Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PAPER
Submitted to fulfill the requirements of Pragmatics
Mid-term & Final Exams
By
Name
: Tantri Sundari
NIM
Class
: P2TK
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
Based on (Conklin, 1912) conversation is a form of interactive, spontaneous
communication between two or more people who are following rules of etiquette. It is
polite give and take of subjects thought of by people talking with each other for company.
Conversation is a central activity in social life. (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008) said
conversation is not seen simply as the product of two speaker-hearers who attempt to
exchange information or convey messages to each other. Participants in conversation are
seen as mutually orienting to, and collaborating in order to achieve, orderly and
meaningful communication. Conversation also can not be separated from it context and
circumstance when it was uttered, somehow it is like a unity among the meaning, context
and lately conversation is connected with social.
However, how is ordinary conversation organized, how do people coordinate
their talk in interaction, and what is the role of talk in wider social processes? The study
of conversation became more interesting when Harold Garnkel, an ethno methodologist
conducted a research on social action and interaction. Then, these ideas were developed
by Sacks who determined that conversation is an organized activity that has a systematic
structure. It is called conversational analysis (CA). According to (Sidnell, 2010)
conversation analysis (CA) is an approach within the social sciences that aims to describe,
analyze and understand talk as a basic and constitutive feature of human social life.
Hutchby (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008) states that conversation analysis is characterized by
the view that how talk is produced and how the meanings of that talk are determined are
the practical, social and interactional accomplishments of members of a culture.
According to (Siobhan Chapman & Routledge, 2009) the more important CA investigates
the sequential nature of conversation; analysts have studied the systematically recurring
linguistic units that open these conversations.
In this discussion, we will discuss more about the conversational and preference
structure. What kind of features that was existed in a conversation, and how do we do the
conversation will be discussed on the next chapter.
1.2 Formulation of Problems
There are six problems that we are going to discuss in this paper:
1. What is the definition of conversation?
2. What is the definition of conversational analysis?
3. What kinds of features are existed in a conversation?
4. What kinds of conversation style do people have?
5. What is adjacency pair?
6. Explain about preference structure!
1.3 Objective
The purposes of doing discussion about conversation and preference structure are:
1. To know more about the definition of conversation.
2. To understand more about the definition of conversational analysis.
3. Can identify kinds of features are existed in a conversation.
4. To recognize kinds of conversation style people have.
5. To know more adjacency pair.
6. To ccomprehend about preference structure
CHAPTER 2
DISCUSSION
e. Pause
(Yule, 1996a) states that pause is silence between turn. If the normal
expectation is that completion points are marked by the end of a sentence and a
pause, then one way to keep the turn is to avoid having those two markers occur
together. That is, dont pause at the end of sentences; make your sentences run on
by using connectors like and, and then, so, but; place your pauses at points where
the message is clearly incomplete; and preferably ll the pause with a
hesitation marker such as er, em, uh, ah (Yule, 2014).
Example: (Yule, 2014)
X: well that lm really was . . . wasnt what he was good at
Y:
when diX: I mean his other . . . em his later lms were much more . . . er really more in
the romantic style and that was more what what he was . . . you know . . . em
best at doing
Y: so when did he make that one
These types of strategies, by themselves, should not be considered
undesirable or domineering. They are present in the conversational speech of
most people and they are part of what makes conversation work. We recognize
these subtle indicators as ways of organizing our turns and negotiating the
intricate business of social interaction via language.
All cultures have their own preferences as to how long a speaker should
hold the oor, how they indicate that they have nished and another speaker can
take the oor, when a new speaker can start, whether the new speaker can overlap
and interrupt, when speakers can pause and for how long. According to (Cutting,
2005) for example, Latin Americans have pauses of a fraction of a second and it
is socially acceptable to overlap and interrupt, whereas North American Indians
expect a two second pause between turns, and for the Japanese it is unacceptable
to interrupt.
f. Attributable silence
Attributable silence is the absence of talk when a speaker is given the
right to speak in conversation (Yule, 1996a).
Each culture seems to have an unwritten agreement about the acceptable length of
a pause between two turns. In any culture, if the pause is intended to carry
meaning, analysts call it an attributable silence.
Example: (Cutting, 2005)
A : Did you have a good time last night?
B : (3) Yeah.
A : So he asked you out then?
B : He did.
B pauses for three seconds before her Yeah, and A attributes to this
silence an afrmative answer and very positive sentiments. In the cultures in
which there is a low level of tolerance of silence between turns, if there is a lull in
the conversation extending past about ten seconds, speakers tend to utter
something like um or So there you go, in order to break the silence. For those
who do not know each other well, a long non-attributable silence can feel
awkward.
g. Backchannels
Backchannels is indication that listener pay attention to speaker.
