- Opening Stages : Beginning (ex. Salutation and greetings such as “hello, how are you) ; Initiating exchanges that establish social relations (ex. Formulaic expressions such as “how’re things?”, “ what you have been up to since I last saw you?”
- Midlle Stages : development of range of topic using conversational strategies for turn taking, turn allocation, and keeping a turn, adjacency pairs, preferred and dispreferred responses. Ways giving feedback, changing a topic, asking for clarification, correcting what was said, etc.
- Closing stages : Preclosing exchanges signaling the ending of the conversation (ex. Disourse makers and formulaic expressions such as “anyway, well, I’d better off, thanks for calling, falling intonation) ; closing (ex; formulaic expressions such as bye, see you)
Opening and closing in conversations are often carried out in typical ways. They are also context and speech event specific. For example how we open a conversation at the bus stop is very different from how we do it on the telephone. Opening and closings often make use of pairs of utterances such as : Hi, how are you? And bye, see you later, which are often not meant to be taken literally. Closing are often preceded by pre closings such as “okay”, good, statement such as well, it’s been nice talking to you or anyway, I’ve got to go now” and an accompanying fall intonation.
These kinds of conversational ritual vary, however from culture to culture. Just because someone is able to open and close a conversation in their first language does not mean that they will necessarily know how to do this in a second language and culture.
Adjacency Pairs
One way in which meanings are communicated and interpreted in a conversation is thgough use of adjacency pairs. Adjacency pairs are utterances produced by two successive speakers in such way that the second utterance is identified as related to the first one as an expected follow up.
The basic rule for adjacency pairs is that when speakers produced a first pair part, they should stop talking and allow the other speaker to produce a second pair part. When the second speaker does not to do this, this is often commented on such as when someone says” you did not answer my question” or continues with variation in the first pair par until they get an appropriate response. A student of mine did an analysis of arguments that occurred in the show the simpsons and found that most of the arguments that occurred in the show were caused by the second speaker nit giving the first speaker an expected follow up to a first pair part. The first speaker she saw, would continue to press the other speaker until they got the response that they wanted, often resulting in an arguments as they did so.
Turn Taking
In conversation there are norms who talks when and for how long. The basic rule in English is that one person speaks at a time, after which they may nominate another speaker, or another speaker may take up the turn without being nominated. There are number of ways in which we can signal that we have came to the end of a turn, such as the completion of syntactic unit followed by a pause. We can also use falling intonation, and signals such as mhm,yeah, so, or anyway “ to do this. We may also signal the end of a turn through eye contact, body position and movement, or pitch and loudness. For example low pitch may indicate we wish to hold it.
Topic Management
Topic management is another important aspects of conversations. It includes a knowledge of appropriate topics and taboo, topics in particular settings. As Nolasco and Arthur point out :
Different cultures talk about different things in their everyday lives. Native speakers are very aware of what they should and should not talk about with specific categories of people in their own language, but the rules may be different in a foreign language. Both teachers and students need to develop a sense of taboo subjects if they are to avoid affence.
Feedcback.
That is the way that listeers show they attending to what is being said. Feedback can be done both verbally, using takens such as mhm, and uh huh, by paraphrasing what the other person has just said, or non verbally through body position and eye contact. Feed back also varies cross culturally.
Repair
That is the way speakers correct things that have been said in conversation,. This is often done through self repairs and other repairs.
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