Analysing your own transcript

 

Today we annotated the transcripts you wrote of your own spoken conversations. In doing this we recognised that the two competing purposes of language were operating in full force – the need for efficiency, and the need to communicate nuanced information. This has lead to a constant process of evolution in our language, which is particularly evident in the speech of young people (you, essentially).

 

The task: (Due Tuesday 22 September)

 

  1. Annotate all the non-standard features in your transcript (If you don’t have your own, use one from someone else’s blog)
  2. Label each of these features – naming the language term for each type of modification (you can use this glossary to help with that)
  3. Write three paragraphs that explain the effect of three choice spoken language effects from your transcript (an example of such a paragraph can be found below)

This example paragraph is based on the content of the annotated exemplar below

One of the reasons that people modify their language when they speak in casual situations is for the purposes of brevity. Often when people are speaking directly to each other, there are aspects of standard English that are unnecessary. This can be seen in the sentence “Got sent out” where the speaker has omitted the “I” from the sentence. While some might call this laziness, there’s also another explanation. When in person, the speaker is known to their audience, which makes the use of the personal pronoun (I) unnecessary to the meaning of the sentence. As no information is lost from this omission, and as it doesn’t lead to any confusion, something that would not be the case if this conversation were written, the removal of the “I” from the sentence is in fact a successful device, easing the flow of the conversation and keeping the speaker’s intended meaning clear.

The informality introduced by the use of this device also suggests, along with a number of other features, that the conversation is happening between people who know each other well.

 

Posted by Christopher Waugh

“Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.” (Katherine Mansfield)

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