Konuşma Organi̇zasyonunda Di̇lbi̇lgi̇sel Özelli̇kler

Yıl: 7, Sayı: 27, Aralık 2020, s. 41-50 Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Ozan Deniz YALÇINKAYA Dicle Üniversitesi, Filoloji, [email protected] GRAMMATICAL FEATURES FOR ORGANIZING CONVERSATION: REAL TIME CONVERSATION Abstract As a social entity, language has an important place in direct communication with the verbal data it contains. In the interactive and digital world we are in, formal standards and grammar rules have been adapted to English spoken in social life. Although there are various studies on the distinctive grammatical features of speech such as speech acts, information flow, topic, and integrity, even today, two aspects of language, grammar and conversation, are not addressed together and even though studies related to spoken English grammar is felt to be overdue, grammatical tradition has still felt its superiority against spoken language and thus spoken language has largely been overlooked. Hence, this study once more aims to take into consideration of grammatical features that are generally common in speech and are different from the written language and accepted as standard English. For example, conversation takes place in real time, takes place in a shared context and therefore prevents elaboration of meaning. Moreover, the conversation is interactive and the participants talk about their own feelings and attitudes using a series of statements. Dysfluencies that disrupt the flow of speech, such as pauses, hesitations, repetitions, incomplete sentences, false starts, gaps, non-causal questions, and vocals, are directly related to the real time of speech. The study employing a pragmatic and corpus-based approach with both structural and usage perspectives will be limited to the elements mentioned above. Keywords: Dysfluencies, grammar, discourse, conversation, expressions Grammatıcal Features For Organızıng Conversatıon KONUŞMA ORGANİZASYONUNDA DİLBİLGİSEL ÖZELLİKLER: GERÇEK ZAMANLI KONUŞMA Özet Sosyal bir varlık olan dil, içerdiği sözlü verilerle doğrudan iletişimde önemli bir yere sahiptir. İçinde bulunduğumuz interaktif ve dijital dünyada, biçimsel standartlar ve dilbilgisi kuralları sosyal hayatta konuşulan İngilizceye uyarlanmaya çalışılmıştır. Konuşmayla ilgili söz edimi, bilgi akışı, konu, bütünlük gibi konuşmanın ayırt edici gramer özellikleri üzerine çeşitli çalışmalar olmasına rağmen, bugün bile dilin iki yönü, dilbilgisi ve konuşma, birlikte ele alınmamaktadır, dahası gramer geleneği hala konuşulan dile karşı üstünlüğünü hissetmiştir ve bu nedenle konuşma dili büyük ölçüde göz ardı edilmiştir. Nitekim bu çalışma, genel olarak konuşmada yaygın olan, yazı dilinden farklı ve standart İngilizce olarak kabul edilen gramer özelliklerini bir kez daha dikkate almayı amaçlamaktadır. Örneğin, konuşma gerçek zamanlı olarak gerçekleşir, paylaşılan bir bağlamda gerçekleşir ve bu nedenle anlamın detaylandırılmasını önler. Ayrıca konuşma etkileşimlidir ve katılımcılar kendi duygu ve tutumları hakkında bir dizi ifade kullanarak konuşur. Duraklamalar, tereddütler, tekrarlar, eksik cümleler, yanlış başlangıçlar, boşluklar, nedensel olmayan sorular ve vokaller gibi konuşma akışını bozan istemsizlikler, doğrudan konuşmanın gerçek zamanıyla ilgilidir. Hem yapısal hem de kullanım perspektifleriyle pragmatik ve korpus tabanlı yaklaşımdan faydalanılan çalışma yukarıda sıralanan unsurlarla sınırlı olacaktır. Anahtar Kelimeler: İstemsizlik, dilbilgisi, söylem, konuşma, ifadeler “The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein INTRODUCTION Features of spoken English For an effective communication, it is essential that language be used effectively and efficiently in the conversations. Throughout this process, people can share their ideas, change and exchange information, and express their emotions. Celce-Murcia et al. (1995:9) argue that the ability to use language effectively to communicate is called communicative competence. Thus, achieving communicative competence is one of the objectives of English language teaching. It is quite common to witness many ungrammatical sentences such as deviations, uttering wrong words, and expressions in daily conversations. In EFL classes, however, education is commonly based grammatical competence1. However, the concept of communicative competence 1Grammatical competence refers to the knowledge we have of a language that accounts for our ability to produce sentences in a language. It refers to knowledge of the building blocks of sentences (e.g., parts of speech, tenses, Türk & İslam Dünyası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi /The Journal of Turk & Islam World Social Studies Yıl: 7, Sayı: 27, Aralık 2020, s. 41-50 42 Grammatıcal Features For Organızıng Conversatıon is different from the grammatical competence. All these deviations are disfluencies. The most complaint by the students is 'I have no difficulty in understanding my teacher's English, but when I speak to 'real people outside' I face a real challenge to