Conversational Style

The aim of this section is to analyse variations that occur in natural spontaneous, everyday speech. It is the most commonly used type of intonational style and consequently a variety which will be more familiar to the vast majority of English-speaking people than any other. That is why it is called familiar. This kind of English is also a means for everyday communication, heard in natural conversational interaction between speakers. So phonetic stylists call it conversational. Some scholars also call it informal, because this style occurs mainly in informal external and internal relationships in the speech of relatives, friends, well-acquainted people and so on.

In informal situations, where speakers are more relaxed, less attention is given by them to the effect they produce on the listeners, because, as it has already been mentioned, in formal situations they monitor their linguistic behaviour, perhaps sometimes unconsciously. But in everyday life a more natural and spontaneous style will be used. It is the style at the extreme informal end of the stylistic linear continuum that is known as "vernacular" (48). Thus all speakers have a vernacular style but its variations in the use of non-standard norms depend on the social background. In this style variation will be at its most consistent level. It is the most situationally influenced kind of English. From pedagogical viewpoint this English seems to be one of the most useful and least artificial kinds of the language to teach foreign learners.

We would also point out here that in conversational style the emotional reaction to the stimulating speech signals is very important so the attitudinal function of intonation here comes to the fore. Therefore one is liable to find here a wider range of contrasts at any level than could be expected elsewhere. We have already outlined specifications of different types of dialogues, classified them according to the degree of formality, so here we will attempt to gain some insight into everyday conversations. We are now to further our understanding of subtleties in variations of this type of English and provide a valid description, we hope, on all linguistic and extralinguistic levels.

Conversations are one of the most complex forms of human behaviour. One starts to examine in depth even apparently trivial conversations, the complexity soon becomes obvious and, as with most other aspects of language study, new dimensions to the study appear.

Clearly, a conversation consists of more than verbal language. Communication, to be effective, relies on other features than language and a great deal on that is not said. A measure of common understanding has to exist between speakers. Where this common understanding is lacking, failures in communication are apt to occur.

In a conversation we do not just listen to words, we derive the meaning consciously or unconsciously from a number of other communicative systems and it could be that a lift of an eyebrow, a twitch at the side of the mouth, or a silence tell us more than a dozen sentences.

But undoubtedly the verbal part of the communication playsa very important role and has its own systems too but only linked with other effective ways contributed by the speakers. The full effect is achieved and meanings are exchanged even with strangers and about unfamiliar topics.

So to study conversational interactions means to study some of the "rules" of non-verbal behaviour in relation to particular cultures and societies and also to study the linguistic rules governing the talks. Both types of study are still in relatively early infancy and the study of the relationship between them is even.less advanced. At the present moment it seems we just do not have the tools, the methodology to cope with the linguistical, psychological and sociological complexities of interaction simultaneously, at least with the rigour and scientific objectivity that the social sciences like to set as their target. Thus any piece of research is likely to lean heavily on either linguistics, psychology or sociology, and to run the risk of ignoring, or at least giving insufficient weight to other factors.

Another complexity in carrying out researches in this type of speech lies in the procedural difficulties of obtaining reliable data. It is well-known that most people behave differently if they are aware of being tape-recorded, but unfortunately linguists cannot analyse everyday language without making tape recordings first.

So of course the recorded samples of spontaneous informal conversations are not quite reliable. The only safe way of obtaining data is through the technique of "surreptitious" recording. However, the transcript of these talks doesn't show non-verbal means of communication — postures, gestures, facial expressions, manners and other superficial manifestations which constitute the so-called "silent language" of people. With the invention of "Video" one can easily solve this problem and the fieldwork procedures using it will be able to achieve quite realistic, objective data and investigate the phenomena in all its complexity and unity.

Unfortunately, in this book we rely only upon the tapescripts of everyday informal conversations recorded for English textbooks.

Spontaneous, colloquial, informal conversations display certain common linguistic characteristics.

1. Firstly, talks of this kind are characterized by the inexplic-itness of the language as the speakers rely very much upon the extralinguistic factors — context, kinesics, etc. This manifests itself in "incompleteness" of many utterances as the context makes it clear what was meant by the speaker, thus making redundant its vocal expression:

Jane: Well... maybe, but... take responsibility; the... the... you don't need as great a sense of responsibility for you... your kind of work as you do in teaching — all those children, all those parents...

Brenda: No, but you do have your... your... your colleagues at work — you have a certain amount of responsibility to them.

Sometimes the speakers even abrupt the speech suddenly and tail off into silence but the listeners understand them, catch the meaning, because the participants have a common personal background and the explicitness is tolerated or even taken for granted and is diagnostic of conversation. Occasionally, the listeners request recapitulation by all sorts of repeated and echoing questions:

Richard: Well, I'm going tonight in fact. Jane: Tonight? Oh, are you? Richard: Yes, most nights really.

2. Secondly, conversations are characterized by the lack of planning and the randomness of subject matter. They are very often unpredictable, not guided to an overall theme as, for example, in our first conversation.

