study guide book 1

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First published 2006. Reprinted with amendments 2007.

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Contents

Introduction 4

Unit 1 The art of the everyday 7

Unit 2 Telling stories 16

Unit 3 Putting on the style 29

Unit 4 Childs play 42

Units 5--6 Language and creativity 52

Unit 7 Making connections with new technologies 63

Unit 8 Writing the self 71

Unit 9 Literacies, collaboration and context 78

Unit 10 The 19th-century communication revolution 88

Unit 11 Locating creativity in texts and practices 95

References 111

4

Introduction

Welcome to E301 The art of English. Through the course as a whole we

explore what is variously described as linguistic creativity or verbal art in English. We take a broad approach to the topic, ranging from language play in informal talk between friends to canonical poetry and Shakespearean theatre.

Organising your study

The course is divided into units, each consisting roughly of a weeks work.

The core of each unit is usually a chapter from one of the two course books (The art of English: everyday creativity and The art of English: literary creativity), or sometimes a selection of readings from one of the two set

books. Alongside this there are related activities based on each of the two CD-ROMs, as well as activities that take you to the course website

(E301 eDesktop) and beyond. Some activities have been designed to help you develop study skills appropriate to third level study.

Each unit is structured as follows:

. a summary of what materials you need to study that week.

. a list of learning points specific to the unit.

. study notes guiding you on the reading you need to do that week;

. activities relating to the CD-ROM, eDesktop and other material

to be done that week.

The different components that make up the course are explained in the

Course Guide and we suggest that you read this carefully before beginning on the course in earnest. It would also be useful to look through the Assignment Guide to familiarize yourself with the course assessment strategy,

and the course Study Calendar. The learning outcomes -- a list of what you can expect to achieve from studying the course -- are contained in the

Assignment Guide.

Dividing the course into discrete units or weeks of work is mainly a matter of convenience: it helps the course team ensure they plan an appropriate

balance of activities, and it helps you pace your work throughout the year. But we expect that you will wish to exercise some judgement in organizing

your work. The main thing is to complete the work in each study guide in time, and to be sure you are up to date when you come to write your assignments. The timings for reading and activities serve as a rough guide.

Some optional or extension activities have been included. Each weeks work should take about 12 to 13 hours, but you may wish to specialize, spending

more time on some activities and less on others. While we have tried to design an effective structure for the course, you should be able to chart a

pathway through the materials depending on your interests and experience.

5INTRODUCTION

Use of additional material

Additional academic reading

The E301 course materials, including the two set books, make up the core of the course, and there should be enough academic reading material here for

you to complete the course. In the course books we sometimes refer to sources (books or articles) that extend the ideas discussed in particular

chapters. You may wish to follow up some of these if you have an interest in the topic discussed, and of course you may draw on any relevant material

in assignments, but you do not need to draw on such additional materials to complete the course successfully.

The E301 eDesktop contains links to other sites relevant to E301, and we include some web activities that direct you to these sites and also help you

search for and evaluate additional internet sources. This is to help you develop some basic research skills that are appropriate to third-level study. You will be

able to draw on some of this work in assignments. You may wish to carry out further searches on topics of particular interest, and such work may enrich your

study of the course. Bear in mind, though, that this can be time-consuming and that you do not need to seek out additional material to pass the course.

Technical terms are explained where they rst occur in the course books. This should be enough support, but if you wish to explore concepts further

we recommend two sources:

Swann, J., Deumert, A., Lillis, T. and Mesthrie, R. (2004) A Dictionary of Sociolinguistics, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press (more relevant

to the first part of the course).

Wales, K. (2001) A Dictionary of Stylistics, Harlow, Longman (more relevant to the second part of the course).

Personal examples of creativity

A major argument of the course is that creativity in language of one sort or

another is all around us, and we therefore encourage you to collect and analyse your own examples. These may sometimes serve as data for an

assignment. You will be familiar with this type of data collection if you have studied our second-level course on the English language (U210 The English

Language: past, present and future until 2006; U211 Exploring the English Language from 2007). Further guidance will be given on this in the notes

for each unit.

Using the CD-ROM

For many of the study guide activities you will need to refer to resources which

are provided on the E301 CD-ROM -- video bands, audio bands, transcripts and video stills. To install the software, switch your computer on and put the rst

6 STUDY GUIDE 1

E301 CD-ROM in the CD drive. The installation program should start to run automatically. If this does not happen, click on the Start button on the bottom

left of your screen, then click on Run, type D:\start and click the OK button. (If your computers CD-ROM drive is not D:, substitute the appropriate letter.)

Once the installation program has started, follow the onscreen instructions. The software only needs to be installed once. Subsequently, when you put an

E301 CD-ROM in the CD drive of your computer, the E301 Media Kit will start.

If you would like more detailed instructions about using Media Kit, read the

help le built into the program. Click on the Help button at the top of the contents screen.

The course eDesktop

The E301 eDesktop is a course website that has been created as a central

point of access for course-related material for you to use during your studies. It is managed by the E301 course team and may be updated at intervals

during the course of your studies. The eDesktop contains links to the latest course news, the study calendar, conferencing, course resources and library

resources. You can nd more detailed information in the Students guide to the eDesktop, or you can explore it yourself by clicking the link on the OU StudentHome page: http://www.open.ac.uk/students.

Using Study Guide 1

In the part of the course covered by Study Guide 1, the focus is on everyday creativity. Units 1 to 6 consider spoken language, and guide you through the

first set book, Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk. In Units 7 to 10 we turn our attention to various aspects of written language and literacy, while the final unit provides an overview of the first part of the course. Study

Guide 2 will focus on literary creativity, but you may notice that we begin our study of everyday creativity by mirroring the traditional distinction between

the major genres of poetry, narrative fiction and drama, with the first three units of Study Guide 1 focusing in turn on the poetics of conversation,

conversational stories, and the performance of identity in interaction with others.

For this rst part of the course, you need to use Study Guide 1 in conjunction with the following materials:

. Course book 1: The art of English: everyday creativity.

. Set book: Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk, by Ronald Carter.

. CD-ROM 1: Everyday creativity.

You will also need access to the E301 eDesktop and the internet.

This unit of study

7

The art of the everyday

During this week you should:

Familiarize yourself with the course materials -- Course Guide, Study

Calendar, Assignment Guide, and E301 eDesktop (allow 2--3 hours).

Work through the following course materials and corresponding

sections of this study guide:

Introduction and Chapter 1 of Book 1, The art of the everyday (allow

about 7--8 hours).

CD-ROM Band 1, Common talk (allow about 40 minutes).

CD-ROM Band 2, Bilingual puns (allow about 40 minutes).

CD-ROM Band 3, Why play with language? (allow about 40 minutes).

Data collection and analysis: puns and word play (ongoing).

There are no Web activities in this unit: it will simply be helpful to explore

the eDesktop and familiarize yourself with the material it contains and the

links to other useful sites.

Learning points

The work in this unit should enable you to understand and critically evaluate:

. ideas about everyday language being full of verbal art that takes various

forms depending on the context and serves particular functions within a given conversation;

. the argument that there is some continuity between such everyday

artfulness and literary language;

. the argument that the presence of creativity in everyday spoken language has benefits both for the individual and for the human species as a whole;

. different models of literariness that underpin these arguments, including inherency, sociocultural and cognitive models;

. different approaches to the study of spoken language, including those that

focus on textual properties and those that pay more attention to the social and cultural contexts in which language is produced.

8 STUDY GUIDE 1

Study notes: Course book 1, Chapter 1

Chapter author: Joan Swann, The Open University.

Reading authors: Ronald Carter, Professor of Modern English Language, University of Nottingham; Guy Cook, Professor of Language and Education

at The Open University; Lynne Cameron, Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Leeds.

In the opening chapter, Joan Swann introduces current arguments about the

prevalence and signicance of creativity in everyday talk, and how these ideas are blurring the distinction between what has previously been seen as

literary and ordinary language. These ideas are discussed here in relation to poetic features in spoken language; but the basic argument -- that creative language use occurs in a wide range of everyday contexts -- runs through

other chapters in the rst course book.

