Topic 5: Oral communication elements.

Norms governing oral discourse,

routines, and formulae. Oral communication strategies.

1. Introduction.
What is language if it's not communication? Communication is what has allowed
human beings to evolve on develop. It is at the heart of any relationship and forms the
basis for human civilization. It can occur through speech, music, art, science, or any
other means.
Oral communication and conversation is the rock on which personal relationships are
built. It is such a common part of our everyday lives that we take it for granted. This
unit will look at the different factors involved in oral communication. We will examine
Hyme’s model for oral communication before considering the norms and conventions
of oral discourse, including maxims, turn taking and speech acts. It will study some
typical routines and formulae used in oral communication along with the strategies
used in communication and conversation.

2. Oral Communication
2.1 Definition:
It refers to an interactive process between a speaker and a listener or group of
listeners. It involves both production and reception; speaker encodes a message which
is then decoded by the listener.

Communication is context-bound. It will take place in any number of situations and it

will vary depending on the situations.

There are some factors which are common to all effective oral communication.
- The speaker has a message.
- There is a communication purpose
- The language selected must be appropriate for the purpose and the context.

2.2 Oral Communication vs Written Communication

Oral communication differs greatly from written communication.
Written communication is planned and carefully structured.
Oral communication is produced in real time. It has imperfections, false starts,
repetitions, corrections, ungrammatical utterances. It contains fillers that give time to
the speaker to think.

Differences between spoken and written language.

Speakers have a much greater range of possibilities at their command than writers.
Apart from the actual words they use, they can vary their intonation and stress, which
helps them to show which part of what they are saying is most important. By varying the
pitch and intonation in their voice, they can clearly convey their attitude to what they
are saying, too; they can indicate interest or lack of it, for example, and they can show
whether they wish to be taken seriously.

At any point in a speech event, speakers can rephrase what they are saying; they
can speed up or slow down. This will often be done in response to the feedback they are
getting from their listeners, who will show through a variety of gestures, expressions
and interruptions, that they understand/do not understand. And in face-to-face
interaction the speaker can use a whole range of facial expressions, gestures and
general body language to help to convey the message.

Not all speakers have the benefit of such immediate listener feedback, however.
Whilst even speech makers may be able to discern through the expressions and
atmosphere on an audience how their message is getting across, speakers on the
telephone, for example, have to rely on the words and the use of intonation, pitch and
stress only, without being able to see all the visual clues that would help them to know
what the other person is thinking.
Perhaps the single most important difference between writing and speaking,
however, concerns the need for accuracy. Native speakers constantly make 'mistakes'
when they are speaking. They hesitate and say the same thing in different ways and
they often change the subject of what they are saying in mid-sentence. Except in
extremely formal situations, this is considered normal and acceptable behaviour. A
piece of writing, however, with mistakes and half-finished sentences, etc. would be
judged by many speakers to be ungrammatical since it is expected that writing should
be 'correct'. From the point of view of language teaching, therefore, there is often far
greater pressure for written accuracy than there is for accuracy in speaking.

The writer also suffers from the disadvantage of not getting immediate
feedback from the reader-and sometimes getting no feedback at all. Writers cannot
use intonation or stress, and facial expression, gesture and body movement are denied
to them. These disadvantages have to be compensated for by greater clarity and by
the use of grammatical and stylistic techniques for focusing attention on main points,
etc. Perhaps most importantly, there is a greater need for logical organization in a
piece of writing than there is in a conversation, for the reader has to understand what
has been written without asking for clarification or relying on the writer's tone of voice
or expression.
Formal features of Oral Communication:
The grammar on syntax of oral communication are different from written language. It
takes place in real time and has the following features:
- Less subordination.
- Use of coordinated clauses with simple conjunctions: and, but, so (Parataxis)
- Frequent repetition of words and phrases.
- Omissions of grammatical forms. (Ellipsis of subjects and auxiliaries)
- Slurring (“kinda” for kind of, “wanna” for want to)
- Discourse fillers (um, er, well, you know…)
- More active sentences than passive ones.
- Contractions (“I´m” instead of I am)
- False starts reformulations, topic changes.

2.3 Hyme’s Speaking Model:

An important contribution to the analysis of. Oral communication has been made by
the American sociologist Dell Hymes. He brought together Ethnography, the
description an analysis of culture and Linguistic, the description and analysis of
language codes. They conformed a new field of study. The Ethnography of
Communication, also called Ethnography of speaking.

Hymes likened the speech event in oral communication to the sentence in grammar. A
basic analytical unit, which can be a single utterance or a stretch of utterances. These
interactions can take place in any social context. Speech acts reflect the idea that all
interaction is embedded in sociocultural context and is governed by conventions
emerging from those contexts.

