English grammar - Roger Berry 2012
C12 Analysing spoken texts
Section C Exploration
A) Study this transcript of an unplanned monologue by a woman recalling a highschool experience.
The recording can be listened to on the website. The speaker is from the American Midwest and displays some of the accent features of that region.
Note the lack of punctuation other than the use of dashes (to indicate pauses).
1. well - being a semi-geek - in high school - I - was also in the marching band -
2. and - basically - we had to - perform at football games - at the 4 th of July parade
3. of course - and we had to wear these horrible uniforms - that were - in our
4. school colours of course - red white and blue - made of 120 per cent polyester -
5. and we had to march in formation out on the football field - before the games and
6. during half time - and one time we were marching - doing our little - kind of -
7. sequence of movements on - the field - right before a game and the football
8. players were - warming up - and I played the flute - and - at one point some guy
9. from the opposing team - kicked the ball - out of control - and - the ball came
10. flying towards me and hit me in - the mouth - which - hit my flute as well -
11. luckily I didn’t have any broken teeth but I had a broken flute - and - a bloody lip
12. - anyway - there was mass panic - the whole formation kind of fell apart - and
13. all these - you know - panicking women were running out onto the field to see
14. what was wrong - and I was holding my - hand to my mouth - and - some women
15. from the - I don’t know - what do you call it - the - what is it called - it’s kind of
16. sports - this group of people who raise money for sports and kind of you know
17. distribute the money and stuff for school activities - came over and started yelling
18. at me to not get blood on my white gloves - that those white gloves cost ten
19. dollars a pair or something - here I am - blood streaming from my mouth - my
20. thousand dollar flute in pieces - and lucky to be alive - and she’s screaming at
21. me about getting blood on my - gloves - anyway I quit marching band after that
Vocabulary: geek - a person who is not very sociable
Activity C12.1
Do the dashes indicating pauses correspond to any grammatical divisions?
Activity C12.2
Would it be possible to add more punctuation, for example commas, and if so where? Could the text even be divided into grammatical sentences (as was done in C9)? For example, how about anyway on line 12; does it go with the preceding or following text?
Activity C12.3
Take the section starting with luckily on line 11 and ending with mouth on line (14) and transform it into ’written’ English. What needs to be changed apart from punctuation? Does the result seem like normal written English?
Activity C12.4
Look at the use of conjunctions and subordinators in the first ten lines of the passage (up to as well). How complex are the noun phrases in terms of postmodification?
Activity C12.5
Is there any contextual ellipsis (see A12)?
Activity C12.6
Are there any interruptions to the flow of her story?
Activity C12.7
Listen to the recording of this passage. How careful do you think the speaker is being? What does this suggest?
B) Study these two extracts from conversations between housemates at a UK university and answer the questions underneath. The second can be listened to on the website.
B1. Two of them are sitting in the living-room.
A. Lecture earlier?
B. Yeh - had a fire alarm in it.
Activity C12.8
What grammatical feature typical of speech does this demonstrate? How would the lines appear without it?
B2. In this extract several of the students are talking about golf.
1 A. it’s gotta be the best professional sport
2 B. racing driver
3 C. footballer
4 A. think how much effort you have to put in to play football
5 D. yeh think about the danger involved in racing driving
6 B. yeh but that - it makes you feel alive=
7 D. = you can smoke - you can drink - anything you wanna do playing golf - you
get to go to some amazing locations=
8 E. =you can get smashed
9 A. all over the world
(= indicates overlapping utterances)
Activity C12.9
In general, how much ’grammar’ in terms of grammatical structure is there in this conversation? How easy is it to identify sentences, i.e. to insert full stops?
Activity C12.10
a) Is there any cohesion, i.e. explicit links between utterances (see B11), in the text?
b) How could you make utterances 2 and 3 more explicitly related to 1?
Activity C12.11
Are there any non-standard written forms indicating informal speech?
Activity C12.12
Who does you in utterances 4, 6, 7 and 8 refer to?
Activity C12.13
Compare the second conversation with the monologue above in (A) in terms of grammatical structure.
Comments
Activity C12.1: Generally the dashes do not correspond to anything grammatical. However, they do not split phrases (except for in - the mouth on line 10)
Activity C12.2: Yes, the text could be divided into four sentences on lines 9 and 10, 16, 18 and 19. Anyway clearly goes with the following text: Anyway, there was mass panic . . .
Activity C12.3:
The ’written’ version would look something like this:
Luckily, I didn’t have any broken teeth, but I had a broken flute and a bloody lip. The whole formation kind of fell apart, and all these panicking women were running out onto the field to see what was wrong and I was holding my hand to my mouth . . .
The text seems to run on more than it would if it was a written description, especially with the double use of and in the second sentence. Kind of also seems inappropriate or unnecessary. In other words, it still sounds like speech.
Activity C12.4:
There are several uses of and to link clauses; this is the only conjunction used. There are two relative pronouns: that on line 3 and which on line 10. With the aid of these relative clauses and other postmodification there are some complex noun phrases, for example:
these horrible uniforms - that were - in our school colours of course - red white
and blue - made of 120 per cent polyester
our little - kind of - sequence of movements
Activity C12.5:
There is none.
Activity C12.6:
The only place where there is a major interruption is on lines 15-17, from I don’t know to school activities where the speaker is lost for a word or phrase and fills in with appeals to the listener (what do you call it?) and hesitations (kind of you know). The result is that the subject of came on line 17 is some women from the . . . on line 14.
There are other minor ’insertions’, for example at the 4th of July parade of course on line 2.
Activity C12.7:
The speaker appears very careful. This is borne out by the large number of hesitations, where she is planning what to say, and by the lack of any grammatical ’errors’ or restarts. This suggests that the description should be considered quite formal, even though it is spoken and unplanned. The absence of ellipsis supports this view.
Activity C12.8: Both lines have contextual ellipsis. In full the first one would be something like
Did you have a lecture earlier?
and the second would be
Yeh - it had a fire alarm in it.
Activity C12.9:
The amount of ’grammar’ is rather limited; for example, several utterances, e.g. 2, 3 and 9, consist only of phrases. Overall it would be impossible to make this text look like writing; only utterances 1, 4 and 5 could be said to be ’complete’ sentences.
Activity C12.10:
a) The only obvious link is but in utterance 6, showing an inconsistency between it and utterance 5. Otherwise the utterances have little obvious connection, though utterance 9 is clearly a continuation of 7. This is not to say that the conversation does not hold together; however, much has to be inferred from the context (this kind of ’connection’ is sometimes called ’coherence’).
b) Adding for example What about . . .? would show that they are making alternative suggestions.
Activity C12.11:
Yeh instead of yes, as well as gotta and wanna (instead of got to and want to).
Activity C12.12:
It is generic you, referring to people in general (though with an appeal in particular to the listeners); see B2.
Activity C12.13:
There are a number of differences between A and B2:
□ B2 has a number of short utterances; this is a reflection of the nature of a multisided conversation, where participants may only have a moment to make their contribution (note also the overlapping); the fact that the conversation is rather ’competitive’ may be to do with the all-male cast.
□ A could be rendered using full punctuation and complete grammatical sentences (though it would still sound like speech); this would not be possible for B2.
□ in A links are made explicit, although in a simple way (e.g. via the use of and); in B2 they have to be guessed.
These differences reflect the difference in the situations: in A someone is trying quite carefully to make a coherent narrative, while in B2 the participants are performing spontaneously and casually as they know each other well; other conversations, e.g. between strangers, might not sound so informal. From this we can see how much difference there is within spoken language.