As you read, look out for:

. the idea that there is some continuity between everyday and literary

language: Ronald Carters suggestion that there is a literary cline or continuum, so that texts may be more, or less literary.

. the different forms taken by verbal art: Ronald Carters distinction, in

Reading A, between pattern-reforming and pattern-reinforcing examples.

. Carters distinction between inherency, sociocultural and cognitive

models of literariness, and how these relate to discussion in later readings and examples.

. the argument that verbal art is functional in interactions -- for example,

it may create a friendly atmosphere, but equally it may be used in a more hostile way. All three readings make this point, while Section 1.5 looks

more closely at the functions of humour in specific contexts.

. the wider benefits associated with verbal art. In this respect see particularly Guy Cooks argument in Reading B about potential cognitive

and evolutionary benefits (this is followed up in an interview with Guy Cook on CD-ROM Band 3).

. the argument that metaphor is not simply (or even mainly) a literary

device, but that it is an inherent feature of language and the human mind, and that literary metaphor builds on and extends everyday metaphor. In

Reading C, Lynne Cameron looks at the use of metaphor in educational and medical discourse.

. the different approaches to the study of language use (textual or more

contextualised) that are evident in the readings and examples. Ronald Carters corpus-based approach to linguistic creativity is discussed

further on CD-ROM Band 1.

9UNIT 1 THE ART OF THE EVERYDAY

A note on terminology

There has been extensive study of the formal properties of literary language, and there is a wide range of terms used to describe this. Some of these will be known to you but others are less common . This may

be your first encounter with meronym, for instance, mentioned by Carter in Reading A! We provide a brief gloss where technical terms

occur, but you arent expected to remember all of these. More important terms are set in bold type when they first occur, and are explained in

the chapter.

Activities

CD-ROM Band 1: Common talk (duration approx. 11 minutes)

Featuring: Ronald Carter, Professor of Modern English Language, University

of Nottingham.

Ronald Carter is the author of Reading A and also of the set book for this part of the course, Language and Creativity: The Art of Common

Talk. Most of his work in the area of everyday creativity is based on a study of examples from the CANCODE corpus of spoken language

at Nottingham University, which he has been partly responsible for developing.

In the CD-ROM band he talks about this research. Whereas electronic corpora such as CANCODE are conventionally used for gathering

evidence about word frequency, word use and word meaning for dictionaries, Carter has also used the corpus as a source of evidence about

creativity in language. He talks about the kinds of evidence provided by a corpus such as CANCODE and the value of this approach to the study

of creativity.

A C T I V I T Y 1

40 minutes Please listen to Band 1 and consider the following questions. (You may need to play all, or parts, of the band more than once.)

. What kinds of insights does the corpus provide into everyday creativity?

. What does Carter see as the strengths and limitations of this approach?

. How does this relate to any notes you made on Chapter 1, Reading A in the course book?

10 STUDY GUIDE 1

C ommen t

I found it interesting that Carter stumbled on linguistic creativity almost accidentally while using CANCODE. As in Reading A, he talks about the prevalence of creativity -- a judgement supported by the substantial body of evidence he is able to draw on. He refers to the mobile earrings example you have already seen, but explains this further. On the basis of his research, he sees people as frequently engaging in creative activity, and he also sees creativity as co-created -- developed in interaction with others. This contrasts with the traditional view of the lone poet in a garret.

Clearly, the sheer size of electronic corpora is one of their strengths. It enables researchers to have reasonable condence in any linguistic patterns they discover. Carter refers, however, to the difculties of nding an entry point. Researchers usually search for particular words or grammatical structures. Carter can predict that certain word forms, such as -ish suffixes, are likely to be associated with creativity, as is laughter, which is transcribed in the corpus. However, almost by definition, creativity is also unpredictable, which makes discovering examples partly a matter of chance.

CANCODE also contains background information on speakers and settings, allowing Carter to say something about the contexts in which creative language is used. The discussion of Reading A on pages 8--9 of the course book saw this contextual information as relatively limited, and Carter concedes that in comparison to ethnographic studies of language use, he has limited insights into what creative language may mean to speakers in particular contexts. He clearly feels, however, that CANCODE provides a useful balance of quantitative and qualitative information. What are your own views on this? (Note that Ben Ramptons research, mentioned by Carter, will be discussed in Chapter 3 and later, on CD-ROM Band 8, Rampton discusses how he goes about doing ethnographic research. There will be an oppor tunity then to evaluate further these different approaches to the study of language.)

CD-ROM Band 2: Bilingual puns (duration approx. 9 minutes)

Featuring: G.D. Jayalakshmi, freelance media consultant; R. Amritavalli and

S. Upendran, Professors in the Centre for Media and Communication, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad.

In Band 2, G.D Jayalakshmi talks to R. Amritavalli and S. Upendran about their work on what they have called the humorous bilingual. They consider

how bilingual speakers in India use the resources of both their languages to create humour, and especially how they create bilingual puns. Joan Swann

(Chapter 1, p. 5) cites one example from their original (1990) paper and comments (Chapter 1, p. 6) that these kinds of puns are commonly used in

India between both children and adults, but are also used in public discourses such as advertising and newspaper headlines.


Amritavalli and Upendran discuss the forms taken by bilingual puns and give examples. They also talk about how these puns are used and what they might

mean to speakers.

A C T I V I T Y 2

40 minutes Listen to the discussion on Band 2 and consider what Amritavalli and Upendran say about the way people draw on the resources of different languages and cultures to create puns. How does this relate to the discussion of puns and other forms of word play in Chapter 1?

C ommen t

The puns mentioned clearly depend on considerable cultural as well as linguistic understanding. For example, listeners need to recognise references to: Valmiki, the Hindu sage traditionally regarded as the author of the Ramayana epic; Janmastami, the festival of the birth of the Hindu god Krishna; Kailas, a Himalayan mountain where the God Shiva is said to live; and the pseudopodia (false feet) of amoebae.

Formally, the humour results from playing with and adapting or stretching the sound systems of both languages. The Mickey Mouse pun, for instance, relies on a similarity in pronunciation between Wall Mickey and Valmiki, even though their pronunciations are not identical: the initial sound of Valmiki is somewhere between a /v/ and a /w/ sound and does not exist in most varieties of English. No doubt you noticed other examples. This distor tion of the sound systems itself probably contributes to the humour.

The speakers also comment on the signicance of speakers bilingual and bicultural understandings, noting that bilingual punning creates a shared community but also plays on a tension between two cultures. How far do you agree with Upendran that bilingual punning is particularly creative because it requires considerable thought on the part of speakers/listeners?

More about puns

Puns are created by playing on ambiguity in the meanings of words. Punning can involve the exploitation of polysemy, where a word has

two (related) meanings -- perhaps one literal and the other figurative; or it may involve the use of homonyms -- words that look or sound the

same but have completely different meanings. Near-puns (or stretched puns) occur when the pronunciation has to be distorted to produce the

effect, or where two words are blended together to sound similar to another word. Puns can also play upon the similarity of meaning or sound between words from different dialects or languages.

12 STUDY GUIDE 1

An example of a bidialectal pun playing on Geordie (Newcastle upon

Tyne dialect) and more standard pronunciations: Geordie feels unwell and staggers along to the doctor. The doctor examines him and says,

You seem a bit wobbly, can you walk? Geordie however hears this as work and replies, Can I [wO:k]? Ah canna even [wa:k]! The pun plays

on the similarity in pronunciation between work in Geordie and walk in RP or near RP. It does lose something in the explanation!

Puns have often been disparaged as a worthless form of wit. Puns and other forms of word play are, however, often used as a literary device -

famously in Shakespeares plays and James Joyces novels.

The term paronomasia is sometimes used for puns and similar word play. The Oxford English Dictionary quotes Alexander Popes

description of: The Paronomasia or Pun, where a word, like the tongue of a jackdaw, speaks twice as much for being split. (OED online)

CD-ROM Band 3: Why play with language? (duration approx. 11 minutes)

Featuring: Guy Cook, Professor of Language and Education at The Open

University.

