An Analysis of Spontaneous
Conversation
Spontaneous
conversation comes up in every day life more often than not, but if our early
morning chats and break time gossips were all planned it would all be a bit
perculiar wouldn’t it? Spontaneous conversation is basically a conversation
that hasn’t been planned, for example, situations like chatting with your
friends at college or talking to your family at dinner time. If these
conversations were planned and written out as speeches and such, there would be
no such emotion and personality behind the conversation. However, job
interviews are both, the questions may be planned and thought out, as well as
your answers but if you’re thrown something you weren’t expecting, your answer wouldn’t
have been planned out for this moment.
Transcripts are made
for spontatneous conversations and through this you can see that a conversation
is unplanned and spontaneous through this proof. For example, in my transcript
of a ‘QI’ episode, there are lots of overlaps, pauses, informal lexis and
euphanasia as well as many other things that are evident in the transcript.
One of the first
things noticed about the transcript I wrote was the lack of opening speech or
opening sentences. This was mainly because I wrote my transcript starting
through the middle of the conversation rather than the start, removing the
possibility of this appearing, although it is one of the most common features
of spoken lexis and spotaneous conversation.
Although openings
arent found within the transcript, the second thing I noticed was the sheer
amount of interruptions and overlaps within the speech, examples including
lines 2, 6, 9, 25, 27, 30, 32, 36 and 47. The feature of overlapping and
interruptions within the speech show that the conversation was not planned as
it can quite easily be interrupted and added to by the less ‘in control’
members of the conversation who seem to be Jo, Colin, Alan and David.
Another feature which
supports the idea of the spontaneous conversation was the informal lexis used
within the speech. For example things such as fillers, impromtu pauses,
laughter from the audience and the overbearing voice of Alan Davies making
noises. This is evident from lines such as ‘WOOHOW’ from Alan after laughing at
his own joke. Without fillers, pauses and other uses of informal lexis such as
taboo language, shortenings and other forms of words such as glottals, this
conversation would’ve seemed a lot more planned rather than a genuine talk. All
of these features seem to be followed through with subconsciously by everybody
in certain times of appropriateness, shouting ‘WOOHOW’ and imitating cowboy
actions probably wouldn’t get you the job at an interview.
Topic shifts and turn
taking elements are also evident within the conversation the five are having,
especially when it comes to what Stephen is saying. Right near the end on lines
69 to 73, Stephen is changing the topic quite clearly as a completely different
part of the show starts. This also shows his power within the conversation as
well as the fact that the conversation isn’t planned. Turn taking elements are
shown when somebody uses things such as tag questions in which somebody else is
inclined to answer because of Grice’s Maxims and Co-operation theory.
Finally, another piece
of evidence to prove that this speech is spontaneous is seemingly one of the
most entertaining. False starts. False starts are basically what is says on the
tin, somebody starts to say something, changes their mind and then says
something else. This is shown in this transcript through a short pause after
the mistake itself and then the continuation of the line afterwards. The person
that seems to do this most is David, especially when he says ‘that’s very (.) that’s
uh (.) he’d have to have been a toddler (.) during the American civil war and’
in lines 3 and 4. These show that the speaker is not quite sure how to say
something either because they change their mind or they are just not sure what
should come next in the sentence, which can end up being quite humourous,
especially with the added pauses and filler, resulting in the audience laughing
out loud.
Throughout the transcript,
there are quite a few other features of spontaneous language to do with lexis,
such as dietic expressions, which are expressions that might not be understood
unless the context of the conversation is understood, for example when Jo says ‘and
theres the toddler’ on line 9, you don’t really understand what she is talking
about unless you have heard the other half of the conversation and seen what
she sees on the photograph they are shown.
Also, what seems quite
evident within Stephen’s choice of words is the use of discourse hedges and skip
connectors. When Stephen says on line 11 ‘I should imagine’ he is softening the
statement he has just used, as if he cannot be sure if it is true but he thinks
it would be, as if asking the audience and the other members of the
conversation not to blame him if he is wrong. Stephen also seems to loop the
conversation back on track, creating discourse markers called skip connectors.
He does this when he says ‘so (.) that’s the uh (.) Civil War answer’ on line
69. However, this line can also be described as an ending or a summing up of
the conversation, as well as reminding us of his power over the conversation.
