Spoken Discourse
Spoken Discourse Assignment
Introduction
In this paper, the aim is to apply different methods of discourse analysis to a selected extract of transcribed language to establish who holds the power during the interaction. In a normal interview situation, the interviewer will control the topic change of the interaction and ask the questions and the interviewee will respond. One of the aims is to establish whether this is the case, and to see if this remains constant throughout the extract. The initial assumption is Gillian Duffy holds the power. However, an analysis of the transcript reveals a number of irregularities that would suggest a struggle for power from both parties within the interaction. …show more content…
To explore the irregularities, several frameworks will be applied. These will include a structural analysis, followed by a pragmatic analysis that will include frameworks by Grice (The Co-operative Principle, 1975) and Brown & Levinson (Politeness Theory, 1978).
Levels of Discourse
As this extract is taken from a live, televised, media interview, there is more than one level of discourse (see diagram one). The interaction is between Addresser 2- Former British PM, Gordon Brown (GB) and Addressee 2- Gillian Duffy (GD). The interview is situated in a public street, consisting of observers from the general public surrounding (who have no verbal part in the interaction).
It is important to acknowledge the different levels of discourse within this situation. Firstly, there is an audience at “home” watching and secondly there is both addresser 1-TV company (Sky News) and Addressee 1-Public audience. The audience’ s presence is an invisible pressure to GB, as he is both aware of their importance and presence, thus his dialogue will be implicitly affected, in the same respect, this will also affect the dialogue of GD.
The purpose of the interaction and the initial intention was likely to be a political party opportunity, to project GB as a positive, Labour member. GB has an image to maintain, as a professional leader, whereas GD has no real understanding of the possible political ramifications of this interaction. She is asking questions, probably aware of cameras however, unaware of the effect of the mass audience watching at home. It is clear throughout the interaction that both speakers have different agendas. GB attempts to switch subjects to his choice to avoid GD’s challenging questions. GB has institutional power because of who he is, whereas GD takes it away from him.
Diagram One:
Addresser 1 Message Addressee 1
(TV Company, SKY News) (Public Audience)
Addresser 2 Message Addressee 2 (GB) (GD)
Summary of Interview
The interaction is three minutes of verbal interaction taken from a live, media broadcasted interview on Sky News, between Gordon Brown (GB) and Gillian Duffy (GD). GB has come from a Community Payback Scheme in Rochdale. He is standing in the street engaging in an unrehearsed conversation with a general member of the community, Gillian Duffy. They are surrounded by reporters and camera operators from various media organisations, as well as by members of the public, members of Brown’s election team and Simon Danczuk (Labour Parliamentary Party Candidate for Rochdale).
Highlighted on the BBC News website 24/4/10, Gordon Brown has later said he was “mortified” after he was caught on microphone, describing a pensioner (GD) he had just spoken to, as a “bigoted woman”. (GD) had challenged him on issues including immigration. As GB returned to his car, he was still wearing a broadcast microphone and was heard to say “that was a disaster” causing a media frenzy. (www.bbc.news.co.uk 28/04/10)
Structural analysis
A structural analysis examines the structure of the interaction and lets us explore the conversational behaviour. This will include analysing the number of turns addressers have; how long those turns are; who does the interrupting; who asks questions and who answers them. In relation to these features, I will refer to the table in appendix (i). The initial assumption suggested that GD held the power during the interaction; however, with 20.90% of total words spoken compared to GB’s 79.10%, it now seems GB holds this part. The average turn length (GD: 14.58 and GB: 38.60, words per turn) suggests GB statistically utters the most during the interaction.
Further analysis revealed, GB is interrupted on 9 occasions (Lines: 4, 10, 16, 26, 30, 34, 38, 52 & 61) compared to GD interrupted twice (Lines: 1 & 19). This shows that there is clear evidence of a power struggle taking place and suggests that these interruptions are intended to control contributions and portray GD as trying to take control over the topic of discussion and hold the floor.
