Written discourse

Exercises
Exercise 5.1
What inferences would you draw from the two exchanges below? What is the social relationship? The setting? And what features of “what is said” (e.g. what specific words and phrases?) allow you to make these inferences?

Debby:	Manela, sorry to bother you,
	but are the payroll forms ready?
Manela:	Oh sure.
	Here they are.
Mr. Kay:	Okay, let’s get started.
	First we’ll go over the problems from last night.

Exercise 5.2
Differences in the ways we use language to act and interact often arise through differences in their “context.” Collect ten to fifteen examples of phone openings, and ten to fifteen examples of face-to-face greetings. What differences between them can you identify in who talks when, and the use of words (e.g. hello, hi) and questions. What about differences within each con-text? Does the way you (or your interlocutors) talk seem to be related to how well you know each other, or when you’ve spoken to them last?

Exercise 5.3

Try to change the discourse markers you use in your everyday conversations. For example, answer each question that someone asks you with well. Completely stop using like or y’know. Add and to every sentence or utterance. Keep a log of your own ability to make these changes. What changes were the hardest to make? What do the changes tell you about these discourse markers?
Exercise 5.4
Identify question/answer adjacency pairs in the transcribed excerpts in this chapter. Analyze those adjacency pairs, as well as questions that you hear in classes and conversations, to answer the following:

— Are all utterances that end with a rising intonation questions?

— Are questions always performed through interrogative sentences?
— Does there seem to be one person who asks questions and others who answer?

If so, does that division seem to be related to the participants’ roles in the conversation? How?

Exercise 5.5
Reread Jack’s story in example (4) in this chapter and answer the following questions:

0. 
   What is Jack doing while Freda is talking to me?
   

0. 
   What thread of the prior talk does he pursue?
   

0. 
   Where and how does the turn-taking become competitive?
   

0. 
   How and when does Jack finally get a turn at talk in which he is the only speaker?
   

– Where does the abstract appear? Does Jack try out or self-repair differ-ent abstracts? Why might he do so?

— Where is the orientation? What background information is presented?

— What occurs during the complicating action?
— Is the story brought back to the present?
— What aspects of language evaluate “what happened”?
— What is the point of the story?
Exercise 5.6
Write Jack’s spoken narrative from (4) in one of the following written genres: an entry in a private journal or diary; a personal letter to a friend; a posting on your blog; support for a thesis in an essay that young boys are mischievous. What changes did you make? Which were easy to decide upon? Which did you struggle with?
Exercise 5.7
If you use instant messaging to communicate with friends or family, how do you manage your back channels? How do you take turns? Are adjacency pairs completed? Consider your answer in terms of the difference between spoken and written discourse.
Exercise 5.8
Requests are one of the most studied of all speech acts. The philosopher John Searle suggested that the following rules underlie the production and interpretation of requests.

Type of rule
Propositional content
Preparatory

Sincerity

Essential
Future act A of H
(a) H is able to do A. S believes H is
able to do A.
(b) It is not obvious to both S and H that
H will do A in the normal course of
events of his own accord.
S wants H to do A.
Counts as an attempt to get H to do A.

There are many ways to make a request. Whereas some seem direct and might be subcategorized as orders (e.g. Come over now!), others are very indirect and might be subcategorized as hints (e.g. I’m really lonely and I’m wondering if you’re doing anything now). Jot down and compare the requests you hear people making, including some written requests. You’ll be surprised at how much variety you find!

Exercise 5.9
Fill in the empty cells of the SPEAKING grid below, following from the information given in each column. Then explain the phonological, lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic features which you think would characterize each speech event. The topic of all three speech events is: Income taxes.

Setting	Senate	Bar	Dinner at home