Wednesday, 5 November 2014

Analysis of Transcript

This was a conversation between myself and a friend (Natalya). She was guiding me to recreate a simple image she had drawn of a circle, square and triangle with smiling faces, legs and arms.

Throughout the conversation repetition was frequent, especially Natalya's use of 'little leggies' this was to aid my understanding of her instructions because once I had created it the first time, this repeating term made it clear that she wished for me to recreate the same 'legs' within the image. The terms she chose were colloquial, slightly comical and expressed the cartoon aspect of this image. This phrase hints on coinage, for it is not a dictionary word, technically it is a phrase that Natayla invented.

The conversation was between two friends so most of the language was colloquial, reflecting on the relaxed environment and relationship between us as speakers. It was friendly, informal and clearly unpractised; 'then they gotta do'. The frequent pauses for thought in conversation again reflect the improvisation of the conversation; 'draw a circle round it (2),  I'm not meant to see this, am I?' this pause shows that the question was an after thought. This interrogative sentence is only made that way by the tag question at the end, else is may be exclamatory. The tag question is asking for clarification from, in this instance, me.

The transcript highlights the number of fillers in our idiolects; 'umm' and 'like' were most commonly used, often mid instruction as Natalya considered if her method of instruction was working or how to proceed. Mine were often sarcastic in a thoughtful manner; 'ummm (.) ok' because my dialect was not as frequent as Natayla's due to the nature of the activity. This use created humour, again because of the nature of our friendship, such humour is generally only used between friends because it can easily be misunderstood as rude but a friend understands the intentions of the speaker.

There was re-occurring back channel agreement, often including phrases such as 'right' and 'ok' from myself. This is conversational, to show Natalya my understanding and the fact that I was listening and following, it is not used to interrupt, from this I intend Natalya to continue what she is saying.

Laughter was continual, often muffling the speech; 'yeh it looks good (1) both laugh' this gives the sentence a completely different tone and meaning, we both laughed because in comparison to the original it was not that 'good'. Our laughter reflects our comfort with one another throughout the conversation.

1 comment:

  1. Some very peceptive observations - you focus on significant aspects of teh communication exercise. You cover probably too many, which means you don't explore the examples fully in terms of actual quotes in context - once you have given an overview by generalising, look into how examples are subtly different and how/why in context. Your context/sub-text comments are really good so it is just the close analysis of quotes that is missing from the PEE. Another aspect to work on is the order of points. Have a look at how much better it would be to put tone/register paragraphs like the one on colloqial language before ones like the repetition paragraph in terms of the reader/marker's understanding of how communication happens in the exercise and how meaning is made. Consider this when planning. One of the terms you really need here is 'spontaneous' speech (unplanned). Check the term 'dialect'. I love the discussion of the coinage "leggies" and how it creates a friendly tone and an informal register and why this is appropriate - that is a really useful aspect to examine because it ranges from 'word level' to conceptual and brings in all the context.

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