Speech events in English Language

 A speech event is what is going on, including both linguistic and non-linguistic activity that make up the context. Every speech event makes some demands on the participants as to the appropriate contribution required of them. Take for example a dialogue below:

A:        Let me see your card

B:        It’s not with me

A:        And why do you think you’ll be treated without your card?

B:        The nurse said I should come

A:        Go back to the nurse and tell her to register you afresh

Anyone listening to this exchange would be able to recognise the kind of speech event it is as an encounter between a physician and a patient. It is also possible to understand why B’s answer: “the nurse said I should come” is the appropriate answer to A’s question “...why do you think you’ll be treated without your card?” You can see that B’s answer is a speech act that particularly relies on the function of the act in the speech event where a doctor thinks a patient had no right to treatment without a hospital card.

Utterances in Speech Events

Speech events represent speech genres upon when linguistic choices are made. Here the form is defined in terms of the “style” or register prevalent in the event. Items such as “card”, “nurse”, or “treat” clearly define the speech event where the utterances are made. Look at another example:

Fry the onion and garlic gently in the butter or margarine until cooked but not browned. Add tomatoes, wine, seasoning, sugar and parsley, stir well and simmer gently 10 minutes. Drain the scampi well, add to the sauce and continue simmering for about 5 minutes, or until they are just heated through. Serve with crusty French bread, or boiled rice (Grundy 2000:169)

How would you describe the above text? Suggest a speech event where it occurred.

Utterances, either as words, phrases or sentences are linked with particular speech events or contexts in which they occur. We noted in Unit 11 that speech acts represent the intention of the speech and the function of the act itself. Again look at the following statements/interrogatives and try to identify the context in which they occurred or likely to occur and say what direct/indirect act each performs:

1.                  The chancellor is here again

2.                  The nurse said I should come

3.                  Mustapha’s men (are) still in the army

4.                  What matters is how you see yourself

5.                  Like I was telling us...

6.                  Women are now active political stakeholders

7.                  Are we all here?

8.                  Do I know you?

9.                  What’s your name    by the way?

10.             How are you doing?

Levinson (1979) proposes “activity type” rather than “speech event” because the latter implies that all acts constitute speaking. He defines activity type as a “goal defined, socially constituted, bounded, events constraints on the participants, setting and so on, but above all on the kinds of allowable contributions. Paradigm examples would be teaching, a job interview, a jural interrogation, a football game, a task in a workshop, a dinner party and so on.”

 Levinson believes that what is important is that activity type is a “culturally recognised activity, whether or not that activity is co-extensive with a period of speech or indeed whether any talk takes place in it at all. A one-on-one conversation is an activity co-extensive with a period of speech while a football game is not. The function of any utterance depends on the meaning of words which differentiate the utterances as well as the role each utterance plays in the event (Levinson, 1979). The structure of the activity type/speech event therefore consists of the speech acts the utterances perform in the event.

 Conversations as Speech Events

A conversation is like other speech events such as a radio interview, telephone exchange, career talks, debates, classroom event etc. In either of these events there are elements of organised turn-taking that demands certain types of contributions from participants. Each contribution to a talk exchange is purposeful and contributes significantly to the general anticipated outcome of the event. A conversation often satisfies Levinson’s cultural relevance criterion for speech activity. 

In some conversations elements of code-switching usually occur where interlocutors employ certain culture-bound speech acts to drive home their intentions. In such conversations interactants are able to take some natural turns, employ their knowledge of the language system to convey their intentions, employ discourse strategies like hesitations, pauses, false starts, attention getters, slurs, fillers etc. and engage other language devices in conversation. Below are two conversations. Study them carefully, suggest the context of these events and try to examine some features of conversations as speech events. Pause in the B part of the conversations in marked by (.).

A.

A:        That’s really a beautiful dress

B:        Thank you. I’m glad you like it

A:        Would you like some more wine?

B:        I beg your pardon?

A:        Would you like some more wine?

B:        Oh, er, no thank you. But perhaps you

could bring me a little orange juice?

A:        Yes, of course

A:        Here you are

B:        Thank you

A:        Would you like to dance?

B:        Well, I’d love to, but I’m afraid I don’t know

how to tango

A:        Actually, I think this is a waltz

B:        I see, I’m afraid I don’t know how to waltz, either

A:        Oh, do let me teach you (The New Cambridge English Course book 3)

B.

A:        You should eat first

B:        I know what I want to eat (.)

A:        What’s happened here (.) All the books on the shelf?

B:        Your older books are in the second bedroom. I need the space for

my books

A:        Ezi okwu? You’ve really moved in, haven’t you?

B:        Go and have a bath (.)

A:        And what was that flowery scent on my good man?

B:        I gave him a scented talcum powder. Didn’t notice his body odour?