Guy Cook is the author of Reading B in Chapter 1 and also contributes

a reading to the second course book.

In this band we asked Guy Cook to expand on his ideas in Reading B about the cognitive and evolutionary benets of language play. He discusses these

and other explanations for language play, and also suggests that the potential cognitive effects of play may be related to our sense of literary quality. The

band is divided into three sections: Explanations of language play, Evolutionary advantage --- a speculative explanation? and Play and literary

quality.

A C T I V I T Y 3

40 minutes Listen carefully to Band 3 and identify the main points in Cooks argument. You may wish also to look back over any notes you made for Reading B. How persuasive do you nd what he is saying?

C ommen t

Cooks arguments have to do with the ubiquity of language play. For Cook, similar phenomena occur across different types of language use, both serious/ profound and more trivial. While he makes less of this in the CD-ROM band, it is clear from the reading that he regards language play as universal -comparable uses of language [to Cooks examples] can be found in many


times, cultures and languages (Course book 1, p. 43). In his discussion of explanations of language play, Cook suggests that local explanations (e.g. expressing aggression or affection) do not seem fully to account for its prevalence. He therefore argues that we need to look for more general explanations. One explanation might be that mastery of language is an asset, so it is valuable to keep practising this. But Cook also argues that there may be cognitive benefits in the surrender to linguistic form (the production of novel connections and new ideas -- schema refreshment, in Cooks terms). An impor tant point here is that not all language play will have these effects -in fact, most will not. The argument, rather, is that play has the potential to produce cognitive benefits. Note Cooks analogy here with genetic mutation.

In terms of evolutionary advantage, Cook suggests that play with language may help to perfect skills with language and give individuals a competitive edge; it may also encourage creative thought, and greater adaptability. Cook concedes that his arguments are speculative. This is necessarily the case in relation to potential evolutionary benets, where evidence is limited. He is, however, taking account of contemporary evidence of the ubiquity of play and trying to provide a convincing explanation.

Cook relates this argument to our sense of literary quality. Language play that is more able to challenge existing ideas, and refresh mental schemata, constitutes a better use of language -- this is a criterion of literary quality for Cook. How do you respond to this argument? Note the points made by Lesley Jeffries and Elena Semino (see Chapter 1, Section 1.3) that literature (high quality language play, in Cooks terms) need not refresh mental schemata but may also pleasurably reinforce them. These arguments about literary quality will be discussed further in the second course book.

Data collection and analysis: puns and word play

A C T I V I T Y 4 ( E X T E N S I O N A C T I V I T Y )

Ongoing Make a collection of examples of puns and other types of word play used in different everyday contexts. Although this part of the course focuses on spoken, informal language, you could extend your search to more formal contexts and to writing. Consider how your word play works linguistically, the function(s) it seems to serve or the effects that seem to be intended, and whether you think it achieves these.

If you want to make more serious use of your word play -- e.g. in an assignment -- you should note impor tant contextual information, and also any potentially interesting features you could refer to in your discussion, as in the examples below.

14 STUDY GUIDE 1

Word play examples

Masquito

Recorded: April 2004

Participants: A -- female, 20s, student; B -- male, 20s, also student, As partner; C -- female, 50s, lecturer; D -- male, 50s, university administrator;

C and D are As parents.

Setting: Paris, on grassed area in centre of boulevard, outside A and Bs flat. A and B are working temporarily in Paris, C and D are visiting. A has been talking about a mosquito that bit B at night, but not her:

A: Normally Im the one that gets bitten but this time its him.

C: Must be a male-oriented mosquito -- all that male blood.

A: Is that a masquito did you say?

Notes:

This involves play with sound/meaning. The replacement of / a/ by /a/ gives a nonsense word that is a blend of mosquito and masculine.

There is frequent joking in this conversation and the word play seems

generally to contribute to an informal, friendly atmosphere.

Note especially the collaborative nature of play -- and compare this with Carters comment that creativity is co-created (e.g. CD-ROM Band 1). Masquito would not have occurred without male-oriented mosquito.

Squirrel

Recorded: November 2003

Participants: several, female and male, mainly middle aged, university lecturers, research students, secretaries and administrators. One participant is a research student who has just had a viva for her PhD

and passed. Others include the external examiner, supervisors and colleagues. In the extract below, the external examiner is male; A is a

lecturer, female; B is a professor and head of department.

Setting: Open University, departmental office; participants are celebrating over drinks. The external examiner is telling a story about a

car he saw going by with a squirrel inside, looking out of the window.

Ext.: ... and theres this car with a squirrel in it, looking out the window, and its just driving along, you know.

A: (quietly) Really clever squirrel.


B: (standing next to A -- hears this, laughs and says more loudly) Oh yeah -- was it a good driver?

(laughter)

Notes:

Play here seems to involve grammar: the pronoun it, in the first turn, refers back to this car, but the syntax is potentially ambiguous. A and

then B playfully re-interpret the pronoun as referring to the squirrel.

This is another friendly, good-humoured occasion, characterised (at this stage) by non-serious, joking conversation. The example contributes to

this, evoking laughter.

Again, the language play is collaborative. As quietness may be to do with the risk attached to this sort of joking behaviour. Compare this with Carters argument that pattern-reforming play involves a risk -- it may

not work. In this case B, who is of higher status and may be more confident, is prepared to take a greater risk; the joke does work

(laughter); and, in Carters terms, B potentially wins enhanced regard.

16

Telling stories

This unit of study

During this week you should work through the following course materials and the corresponding sections of this study guide:

Chapter 2 of Book 1, Telling stories (allow 7--8 hours).

CD-ROM Band 4, Mbelos story (allow about 20 minutes).

CD-ROM Band 5, Womens conversational stories (allow about 1 hour).

Transcription activities: different transcription formats (allow about

1 hour 10 minutes).

CD-ROM Band 6, Sample stories (allow about 2 hours).

Data collection and analysis: narratives (ongoing).

Learning points


. the argument that telling stories is one of the primary and universal ways

through which people convey their experiences;

. theories about the basic form and structural elements of narrative, and about the functions narrative performs in human interactions;

. the idea that evaluation is a key element in conversational narrative;

. the argument that storytelling is important in constructing the identity of the narrator and the relationships between the participants in an interaction;

. the importance of cultural knowledge and background in the listeners

understanding of the structure and meaning of a story.

You will also gain experience in transcription, and in the collection and

analysis of narrative data.


Chapter author: Michael Toolan, Professor of Applied English Linguistics, University of Birmingham.

Reading authors: Neal Norrick, Professor of English Philology, Saarland

University in Saarbrucken; Mary Bock, Honorary Research Assistant in the

17UNIT 2 TELLING STORIES

English Department, University of Cape Town; Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Professor of Linguistics and English, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi.

Following the argument in Chapter 1 about the pervasiveness of poetic

language in everyday language, Michael Toolan argues in this chapter that storytelling is similarly ubiquitous in human interactions, and that it

represents a primary means by which we convey our sense of the world and our identity to other people. Like poetic language, conversational storytelling is also seen as an essentially creative activity that serves important functions

within interactions.


. how the approaches to narrative discussed in the chapter move from

Labovs mainly textual focus on narrative form to approaches which are more concerned with social interaction, and wider socio-historical and

cultural influences.

. the analysis of the example narrative (Alisons story), and the role of the Orientation, Complicating Action, Resolution and Evaluation.

. discussion in the chapter text and readings of the interactional and

cultural functions served by narratives. In Readings A, B and C, note in particular how narratives may help construct certain social and cultural

identities.

. how narratives conserve cultural tradition and also depend upon specific cultural knowledge for their understanding -- a major focus of Reading C.

. the extent to which Readings A, B and C may be related to Carters inherency, sociocultural and cognitive models of literariness.

An issue arising from the consideration of narrative creativity in this chapter is the extent to which storytellers perform identities for themselves and for the other personae in their stories. Performance is further examined in the next

chapter.

