How is communication situated, developed and managed in a short speech event?

CORE READING
Young, R.F. (2008). Language and Interaction: An advanced resource book. London: Routledge.

Procedure:

1. Record a speech event in which you are one of the participants. The setting may be any of your choice (formal, informal, professional, non-professional, familiar, non-familiar etc.).

2. Transcribe a few minutes of this event where there are a number of exchanges. The transcription should be around one A4 side, which should be submitted as an appendix to the assignment.

3. Present your transcription system clearly, giving a key for all the symbols. Use the transcript in Young (2008, p. 134 & 135) as an example. Use single line-spacing in the transcription and include turn numbers. Try to transcribe as accurately as possible, but since there are good reasons that a recording may be hard to hear or interpret, we will make allowance for acceptable inaccuracies. You must also submit the original recording for comparison as an mp3 or mp4 sound file.

4. The assignment should comprise two main sections as follows:

Analysis:

Analyse the discursive practices that are evident in the speech event using, as appropriate, the various frameworks studied in the module. This means that you must:

a. Describe the setting carefully including all detail that seems to be relevant, including the communities that the participants belong to.

b. Look at how the interaction is managed by the participants, commenting on how the available resources – identity resources, linguistic resources and interactional resources, as set out in Young (2008, p. 71) – are used.

Discussion:

Relate the evidence in your data to theory and to other empirical studies. This means that you must draw on the literature (citing a minimum of 5 different sources) to assess whether the evidence in your chosen speech event confirms or challenges previous research findings.

NB. Choose one or more extracts (totaling a maximum of one page) from your transcription to present in your actual assignment do not refer to the appendix. Remember to include the original turn numbers to help you clearly identify examples from the data when you mention these in your analytical commentary and discussion. Note how Young (2008) refers to turn numbers and incorporates quotations from the data in his analytical commentary on p. 133.