Analysis Of Speech Event - Essay Example

ANALYSIS OF SPEECH EVENT INTRODUCTION: English as the language of instruction in higher education is gaining importance in countries where it has traditionally been taught as a foreign language. Research on academic spoken English started a few years ago mainly to provide teaching materials for the courses addressed to international students in the U.K. and the U.S.(Gomez 2006: 35). In the field of spoken English, Speech Events can be of various types, involving verbal interaction and communication through English. An interview, conference, group discussion, symposium, seminar, formal speech, academic lecture, student presentation, classroom teaching, conversation, dialogue, etc. are different types of Speech Events. Following is an analysis of an interview with Prime Minister of Great Britain: Tony Blair, with respect to interactional, pedagogic and other issues related to Speech Events. The interview was conducted by Larry King on the programme “Larry King Live”. The Prime Minister spoke from No.10, Downing Street, London. It was aired on November 6, 2001, at 21:00 ET on CNN1. SPEECH EVENT: INTERVIEW The interview is a speech event or meeting in which a person is asked about his/ her views and activities by a reporter or interviewer. From a linguistic point of view, speech events can be located on distance language-proximity language continuum (Koch and Osterreicher 1990: 12 as cited by Tan; Herbst:19962 ). Distance language is characterized by a high degree of pre-planning and permanence, by intensive and compact texts, and a high density of information. Linguistic features are, for example, a lack of contact signals or hesitation phenomena, hypotaxis, a lexically high type-token relation (1990: 50-120 as cited by Tan; Herbst:1996). When answering questions on actions to be taken in Afghanistan, (p.5 of transcripts of the interview), Tony Blair’s reply is emphatic and totally focused, showing an example of distance language. Proximity language on the other hand exhibits little preplanning, permanence, or extensive texts, and a low density of information e.g. neighbours chatting across a fence (1990:11 as cited by Tan; Herbst 1996). Linguistic characteristics for proximity language are for example, contact signals, hesitation phenomena, parataxis, and a lexically low type-token relationship (1990: 50-120 as cited by Tan; Herbst 1996). In the otherwise formal interview, there are characteristics of proximity language, as seen when Larry King enquires, towards the end of interview about the Prime Minister’s small son, and both the men exchange views about whether the world will be safe in the future for the next generation to live in. THEORETICAL ANALYSIS: The theoretical analysis of a speech event is mainly based on Hymes’ (1972 p.35-71) components of speech and Koch and Osterreicher’s conditions of communication (1990: 8 as cited by Tan; Herbst p.185). Hymes’ components of speech are: participants, purpose, roles/status/norms, topic, setting and key. Osterreicher’s terms point out the conditions under which communication takes place. Where to locate the speech event on the intergroup-interindividual continuum, and which variety of speech to expect on the distance language-proximity language continuum are seen.(Tan; Herbst 1996: 185). The more the participants react to each other as individuals, the greater is the uncertainty factor, and greater the variability in the data. On the other hand the more the participants react to each other as representatives of different social groups, the more “regularised” is the speech event, and the more comparable is the data. However, in this interview being analysed, only one main participant is there: the Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair. The other member of this speech event is the interviewer: Mr. Larry King from CNN. Taking spontaneity into consideration, though formal, a spontaneous response pattern was seen from the interviewee, which meant that the interchange was close to proximity language. When asked by Larry King about how his friendship with President Bush had developed, he responded immediately that the friendship had “developed very fast and actually very well”. He also expressed his great respect for President Bush, and that “he had performed magnificently during the crisis”, which had followed the September 11th attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, “and he had shown real qualities of leadership which had been required at that time”. The purpose of the interview was to obtain information on crucial world matters from a world leader. In this interview with only one main interviewee, the criterion of role, status and norm as applied to Tony Blair was one of power, and the questions were also formulated according to the needs of the situation. Since Mr. Blair had on earlier occassions been interviewed by Larry King, (as seen in the welcome given to him by King: “ A return visit for the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Tony Blair”) he had a good rapport with him. He paid less attention to role, status and norm, and hence his responses approached proximity language. He spoke about talking with U.S. President George Bush several times a week, as it was necessary to “keep closely in contact with