" "It causes two-thirds of the universe to implode Complaint excuse/remedy "It's awfully cold in here" "Oh, sorry, I'll close the window" Farewells (sometimes called degreeting) "See you!" "Yeah, see you later!" Inform acknowledge "Your phone is over there" "I know"
There are, of course, other sorts of tags for response: Greetings and farewells Backchannels small expressions that show understanding and often agreement, to demonstrate that whats being said is being responded to in some way hmmm, yeah, I know Imperatives: Get on with it.

At times, conversations seem to move on in a slightly sideways manner, with something else introduced that doesnt necessarily seem relevant. This is called an insertion sequence. But the conversation soon moves back to the topic. S1: Do you want spaghetti for dinner? S2: We had lasagne last night S1: Thats why Ive still got some of the sauce left over S2: OK then, spaghetti it is. The middle two expressions are relevant but they are an elaboration before returning to the central issue of the original question. Conversation also expresses stance and attitudes. Some of these are to do with politeness (Would you, Could you). There can also be interjections (Wow) and expletives to express attitudes see the usefulness of the f word in Part 1. People also express preferences either through adverbial or adjectival remarks that evaluate (That was good) or show a stance: I didnt say that actually. Of course, one of the really significant aspects of conversation is that it doesnt flow as writing does. There are often pauses, hesitations and repeats. These are called dysfluencies. People may also put themselves right with a repair to what they have just said. Because conversation is informal, abbreviations/ ellipsis (cant etc) are often employed. Its also obvious that the

language used my be less formal in terms of register, and characterised by a vernacular range of expression. They may also want to limit or re-define what they are trying to say using a hedge, usefully defined by Wikipedia as follows (blue references will lead you to Wikipedia pages) A hedge is a mitigating device used to lessen the impact of an utterance. Typically, they are adjectives or adverbs, but can also consist of clauses. It could be regarded as a form of euphemism. Examples: 1. There might just be a few insignificant problems we need to address. (adjective) 2. The party was somewhat spoiled by the return of the parents. (adverb) 3. I'm not an expert but you might want to try restarting your computer. (clause) Hedges may intentionally or unintentionally be employed in both spoken and written language since they are crucially important in communication. Hedges help speakers and writers indicate more precisely indicate how Gricean maxims (expectations of quantity, quality, manner, and relevance) are observed in assessments. For example, 1. All I know is, smoking is harmful to your health. In (1), it can be observed that information conveyed by the speaker is limited by adding all I know and as you probably know. By so saying, the speaker wants to inform that she is not only making an assertion but observing the maxim of quantity as well. They told me that they are married. If the speaker only says th at they are married and they do not know for sure if they are married, they may violate the maxim of quality since they say something that they do not know to be true or false. Nevertheless, by adding they told me that, the speaker wants to confirm that they are observing the conversational maxim of quality. I am not sure if all of these are clear to you, but this is what I know. The above example (3) shows that hedges are good indications the speakers are not only conscious of the maxim of manner, but they are also trying to observe them. By the way, you like this car? By using by the way, what has been said by the speakers is not relevant to the moment in which the conversation takes place. Such a hedge can be found in the middle of speakers conversation as the speaker wants to switch to another topic that is different from the previous one. Therefore, by the way functions as a hedge indicating that the speaker wants to drift into another topic or to stop the previous topic.

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