A:        That’s the smell of villagers. I used to smell like that until I left

Aba to go to secondary school. (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Half of a yellow sun)

Pragmatics and Conversations Analysis

From all we have discussed so far it is quite clear that conversation is a discourse type that contains several discourse strategies that are of interest to pragmatics. Every piece of conversation consists of some acts that represent the speaker’s intention and our efforts in discovering and evaluating those acts/discourse strategies amount to efforts in pragmatics. This section will be devoted to a more detailed examination of conversion and conversation analysis. The question we will attempt to answer here is whether conversation analysis is the same thing as doing pragmatics.

In the last sub-section (3.2), we identified some of the features of conversations namely turn-taking, and other strategies like fillers, repair mechanisms, overlaps etc during a conversation. Cook (1989) observes that conversation like any other type of talk is widely used in a more informal sense and has the following characteristics:

(i)                not primarily necessitated by a practical task;

(ii)             any unequal power of participations is partially suspended;

(iii)           the number of participants is small

(iv)           turns are quite short

(v)              talk is primarily for the participants and not for an outside audience (Cook 1989:51)

Number of participants is suggested as between 3 and 5 or a little more but certainly a conversation is not likely to take place among 20 or more people. It is also observed that there is no fixed length of turns in conversation, but it is clear that when one person talks for 30 minutes, a conversation has certainly ended. Conversation analysts (also known as ethnomethodologists) attempt to discover what methods people in a conversation use to participate in and make sense of interaction. 

They actually observed that conversation involves turn-taking, meaning that one speaker’s turn begins where the other person’s turn ends and interactants tend to know when to take turns with absolute precision within split-second timing. Overlaps occur less frequently and where they do occur at all some repair mechanisms are applied to remedy them. Overlaps will generally signal annoyance, urgency, or a desire to correct what is being said. Conversation analysis “tries to describe how people take turns, and under what circumstances they overlap turns or pause between them” (1989). 

Conversation provides the raw data for a pragmatic study. While a conversation analyst is involved on the structure of turn-taking in a conversation and what they imply about the roles and relationships of interactants, a pragmatic analyst is primarily concerned with how this structure contributes to the meaning-making process and other speech acts that signal the speaker’s intention; how direct or indirect speech acts, contribute to the overall communication of the speaker’s intention and what results s/he expects. 

Ethnomethodologists identify turn types, the main one being what they describe as adjacency pair. This occurs when the utterance of one speaker makes a particular kind of response likely, usually a choice of two likely responses. For example a request will likely attract either an acceptance or refusal. Other examples of adjacency pair are shown below:

1.                  OFFER           (a) acceptance (preferred) (b) refusal (dispreferred)

2.                  ASSESSMENT (a) agreement (preferred) (b) disagreement (dispreferred)

3.                  BLAME (a) denial (preferred) (b) admission (dispreferred)

4.                  QUESTION (a) expected answer (preferred) (b) unexpected a nswer

A “dispreferred” response is often marked by either a slight pause or a preface like “well,”“you see,”“em...er (hesitation) etc. Read the conversation below, paying attention to the turn-taking process and the pragmatics of the utterances.

A.                You, know, Mr. Sanda, to you it may seem a joke, but these things really do happen you know

B.                What things?

A. Those who make money with black magic. I mean, there are people who do it. It is bad money. It doesn’t always last, and the things people have to do to get such money, it’s terrible business. Sometimes they have to sacrifice their near relations, even children. It’s a pact with the devil but they do it.

A.                It’s a pact with the devil all right, but it doesn’t produce any money. They just slaughter those poor victims for nothing

B.                Those overnight millionaires then, how do you think they do it?

A.                Cocaine. 419 swindle. Godfathering or mothering armed robbers. Or after a career with the police. Or the Army, if you’re lucky to grab a political post. Then retire at forty - as a General who has never fought a war. Or you start your own church, or mosque. That’s getting more and more popular.

B.                You don’t believe anything, that’s your problem

A. There are far too many superstitions.

C.                Na true, Ah, oga, make you hear this one o. E take in eye see this one o, no to say den tell am

A.                Don’t bother. It’s too early in the morning; my stomach won’t be able to take it.

C.                And what of hunchbacks? Dat na another favourite for making money. They take out the hunch, sometimes while the man self still dey alive

B.                Yes, that’s supposed to be most effective, when the hunch is

carved out with the owner still breathing.  (Wohle Soyinka: The Beautification of Area Boy)

CONCLUSION

Conversation is one type of speech events where we see interactants in action. In it speakers demonstrate their knowledge of language and apply some discourse strategies to communicate their intention. Some of these strategies include speech acts in a variety of social contexts where people meet and interact with one another. The study of conversation gives us insights to the various ways utterances convey meanings in different types of speech events. An ethnomethodologist approach extends to the analysis of how speakers take turns in a conversation and how that enhances the art of communication.