Spoken Text Analysis Essay

Spoken Text Analysis

Text a is an extract from a conversation between MS , a researcher and two twelve year old boys , G and M. From the beginning of the text it is clearly shown that out of the speakers, G is the more dominant one, with constant interruptions throughout. However, this converges to the boys and uses minimal responses showing is that he wants the two boys to continue talking, maybe try to try and get information or data out of them about what they do in their free time in their home town Edinburgh. This transcript is mixed type as it involves both interactional and transactional speech.
The Boys start by telling the researcher about ‘’this haunted house’’ that they went to together. ‘Haunted’ is one of the first adjectives
As this is only an extract and we’re already a little bit into the story, there is no abstract . There is however an orietation as in the beginning , ‘g’ and ‘m’ tell us the basic information (what , where , who) , ‘’ I went up to the top of the school…’’, ‘’this haunted house, it was burned down’’. There is also a conflict as this is where the boys are at the haunted house and they find ‘blood stained crouches ‘ and pieces of bone’.
Most of the extract uses concrete nouns ‘school’, spire’ crutches’ , paintings’ and there aren’t that many abstract nouns in this extract. This is because the 3 speakers are all male and in spoken language, males are thought to be more direct and talk about what actually happened rather than what they felt while they were there. This proves tannen’s gender theory off difference as men and woman talk differently and about different topics.
The boys also use some Scottish dialect in the conversation like ‘wee’ meaning small. In contrast to this ‘g’ uses ‘big’ and ‘huge’ to describe skylight. This seems like he’s exaggerating and trying to impress the researcher and trying to be cool. The use of him saying ‘’I just about fell thorugh’’ backs this