The speech event involves

a number of more components identified by Hymes in his SPEAKING model.
S Setting: physical circumstances. SCENE: Psychological background.
P Participants. Speaker an audience.
E Ends: Purpose (what is expected to be achieved) and outcomes (what is actually
achieved).
A Act. An speech event involves a range of speech acts or particular type of utterances,
for example requests, commands, etc.
K Key: manner and spirit. For example, serious or playful. Signalled by verbal or #non
verbal means.
I Instrumentalities: Channel (spoken or written) and language or language variety.
N: Norms of interaction and of interpretation.
G: Genres: Types of language use. For example, sermon, interview, editorial, joke.

Del Hyme’s list of communication functions is similar to the list of illocutionary acts
proposed by Searle (1977). The difference between these two taxonomists is the
perspective or scope (The dependency or independency between grammatical form
and function).
- From Searle’s perspective (Speech Act Theory): The grammatical form used is directly
linked with its function (Illocutionary form).
- From Hyme’s perspective (Ethnography of communication): An utterance can carry
different communicative functions (diverse illocutionary forces). In other words, the
grammatical form does not determine the force of the act. And the other way round,
different phrases (with different grammatical forms) can have the same illocutionary
force. Let´s see an example:
Would you mind lending me 5 pounds?
Could I have 5 pounds?
You wouldn't have a spare fiver, would you?
Give us a fiver.
All of these phrases have different grammatical forms but the same illocutionary force:
making a request.
It is clear, therefore, the situation and context play an important role in the
communication act.

3. Elements on rules that govern oral discourse.

All speech communities possess a set of non-linguistic rules and norms which govern
how oral communication takes place in that community. These norms (conventions)
vary from community to community. This extra linguistic knowledge was dubbed
communicative competence by Hymes, and it is something which is naturally acquired
by native speakers. However, for second language students, it is something that has to
be included in the teaching of the language.

3.1 Conversational maxims:

Speakers and listeners are adhere to the cooperative principle proposed by Grice
(1976), by trying to satisfy four maxims. They are expressed as precepts to speakers as
to how they should contribute to a conversation.
1. Maxim of quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required, nor more
or less.
2 Maxim of quality: Try to make your contribution Wonder is true.
3 Maxim of relation: Make your contribution relevant.
4 Maxim of manner: be clear. Avoid obscurity, ambiguity, and disorderliness.

They are not rules, but observations of the ways in which effective conversation takes
place. They do not consider that in the real world, many conversations involve
disagreement and resistance. They are questioned by some scholars on the basis that
cooperation is not essential to communication.

3.2 Speech Acts:

Speech acts deal with the question of the intentions of the speaker and the function of
the language used. What speakers encode in the words they say (Locutionary act) is
not simply to convey information. That is often a further intention (illocutionary act)
that must be inferred by the listener (perlocutionary act).
For example. “It is a bit warm in here, isn't it?
This is not just a simple comment about the temperature, but a veiled request.

There are 4 categories:

- Constatives: Making statements (response, give information, report predicts, etc).
- Directives: an influence on the listener (Request advice, order, warning, ect).
- Commissives: action on the part of the speaker (Agree, offer, promise, etc).
- Ackowledgements: Expressing recognition (Apologies, condolences, congratulations,
etc).

3.3 Turn taking

It is a basic form of organisation for conversation. Norms and conventions govern who
speaks when and for how long.
- There are changes between speakers. Transfers.
- Normally, one speaker at time.
- The order on length of terms are not fixed.
- Repair mechanisms are used to deal with errors and violations.
In some communities, overlapping is acceptable. The transfer from one speaker to the
next occurs in transition places. They are usually marked by intonation. (going down in
statements and rising in a question).
The current speaker can select the next speaker or it can self-select. It can be done by
saying the name of the next speaker, asking a different question, using gesture, turning
to this person, pointing, etc.
If the next speaker is not selected and there are more participants, a competition
situation will arise between the prospective speakers and one will have to self-select. If
it does not occur, the first speaker has the option of continuing.

Assent terms are used to show the listener's attention and to encourage the speaker to
continue (uh-huh, right, ok…). They are considered turns if they occur at the end of a
speaker’s utterance or they can be inserted in the middle of a speaker’s utterance
(Also known as back channel or feedback signals).

3.4 Topics:
There are a series of conventional norms concerning the choice of topics for a
conversation. The choice will depend on participants, context and situation.
Example: In an informal conversation between strangers, the opening topic most
widely used is the weather. In an formal context, like a meeting, topics will be defined
by the agenda.
Some phrases are used to change or maintain the topic; “That reminds me...”, “As I
was saying anyway...”. Or to end topic; “All's well that ends well”, “Worse things
happen at sea”.