Due to the length of the utterances, it seems GB does not want to allow GD to speak, as clearly witnessed in (Lines: 19-26) with the longest utterance within the extract (101 words). Gillian initiates turn-taking on twelve occasions, by using speech acts such as asking questions.
(L1) “But how are you gonna get us out of all this debt Gordon?” (L18) “Where are they flocking from” (A dialectal term, referring to the following question) (L27) “What are you going to do about students who are coming in now?”
Commanding (L28) “Scrap that Gordon” and complaining (L11 – L13)”but there’s too many people now who who aren’t vulnerable but they can get claim and people who are vulnerable can’t get claim”. GB also uses speech acts such as answering questions (L2 –L3) “because I I’ve cut the deficit reduction plan” and agreeing (L8) “good”. In situations like an uncontrolled environment such as this one, GB has to depend on quick thinking and remember only important information he is about to talk about. However, the extract shows he is unable to refer to scripted dialogue, due to nature of the question being asked from GD, which are evidently ones he is unprepared for.
The language used in the interaction is informal as from the start GD refers to GB as “Gordon” (L1) using first name terms of address. This is also shown in (L28) “Scrap that Gordon” i.e. the usage of slang.
As C. Rodgers (2006) notes,
Informal conversations are often much richer, in terms of emotional content and motivational quality, than formal workplace communications. Also, people often express themselves more openly and authentically through their informal tall and interaction than they do during more formally bounded interactions (Rodgers, 2006, pg11) During the structural analysis the amount of paralinguistic features are evident throughout the interaction.
GB is calm and relaxed up until GD asks him a challenging question (L1) GB uses hand gestures in his reply and smiles nervously, agreeing with GD (L8) suggesting that GB is flustered by the questions he is being asked. GB uses non fluency features as he stammers on several occasions Lines: 9, 15, 19, 41, 49 & 62 this suggests he is struggling for power and is unsure what to say. According to D. Crystal (1976)
Paralanguage is in fact generally seen as a kind of bridge between non-linguistic forms of communicative behaviour and the traditionally central areas of ‘verbal’ linguistic study-grammar (Crystal, 1976, pg162) Referring back to the initial assumption that GD held power; the structural analysis suggests that GB has power because he does utter the most words and has the longest turns but GD allocates turns, controls the topic and asks the majority of the questions. Therefore the initial assumptions are put into question. In order to determine the extent to which the power struggle is actually balanced, a pragmatic analysis will now be …show more content…
undertaken.
Pragmatic Analysis
In the next part of the analysis pragmatic frameworks will be applied.
For this, Grice’s cooperative Principle (1975) will be used:
Grice says that when we communicate we assume, without realising it, that we, and the people we are talking to will be conversationally cooperative – we will cooperate to achieve mutual conversational ends (Grice, 1975, p183)
During the interaction the maxim of relevance is flouted (Lines: 5, 11, 16, 27, 34 & 53) as GD interrupts GB with questions, changing the topic of talk suggesting she is not happy with GB’s answers. The maxim of manner is flouted (L1) where GD asks GB “but how are you going to get us out of this debt Gordon?” This is due to the fact that question is asked in an obscure manner. The implication is that its GB’s fault the country is in so much debt. The same question is also an On Record threat to GB’s positive face as GD makes it clear who it’s aimed at.
The maxim of manner is also flouted by GD again (L18) “Where are they flocking from” suggesting she is implying that the country is overwhelmed by immigrants.
According to Grice
(1989)
The presence of a conversational implicature must be capable of being worked out; for even if it can in fact be intuitively grasped, unless the intuition is replaceable by an argument, the implicature (if present at all) will not count as a conversational implicature; it will be a conventional implicature (Grice, 1989, pg31)
Throughout the interaction there are numerous threats to GB’s negative face by the amount of times GD interrupts him. According to Brown and Levinson as highlighted by Jonathan Culpeper (2002) to explain politeness with reference to the notion of face, they suggested that face consists of two basic socio-psychological wants. Positive face is the want to be approved of. Negative face is the want to be unimpeded.
