The Communicative Grammar of English Workbook - Edward Woods, Rudy Coppieters 2002

1.2. Cooperation in conversation
Unit one. Spoken and written English

Sections 21-23

A conversation is not just a matter of giving and receiving information. It is a form of social interaction and participant cooperation is a basic feature of conversation. There is a give-and-take process which is manifested in several ways:

• turn-taking, where the role of speaker is shared in a conversation. This is shown in the interplay of questions, answers and positive follow-up comments.

• using fillers or discourse markers. These usually add little information, but tell us something of the speaker’s attitude to their audience and what they are saying.

Task ***

Look at the text below.

1. Comment on features of turn-taking.

2. Note the discourse items and indicate whether they are

i. purely interactive, e.g. ah, aha, mhm, mmm, oh, yes, yeah, yup, uhuh

_ii mainly interactive, e.g. no, please, I see, I mean, you know, you see, OK, that’s OK, all right, thank you, that’s right, that’s all right, well, sure, right

_iii also interactive, e.g. anyway, in fact, maybe, perhaps, probably, absolutely, of course, certainly, obviously, indeed, wasn’t it (and other tags), really, honestly

Extract

Speaker One who is a woman of 78 is telling speaker Two, a woman of 30, and speaker Three, a man of 47, about a plane journey she had.

S.1 ... somebody said to me the pilot says you can go in the cabin you see, well my mouth dropped open ...

S.2 (laughs)

S.1 No idea you see. Now I thought oh, I’d had a joke with one of the girls, you know ...

S.2 Yes

S1 ... the stewardess girls, and -er- maybe it was her. Or there was a young man with us who had been in our hotel. Maybe he’d said something. Somebody had anyway. So they took me, and Jeanne went with me, of course, in case I fell

S.2 Yeah.

S.1 Right into where the two pilots were. It was absolutely fantastic.

S.3 Marvellous, wasn’t it.

S.2 Was that the first time you’ve ever been ...

S.1 In the cabin?

S.2 Yeah.

S.1 Yeah.

S.3 Yeah. Normally they only take children and VI...

S.2 That’s right.

S.3 And V.I.Ps

S.1 Yeah.

S.3 So I don’t know which

S.1 Well, this was a V.I.P.

S.2 Yeah (laughs)

S.3 (laughs)

S.1 And -er- I went through this door and below was a city. All, all the lights and that. And it was fantastic.

S.2 What was the city?

S.1 Er - I was just, you know

S.2 Oh, you’re coming to that.

S.1 And I kept thinking I wonder where we are now. Just, you know, and -er - one of the pilots said you’re looking down on Budapest.

S.3 Mmm

S.1 He said the top side of that river is Buda and at this side is Pest. That’s why it’s called Budapest.

S.2 Oh, is it. I didn’t know.

S.1 Well, I’d never heard that before.

S.3 Yeah, it is two...

S.2 No, I hadn’t.

S.3 ... two towns.

S.2 Oh.

S.1 I was absolutely transfixed with that.

S.2 Mmm

S.1 It was like looking on Fairyland.

S.3 Mmm. It was lovely, wasn’t it?

(from R. Carter & M. McCarthy, Exploring Spoken English, C.U.P. 1997, pp. 32, 33)