4. Routines and Formulas:

4.1 Routines:
They are fixed structures that can be considered as a single unit. Their meaning is given
by the whole. They cannot be broken into parts.
- Greetings: Hi, Hey, how do you do?
- Phatic purpose: How are you?
- To repair a social situation and maintain politeness: Bless you (sneezing), excuse me, I
beg your pardon (bodily noises), sorry (when bumping into someone by accident).
- Jokes: Formulaic and repetitive language. “Doctor, doctor…”.
-Condolences: “I don´t know what to say…”

4.2 Adjancency pairs:

They are utterances produced by two successive speakers, with the second expected
to follow up to the first.
The most common instance of adjacency pair is a simple question-answer exchange,
but there are many possibilities.
Greeting-Greeting. Congratulations-Thanks. Apology-Acceptance. Inform-
Acknowledgement. Leave taking- leave taking. Invitation-Acceptance. Complaint-
Excuse.

Norms that apply to adjacency pairs.

- They are produced by different speakers.
- First pair part (FPP) followed by a second pair part (SPP). Otherwise, the exchange is
incomplete.
- After a FPP, there is a limited choice of SPP.

a. Do you fancy a cup of tea? (FPP)

b. Yes, that´d be lovely. (SPP1) Preferred (expected)
c. No thanks, I must go now. (SPP 2) Dispreferred.

Dispreferred SPP are usually more complex. They include explanations or apologies.

FPP Preferred SPP Dispreferred SPP

Request Compliance Refusal
Offer or invitation Acceptance Refusal
Assessment Agreement Disagreement
Question Expected answer Unexpected or no answer
Blame Denial Admission

Adjacency pass can be used to build longer utterances through embedding or

sequencing pairs.
Example:
A. Where is the milk? (FPP1)
B. You mean skim milk? (FPP2)
A. Yes. (SPP2)
B. On the counter. (SPP1)

5. Strategies in Oral Communication

Strategies in oral communication deal with the need to maintain communication when
problems occur. These problems may occur owing to lack of competence in the
language, especially in the case of language learners whose grasp of the language is
not perfect. When communication problems arise, there are various strategies
available grouped into two main types. Avoidance strategies and compensatory
strategies.

5.1 Avoidance
They deal primarily with avoiding a problem in one of a number of ways and imply
some degree of loss of the objective for the communication.
They are generally seen as the last resort. If I speaker has difficulty in pronouncing a
certain from him in a word, he may use a different word which does not contain this
sound. For example, Spanish speakers who have difficulty with the phoneme /w/ in the
conditional form “would” may change to a different model form such as might or
should, even though this means a change in meaning.
At the more extreme level, avoidance strategies may mean living a message or a
sentence unfinished. Or win to a lack of grammatical or lexical knowledge. In these
situations, the speaker may have to abandon his utterance and start another, or leave
it up to the other speaker to initiate a repair strategy in order to maintain the
communication. Speaker may also choose to avoid topics about which they have
limited linguistic resources and steer the conversation round to a topic about which
they feel more confident.

5.2 Compensation
With this type of. Strategies. Their speaker attempts to compensate for gaps in their
language ability by using replacement forms or substitutes. This can be done in various
ways.
-Time fillers. In order to win time (ummm, let´s see, well, etc)
- Using blanket or more general terms: Use of less specific terms. For example, the use
of make undo. For the specific actions which require a different verb. For example: “I
did a photograph” instead of “I took a photograph”.
- Describing/explaining: For example, “the thing you put your head on in bed” for
pillow.
- Using an approximate term: spoon for coffe spoon
- Creating new words: unexpensive instead of inexpensive
- Translation: Speaking of the king of Rome instead of speaking of the devil.
- Make a word in their language sound foreign, by adding suffix -ation for example.
- Mime/gesture/sounds

5.3 Repair strategies:

They are used in order to maintain communication when a breakdown occurs.
- Nonlinguistic repairs. Mime, gesture and facial expression.
- Checking. The speaker may use phrases to cheque whether the listener has
understood. Unease following the conversation, such as OK? are you with me? Got
that?
- Repetition of a word or phrase to check that the other participant has understood. Or
restating the message in a different way using phrases like “what I mean is…” or “in
other words”.
- Use of written language for clarification.
- Decontracted forms.
- Contrastive stress: Overstressing the word or segment that is the cause of the
confusion.
5. Conclusion

6. Didatic Transposition:
This unit is of clear use to students in the classroom. It is evident that oral
communication must play a vital role in the English language classroom, especially
given the current focus on communicative approaches to teaching.

As linguist teachers, we have the formidable task of transferring this pragmatic

knowledge to our students in a way which will ensure its incorporation into their
communicative competence, and more specifically into their Specific Competences 1, 2
and 3.

Teachers should build into their syllabi information relating to the mechanics of oral
communication especially relevant strategies for turn taking and communication
repair, which are key for language learners. The materials to be used in class should be
designed and selected accordingly in order to provide students with relevant practise
in communication skills.
7. Bibliography