GB enhances GD’s positive face on numerous occasions (L48-L58) by complimenting the colour of her coat and being nice about her family. By demonstrating phatic talk and walking forward suggests that GB is struggling to hold power and doesn’t know what to say. GB looks directly at the camera (L56) possibly realising that the interview hasn’t gone very well and that GD has wiped the floor with him.
In summarising the pragmatic analysis the results suggest that although GB held power during the structural analysis, GD takes power in the pragmatic analysis.
Conclusion
In conclusion, after examining both a structural and pragmatic analysis, the results suggest that the initial assumption, GD holds the power was correct. Although GB had the longest utterances and spoke the most words, GD takes over by the amount of times she interrupts him and changes the topic of talk. GB was probably intending on support from GD because of her age and her lifelong support to the Labour party but didn’t expect her to have such a strong opinion.
Appendix (i)
Conversational Behaviour GD GB
Who has the most turns 14 20
Who has the most utterances? 20.90% 79.10%
Average turn length 14.58 38.60
Who interrupts 7 2
Who is interrupted 6 9
Who initiates? **
Who responds? **
Who changes topic **
Who uses first name **
Bibliography
Link to Interaction on Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTr8IVWBuPE
Anon, (2010)BBC News, Gordon Brown ‘mortified’ by his ‘bigoted woman’ slur, Available: [Online] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8649853.stm [12/12/13]
Brown, Penelope; Levinson, Stephen (1978), Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Cameron, D (2001) Working with Spoken Discourse, London: Sage
Carter, R & Simpson, P (1989) Language, Discourse & Literature, London: Routledge
Crystal, D (1976) Prosodic Systems and Intonation in English volume1 of Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, CUP Archive: London
Grice, H P (1975) ‘Logic and conversation’ In P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds) Studies in Syntax and Semantics III: Speech Acts
Langford, D (1994) Analysing Talk, London: Macmillan
Rodgers. C (2006) Informal Coalitions, Mastering the Hidden Dynamics of Organizational Change, Palgrave: Macmillan
Yule, G (1996) Pragmatics, Oxford: Oxford
Introduction
In this paper, the aim is to apply different methods of discourse analysis to a selected extract of transcribed language to establish who holds the power during the interaction. In a normal interview situation, the interviewer will control the topic change of the interaction and ask the questions and the interviewee will respond. One of the aims is to establish whether this is the case, and to see if this remains constant throughout the extract. The initial assumption is Gillian Duffy holds the power. However, an analysis of the transcript reveals a number of irregularities that would suggest a struggle for power from both parties within the interaction. …show more content…
To explore the irregularities, several frameworks will be applied. These will include a structural analysis, followed by a pragmatic analysis that will include frameworks by Grice (The Co-operative Principle, 1975) and Brown & Levinson (Politeness Theory, 1978).
Levels of Discourse
As this extract is taken from a live, televised, media interview, there is more than one level of discourse (see diagram one). The interaction is between Addresser 2- Former British PM, Gordon Brown (GB) and Addressee 2- Gillian Duffy (GD). The interview is situated in a public street, consisting of observers from the general public surrounding (who have no verbal part in the interaction).
It is important to acknowledge the different levels of discourse within this situation. Firstly, there is an audience at “home” watching and secondly there is both addresser 1-TV company (Sky News) and Addressee 1-Public audience. The audience’ s presence is an invisible pressure to GB, as he is both aware of their importance and presence, thus his dialogue will be implicitly affected, in the same respect, this will also affect the dialogue of GD.
The purpose of the interaction and the initial intention was likely to be a political party opportunity, to project GB as a positive, Labour member. GB has an image to maintain, as a professional leader, whereas GD has no real understanding of the possible political ramifications of this interaction. She is asking questions, probably aware of cameras however, unaware of the effect of the mass audience watching at home. It is clear throughout the interaction that both speakers have different agendas. GB attempts to switch subjects to his choice to avoid GD’s challenging questions. GB has institutional power because of who he is, whereas GD takes it away from him.