Finally, stephen uses
disjointed construction in some of his shorter lines, such as the one on line
16 when he says ‘well (1) that’s the answer (2) still alive’. He answers his
own statement with another statement, reformulating what he was saying. This
also counts as an ellipsis as he misses out some words but the statement still
makes sense, therefore shortening the statement, making this yet again more
proof as to how this conversation is spontaneous as the language and grammar is
informal.
Using Grice’s Maxim
from the list of conversation theories, you can see that not all of this
conversation follows this theory. This is because some of the speech is not
relevant or clear, especially when Jo claims that somebody is a toddler.
However, the other two aspects of the theory, quality and quantity are followed
by most participants of the conversation, maybe apart from Stephen who can
sometimes say a lot more than needed, however this also shows his power within
the conversation. Using face and politeness theory from the list of
conversational theories, you can see that this conversation holds many aspects
of the positive politeness, especially humour and using respectful terms of
address. On the other hand, you can also see that the conversation holds
negative politeness also because of Stephens use of hedging and the occassional
use of pessimism. The use of positive politeness brings a boost of self-esteem
to the recipent and fits the human need of wanting to be liked or agreed with,
whereas the use of negative politeness makes the recipent feel comfortable and
less opposed. Finally, although you don’t see much of this theory, accomodation
theory is shown a little bit within this conversation. As the conversation
continues, you can almost hear the 4 members of the panel other than Stephen
suiting up to his full on british poshness, showing convergence between the
two.
Finally, throughout
most of the transcript, you can see that Stephen Fry is the one person that is
mostly in power. This is because of his use of lexis, overpowering quantity,
hedging and how easily he can control the topic of the conversation as well as
who it is directed to. However this could be argued that this isn’t the case
because of the amount of interruptions and feedback within the conversation. It
is clear that Stephen gets interrupted a lot whilst he is giving the
information that the panel needs, whether this is for humour purposes from the
other panel members is unclear, but it does show that Stephen does speak a lot
when he talks, breaking Maxim’s quantity rule, which could also be showing his
lack of power and how he is trying to regain it from the other members. Back to
the first hand though, Stephen is mostly the guy that the others ask the
questions to when they manage to pipe in between speeches. Stephen seems to be
the one with the most knowledge about the subject as he is the host of the
show, following the idea that he holds the power most of the way through this
spontaneous conversation.
Eleanor Williams
My accent is influenced greatly from where me and my family around me come from. Because my family are French and come from Calais, I can sometimes have a different style of speech to those who are English speakers. Although I can speak fluent English, it is my accent that can be quite different at times. Although the French language can be quite similar to the English language in ways, the phonology tends to be more consistent of fricatives rather than harsh sounds like plosives which the English tend to use more. For example, whilst the English say /ch/ I say /sh/, so instead of saying 'chocolate' i say 'shocolate'. this is because I was taught to read with flowing expression through received English, so i would read and say the words how they were written and say them in almost old English, making the words flow and sound more poetic. This was also affected by my mother who tended to have a nasally accent and used quieter fricatives rather than loud plosives. Once I had moved to England on the other hand, I started to learn to pronounce every phoneme because of the stereotype of the English language being 'posh' and of high prestige, meaning I never dropped my 't's and still don't to this day.
My family background also influences my idiolect. For example, I call my mother 'mumma' when I am with my family and then 'mum' when I am with my friends. Some words such as taboo language aren't allowed to be used inside the house (by me) as far as I know, because of the face value behind the words and the intent that could be behind them, these include things like saying 'shit' or 'fuck' when accidentally stubbing your toe on the lounge cabinet. On the other hand, I do tend to use quite a lot of blasphemy recently such as 'Jesus Christ' when I am shocked at something, but I never use 'oh my god' unless it really is a dire situation as I prefer to use 'oh my gosh'. Sometimes I will use French phrases to say good morning or thank you, especially when talking to my mother, I will say 'bonjour' and 'merci beaucoup'. As well as this, because I am very interested in the Japanese language, I tend to use lexis from there too, such as yes and thank you, 'hai' and 'arigato', but these tend to be to only very close family members or friends. If I am happy I tend to use this variety of language in my informal speech.