Activities

CD-ROM Band 4: Mbelos story (duration approx. 3 minutes)

This extract from the South African lm The Guguletu Seven, made by

Lindy Wilson, includes an edited version of the story reproduced by Mary Bock in Chapter 2, Reading B. Thapelo Mbelo told Wilson his story in an interview

when she was collecting material for the film.

On 3 March 1986, the South African Police Special Branch (Vlakplaas) killed seven young black men at a crossroads in Guguletu, a township near Cape

Town. The Special Branch had been informed that terrorists were planning to attack a police bus. The film tells how ten years later, investigators from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission discovered that the

18 STUDY GUIDE 1

young men had been trained, armed and organised by a police informer, Jimmy Mbane, who told the police exactly what was planned. In this short

clip from the film, Thapelo Mbelo, a member of the Special Branch, explains what happened. In the last minute of the film clip, we see Mbelo answering

questions from the lawyer at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing.

A C T I V I T Y 1

15--20 minutes Please now watch Band 4, the extract from The Guguletu Seven.

What does hearing and seeing the stor ytelling add to the analysis of the transcript in the chapter reading?

Note: Because the extracts in the lm have been edited, the story does not correspond exactly to the transcript analysed by Mary Bock.

CD-ROM Band 5: Womens conversational stories (duration approx. 10 minutes)

Featuring: Jennifer Coates, Professor of English Language and Linguistics,

Roehampton University, London.

Jennifer Coates is well known for her research on language and gender, and particularly for her studies of informal conversations between women friends, which are discussed in her book Women Talk: Conversation

between Women Friends (Coates, 1996). For Coates, talk plays a vital part in the construction and maintenance of friendship, and the construction

and maintenance of (gendered) identities. Her discussion of narratives is based on evidence from a corpus of 20 conversations between groups of

girls and women of different ages (from 12 years old to early 50s), from different geographical regions in the UK. Their social-class background

ranged from upper working to professional middle class. The speakers were all British and all white so it is important to note that the patterns

Coates found in her data may not generalise to speakers from other cultural contexts.

Elsewhere, Coates (2003) has also discussed gender differences in narratives, arguing that mens stories are more often focused on plot

and on personal achievement, and womens on characterization and relationships; and that womens stories are, in various ways, more

collaborative than mens.

For the CD-ROM band we asked Jennifer Coates to discuss some of the characteristics of the womens narratives in her data, and to talk us through an example.

UNIT 2 TELLING STORIES 19

A C T I V I T Y 2

15 minutes Before listening to Band 5, look at the transcript below of a narrative that Coates refers to on this band. Think carefully about the way it is structured. Does it seem to fall into the narrative structure identied by Labov?

In so far as you can tell from a written transcript, how well does this seem to work as a narrative? How does the narrator bring the story, and its central character, to life?

My mother and the jogger

(Narrator)

1 Shes a major embarrassment .

2 Do you know what she did recently?

3 She took- shes got these 2 Dobermans who are really unruly but very sweet.

4 She took them for a walk on the beach one day,

5 and this was at the height of the Rottweiler scare (yeah),

6 and this joggers running along the beach at Liverpool,

7 and Rosie, her dog that she cant control,

8 decided to run along after the jogger

9 and bit him on the bottom (oh, oh no).

10 And this man was going absolutely mad,

11 and my mother started off by being nice to him

12 and saying Im terribly sorry, shes only a puppy and she was just

being playful and so on,

13 and he got worse,

14 and the more she tried to placate him, (yes)

15 the more he decided he was going to go to the police station and

create a scene about it.

16 So she said, let me have a look,

17 and she strode over and pulled his- pulled his track suit bottoms down,

18 and said Dont be so bloody stupid, man, theres nothing wrong with you. Youre perfectly all right.

19 (at which point) he was so embarrassed he just jogged away.

(Friend)

20 Oh that would that would be the sort of thing she would do.

(Narrator)

21 Thats just what shes like shes (very) funny ...

20 STUDY GUIDE 1

C ommen t

The story seems to t well into the Labovian framework. A possible abstract can be identied at lines 1 and 2, orientation at lines 3--7, and then complicating action beginning at lines 7--8 (Rosie ... decided to run along after the jogger). The resolution comes at line 19, where the jogger jogs away. Lines 20 and 21 could be a coda, bringing us back to the present. There is plenty of evaluation during the narrative, with direct speech (embedded evaluation in Labovs terms) used to bring the character of the mother to life. For Coates, the representation of speech plays a key part in narratives. In relation to another story, she has commented:

It does not matter whether these people actually said what they are represented as saying; the narrator animates her characters as part of the creative act of telling a story. There is an immediacy in direct speech which would be missing if the speakers words were merely repor ted.

(Coates, 1996, p. 98)

A C T I V I T Y 3

45 minutes Please listen to Band 5, noting what Coates says about creativity in everyday narratives, in particular how narratives are structured (e.g. linguistic patterns and themes), how speakers shape the story in a particular way and how stories are used to construct an identity.

You may need to play the jogger story itself a few times, listening to it on its own and with the transcript. Does your view of the story change on hearing it performed? How far do you agree with Coates interpretations?

Transcription activities: different transcription formats

Your work during the rst six units of the course focuses mainly on spoken

language -- usually, though not entirely, language used in interaction with others. In order to analyse spoken interaction, researchers need rst to

transcribe this. Transcription raises a number of issues about the representation of interaction in written form. Researchers need to make choices about how best to do this. Such choices are not neutral, however -

the way interaction is transcribed is likely to facilitate certain interpretations over others. It is in this sense that transcription has famously been referred to

as a form of theory (Ochs, 1979), rather than simply a way of recording speech. Michael Toolan (Chapter 2, p. 70) made a similar comment on Mary

Bocks transcription of narratives in Reading B:

I found the analysis convincing and Bocks way of transcribing and

representing the narratives useful -- in the case of Batemans narrative,


grouping the transcription into stanzas highlights the structure of the overarching narrative as well as the existence of internal mini-narratives that

can be analysed in their own terms. Note, however, that this is clearly an interpretative overlay rather than something unquestionably embedded in the

tellers talk. Such framings are an inescapable part of transcription; a transcript without stanzas would be a different framing, not the absence of any.

If you have studied one of the English language second level courses, U210 The English Language: past, present and future or (from 2007) U211 Exploring the English Language, you will have already studied transcription and perhaps

made some transcriptions of your own. Here we review and consolidate this activity. In this unit we look at transcription formats and the representation of

turn-taking, in Unit 3 at the detail of transcription conventions for representing speech, and in Unit 4 at the inclusion of nonverbal information. The study of

transcription is a good way of increasing understanding of spoken language (in this unit, conversational narratives and how they work), and it can also help

you to evaluate other peoples research into spoken language.

A C T I V I T Y 4

40 minutes Look through the transcriptions of interactions and narratives in Chapters 1 and 2. Focus on transcription formats -- how transcripts are laid out. Look particularly at how speakers different turns are represented. Do the formats selected seem to be useful -- are they clear to the reader and do they seem to suit the purposes of the research?

C ommen t

Most transcripts of interactions use a standard layout, with speech represented in consecutive turns. There are often devices to indicate overlapping speech -e.g. the use of square brackets in Norricks transcripts in Chapter 2, Reading A:

Jean: You could go over there around the holidays and get smashed before you left [the place.]

Helen: [Oh yeah. ]

Sometimes short turns (e.g. minimal responses that indicate conversational support) are represented as asides -- set off in brackets within a longer turn, as in Carters example 2 in Chapter 1, Reading A:

A: Oh yes, I mean they were all eager to get on it they were really looking forward to being the chosen ones [B: Mm] and he was one of the ones who was called up [B: yeah] and he was getting ready to go and the chief petty officer came back and said, oh no its a mistake

Sometimes narratives are represented as continuous paragraphs, as in the case of Alisons story in Chapter 2. On other occasions, clauses are represented on separate lines, as in the case of Boots story. This makes it easier to carry out

22 STUDY GUIDE 1

a formal analysis, such as identifying Labovs narrative structure (abstract, orientation, complicating action, etc). The most complex layout must be that of Mary Bock, who in Chris Batemans story (Reading B) analysed larger episodes and mini-narratives within these episodes.