Diagram One:
Addresser 1 Message Addressee 1
(TV Company, SKY News) (Public Audience)
Addresser 2 Message Addressee 2 (GB) (GD)
Summary of Interview
The interaction is three minutes of verbal interaction taken from a live, media broadcasted interview on Sky News, between Gordon Brown (GB) and Gillian Duffy (GD). GB has come from a Community Payback Scheme in Rochdale. He is standing in the street engaging in an unrehearsed conversation with a general member of the community, Gillian Duffy. They are surrounded by reporters and camera operators from various media organisations, as well as by members of the public, members of Brown’s election team and Simon Danczuk (Labour Parliamentary Party Candidate for Rochdale).
Highlighted on the BBC News website 24/4/10, Gordon Brown has later said he was “mortified” after he was caught on microphone, describing a pensioner (GD) he had just spoken to, as a “bigoted woman”. (GD) had challenged him on issues including immigration. As GB returned to his car, he was still wearing a broadcast microphone and was heard to say “that was a disaster” causing a media frenzy. (www.bbc.news.co.uk 28/04/10)
Structural analysis
A structural analysis examines the structure of the interaction and lets us explore the conversational behaviour. This will include analysing the number of turns addressers have; how long those turns are; who does the interrupting; who asks questions and who answers them. In relation to these features, I will refer to the table in appendix (i). The initial assumption suggested that GD held the power during the interaction; however, with 20.90% of total words spoken compared to GB’s 79.10%, it now seems GB holds this part. The average turn length (GD: 14.58 and GB: 38.60, words per turn) suggests GB statistically utters the most during the interaction.
Further analysis revealed, GB is interrupted on 9 occasions (Lines: 4, 10, 16, 26, 30, 34, 38, 52 & 61) compared to GD interrupted twice (Lines: 1 & 19). This shows that there is clear evidence of a power struggle taking place and suggests that these interruptions are intended to control contributions and portray GD as trying to take control over the topic of discussion and hold the floor.
Due to the length of the utterances, it seems GB does not want to allow GD to speak, as clearly witnessed in (Lines: 19-26) with the longest utterance within the extract (101 words). Gillian initiates turn-taking on twelve occasions, by using speech acts such as asking questions.
(L1) “But how are you gonna get us out of all this debt Gordon?” (L18) “Where are they flocking from” (A dialectal term, referring to the following question) (L27) “What are you going to do about students who are coming in now?”
Commanding (L28) “Scrap that Gordon” and complaining (L11 – L13)”but there’s too many people now who who aren’t vulnerable but they can get claim and people who are vulnerable can’t get claim”. GB also uses speech acts such as answering questions (L2 –L3) “because I I’ve cut the deficit reduction plan” and agreeing (L8) “good”. In situations like an uncontrolled environment such as this one, GB has to depend on quick thinking and remember only important information he is about to talk about. However, the extract shows he is unable to refer to scripted dialogue, due to nature of the question being asked from GD, which are evidently ones he is unprepared for.
The language used in the interaction is informal as from the start GD refers to GB as “Gordon” (L1) using first name terms of address. This is also shown in (L28) “Scrap that Gordon” i.e. the usage of slang.
As C. Rodgers (2006) notes,
Informal conversations are often much richer, in terms of emotional content and motivational quality, than formal workplace communications. Also, people often express themselves more openly and authentically through their informal tall and interaction than they do during more formally bounded interactions (Rodgers, 2006, pg11) During the structural analysis the amount of paralinguistic features are evident throughout the interaction.
GB is calm and relaxed up until GD asks him a challenging question (L1) GB uses hand gestures in his reply and smiles nervously, agreeing with GD (L8) suggesting that GB is flustered by the questions he is being asked. GB uses non fluency features as he stammers on several occasions Lines: 9, 15, 19, 41, 49 & 62 this suggests he is struggling for power and is unsure what to say. According to D. Crystal (1976)
Paralanguage is in fact generally seen as a kind of bridge between non-linguistic forms of communicative behaviour and the traditionally central areas of ‘verbal’ linguistic study-grammar (Crystal, 1976, pg162) Referring back to the initial assumption that GD held power; the structural analysis suggests that GB has power because he does utter the most words and has the longest turns but GD allocates turns, controls the topic and asks the majority of the questions. Therefore the initial assumptions are put into question. In order to determine the extent to which the power struggle is actually balanced, a pragmatic analysis will now be …show more content…
undertaken.