This is the most changeable variety of the language. It is, however, true that in many everyday communications certain semantic blocks are commonly repeated. For instance, the stereotyped exchange of greetings, partings, pleasantries, making acquaintance, starting the conversation, arresting attention, making contacts and so on.

One can easily spot phrases of speech etiquette functioning in colloquial talks such as questions to keep the conversation going, asking for information, expressions leading up to questions, polite formulas for attracting attention, requesting, agreeing and refusing, expressing gratitude and others. These devices and opening gambits are very helpful for speakers to build up a conversational unity and are used by native speakers mechanically. For foreign learners, however, they should be taught in an appropriate order to help them to control and handle the speech.

3. The third general feature of the conversational style talks is "non-fluency". Informal spontaneous conversation is characterized by a high proportion of "errors" involving hesitation phenomena, slips of the tongue and all sorts of overlapping and simultaneous speech:

Bob: I think I'd much prefer to go in for teaching.

Jane: Jolly good! 1 (simulta-

Bob: Because... er... well, you get long holidays. J neously)

The distribution of hesitancy is very significant, it is strongly influenced by creative thinking and produces a cyclic pattern. They are of primary significance, the avoidance of hesitation devices and "errors" may produce a wrong effect and lead to a different type of speech style.

Some more important characteristics should be mentioned here. Entire range of vocalic clusters, sounds, non-verbal signals are common in conversations, e.g. mmmm, sshh, ah, brr, etc.

Also, one can hear whistles, laughs, giggles, clearings of the throat, snorts and sniffs.

The observation of "Videos" shows us the behaviour of speakers during the conversations. In every society there are specific rules governing the conduct of conversation. Some of these tactics are verbal, others non-verbal, most are culturally determined, some make individual use of cultural habits and expectations. Together with the "silent language" (posture, gesture, facial expression and manners) the space between the speakers also plays an important part in communication. It is a measure of how intimate or otherwise the speakers feel, how formal or informal their relationship is.

A "nose-to-nose" distance of 1,5—2 metres is considered to be most comfortable for talks and anything nearer than this may be unwelcome if the other is not regarded as an intimate. Of course th,e "silent language" has significance at deeper levels and in more complex ways than that exhibited in gesture or postural language. There are more message systems but they are not fully investigated yet.

On the grammatical level informal conversation provides delimitation of utterances and sentences. The length of utterances is much more variable here than in any other variety of English. Changes in modality and status condition variations in utterance length. There is also a problem of delimiting sentences from each other as our conversations are characterized by a large number of loosely coordinated clauses and it is very difficult to decide whether to take these as sequences or as compound sentences,

p.g-

Jane: Well,... maybe, but... take responsibility for your kind of work as you do in teaching — all those children, all those parents...

D.Crystal suggests to refer to such a feature without using the term "sentence" at all, talking instead of clause complexes. (54)

Minor sentences are extremely frequent in responses, many of them are incomplete. There are a few other points to be noted on the grammatical level:

1) High proportion of parenthetic compound types of sentence introduced by you see, you know, I mean, I say and others.

2) Frequent use of interrogative sentence types and very fewimperatives.

3) Common use of vocatives, especially in initial position.

4) Rare use of nominal groups as subjects; the personal pronouns are more in evidence, the informal you is quite common in its impersonal function.

5) A great number of question tags.

6) The use of all sorts of repetitions and repetition structures.Even adverbial intensifiers such as very may be repeated several times.

7) The occurrence of contracted verbal forms (he's, Г11, Гve].

8) The frequency of colloquial ellipses.

All these features and many others, not mentioned here, would be condemned by many teachers of grammar and it would be only just for any other speech style, but for this type of speech it is a standard and indeed a valuable part of informal conversation. Formal written and informal spoken English are totally different varieties of the language and the criteria of acceptable usage must not be confused.

The most noticeable aspect of everyday conversations is their vocabulary. It is characterized by colloquial idioms, the use of words simple in structure, the avoidance of phraseology; also the informality of the text is achieved by the use of words and phrases specific for such conversations, e.g. Yeah. Right. O.K. I see. Oh, yes. Yes, yes. Oh, lovely. Oh dear. Alright. Sure. Good heavens! Thanks! Jolly good!Really? Come off it! Oh, no!Hey! and others. (54)

On the prosodic level the field researchers provide us with data that help us to do some generalizations (54, 13).

1) Conversations fall into coordinated blocks, consisting of suprasegmental and supraphrasal units tied up by variations within the length of pauses, speed, rhythm, pitch ranges, pitch
levels and loudness.

2) Since there are no restrictions on the range and depth of emotions which might be displayed in conversational speech sit uations they will allow entire range of prosodic effects.

3) In the description of prosodic characteristics of this intonational style we will begin by saying that intonation groups are rather short, their potentially lengthy tone units tend to be broken. These short interpausal units are characterized by decentralized stress and sudden jumps down on communicative centres, e.g.