In some cases (e.g. Alison, Boot) the narratives have been elicited, and are monologues or near monologues, but similar conventions may be used where narratives crop up in conversation, as in Jennifer Coates transcription of My mother and the jogger above. In this case, separating out a narrative for transcription tends to foreground the contribution of the main narrator -- a single speaker holding the floor to tell a story. Norrick, by contrast, indicates more of the interaction and gives a sense of joint construction of narratives. Norricks narratives are more collaborative, of course, but transcription may highlight this element or play it down. The box below illustrates alternative transcriptions of a segment of My mother and the jogger.

My mother and the jogger transcriptions

1 Extract as represented in published form, showing narrative clauses

but no interaction (Coates, 1996, p. 100):

and Rosie, her dog that she cant control,

decided to run along after the jogger

and bit him on the bottom.

And this man was going absolutely mad,

2 Extract as transcribed in full by the course team for the audio band:

and Rosie, her dog that she cant control,

decided to run along after the jogger

and bit him on the bottom (oh, oh no).

And this man was going absolutely mad,

3 Extract transcribed in standard dialogue layout:

A: ... and Rosie, her dog that she cant control, decided to run along after the jogger and bit him on the bottom

B: Oh, oh no

A: And this man was going absolutely mad,

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


A C T I V I T Y 5

30 minutes This activity looks at another way of representing joint activity in interaction. The box below illustrates a stave format used to transcribe a narrative (the narrative itself is also represented separately in a neatened up format). The stave format was developed by Jennifer Coates and is particularly useful when you want to transcribe talk in which several speakers participate, often simultaneously. The term stave was coined by analogy with musical staves. This type of transcript represents talk from all speakers in the same stave (on separate lines), rather than separating out turns by individual speakers. All the lines are to be read simultaneously, like a musical score. For Coates, this makes the relationship between different voices easier to grasp -- in this case we can see all the activity going on around the main narrative and that contributes to this.

Please work through the transcript -- rst identify what is going on, then consider how effective you think this format is. Do you agree with Coates that it is easier to see the relationship between voices than in a conventional dialogue transcript? Stave transcripts are not easy to read at rst -- you will need to spend a bit of time seeing how the format works. If you wish, you could re-transcribe a short extract in a dialogue format to compare this with the stave format.

Quiz transcription

In the interaction below, Janet tells a story about her daughter Vicky taking part in a quiz. Mr Lee is a teacher at Vickys school, and Janet is

pleased that her daughter managed to draw with him in the quiz.

1 Stave transcript

1 JANET: ooh I must tell you/ Vicky- you know the quiz Vicky goes to

2 JANET: on Wednesday? = = she drew with Robin Lee= =last night/ MEG: = mhm = MARY: ((xx cant guess))

HELEN: = oh =

3 JANET: ((she

MARY:

HELEN: its quite lucrative this idea as well/ not only is it-

SALLY: ((xxxxxxxxxxx))

JEN: what dyou

4 JANET: got)) two fifty/ its a- its a pub-

MEG:

HELEN: in a- in a pub

JEN: what dyou mean its- its

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

24 STUDY GUIDE 1

5 JANET: they have this little quiz/ and apparently Mr Lee goes

HELEN:

6 JANET: now/ and Vicky was absolutely deLIGHTed/ she BEAT him /

HELEN:

7 JANET: well she didnt beat him/ she came- she drew/

MEG: youd love those Jennifer/

(Adapted from Coates, 1996, pp. 135--6)

2 Janets narrative transcribed separately

1 ooh I must tell you

2 Vicky- you know the quiz Vicky goes to on Wednesday? [mhm] 3 she drew with Robin Lee [oh ]

4 last night 5 she got two fifty

6 in a- in a pub? 7 its a- its a pub

8 they have this little quiz 9 and apparently Mr Lee goes now

10 and Vicky was absolutely deLIGHTed [] 11 she BEAT him 12 well she didnt beat him

13 she came- she drew

(Coates, 2003, p. 112)

CD-ROM Band 6: Sample stories (duration approx. 8 minutes)

This band includes four examples of stories which you are asked to listen to

and relate to your study of narrative. The stories also allow you to practise transcription, and for this reason transcripts are not included in the CD-ROM.

1 Stealing a chicken (about 3 minutes)

This is an example of an elicited story: a man is asked by his family to tell his

granddaughter a story before she goes to bed. He tells her a series of stories about when he was young, of which this is one. The family comes from

Newcastle upon Tyne, in the north-east of England (if youre not familiar with the accent you will need to listen carefully). The events in this story took

place in the 1920s during the Depression, a period when many people in Britain were out of work and trying to survive on limited resources. Its a

story about how the young man and some friends stole a chicken intended for a meal held for army ofcers. Names mentioned in the story include the

Drill Hall, a venue often used for dances, and the Leazes park.


The story was audio-recorded by a member of the family. Participants here are the storyteller, his wife, daughter and granddaughter.

2 Tunnel game (under 1 minute)

This very brief story is told by a boy, Sean, in the course of a BBC recording

made for another Open University course, U212 Childhood. The boy was thirteen at the time, and lived in Oakland, California. Sean was filmed playing

with his brothers in one of his favourite places, Diamond Park. In a separate interview he talked about playing in the park, and the story was told as part of the explanation of a game that involved running through a tunnel. You

hear the explanation of the game and then a brief narrative which gives its origins.

Participants during the narration of the story are the boy and an Open

University academic carrying out the interview; also present were a sound recordist, a camera operator and Seans two brothers Chris (10 years) and

Andrew (8 years).

3 Kitchen oor (about 1 minute)

The story here comes from Jennifer Coatess data on womens talk. It is told spontaneously as part of an informal conversation between friends. It is part of a story sequence (mirroring stories, in Coates terms), in which stories on

a similar theme follow on rapidly one from another. The theme here is the inadequacies of men, and this is the fourth story in the sequence. You hear

rst the end of the previous story about eating from paper rather than a plate, then the narrator comes in with her kitchen oor story. This is the same

person who told the story of My mother and the jogger, and the same group of friends is involved. In this case, though, there is more interaction around

the story.

Participants include the storyteller and 2 female friends, one of whom audio-

records the conversation.

4 Stories about mothers (about 3 minutes)

These stories emerged during a BBC Radio 4 Womans Hour discussion broadcast to mark Mothers day. Participants in the discussion were talking about their

experience of mothering. As in the example above, these stories form part of a sequence. In this case, the stories are very brief, often fragmentary, rather than

being discrete stories as in the other examples.

Participants include Martha Kearney (Womans Hour presenter), Stephen Armstrong (journalist), Shappi Khorsandi (comedian) and Lynda Bellingham (actor).

STUDY GUIDE 126

A C T I V I T Y 6

40 minutes First listen to the stories. You may need to play them more than once to hear what is going on. In some stories the speech is rapid, or there is quiet or unclear speech, or overlapping speech. This is not unusual, however, and is one of the challenges of transcribing spoken language!

Select one story that you nd interesting, or perhaps two that contrast in some way. Does your story seem to illuminate the work you have done on narrative this week? For example, does it exemplify or provide a contrast with the discussion of narrative by Michael Toolan and the reading authors in Chapter 2 of the course book, or by Jennifer Coates on CD-ROM Band 5? What can you say about: how the story is structured; in what sense the story is creative; how other participants contribute to this, if at all; what functions the story seems to full in this interaction and how it achieves these? Think about how you would transcribe this story -- given what you want to say about the story, which format would work best?

A C T I V I T Y 7

1 hour 20 minutes Now try out one of the transcription formats discussed above. Transcription is time-consuming, particularly if you are looking out for detail such as overlapping speech (one estimate suggests a minute of talk takes 15 minutes to transcribe, but a detailed transcript may take longer). If you are transcribing to illustrate overlaps and similar features, you may wish to transcribe only part of your narrative. If any speech is difficult to decipher you can represent this by a series of crosses in brackets -- we went along (xxxx). If you are not sure about a word but feel you can make a guess, put the guessed word in brackets -- so she goes into the (garden). As you replay the recording you may find that some of these words become clearer.

