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WHAT SPEAKERS KNOW - Coggle Diagram
WHAT SPEAKERS KNOW
LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE
Speaking serves two purposes:
transactional function
(convey information and facilitate the exchange of goods and services)
interpersonal function
(establish and maintain social relationships).
Generate different
speech events
which are structured in accordance with the kinds of social and mental processes that they accompany.
When speech events become conventionalised, they evolve into specific
genres
.
Genres:
interactive
or
non-interactive
;
planned
or
unplanned
.
The more planned - the more looks like writing.
Discourse knowledge
how individual elements are connected within a genre to form coherent and cohesive stretches of discourse.
Discourse competence
: knowing how to organise and connect individual utterances and turn-taking structures across an interactive talk. To achieve cohesion and coherence we can draw on
discourse markers
, lexical and grammatical knowledge. We use
discourse markers
to signal our intentions (but = want to introduce contrast), to hold the conversational turn, to mark the boundaries in the talk.
Pragmatic knowledge
describes the relation between language and its contexts of use, including the purpose for which language is being used.
e.g. How listeners use contextual information to make sense of what they are hearing.
Speech acts
when someone says something, the are also
doing
something.
Each utterance has a communicative purpose. Speech acts = functions (suggest, praise etc.).
Pragmatic knowledge
: knowledge of how speech acts are comprised and realised; knowing how to do things with language taking into account its contexts of use.
Speech acts form a reciprocal exchange as the get other people to do things. In language this is realised through
adjacency pairs
(A: Would you mind...? B: Not at all.) They are quite formulaic.
The co-operative principle
The fact that speakers are able to interpret speech acts and respond appropriately suggests that participants in a speech event are playing the game according to the same rules.
Four maxims by Grice
1. Quantity
: make your contribution just as informative as required.
2. Quality
: make your contribution one that is true.
3. Relation
: Make your contribution relevant.
4. Manner
: Avoid obscurity and ambiguity. Be brief and orderly.
Speakers will often indicate that they migh violate one of the maxims.
Politeness might push participants to violate the maxims.
The choice of
register
is influenced by the
tenor
- the relationship between speakers;
field
- what is going on and being talked about;
mode
- tha channel (face-to-face/written etc.)
Grammar
Context factors, including the lack of formality, make the use of
complex grammar
unnecessary. But to sustain a conversation over a variety of topics with a number of speakers, complex grammar is needed; as well as to generate a sophisticated range of meanings.
Speech in real-time with minimum planning opportunities restrict grammar complexity.
Features of spoken grammar:
clause
is the basic unit of construction (VS sentence in writing);
clauses are usually added -
co-ordination
(VS clauses are embedded - subordination - in writing);
head
(topic) +
body
(what is said) +
tail
(VS subject + verb + object in writing);
preference for direct speech;
question tags;
vague language (to fill pauses and reduce assertiveness VS writing that requires greater precision and uses modality to reduce assertiveness)
performance effects (hesitations, repeats, false starts, incompletion, syntactic blends).
Verb forms in spoken language:
present tenses outnumber past tenses;
simple forms outnumber progressive and perfect forms;
past perfect and past perfect cont are rare;
98% of active verbs (not passive);
will, would and can are extremely common.
Vocabulary
Fifity most frequent words in spoken English make up nearly 50% of all talk. Spoken language has a high proportion of words expressing attitude (
maybe
). As well as words expressing appraisal (
ridiculous
) - a lof of speech has an interpersonal function.
Productive vocabulary is half the size of receptive. And the number of words used in speaking is less than in writing.
2500 words cover 95% of spoken text (80% - writing).
Chunks
Fluency is all about the use of prefabricated chunks. The less we have to assemble ourselves - the more fluent we are.
Chunks
: collocations, phrasal verbs, idioms, catchphrases, sayings, sentence frames, social formulas, discourse markers.
It is the number of chunks mastered (the command of chunks) that determines fluency and language proficiency. Better
idiomaticity
is another benefit of chunks (=not just grammatically correct way of saying sth).
The lexical knowledge that a proficient speaker has access to consists not just of a few thousand words, but of a much greater number of chunks.
Phonology
Pronounciation of individual words doesn't involve conscious choices. What does is
intonation
. Intonation serves to separate the stream of speech into blocks of information (
tone units
) and to mark information within the units as being significant.
In English, high pitch is associated with new information. Intonation also signals the connection between tone units. A rise in pitch at the end of the tone unit implies continuation; a fall - completion.
Three functions of intonation:
segmentation, prominence, cohesion.
The marked rise in pitch on the first word of the storry separates it from the preceding discourse (the same as a paragraph in writing). News readers do this when they move on to a new piece.
EXTRALINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE
Topic
Cultural knowledge
Sociocultural knowledge
is knowledge about social values and the norms of behaviour in a given society, including the ways these are realized through language. Can be both linguistic and extralinguistic. e.g. Knowing whether people in a give culture shakehands on meeting.
Knowledge of the context
Allows to make refernce to the immediate context → less need to be explicit (as one might normally ve in writing) → the 'situated' nature of speech is
eliptic
Other characteristics os spoken language grounded in a shared context: high frequency of personal pronouns; use of substitute forms (...and everybody else did); use of deictic language.
Familiarity with other speakers
SPEECH CONDITIONS
determine the degree of fluency
Cognitive factors
: familiarity with the topic;familiarity with the genre;familiarity with the interlocutors;processing demands (complexity of mental processing required).
Affective factors:
Feelings towards the topic and participants; Self-consciousness.
Performance factors
Mode;Degree of collaboration;Discourse control;Planning and rehearsal time;Time pressure;Environmental conditions.