Jane: ~*That's Agoing... | to ~*make you very un^vfit, you know.

a) The heads are usually level, or rarely, falling. Falling heads occur only in groups consisting of several stressed syllables.

b) As for the nuclei, simple falling and rising tones are common. Emphatic tones occur in highly emotional contexts. High
pre-nuclear syllables are very frequent, e.g.

"— Do you think it _vmatters?" "— Fd -* rather be «thin than _xfat."

6. The tempo of colloquial speech is very varied. The natural speed might be very fast but the impression of "slowness" may
arise because of a great number of hesitation pauses both filled and non-filled (hesitant drawls) within the block. However, the
speakers may have no pauses between their parts, very often they speak simultaneously, interrupt each other.

Also a familiar point about informal conversation is the frequency of silence for purposes of contrastive pause as opposed to its being required simply for breath-taking.

Pauses may occur randomly, not just at places of grammatical junctions, e.g.

Richard: _xOh, ||..._vlook, | you ^don't seem to | ^V realize >that...thatl_xlikeit. ||

So, tempo is very flexible in this style. It is uneven with and between utterances.

7. Interpausal stretches have a marked tendency towards subjective rhythmic isochrony.

Now to conclude the description of prosodic invariant char- acteristics we would like to point out that the impression that the intonation is rather "chaotic" in conversations is completely wrong. Suprasegmental features form a basic set of recurrent patterns which is occasionally disturbed by the introduction of specific prosodic and paralinguistic effects which depend upon the modality an individual is using.

The phonological opposition of conversational (informal) and informational (formal) dialogues shows that there is much in common between them, but the former are characterized by a greater variety in all linguistic and extralinguistic characteristics, therefore much research work should be done to enable investigators to have good grounds to draw the invariantal phonosty-listic characteristics of this type of speech.

Now we shall examine another, very specific register of conversational style — telephone conversations. This sphere of communication is limited in certain important respects by the special situation, which imposes a number of restrictions.

The conversationalists who can see each other are able to place a great amount of reliance on the facilities offered by such things as gesture and the presence of a common extralinguistic context.

Telephone conversations lack these facilities to a large extent and so have a tendency to become more explicit than ordinary conversations with a different use of "indicator" words such as pronouns which may be vague in their reference if it cannot be seen who or what is referred to.

The telephone situation is quite unique being the only frequently occurring case of a conversation in which the participants are not visible to each other, so there is some uncertainty in keeping up the give-and-take between the participants.

A different range of situational pressures is exerted upon the participants, and consequently a range of linguistic contrasts which they are permitted to choose differs somewhat.

The "talkers" avoid long utterances without introducing pauses. Pauses cannot be long, because anything approaching a silence may be interpreted by the listener either as a breakdown of communication or as an opportunity for interruption which may not have been desired. Voiced hesitation introduced to fill the gap (drawls, random vocalizations, repetitions of words) is more frequent here than elsewhere. In view of the purpose of a telephone call questions (also repeated and echoed), responses and imperatives are very common.

Vocabulary is characterized by the use of colloquialisms, idioms and vocalization. The opening and closing of a telephone conversation are marked by the use of the same formulas, the linguistic devices carrying out these operations are not numerous and always predicted.

It is obvious that telephone conversations differ from others •mainly in degree of formality and can most realistically be seen as a subprovince of the more general notion.

We shall conclude this chapter by examining one more area of conversations, namely, when partners' stretches of speech are not equal: one is an active speaker, the other is an active listener. It happens when people tell stories of anecdotal character or in the form of long narratives. It may be the story of a film or a book or just a story of events that have happened to us. In this case the speech of the narrator reminds us very much of the informational monologue, only differs in the degree of formality.

Correspondingly, there is a greater variety in using hesitation phenomena (filled or non-filled), vocalizations, repetitions and so on.

The speed of utterances and pausal contrasts vary in accordance with the semantic value of the narration.

The listener responds either non-verbally by using vocalizations, gestures and facial expressions or by prompting the talk with all sorts of phrases showing personal concert and interest, like: What then? So what? And? Well? and so on.

Now by way of conclusion we would like to say that it is not without significance that education is now increasingly interested in communicative studies. Teachers have to find new ways of coming to terms with those they hope to teach and the study of interaction is one way of trying to enable sufficient "conversation" to take place to facilitate teaching and learning.

In a study of interaction there is a real hope for improving teacher's effectiveness. But any such study has to be highly complex, and in view of the difficulty and complexity the question of whether such studies can be of practical value was raised and some useful advice for such attempts was given.

"Language" and "People" are both familiar terms and repre sent familiar things. But the and between them represents an enormously complex relationship. This relationship involves cultures and civilizations, individual human beings, their interaction and their forms of organization, it involves values.

The book of our aim cannot pretend to explore in any depth or with any adequacy such vast areas, but it seems worth making attempts to trail some of the more significant strands in the relationships and that's what we tried to do here.

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