How does your transcription work? Does it seem to be effective? Does it have any shortcomings? Does the act of transcribing affect your interpretation of the story, and if so, how?

Your work on the narrative(s) may feed into an assignment, and should also inform your study of spoken interaction in later units.

Data collection and analysis: narratives

To add to your data le of creative language use, you may wish to record and transcribe a narrative of your own. Activity 8 provides guidance on this.


A C T I V I T Y 8 ( E X T E N S I O N A C T I V I T Y )

Ongoing First decide what kind of story you wish to record. The easiest way to get hold of a narrative is to elicit one -- Labov (Boots story in Chapter 2) and Toolan (Alisons story) simply asked people if they had ever been in a situation in which they had feared for their lives. This is almost cer tain to produce a story, but of course there are all sorts of other questions you might ask. Eliciting a story is useful if you are interested in narrative structure, in how a narrator may use language creatively, in the narrators use of evaluation, in how they represent themselves and/or how they represent other characters in the story.

Alternatively you may be interested in conversational narratives. In this case, you will need to record a conversation likely to produce narratives. Informal conversation between friends or family, perhaps over a meal or a drink, will almost certainly throw up a few examples. This will allow you to look at how spontaneous narratives work -- what seems to motivate them, how they are structured, how speakers represent themselves and others, what part other participants play in constructing the narrative.

It is easier to audio- rather than video-record interaction, but you should also note down any points of interest about the setting, any activities being carried out, and participants behaviour. You will need to practise rst with your audio recorder to make sure that you can obtain a clear recording.

When recording people, its impor tant to take account of ethical considerations -- see the box below.

Once you have recorded your story, or identied conversational narratives in the interaction you recorded, you should proceed as in Activities 6 and 7 above: identifying points of interest, linking these to your earlier study in this unit, and deciding how to transcribe the narrative to explore these issues in greater depth. You may nd you can say rather more about your own narrative as you know more about the context in which it was collected. If you wish to use your narrative -- e.g. in a TMA -- you should note down the date of the recording, the setting, participants and any other relevant information, as in the word play examples discussed in Unit 1, Activity 4.

28 STUDY GUIDE 1

A note on ethics

When recording peoples speech, it is important to do so openly and obtain their consent. In the past, linguists sometimes recorded people surreptitiously with the aim of obtaining samples of speech that were

natural and not affected by speakers knowledge that they were being recorded. It is now generally agreed, however, that these benefits are

outweighed by ethical considerations, and that speakers should not be deceived in this way. Jennifer Coates writes that she originally made

surreptitious recordings of some of her women friends, and that this was greeted with extreme hostility when they discovered what she had

done. However, it is generally accepted that being slightly vague about the detail of your interests in spoken language is not unethical: for instance, you might say you were interested in informal talk without

specifying narratives. Researchers often debrief participants later on, however - and this sometimes provides interesting information about

their own perceptions of the conversation.

When speakers are aware they are being recorded this will affect the way they speak, but after a few minutes they usually pay less attention

to the recording. Speakers are also affected by certain norms and expectations -- e.g. how you normally chat to friends -- and this

will diminish the possible effect of the recording process on natural language.

Particular care needs to be taken when recording children under 16. Consent should always be obtained from parents or equivalent adults.

Care is also needed when recording people over whom you have some

authority, e.g. to ensure they are not put under undue pressure to participate.

Guidelines on researching language use are available from the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) - see the student project

version of the recommendations on good practice on the BAAL website: http://www.baal.org.uk.

This unit of study

29

Putting on the style

During this week you should work through the following course

materials and the corresponding sections of this study guide:

Chapter 3 of Book 1, Putting on the style (allow 7--8 hours).

CD-ROM Band 7, Messing with style (allow about 30 minutes).

CD-ROM Band 8, Language crossing (allow about 50 minutes).

CD-ROM Band 9, Polari (allow about 30 minutes).

CD-ROM Band 10, Performance and performativity (allow about

40 minutes).

Transcription activities: making a detailed transcript (allow about

1 hour 30 minutes).

Websearch: Polari safari (allow about 1 hour).

Learning points


. arguments that identity is routinely performed, in part by certain types of language use, and that this may be seen as a creative act;

. the conceptions of identity that underpin such arguments;

. how spoken interaction may be studied by researchers, including the value of a contextualised, ethnographic approach.

You will also become more familiar with transcription conventions and the choices that need to be made in the transcription of spoken interaction; you will gain some experience of interpreting quantitative information about

language use; and you will begin to work on identifying and evaluating websites that may be relevant to your study.


Chapter authors: Susan McRae, currently lecturing in the Faculty of Arts and

Social Sciences (English Language) at Kingston University; Joan Swann,

The Open University.

30 STUDY GUIDE 1

Reading authors: Penelope Eckert, Professor in the Department of Linguistics,

Stanford University; Ben Rampton, Professor of Applied and Sociolinguistics,

Kings College, University of London; Niko Besnier, Visiting Professor in the

Department of Anthropology, University of California,

Los Angeles; Paul Baker, Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and

Modern English Language, Lancaster University.

You saw in Chapter 2 that storytellers are often seen to be performing as

they tell their stories. Chapter 3 extends this idea by looking at the way

people put on performances in their everyday conversations, even when they

are not telling stories; and how they use aspects of speaking style to construct

and project particular identities for themselves, or to represent their view of

the identities of others.


. discussion of speaking style; evidence that speakers draw on and switch between language varieties in interaction with others.

. the different forms such linguistic choices take, such as the adoption of

certain grammatical and pronunciation features of English (Reading A), drawing strategically on different languages or dialects (Readings B and C),

the creation and maintenance of new/alternative varieties (Reading D).

. how these different ways of speaking may be drawn on in the negotiation of a range of identities, and how this may be seen as a type of

performance (examples can be found in all the sections and readings).

. theories of interactional performance that underpin these ideas. Note, for instance: Goffmans dramaturgical or theatrical model, discussed in

Section 3.1; anthropological ideas of performance in interaction, mentioned in Reading B; and the notion of performativity that has

informed much recent research, discussed in relation to gender and sexuality in Section 3.4.

As you read, consider how far, and in what ways, you see such everyday performances as creative. Consider also the research methods used by

different authors, and particularly the value of an ethnographic approach that takes account of the contexts in which language is used. This is followed up in some of the CD-ROM bands.

Activities

CD-ROM Bands 7--9: Style research

In these bands the authors of three of the readings in Chapter 3, Penelope Eckert, Ben Rampton and Paul Baker talk about their research. As an over-

arching question we asked each researcher How do you know? -- in other words, how do they, as researchers, come to discover things about language

and how are they able to substantiate any claims they make? Each speaker handled this question in rather different ways, as you will see.

31UNIT 3 PUTTING ON THE STYLE

CD-ROM Band 7: Messing with style (duration approx. 8 minutes)

Featuring: Penelope Eckert, Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University.

Penelope Eckert is the author of Reading A, on the language of adolescents in a US high school. Eckert is a sociolinguist who is interested in language

variation and change. Sociolinguists in this tradition have identified sociolinguistic patterns -- how language varies across different social groups

and also over time. A major focus of attention has been variation across social class groups, following groundbreaking work by William Labov in the USA

and Peter Trudgill in the UK that identified systematic differences in pronunciation between speakers from different social classes and also between these same speakers speaking styles in different contexts (Labov,

1966, 1972; Trudgill, 1974). Like other researchers in this tradition, Eckert was interested in differences between groups of speakers -- quantitative patterns in

their use of certain grammatical forms and the pronunciations of certain vowels. However, in selecting groups of speakers to study, she wanted to go

beyond social class to identify social categories that were meaningful to speakers themselves. She therefore carried out a detailed ethnographic study

that helped her identify important social groups to investigate and later helped her to interpret her results.