key allies and partners, so that we are working things through together, because one of the almost unique features of this crisis is how many different facets it’s got”. The next component to be analysed is the topic of the discourse. Emotional involvement with regard to the topic and spontaneity or pre-planning of topics will affect the variety of speech produced. Beyond these criteria, the degree to which there is a single or multiple development of topics plays a role. A discourse that is focused on one topic only tends to take place in distance language. However, new topics taken up will be responded to in proximity language. When the environment, the actions, and communicative acts in the interview situation are integrated in the discourse to a great extent, there will be proximity language. In this interview, since the interviewer was in the CNN studios, and the interviewee was at his home in London, the Prime Minister’s residence, the focus was completely on the interview, and proximity language could be seen. The fifth important factor in the analysis of a speech event is the setting. The location and time of the interview and the degree of privacy of the communication have to be taken into account. At a recorded interview, the degree of privacy may be more, which enhances the ability of the person being interviewed to speak without distraction. Also, an optimum physical distance, consistent with the other conditions of communication may influence shifts in the variety of speech, and ensure that the speaker’s responses are the best he can give under the circumstances, and contribute to proximity language. An example is when the Prime Minister talks about all the various facets of the crisis being faced: “the situation in Afghanistan, the war against terrorism more generally, humanitarian issues, issues to do with international relations, relations of the Arab world between Europe and America”. The key of the communication, that is the tone, manner, or spirit plays a vital role in a speech event. Certain keys have a natural affinity to certain varieties of speech, e.g. a humourous manner to proximity speech. A serious tone, light-hearted banter, or a detailed development of the discourse can affect the degree of emotional involvement. Therefore it is important to carry out an analysis of the keys of interview as a whole and in parts, to correct the other parameters in the analysis where necessary (Tan; Herbst: 185-187). In the interview, Tony Blair was observed to portray the right spirit and tone, being always ready to give as clear and detailed an answer as he deemed fit. Communicative competence as defined by Milroy and Milroy (p.100), is the capacity of persons to select and recognize the language variety appropriate to the occasion. This competence is clearly seen throughout the interview, with Blair answering with command over vocabulary appropriate to the occasion, and to the content of the questions posed. For example, regarding post-Taliban government in Afghanistan (p.8 of transcript), “I think the important thing is to make sure that it is a broad-based government. And that means including not merely the Northern Alliance, which tends to be very much from the tribes of the North, but also includes the Pashtun element which is the majority element in Afghanistan”. THE SPOKEN CHANNEL: Hughes (1996: 15) states that spoken discourse is primarily aural in terms of its reception and oral in terms of its production. The spoken channel has a high potential for interaction: this means that in conversational settings the distinctive texture of the discourse is created by more than one person and the shape which the conversation takes on reflects the dynamics existing between the participants.(p.17). AUGMENTED TRANSCRIPTION: Another body of research has supplemented phonetic transcription with acoustic displays, usually spectrograms. Dalby 1984 (cited in Shockey 2003: 73) attempts to come to grips with whether more phonological reduction occurs in unselfconscious casual speech than in a speech read from a script. (p.73). 3There is great variation in the ways different researchers have chosen to represent speech using the written medium. This reflects the special difficulties that apply to the encoding or transcription of speech. Speech varies according to a large number of variations many of which have no counterpart in writing, e.g. tempo, loudness, pitch, etc. The production and comprehension of speech is intimately bound up with the situation in which speech occurs, far more so than is the case for written texts. A speech event takes place in time. Its beginning and end may be hard to determine and its internal composition hard to define. Most researchers agree that the utterances or turns of individual speakers form an important structural component in most kinds of speech, but these are rarely as composed as units in written texts: speakers frequently interrupt each other, use gestures as well as words, leave remarks unfinished and so on. Speech frequently contains items such as vocalized pauses, which although only semi-lexical have immense importance in the analysis of spoken text. Even non-vocal elements such as gestures may be regarded as forming a component of spoken text. GESTURES: INTERACTIONAL PURPOSES: According to Gullberg (2006), gestures, defined as the mainly manual movements speakers perform unwittingly while they speak are closely and systematically related to language and speech. Gesture and speech are temporally co-expressive, in that gesture occurs at the same time as the speech unit with which it is sematically co-expressive.