According to (Yule, 1996a) within an extended turn, however, speakers still
expect their conversational partners to indicate that they are listening. There are
many different ways of doing this, including head nods, smiles, and other facial
expressions and gestures, but the most common vocal indications are called
backchannel signals, or simply backchannels.
According to (Yule, 2014) in same-gender conversations, women
produce more backchannels as indicators of listening and paying attention. The
term backchannels describes the use of words (yeah, really?) or sounds (hmm, oh)
by listeners while someone else is speaking. Men not only produce fewer
backchannels, but appear to treat them, when produced by others, as indications
of agreement. In cross-gender interaction, the absence of backchannels from men
tends to make women think the men are not paying attention to them. The more
frequent production of backchannels by women leads men to think that the
women are agreeing with what theyre saying.
Example: (Yule, 1996a)
Caller: if you use your long distance service a lot then youll
Mary:
uh-uh
Caller: be interested in the discount Im talking about because
Mary:
yeah
Caller: itcan only save you money to switch to a cheaper service
Mary:
mmm
These types of signals (uh-uh, yeah, mmm) provide feedback to the
current speaker that the message is being received. They normally indicate that
the listener is following, and not objecting to, what the speaker is saying. Given
this normal expectation, the absence of backchannels is typically interpreted as
significant. During telephone conversations, the absence of backchannels may
prompt the speaker to ask ifthe listener is still there. During face-to-face
interaction, the absence of backchannels may be interpreted as a way of
withholding agreement, leading to an inference of disagreement.
2.4 Conversational Style
Conversational style is divided by two categories according to the speaker (Yule,
1996a):
a. High involvement style
Speakers icipation in a conversation will be very active, that speaking rate will be
relatively fast, with almost no pausing between turns, and with some overlap or
even completion of the others turn.
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2.
3.
4.
Topic (a) prefer personal topics, (b) shift topics abruptly, (c) introduce topics
without hesitance, (d) persistence (if a new topic is not picked up by others,
reintroduce it. Data show persistence up to a maximum of seven tries).
Genre (a) tell more stories, (b) tell stories in rounds, (c) preferred point of a
story is the emotional experience of the teller.
Pace (a) faster rate of speech (b) pauses avoided (silence has a negative
value; it is taken as evidence of lack of rapport, (c) faster rate of turn taking, (d)
cooperative overlap (the notion of back-channel responses is extended to include
lengthy questions and echoes, resulting from a process of participatory
listenership).
Expressive paraUnguislics (a) expressive phonology, (b) pitch and amplitude
shifts, (c) marked voice quality, (d) strategic pauses.
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speakers. The turns are functionally related to each other in such a fashion that the first turn
requires a certain type or range of types of second turn.
According to Schegloff & Sack in Stephen C. Levinson (1983, p. 302) there are some
characteristics of adjacency pairs. Adjacency pairs are sequences of two utterances that are:
Adjacent. It means that that is the first immediately follows the second
Typed, so that a particular first part requires a particular second (or range of second
parts) E.g. offers requires acceptance or rejections, greetings require greeting and so
on.
From the characteristics above, it means that adjacency pair always consists of a first
part and a second part, produced by different speakers. The utterance of a first part
immediately creates an expectation of the utterance of a second part of the same pair failure
to produce the second part in response will be treated as a significant absence and hence
meaningful.
b. Insertion sequences
In adjacency pairs, not all first parts immediately receive their second parts, however.
It often happens that a question-answer sequence will be delayed while another questionanswer sequences intervenes. Or in other word, it often happens in which one questionanswer pair is embedded within another which is called insertion sequences. According
toYule (1996b, p. 78) an insertion sequences is one adjacency pair within another. The
sequence will then take the form of Q1-Q2-A2-A1 (where Q1 labels the first question, A1 its
answer, and so on), with Q2-A2 as the insertion sequence. Although there appears to be a
question (Q2) in response to a question (Q1), the assumption is that once the second part (A2)
of the insertion sequence is provided, the second part (A1) of the initial question (Q1) will
follow. This pattern is illustrated in the following example.
Agent : so you want the early flight?
(=Q1)
(=Q2)
(=A2)
Client : yeah
thats great
(=A1)
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Jean
(Q1= Request)
Fred
(Q2)
Jean
: Yeah.
(A2)
Fred
: Okay.