A C T I V I T Y 1

30 minutes Listen to Penelope Eckert on Band 7, focusing particularly on:

. her decision to look at the speech of adolescent speakers;

. how an ethnographic approach is valuable in identifying relevant social categories;

. how she was struck by the jock and burnout social categories;

. the emergence of gender, and how this was linked to jock and burnout identities.

Clearly Eckert had cer tain expectations before she began her research, but a signicant part of her approach as an ethnographer involved immersing herself in the activities of her research participants and using the understandings she gained from this to inform her sociolinguistic research.

In her discussion Eckert refers to a correlation between speakers language use and their social class. The term correlation is used here

in its statistical sense. It refers to a statistical relationship between a social variable, such as social class; and a linguistic variable, use of

a particular linguistic feature. This might mean, for instance, that the higher you go up the social class hierarchy, the more speakers use

a particular pronunciation or grammatical form.

32 STUDY GUIDE 1

CD-ROM Band 8: Language Crossing (duration approx. 15 minutes)

Featuring: Ben Rampton, Professor of Applied and Sociolinguistics at Kings College, London.

Ben Rampton is the author of Reading B on language crossing. The ideas

discussed in the reading are quite complex, so we wanted to ask Rampton to explain how he actually carried out the research and worked through his data

to reach an interpretation. Youll remember from the reading that Rampton was not interested in quantitative patterns, as Eckert was, but in how speakers

used particular languages in context, and to particular effect. However, he also adopted an ethnographic approach and we hope the band will give you a sense of how as an ethnographer Rampton goes about his research, puzzling

through his data and arriving at different levels of interpretation.

A C T I V I T Y 2

50 minutes Please listen to Band 8, noting the points Rampton makes. The band is divided into ve sections, focusing on:

. the importance of context in ethnographic research -- and the kind of knowledge Rampton had built up about his research setting;

. how Rampton worked through his data to arrive at the interpretation of specific utterances; how these interpretations are further informed by Ramptons ethnographic knowledge, and by insights from other writers and researchers;

. how Rampton then moved to another level of interpretation, to make more general claims (empirical generalisations) about the symbolic meanings of Creole, Asian English and Panjabi;

. how Rampton came to construct a more general model of language crossing;

. how crossing may be seen as a form of performance.

On this last point, note that Rampton draws on many of Erving Goffmans ideas in his research -- youll remember from Chapter 3 that Goffman extended the notion of performance to include everyday activity that would not be seen as particularly special or performed by speakers and listeners. In the reading, however, Rampton related crossing to a more conventionally artful notion of performance, based on the ideas of Richard Bauman and others. Rampton develops these ideas further in this extract.

In discussing his approach, Rampton refers to examples from his reading. One of the extracts from his data (Example 1 in the reading) is reproduced on the CD-ROM for ease of reference. Click on the text icon to see this transcript while you listen to Rampton discussing the interpretation of specic utterances.


CD-ROM Band 9: Polari (duration approx. 8 minutes)

Featuring: Paul Baker, Lecturer in the Department of English Language and

Linguistics, Lancaster University.

Paul Baker is the author of Reading D, on the language variety Polari used by British gay men and women in the rst part of the twentieth century. When

Baker carried out his research, Polari was no longer in common use. Unlike Penelope Eckert and Ben Rampton, therefore, he could not observe and

collect actual examples of language use, and had to rely on other, more indirect, sources. In this extract, Paul Baker talks further about his research on

Polari and how this is drawn on in the performance of identities. He discusses in particular the methods he adopted to nd out about the meaning and use of Polari. There is also an example of one of the media texts Baker refers to -

the use of Polari for comic effect in one of the Julian and Sandy sketches from the BBC radio programme Round the Horne, broadcast in the 1960s.

This brief extract features Kenneth Horne, Hugh Paddick as Julian and Kenneth Williams as Sandy. You may need to keep Paul Bakers lexicon of

Polari terms next to you as you listen!

A C T I V I T Y 3

30 minutes Listen to Band 9, noting in particular :

. the motivation for Bakers research, and how he characterises the approach he adopted;

. the kinds of data he collected, and how he analysed his data;

. what he sees as the strengths and limitations of this approach.

Note that Baker mentions the idea of triangulation in relation to his research. Triangulation refers to the practice of drawing on different forms of evidence to make research findings more robust. Baker, for

instance, drew on different types of language data, and different research methods. Although he did not use the term, Ramptons practice

of cross-checking interpretations of his transcripts against interviews with participants is a form of triangulation.

The term diachronic, also used by Baker, refers here to the study of how language changes over time.

34 STUDY GUIDE 1

CD-ROM Band 10: Performance and performativity (duration approx. 10 minutes)

Featuring: Deborah Cameron, Professor of Language and Communication, Oxford University.

Deborah Cameron is a British researcher, well known for her work on

language, gender and sexuality. In Chapter 3 we referred to her ideas on performativity -- a concept derived from the work of the feminist philosopher

Judith Butler, although Butler herself borrowed the idea from a philosopher of language, J.L. Austin. The notion of performativity has been inuential in

research on language and identity, but as an idea it can be rather challenging. We therefore asked Cameron to explain what the idea meant to her, and what she saw as its value.

A C T I V I T Y 4

40 minutes Please listen to Band 10, noting in particular :

. the origin of the idea of performativity, and how this was developed by Butler ;

. the impact Butlers ideas have had on research on language and identity -in relation both to contrived, deliberate performances of identity and more routine, unconscious behaviour ;

. some limitations Cameron identifies in the way these ideas have been drawn on in research;

. how Butlers ideas relate to earlier performance models, such as that developed by Erving Goffman.

Cameron refers to early (1970s) research carried out on language and

gender by the US linguist Robin Lakoff. Lakoff argued that there was a distinctive womens language -- a particular way of speaking that was feminine, but also relatively powerless (Lakoff, 1975).

Cameron also refers to ethnomethodology, a tradition of enquiry associated with the sociologist Harold Garfinkel. Ethnomethodologists focus on how human social activities are orderly, and how this order is

locally produced through the use of shared methods by which people make sense of others actions and construct their own. Garfinkel, for

instance, looked at how jury members deliberated to reach a decision, how researchers made coding decisions and the work of staff in a suicide prevention centre. Language is an example of a social activity,

and ethnomethodology gave rise to an approach to the study of spoken language known as conversation analysis.

(Adapted from Swann et al., 2004)


Transcription activities: making a detailed transcript

Following on from the discussion in Unit 2 of different formats and layouts

for transcribing spoken language, we explore here some of the conventions linguists use to represent the detail of speech.

Some researchers use conventional punctuation in transcribing conversations,

but it is unusual for linguists to do this. Punctuation represents written features of language such as sentence boundaries, but this is less helpful in

transcribing spoken language. Sometimes features such as commas or full stops are used, but with a special meaning -- e.g. to indicate pauses. Linguists

also tend to record features such as falling or rising intonation that help to structure spoken utterances. Linguists may record other vocal characteristics -e.g. whether something is said loudly or softly -- that listeners would hear

during an interaction and that may therefore be relevant to how the interaction is interpreted. These sets of features are often referred to as

prosodic or paralinguistic. Additional potentially meaningful features -- e.g. hesitations, disuency -- may also be recorded in transcripts that try to

represent speech accurately.

Prosody, intonation and paralanguage

Descriptions of spoken language sometimes distinguish between

prosody and paralanguage. Prosody includes systematic patterns in features such as speech rate, stress, and pitch variation that contribute to

the linguistic meaning of an utterance. Intonation (pitch variation, or more accurately a combination of pitch and stress) is an aspect of prosody. Intonation may, for instance, indicate clause boundaries, and

whether a clause functions as a statement or a question.

Paralinguistic features include tone of voice, overall loudness or softness, giggling or moaning while speaking. These contribute

more generally to the meaning of an utterance -- e.g. they may give information about a speakers mood, or whether an utterance is to be

taken as a joke. They are usually thought of as features that accompany language, but that are not strictly part of language. In practice, features may fulfil a number of functions and, when describing language, it is

not always possible to make a straightforward distinction between paralinguistic and prosodic features.