(p 4). Research has been conducted to investigate whether overexplicit maintained reference in speech (lexical noun phrases: NPs) and gesture (anaphoric gestures) constitute an interactional communication strategy. Although the presence of anaphoric gestures does not depend on whether they are visible to the addressee, their form and articulation do. Greater spatial distinction and differentiation are seen when gestures are visible to the addressee, and are used for interactional and possibly strategic purposes. (p.30). REFERENCE TRACKING: IN INTERACTION: Gullberg (2006) states that for discourse to be comprehensible and cohesive, who does what to whom, when and where are of significance. Information about entities, time, space and actions has to be carefully tracked and managed from one utterance to the next. This is achieved through a process known as anaphoric linking or reference tracking, which allows anaphora resolution. (p.2). Reference tracking is a bimodial phenomenon(p.157), and is a communication strategy. RESEARCH According to Shockey (2003: 72), research on speech anatomy and physiology has contributed to our understanding of the physical and neurological constraints on the vocal tract, which are in turn reflected in casual speech processes. Studies on co-articulation, stress syllable production, timing and rate as well as general phonetic and phonological theory have all provided insights. Much of the research in speech perception is just as applicable to casual speech as to other kinds. Lodge’s, 1984 (cited in Shockey 2003: 73), summary of processes present in several accents of British English focuses on informal speech. He attempts to formulate a phonological framework which can accommodate English casual speech. PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY: According to Kreidler (1997:16), Phonetics is the Science that studies and describes speech sounds: that is, the sounds produced with the breath by all human beings as part of their language. Gimson; Cruttenden (2001: 6) state that the phonetics of a language concerns the concrete characteristics ( articulatory, acoustics, auditory) of the sounds used in languages. On the other hand, Phonology concerns how sounds function in a systemic way in a particular language. The traditional approach to Phonology is through Phonemics which analyses the stream of speech into a sequence of contrasting segments. Besides being concerned with the sounds of a language, and the syllable structure, both phonetics and phonology must also describe the prosody of the language: that is, how features of pitch, loudness and length work to produce accent, rhythm and intonation. The use of intonation, stress and accent are seen in the English language. Intonation is the verbal sound produced due to the emphasis on certain syllables in the words, and changes in the pitch and loudness of the voice while speaking. In the English language, an important feature is Stress and Accent on certain syllables, while the other part of the word is spoken quickly or at a lower pitch. Thus there is a rise and fall in the intonation of speech. Example of stress and intonation: When asked (p.9 of transcripts) about the poppy he was wearing in his coat lapel, Tony Blair answers: “Yes, this is for Remembrance Day, where we remember the soldiers that gave their lives in the World War”. In this sentence, the stress would be on the first affirmative word: “Yes”. In the word Remembrance, the stress would be on the second syllable: ‘mem’, with the previous and next syllables spoken softer without stress. Similarly in the word “soldiers”, the first syllable ‘sol’ would be stressed, and in the words “World War” both with one syllable each, both words would be spoken with equal emphasis. Gimson; Cruttenden (2001:6) state that the other components of English language are: 1) The Lexicon: The words of the language, the sequence of phonemes of which they are composed, together with their meanings. 2) The Morphology: The structure of words, in particular their inflexion. (e.g. start/ started, here the past tense morpheme is added to the stem morpheme). 3) The Syntax: The description of categories like noun and verb, and the system of rules governing the structure of phrases, clauses and sentences in terms of order and constituency. 4) The Semantics: The meaning of words and the relationship between word meanings, and the way such meanings are combined to give the meanings of sentences. 