(A1= acceptance)
From the example above its shown there is a pair which consist of making a requestaccepting the request (Q1-A1), with an insertion sequence of a question-answer pair (Q2-A2)
which seems to function as a condition on the acceptance (A1) being provided. The delay in
the example above, created by the insertion sequence, is one type of indication that not all
first parts necessarily receive the kind of second parts the speaker anticipate delay represents
distance between what is expected and what is provided. Delay is always interpreted as
meaningful.
c. Opening section (SummonAnswer Sequences)
One kind of conversation with a recognizable overall organization that has been much
studied is the telephone call. These tend to have clear beginnings and carefully organized
closings. Thus, in telephone calls we can recognize the following typical components of an
opening section: the telephone rings, and, upon picking up the receiver, the person at the
receiving end almost invariably speaks first, either with a station identification (name of a
firm, telephone number, etc.) or a plain Hello, where upon the caller produces a Hello,
often with a self-identification.
For a start we may note that such openings are constructed largely from adjacency
pairs: thus we typically get paired Hellos as an exchange of greetings, we may get selfidentifications with paired recognitions, and an exchange of How are you each with their
paired responses. There is, moreover, a puzzle about why the receiver, the person with the
least information about the identity and purposes of the other, almost invariably talks first.
The puzzle dissolves when we assimilate the openings of telephone conversations to
summons-answer sequence. Where the first utterance (or action) is a summons, the second an
answer to the summons, the exchange establishing an open channel for talk. Schegloff in
Stephen C. Levinson (1983, p. 310) suggests that the ringing of the
telephone is the
summons component in such an adjacency pair, so that the first turn at talk (the receiver's
Hello) is actually the second interactional move. So summons-answer sequences are actually
elements of (minimally) three-turn sequences, as illustrated below:
A: John ? ((SUMMONS)
B: Yeah ? ((ANSWER))
A: Pass the water wouldja? ((REASON FOR SUMMONS))
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Many telephone conversation have as their first three turns the following, or something
closely similar:
C: ((rings))
((summons))
T1
R: Hello
T2
C: Hi
T3
R: Oh hi::
d.
Closing Section
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further sequence of Okays just prior to a final exchange of good-byes. One general schema
for closing sections can be represented:
1
First Part
Prefered
Disprefered
Assessment
agree
Invitation
accept
Id love to
refuse
offer
accept
Yes, please
decline
proposal
agree
That'd be great
disagree
accept
Sure
refuse
request
Yes, it is
disagree
As is often the case, the expression of a refusal can be accomplished without actually
saying no. We can use hesitation, preface, produce a kind of token acceptance to show
appreciation to the first speaker. For example, hesitation and preface shown in dispreferred
second parts to invitation:
Backy : come over for some coffee later.
Wally : ohehId love tobut you seeIIm supposed to get this finished
you know
After a preface (Oh) and a hesitation(eh), the second speaker produce a kind of token
acceptance(Id love to) to show appreciationof the invitation. Then, the others understanding
15
is invoked(you see) and an account is presented (Im supposed to get this finished) to explain
what prevents the speaker from accepting the invitation.
The patterns associated with dispreferred second in English are presented as a series
of optional elements
How to do a dispreferred
Examples
a. delay/hesitate
b. preface
well; oh
c. express doubt
d. token acceptance
e. apology
f. mention obligation
h. make it non-personal
i. give an account
j. use mitigators
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CHAPTER 3
CONCLUSION
1. Definition of conversation is conversation is talk between two or more people in
which thoughts, feelings and ideas are expressed, questions are asked and
answered, or news and information are exchanged.
2. Definition of conversational analysis is an approach within the social sciences that
aims to describe, analyze and understand talk as a basic and constitutive feature of
human social life.
3. Kinds of features are existed in a conversation:
a. Floor
b. Turn Taking
c. Transition relevance place (TRP)
d. Overlap
e. Pause
f. Attributable silence
g. Backchannel
4. Kinds of conversation style based on the speakers are high involvement style, and
high considerateness style.
5. Adjacency pair is a unit of conversation that contains an exchange of one turn
each by two speakers. The turns are functionally related to each other in such a
fashion that the first turn requires a certain type or range of types of second turn.
In adjacency pairs, not all first parts immediately receive their second parts,
however it often happens that a question-answer sequence will be delayed while
another question-answer sequences intervenes. Or in other word, it often happens
in which one question-answer pair is embedded within another which is called
insertion sequences.
6. Preference structure devides second part into preferred and dispreferred social acts
the preferred is structurally expected next act and the dispreferred is the
structurally unexpected next act. Dispreferreds take more time/language/effort
while preferred represents closeness and quick connection. Participants try to
avoid creating contexts for dispreferreds e.g., by using pre-sequences.
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(Bilmes, 2014)
(Sacks, 1995)
(Cambridge, 2008)
(Cambridge, 2008)