FROM UTTERANCE TO DISCOURSE

FROM UTTERANCE TO DISCOURSE          

92 – INTRODUCTION

Sections 82–91 outlined some key features of spoken language, especially the way face-to-face conversations are tied to the participants and the immediate situation in which they are speaking in real time.

In this chapter, 92–103, we consider how grammatical features in spoken utterances reflect the creation of discourse rather than just the internal construction of phrases, clauses and sentences. We use the term ‘utterance’ to refer to complete communicative units, which may consist of single words, phrases, clauses and clause combinations spoken in context, in contrast to the term ‘sentence’, which we reserve for units consisting of at least one main clause and any accompanying subordinate clauses, and marked by punctuation (capital letters and full stops) in writing.

This chapter considers how speakers orient themselves to the situation of speaking, centred on the notion of deixis. Deixis concerns the way speakers refer to people and things in terms of time and space, all in relation to the moment and situation of speaking. For example, the basic meanings of I and you in English are ‘person speaking’ and ‘person addressed’, respectively, and who the words refer to will change every time the speaker changes. Similarly, an object which is this cup for a speaker may be referred to as that cup by a listener who is separated from the speaker in space or time:

A:   What’s this box here?

B:   I don’t know. Trash.

[at a travel agent’s; the customer (A) has just received his tickets]

A:   Right well this is all right now is it?

B:   That’s the ticket yes.

(what is this for the customer is that for the agent)

=>  93

This chapter also considers how speakers encode assumptions about what can be understood from the situation without being said, and what cannot, as reflected in the phenomenon of situational ellipsis. Ellipsis, or absence of references to entities which are obvious to all participants, is common in informal speech:

A:   Finished yet?

B:   Not yet.

(obvious to the listener that the speaker means ‘Have you finished yet?’)           

=> 94

This chapter also examines how listeners respond to messages and show their ‘listenership’, for example by the use of response tokens, i.e. single words and phrases that represent much more personally and affectively engaged alternatives to bare yes and no:[talking about food preparation]

A:   Actually these things should be marinated the night before.

B:   Exactly. Oh absolutely. Actually er yeah. Even the vegetables, Karen.

The chapter then describes how speakers package the information in their messages with the listener firmly in mind (e.g. by the use of headers, informative items that precede the conventional clause structure and make the clause easier to process):

(header)

My father, he’s been in hospital three times already.

 => 96

In addition, the chapter considers how speakers create interactive exchanges by the use of questions and tags (short structures typically found at the end of clauses, such as You like mushrooms, don’t you?) (=> 98).

Another important feature of spoken discourse is the purposive use of vague language (such as sort of, whatever) to project particular kinds of relationships between speakers (=> 103).

The way speakers organise their utterances into coherent discourse and monitor it in relation to its reception by listeners is covered in the next chapter, in the section on discourse markers (=> 108).