Discourse and

Conversation
Group4
 Members
Ly Nha Yen
Tran Tuan Minh
Van My Phuong
Nguyen Hoang Thao Vy
Presentation Overview
• what is conversation analysis
• Transcription conversation
• Sequence and structure in conversation
• Preference organization
• Feedback
• Repair
• Discourse marker
• Conclusion
conversation define
• Conversation refers to two or more
individuals talking with one another just for
the sake of talking
• Conversation occurs when people cooperate
with each other in order to introduce and
sustain a single focus of attention by taking
turns with each other
Conversation
analysis
An approach to the analysis of spoken
discourse that looks at the way in which
people manage their everyday
conversational interactions.

Conversation analysis takes less of a

‘linguistics’ view of spoken discourse
CA AS A WORK OF
HARVEY SACKS
• He designed it as a mean of
understanding the levels of social
order that are divulged in everyday
life
CONVERSATIONA
L INTERACTIONS
• An activity in which , for the most
part, two or more people take turn to
speak
Charactersitics
• One person speak at a time
• Slience is avoided
• If two people talk at the same time,
one of them stop.
 AIM
• to determine how participants in a natural conversation
understand and respond to one another when it's their turn to
talk .
TRANSCRIBING AND CODING
CONVERSATION ANALYSIS
DATA
Texts are recorded then analysed at the same time as
they are transcribed.

The analysis aims to understand how

speakers manage their conversational
interactions.
 Transcription is the systematic
Transcription representation of language in the
conventions written form.
 → Exclamation

Another speaker
could have taken the
conversation away
from her.
→ Emphasis
→ Hold the floor
→ Invites a response

Loud talk → No allowance to intervene

→ A transition relevance of place ( TRP)

 THE TRANSITION
R E L E VA N C E O F P L C E

In spoken language, the TRP reders the completion

of a turn construction unit
This analysis shows how Carries and her
friends manage their conversation in a
cooperative manner.
It also shows the strategies they use when they
want to take a turn in a conversation.
Sequence and
structure in
conversation
Opening conversation
Closing conversation
Turn taking
Adjacency pairs
 Opening conversation
One area where conversational openings have been examined
in detail is in the area of telephone conversations.
Schegloff (1979)
Closing conversation
Telephone closings usually go over four turns of
talk, made up of pre-closing and closing moves.

→ Both speakers mutually negotiate the

end of the conversations.
 PRE-SEQUENCES
The making of an arrangement

Referring back to something previously said in the conversation

The initiation of a new topic

Good wishes

A restatement of the reason for calling and thanks for calling

TURN TAKING
The basic rule in English conversation is that one
person speaks at a time, then he may nominate another
speaker, or another speaker may take up the turn
without being nominated
 WAY S T O M A I N TA I N
A TURN:
• Not pausing too long at the end of
an utterance
• Pausing during an utterance
• Increasing the volume of what we
are saying
• Speaking over someone else’s
attempt to take our turn.
WAY S T O E N D O F A T U R N
• The completion of syntactic unit
• The use of falling intonation, then
pausing
• Use a signal
• Eye contact, body position and
movement and voice pitch .
Adjacency pairs
Utterances produced by two successive speakers in a way
that the second utterance is identified as related to the
first one as an expected follow-up to that utterance.

Utterance function → Expected response

• greeting → greeting
• congratulation → thanks
• apology → acceptance
• inform → acknowledge
Adjacency pairs
Expected follow-ups in the use of adjacency pairs, vary
across language and cultures.
PREFERENCE
ORGANIZATION
A question may be followed by an expected answer (the preferred
second pair part) or an ‘unexpected or non-answer’ (the dispreferred
second pair part)
There was also a preference for other-correction’ (rather than ‘self-
correction’) in these interactions.
 Insertion sequence
An insertion sequence; that is, where one adjacency pair
comes between the first pair and the second pair part of
another adjacency pair

Ricky: May I have a bottle of gin?

Shop keeper: Are you twenty one?

Ricky: No.

Shop keeper: No.

 Feedback
T H E WAY S I N W H I C H L I S T E N E R S S H O W T H E Y A R E
AT T E N D I N G T O W H AT I S B E I N G S A I D

The use of The use of eye

Paraphrase Body position
‘response tokens’ contact
→ Providing feedback to each other by use of the
token ‘yeah’, the repetition of key words, falling
intonation and latched utterances.
 Repair
T H E WAY S P E A K E R S C O R R E C T T H I N G S T H E Y O R
S O M E O N E E L S E H A S S A I D A N D C H E C K W H AT T H E Y
H AV E U N D E R S T O O D I N A C O N V E R S AT I O N .
 Repair
T H E R E A R E F O U R T Y P E S O F R E PA I R :
• Self-initiated and Self-repaired
**Situation used in:
- Correcting yourself
- you can't find the right word, and you find it yourself after a small pause.

Example:
J: People are saying you're sexist. Do you think you're sexiest?
P: Ah, no
J: Do you think you offensive woman today?
P: I've appologized to the w- to the people who've been offended
by what I said
 Repair
T H E R E A R E F O U R T Y P E S O F R E PA I R :

2. Other-initiated and self-repaired

**Situations used in:
- couldn't hear the speaker clearly
- misunderstanding

Example:
A: I'm heading off to vacation next week.
B: What?
A: I said I am going on vacation next week.
 Repair
T H E R E A R E F O U R T Y P E S O F R E PA I R :

3. Self-initiated and other-repaired

**Situations used in:
- you can't find the right word, and someone else fills it in for you

Example :
A: I need more storage space on my computer, so I need to get a new
umm....
B: A hard drive?
A: Yeah, that's right, a hard drive.
 Repair
T H E R E A R E F O U R T Y P E S O F R E PA I R :

4. Other-initiated and other-repaired

Situations used in:
- you have your facts incorrect and someone else corrected you

Example :
A: Aren't you glad that today is payday?
B: Payday is actually tomorrow.
 Discourse markers
Items in spoken discourse which act as signposts of discourse coherence
This includes interjections (oh), conjunctions(but), adverbs(now) and lexical phrases(y'know)
 Discourse markers
Adding Qualifying Cause & Effect

Sequencing Discourse Illustratin

markers g

Comparing Emphasisin
Contrastin
g g
 Discourse markers
The ship sunk because it hit a rock. (cause & effect)
Lily likes to play volleyball wheares John prefers to play soccer. (contrast)
Well, It’s spacious and fully- furnished. On top of that, the rental fee is
affordable for a student like me (adding)
.....
 CONCLUSION

• Conversation analysis provides a

way of carrying out fine-grained
analyses of spoken discourse
• There are differing views,
however, as to whether looking at
the data alone is sufficient to
explain what is going on in
conversational interactions
Thank you for listening