Pragmatic Analysis
In the next part of the analysis pragmatic frameworks will be applied.
For this, Grice’s cooperative Principle (1975) will be used:
Grice says that when we communicate we assume, without realising it, that we, and the people we are talking to will be conversationally cooperative – we will cooperate to achieve mutual conversational ends (Grice, 1975, p183)
During the interaction the maxim of relevance is flouted (Lines: 5, 11, 16, 27, 34 & 53) as GD interrupts GB with questions, changing the topic of talk suggesting she is not happy with GB’s answers. The maxim of manner is flouted (L1) where GD asks GB “but how are you going to get us out of this debt Gordon?” This is due to the fact that question is asked in an obscure manner. The implication is that its GB’s fault the country is in so much debt. The same question is also an On Record threat to GB’s positive face as GD makes it clear who it’s aimed at.
The maxim of manner is also flouted by GD again (L18) “Where are they flocking from” suggesting she is implying that the country is overwhelmed by immigrants.
According to Grice
(1989)
The presence of a conversational implicature must be capable of being worked out; for even if it can in fact be intuitively grasped, unless the intuition is replaceable by an argument, the implicature (if present at all) will not count as a conversational implicature; it will be a conventional implicature (Grice, 1989, pg31)
Throughout the interaction there are numerous threats to GB’s negative face by the amount of times GD interrupts him. According to Brown and Levinson as highlighted by Jonathan Culpeper (2002) to explain politeness with reference to the notion of face, they suggested that face consists of two basic socio-psychological wants. Positive face is the want to be approved of. Negative face is the want to be unimpeded.
GB enhances GD’s positive face on numerous occasions (L48-L58) by complimenting the colour of her coat and being nice about her family. By demonstrating phatic talk and walking forward suggests that GB is struggling to hold power and doesn’t know what to say. GB looks directly at the camera (L56) possibly realising that the interview hasn’t gone very well and that GD has wiped the floor with him.
In summarising the pragmatic analysis the results suggest that although GB held power during the structural analysis, GD takes power in the pragmatic analysis.
Conclusion
In conclusion, after examining both a structural and pragmatic analysis, the results suggest that the initial assumption, GD holds the power was correct. Although GB had the longest utterances and spoke the most words, GD takes over by the amount of times she interrupts him and changes the topic of talk. GB was probably intending on support from GD because of her age and her lifelong support to the Labour party but didn’t expect her to have such a strong opinion.
Appendix (i)
Conversational Behaviour GD GB
Who has the most turns 14 20
Who has the most utterances? 20.90% 79.10%
Average turn length 14.58 38.60
Who interrupts 7 2
Who is interrupted 6 9
Who initiates? **
Who responds? **
Who changes topic **
Who uses first name **
Bibliography
Link to Interaction on Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTr8IVWBuPE
Anon, (2010)BBC News, Gordon Brown ‘mortified’ by his ‘bigoted woman’ slur, Available: [Online] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8649853.stm [12/12/13]
Brown, Penelope; Levinson, Stephen (1978), Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Cameron, D (2001) Working with Spoken Discourse, London: Sage
Carter, R & Simpson, P (1989) Language, Discourse & Literature, London: Routledge
Crystal, D (1976) Prosodic Systems and Intonation in English volume1 of Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, CUP Archive: London
Grice, H P (1975) ‘Logic and conversation’ In P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds) Studies in Syntax and Semantics III: Speech Acts
Langford, D (1994) Analysing Talk, London: Macmillan
Rodgers. C (2006) Informal Coalitions, Mastering the Hidden Dynamics of Organizational Change, Palgrave: Macmillan
Yule, G (1996) Pragmatics, Oxford: Oxford