conversational style and current issues

7/18/2019 CONVERSATIONAL STYLE AND CURRENT ISSUES

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UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE CHIMBORAZO

Name: Luis Choto

Number of topis: ! CONVERSA"IONAL S"#LE$

CURREN" ISSUES

CONVERSATIONAL STYLE

In face-to-face verbal exchanges the choice of orate features of speechcan give the participants a feeling of joint interpersonal involvementrather than the sense of detachment or objectivity. Dierent contexts of situation and dierent contexts of culture call for dierent conversationalstyles.

Compare for example an interview, in which the purpose is to elicitinformation, and a conversation among friends, where the purpose is to

share past experiences.

Interview between journalist and young apprentice in ermany.

!" and where do you wor#$

%" I wor# in the metal industry

!" uhuh&why did you choose that particular job$ In the metal industry$

%" well& it was& so to spea#& the job of my dreams. I wanted to wor#.%ut not particularly anIntellectual job, but a more physical one.

!" so& you can say that you chose that job yourself$

%" I chose that job myself.

'(ramsch, Claire, Discourse, !nalysis and second )anguage *eaching.

+ashington, D.C." Center for !pplied )inguistics , page /01



2rom the controlled, non-overlapping se3uence to turns, the interviewer4sattempt as professional, detached, objectivity the cautious responses of the young apprentice desirous to be forthcoming with the re3uired

information, we recogni5e the typical style of a speech event called6Interview7. *his literate journalistic style is 3uite dierent from the oratestyle one may 8nd in a conversation among friends"

Deborah" 9y: ';ighs1

<eter" !nd I4ve been& and I s

Deborah" I do that to but it4s

<ainful<eter" =eah. 2i"ve, six hours a night,

!nd

Deborah" oh od how can you do it. =ou survive$

>ere, <eter and Deborah4s common cultural bac#ground is enacted

through a distinctive orate conversational style, where paralinguisticsignals li#e sighs and interjections 'oy:1 signal empathy, the heavy use of personal pronouns '6I7 6you71 indexes both ego involvement andinvolvement with the listeners and where the fre3uent interruptions andoverlaps index a high degree of conversational co-operation. ?ote,however, that this is how Deborah herself interprets the phenomena,interlocutors from another culture with a more literate conversationalstyle, mar#ed by brevity conciseness and concern for exactitude, mightinterpret the overlaps, the fre3uent bac#channels signals and theinterjections not as co-operation but in the contrary as so many violations

of their conversational space. *hey might perceive Deborah and <eter asbeing intolerable blabberers and might in turn be perceived by them asbeing stando@sh and unsociable.

*he orate-literate continuum gets reali5ed dierently and dierent culturalgenres, li#e interviews and friendly conversation, but also in dierentculture tradition within one genre, such as classroom tal#. 2or example,Indian children from the +arm ;pring reservation in 9regon, who are usedto learning by silently listening to and watching adults in their family, andby participating in social evens within the community as a whole have anotably dierent interactional behavior in the classroom than their !nglo-!merican peers and the teacher, even though all spea# Anglish. *hey



mostly remain silent, do not respond to direct solicitation to display their#nowledge in public, do not view, for person.

Deborah and <eter are perfectly capable of adopting literate discoursestyle in interview situation, and +arn ;pring Indian children can be very

lively conversationalists when among peers outside the classroom.>owever, by temperament and upbringing, people do tend to prefer oneor the other style in a given situation. *his style, in turn forms parts of their cultural identity and sense of self, as we shall see in chapter /.

If all conversational styles are e3ually valid, since they reBect the e3uallyrespectable values of the discourse communities they come from, not allstyles have e3ual power as women and ethnic minorities have longdiscovered. *he problem in education in particular, is how to combinedierent sets of values, dierents discourses and learning styles so as notto suppress anyone4s sense of worth, yet give everyone access to adominant conversational style in posed by forces outside the localcommunities control.

CURRENT ISSUES

*he relationships pf language and cultures in language study is one of themost hotly debated issues at the present time. %ecause language isclosely related to the way we thin#, and to the way we behave andinBuence the behavior of others, the notion that our sense of social realitymay be but a construction of language or language game4 is disturbing.

*he notion that a person social a cultural identity may not be theimmutable monolithic entity it is usually ta#ing for, but a (aleidoscope of various presentations and representation of self through language isunsettling. *hese uncertainties explain in part the current debatessurrounding the role of the native spea#er, the concept of cultural

authenticity, the notion of cross-, and multicultural communication andwhat has become #nown as the politics of recognition 'see page I 01.

conversational style and current issues

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