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Transactions and topics.
TRANSACTIONS AND TOPICS
Key words: Transactions, transaction markers, Topics, stretches of talk, semantic framework
5.5.1 Transactions
Here we are concerned with how speakers manage longer stretches of talk. In Chapter 1, we looked briefly at transaction boundary markers and noted that, although they are most marked in settings such as classrooms, doctor's surgeries and formal interviews, they are also present in conversation, especially marking out openings and closings. We also considered the question of realisations of markers in different languages.
The teacher can isolate, present and exemplify a set of useful transaction markers such as right, now, so, okay, and so on, for example, by drawing attention to how he/she uses markers to divide up a lesson. It is often interesting to get learners to see if these translate directly into their LI, and to ask them to consider what words LI uses to mark such boundaries and to compare these across languages if possible. But providing contexts in which learners can then practise these markers is more difficult. If it was the teacher who traditionally marked out the boundaries of chunks of business in the classroom, then the most obvious way to hand over to the learner this particular function is to generate activities where the learners themselves are responsible for segmenting the business, and where activities need to be opened and closed within a specified time limit. Task-based learning seems especially well suited to this sort of learner-management of the larger discourse, when groups and sub-groups have to achieve a specified goal, arrive at decisions or produce some other recognisable 'real-world' outcome as stages along the way of completing some preconceived task or set of tasks. One actual example from which the next data samples are taken is a task where advanced learners, in groups, have to decide on how to arrange a room for a school open day. They must make decisions on the disposition of the furniture and what extra furniture will be needed in order to write a note for the school caretaker to act upon (the next stage of the task). When observed in their discussions (there were no predetermined 'chairpersons'), various members of both sub-groups spontaneously used opening and closing markers with the characteristic falling intonation followed by a jump to high key for openings and a drop to low key for closing markers (see section 4.8). For example: WHERE shall we have the TABLES?
These were advanced learners, but it is the activity itself and their responsibility for its conduct rather than their level of English alone that generates the natural use of these transaction markers.
Another way of raising awareness of boundary markers and producing data for discussion is by using 'topping-and-tailing' activities. A dialogue is taken, and the beginning and end removed, so that what is left is clearly the 'middle' of a piece of talk (just as in extract (1.5) on page 10 and the reader activity that follows it). The instruction to the learners (in pairs or in groups) is to add a beginning and an end so that the dialogue represents a meeting between two friends who talk briefly and then have to part. This generates greeting and leave-taking adjacency pairs, but also produces a need for opening and closing markers (e.g. 'Hello, what's new?', 'Anyway, I must go', 'Well, I'll give you a ring soon', 'Look, I can't stop now').
5.5.2 Topics
Several questions arise around the notion of topic, not least, what is a topic? Another set of questions concerns how topics are opened, developed, changed and closed, and what linguistic resources are available for this. The question 'What is a topic?' may strike many language teachers as otiose, but there are different ways of looking at topic. Topics could be defined, on the formal level, as stretches of talk bounded by certain topic and/or transactional markers, such as lexical ones {by the way, to change the subject), or phonological ones (changes in pitch). Or we could take a semantic framework, and try to express the content of different segments of talk according to single-word or phrasal titles (e.g. 'holidays', 'buying a house'), or else we could use interactive criteria and say that something is only a topic if more than one speaker makes an utterance relevant to it. We could equally take an overall pragmatic approach and say that topics are strings of utterances perceived as relevant to one another by participants in talk. Or we could take a purely surface cohesional view, and say that topics end where chains of lexical cohesion peter out (see section 3.3). All of these approaches are valid in some measure; the one that tends to dominate language teaching materials is the expression of topics as titles for the 'subject matter' of speech events. Here we hope to supplement that view with a consideration of structural and interactive features of topics.
Topics can be the reason for talk or they can arise because people, are already talking. The former situation is exemplified in this extract, where A has put on some new clothes for a special occasion and B and C are casting an eye over his appearance, at A's request:
(5.13) (A comes in holding his jacket.)
B: That looks very nice, put it on and let's have a look at you.
A: I don't like the two buttons, I didn't know it had two buttons, I
thought it had three.
C: Well, it's the style of the coat, Ken.
B: Nick's has only got two r buttons.
C: It's a r low cut.
A: All right?
B: Very r nice.
C: It's beautiful.
B: Lovely, lovely.
A: Does it look nice?
B: Yeah, it goes very well with those trousers, there's a colour in the jacket that picks up the colour in the trousers.
C: Them others he wears are striped, but they clashed, too much
alike.
A: Two different stripes
C: But not matching each other if you understand what I mean.
B: Yeah, yeah . . . r yeah.
A: It's all right then, eh?
B: It's very nice, Dad, it looks very, very good.
A: I don't like the, I like three buttons, you see . . .
C: Ken, it's the style of the coat!
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