Transcriptions that try to represent speech fully may become extremely

detailed, to the extent of being difcult for the non-specialist to read. In Reading B, Rampton represented some characteristics of his informants

speech -- brief pauses, unnished words, loud enunciations. In other publications, however, he has recorded far more detail in transcribing these

extracts. As an illustration, the transcript below is a fuller version of Example 1

36 STUDY GUIDE 1

in Reading B, incorporating a greater degree of detail on the quality of speech. The notes below list Ramptons transcription conventions in full (not all of

these are reected in this example).

Detailed transcript of language crossing

RAY IA::N::

HANIF ( )

IAN ((from afar)) RAY THE COO:L RAY THE COO:L

HANIF yeh Stevie Wonder YAAA ((laughs loudly))

5 RAY [its worser than that

IAN ((singing)) [I just called to say

HANIF ha (lets) sing (him) a song

IAN I hate you

HANIF ((loud laughs))

10 ANON ((coming up)) ( ) are you running for the school (.)

RAY huh

ANON are [you running for the school =

RAY [no

ANON = [I am

15 IAN [he couldnt run for th he couldnt [run for the school

RAY [SHUT UP =

RAY = I couldn- I don wan- [I cant run anyway

HANIF [right were wasting our [time =

IAN [I did =

20 HANIF = [come on (were) wasting our time =

IAN [you come last ( )

HANIF = [[m^m^m^:]

ANON [I came second

IAN ((singing)) I just called to say [I got a big =

25 RAY [I hate you

IAN = [LUlla:]

((Panjabi for willy))

HANIF AND ((loud laughter)) OTHERS

RAY ((continuing Ians song)) sos Ian Hinks (1.5)

((Ray laughs)) no you havent you got a tiny one (.)

30 youve only got (a arse)

(Rampton, 1998, p. 292)


[ ] IPA phonetic transcription (1989 revision) 0 high stress

0 low stress

low rise

: lengthening

[ overlapping turns

= two utterances closely connected without a noticeable overlap, or different parts of the single speakers turn

(.) pause of less than one second

- break-off/unnished word

(1.5) approximate length of pause in seconds

p piano/quietly

pp very quietly

f forte/loudly

ff very loudly

CAPITALS loud

(( )) stage directions, or comments

( ) speech inaudible

(text) speech hard to discern, analysts guess

italics instance of crossing of central interest in discussion

Ramptons transcription conventions are as follows:

Names have been altered.

A C T I V I T Y 5

15 minutes Work closely through the transcript above, noting the additional transcription features that were not included in the version in the course book. For instance, Rays initial Ian is enunciated loudly, probably calling out to his friend. The transcript above, however, also indicates that the word is lengthened, as sometimes happens when you call to a person. How much does this extra information add to your understanding of the extract?

C ommen t

The lengthening information helped me interpret line 1 as a call from Ray to Ian -- perhaps calling him over to join the group. The = signs indicate turn continuations -- speaking turns continue across overlapping speech. The whole interaction is likely to be quite rapid, with no gaps between turns except for a slight pause (line 10) where Ray seems not to have taken in Anons question, and a later longer pause when Ray responds to Ians jocular insult. Rampton

38 STUDY GUIDE 1

notes that Rays response seems rather weak -- cer tainly there is no laughter after line 28 and, after a pause, Ray himself laughs then adds a further insult.

The phonetic transcription [lUlla:] gives a more precise pronunciation for the Panjabi word.

What do you think a stave format would add to this transcription? In my view the continuing turns would be clearer, and perhaps also the relationship between the different voices. There would be no space for stage directions such as ((singing)), however -- some other means would be needed to represent these.

Several sets of conventions exist for the representation of speech in interaction. One of the best known was devised by the conversation analyst Gail Jefferson, reproduced in Sacks et al. (1974). Many transcriptions, including Ramptons, have adopted features from this set. You will see some other conventions in the course book: we have left transcripts in the form given by the authors of readings and examples, rather than trying to impose a single transcript style.

Conversation analysts sometimes try to represent pronunciation in the way they spell words -- e.g. you been down here before havenche; whur it ends; las night (examples from Sacks et al., 1974, p. 703). Such spelling is controversial: Sacks et al. maintain they are trying to represent pronunciation accurately, but nonstandard spelling conventions are not always applied consistently and, because of their comic strip connotations, may appear derogatory.

The box below gives a simple set of conventions you may wish to adopt in transcribing spoken interaction. You could add further conventions to this where needed.

Transcription conventions

[he said [dont do it

square brackets indicate overlapping speech

A: you know// B: // come off it

This denotes latching (//), i.e. that one after another with no perceptible gap

turn follows rapidly

(thats right) brackets indicate the transcription of these words is uncertain

(xxxxx) word that is impossible to understand, atranscribed

nd cannot be

(.) a brief pause

(1.0) a pause that is long enough to be timed seconds

-- timing given in


((laughs)) may refer to non-speech element such as laughter, a cough, etc.; may also be used to describe the voice quality of the following word -- e.g. ((whispered))

COME BACK as an alternative to double brackets, special formats may be used to indicate features such as loudness

come back a further option is to underline a word or phrase and specify how this is articulated, or any other feature of interest, in a separate right hand margin

A C T I V I T Y 6

1 hour 15 minutes Listen again to the narrative you transcribed last week. Try adding to your transcript to include information about any pauses, or other information about the speakers delivery that helps give a reasonable representation of how the narrative is told.

As an illustration, the transcript below applies some of these conventions to the initial extract (the close of the rst story) in Example 3 on CD-ROM Band 6.

Does making this kind of transcription add to your understanding of the narrative, and if so in what ways?

Sample transcript with conventions applied

A: ... undid the paper ((laughter)) and (like) (.) put a little bit of salt on and I handed them to him you know and he looked at me and he didnt DARE say anything so he had to sit and eat it with his fingers ((laughter)) which he HATES (.) but I was going to make a point of the

slight emphasis

fact that I was not going to put it on a plate and do the whole bit and forceful make a (his tea) [and that articulation

B: [like Charles when I was doing the kitchen oor ...

Note:

SMALL CAPS = increased emphasis

underlining = word to which comment in right hand column relates

laughter extends over some of As words

Websearch: Polari safari

The web is becoming an increasingly useful source of academic information,

though the great variety of material means that any information you obtain there needs to be handled with care. In the past, a subject like Polari would

have been difcult to research, with relatively little information available from

40 STUDY GUIDE 1

conventional academic sources. As the following activity demonstrates, its now possible to nd out quite a lot. In fact, since Polari is a very specic

term, it works well as a search term, leading to several relevant sites.

A C T I V I T Y 7

About 1 hour Put the term Polari into a search engine such as Google or AltaVista. You will nd a vast number of sites -- on Google I found 239,000 worldwide and 7,250 British sites.

Select two or three sites that look interesting and explore these. You might also follow up any potentially interesting links from these sites. What kinds of information do the sites provide you with? How interesting or helpful is this with respect to your study in this unit? How reliable do you think the information is? Do you think you could use it in a TMA?

If you are not familiar with this kind of search, you may nd it helpful rst to look through the SAFARI skills tutorial (especially Section 4, topics 2 and 5) which can be accessed through the eDesktop library resources.

C ommen t

You may well have come up with a different selection of sites from mine. Some of the sites I found were not relevant to the study of language variety (e.g. Polari is also the name of a gay and lesbian support ser vice). The more relevant sites I looked at provided two sorts of information: information about Polari as a language variety, and examples of Polari.

One of the sites I reached was a personal site owned by a researcher into Polari. While the information looked plausible (and was consistent with Paul Bakers reading) I would be cautious about using the site as academic evidence, e.g. in an assignment. There were no references to support any of the statements made (as there would be in an academic book or article), and so no means of checking these. Nor was there any information on the researcher -- whether he was attached to an academic institution or had any relevant publications, for instance. The site did, however, contain a useful reading list and links to other sites.

One of my sites turned out to be run by Paul Baker (this site can also be accessed from ROUTES, through the eDesktop library resources). This is also written in a popular style, but it is clear that Baker is a university academic who has researched and written in this area. The absence of gatekee

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