5) The Pragmatics: The influence of situation on the interpretation of utterances. Moreover, various other aspects of linguistics will involve phonetics and phonology. Stylistics concerns the variations involved in different situations and in different styles of speech. Sociolinguistics concerns the interaction between language and society (e.g. the variation involved across classes and between the sexes). Dialectology often considered a branch of Sociolinguistics concerns the variations in the same language in different regions. Psycholinguistics concerns the behaviour of human beings in their production and perception of language (e.g. how far do we plan ahead and how much of an utterance do we decode at a time? Optimality Theory as stated by Leather (1999) determines the phonetic shape of a word, with an underlying representation (input) and constraints. As Natural Phonology postulates an universal set of natural processes, Optimality Theory claims there is a set of constraints shared by all speaker-hearers. These constraints are not all inviolable. Some which are violable can serve to capture patterns that do not occur throughout the language, however widespread they may be. The violable constraint is one of the particularities of Optimality Theory (OT). As a theory of speech, OT conceives of speakers acting on their knowledge of the relative importance of the various constraints to achieve an optimal output, one that violates only constraints that may be violated (p.18). Current theoretical concern in phonology with nonsegmental issues such as tone, intonation and word stress provides more differentiated frameworks for speech analysis. (p.19). One such framework Autosegmental Phonology (ASP) basically claims that speech cannot plausibly represented only as a sequence of discrete segments, since articulatory activities (glottal, velar, labial and so forth) and the acoustic correlates of the perceptual cues to phonetic contrasts, although coordinated are not organized in simple and simultaneous fashion. On these grounds, ASP would for example, represent segmental and tonal features on separate and autonomous tiers (pp.19-20). The transition between phonetics and phonology is indeterminate. The same processes often operate “in allegro” (casual speech) as major rules, and “in lento” (formal/ citation form) speech as minor rules. The failure to pronounce spelled ‘t’ in ‘hasten’, ‘fasten’ and ‘Christmas’ represents a minor exception, while its non-appearance in sequences such as ‘last minute’ and ‘first place’ is ubiquitous (Shockey 2003: 142). THE USE OF THE PRONOUNS ‘I’ AND ‘YOU’: According to Gomez; Macia et al,(Eds.) (2006: 36), Pronouns together with demonstratives, give reference points for the reader or hearer to understand a speech event. Personal pronouns are by far more common in Spoken English, mainly in conversation. The preference for the use of some pronouns over some others has been related to the consideration of positive or negative politeness. The use of ‘we’ can involve positive politeness in certain circumstances, instead of ‘I’ or ‘you’. However, it is not only the choice of pronoun, but also the context in which it is used, that can give enough information to the hearer to know the degree of closeness meant by the speaker. Throughout the interview, it is natural that the words “you” and “I” have been used several times as most questions related to eliciting the Prime Minister’s opinion on world matters, especially on plans that the leaders of state were formulating to counter terrorism post-September the eleventh, 2001. SOME OTHER SPOKEN MODE FEATURES : According to Hughes (1996: 33). The abbreviation of verbs. The interviewee is seen to use the abbreviation of verbs, in the form of “he’s”, “it’s”, “wasn’t”, etc, which is normal in speech patterns, denoting a comfortable approach, and absence of complete formality. The ability for phrases particularly noun phrases to stand as complete sentences. Example is “….the whole of the network”. (p.6 of transcripts). Tendency for prefabricated fillers such as “you know”. This feature is seen several times during the interview, for example: “You know, so the relationship was developing” (p.1 of transcripts). Use of terms that depend on the context of production for their understanding. Example: (p.2 of transcripts) “ And it is one of those events obviously where you will never forget where you were and what you were doing at the time”, referring to the 11th September attacks on the world trade center. Tendency to hedge ideas and show stance. Example: (p.2 of transcripts) when Tony Blair replies to King’s question about whether he was to meet President Bush the next day. Starting a sentence with “and” for continuity. This feature is also seen several times during the interview, for example (p.7 of transcripts): “ And never forget one thing: Incidentally there were 4.5 million refugees on the move in Afghanistan before the 11th of September.” CONCLUSION: In this speech event analysis of the interview with Prime Minister Tony Blair, the various aspects have been covered, including theoretical analysis, some interactive aspects of grammar and linguistics in verbal communication. 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Journal: Language Learning, Vol 49, Supplement 1, pp.1-57., Blackwell Publishing. Milroy, James; Milroy, Leslie. Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English. U.K., Routledge. Shockey, Linda. (2003). Sound Patterns of Spoken English. Blackwell Publshing. Tan, Margareta; Herbst, Thomas. (1996). Conducting an Interview: using the analysis of a speech event to elicit certain varieties of speech. Proceedings of the Edinburgh Linguistics Department Conference. Pp.182-190. Web site: http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~pgc/archive/1996/tan.ps. Read More