understand them'. Some students get the impression that they are comfortable with classroom-based speaking practice in EFL classrooms as they are unable to prepare them for the real world, emphasizing usually listening and speaking concerns. It is partly because of the lack of real interaction forms in the classroom. In the Cambridge dictionary conversation is defined as “(a) talk between two or more people in which thoughts, feelings,and ideas are expressed, questions are asked and answered, or news and information is exchanged.” According to Leech (2000:3) “Conversational grammar is seen to be just a rather special implementation of the common grammar of English: a discovery which does not necessarily in any way diminish the interest of studying the grammar (i.e. the grammatical use) of spoken language. Although it is not possible to find a generally accepted definition of conversation, as being accepted as the most basic human communication has resulted in attention from various fields such as sociology, philosophy, and anthropology. Pragmatics also played a pivotal role in comprehending conversation. Over the last two decades, speech has become a focal point for many grammarians, who aim to describe the specific features of this dynamic medium. Spontaneous or conversational communication has also received much attention from a pedagogical perspective. When comparing speech and writing, as discussed in Carter and McCarthy “writing is valued while speech is given little value among linguists and applied linguists (including teachers) and in the perception of the public.” (Carter and McCarthy, 1995: 142). Therefore, speakers are required to be equipped with various definite grammatical components of spoken English to accomplish the interpersonal and interactive functions of spoken language in authentic atmospheres. On the other hand, as some scholars highlight that many grammatical aspects of everyday, unplanned conversation are evaluated incorrect in terms of standards of written English (Carter and McCarthy, 1995; McCarthy and Carter, 1995); however, these aspects of natural conversation should not be considered incorrect deviations from standard English (Cullen and Kuo, 2007). Linguistic variation in spoken registers is different from written registers in the use of a wide range of lexical and grammatical features. Grammarians such as Quirk et al. (1985), Halliday (1994), Biber et al. (1999) and Carter and McCarthy (2006) argue from the point of English language, a dichotomy between the spoken and written mediums should be acknowledged, but add that both should be studied in their own right. Thus, as Mumford (2009) maintains that “the nature and characteristics of conversational English itself lead to Not learning features of spoken grammar can impede students’ ability to speak English fluently and appropriately.” phrases, clauses, sentence patterns) and how sentences are formed (Rihards, 2006:3) Türk & İslam Dünyası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi /The Journal of Turk & Islam World Social Studies Yıl: 7, Sayı: 27, Aralık 2020, s. 41-50 43 Grammatıcal Features For Organızıng Conversatıon Having said that, thanks to corpus evidence, that is., Longman grammar of spoken and written English (Biber et al., 1999) and the Cambridge Grammar of English (Carter & McCarthy, 2006) have portrayed everyday talk in distinctive detail, leading to reconsider how frequent nonstandard forms actually are in everyday language use and eliminating them as bad grammar and making something of a breakthrough in the comparison of spoken and written grammar. Thus high frequency of these patterns paves the way for reexamining of everyday language as defective language. On the other hand, unlike Carter and McCarthy (1995), Brazil (1995) takes a different approach to grammar from the perspective which has become familiar through conventional focus on the written language. He proposes for a linear model moving dynamically through time, and puts aside the more traditional architectural model in terms of hierarchies of units. Buttery and McCarthy (2012) have demonstrated the existence of a set of vocabulary with a high frequency of occurrence in spoken interaction, which distinguishes it from writing. Grammatical elements of conversation are functional not arbitrary, and connected with the idiosyncratic discourse conditions of conversation. As McCarthy and Carter (1995: 211) argues that “speakers regularly make grammatical choices which reflect the interactive and interpersonal nature of the communication.” As Quaglio and Biber (2006) put it there are some major grammatical features that conversation. For example, it takes place in real time, it takes place in a shared context and therefore avoids elaboration or specification of meaning, and it is interactive, and conversational participants talk about their own feelings and attitudes; it also employs a vernacular range of expressions. Conversation has some grammatical features that especially characterize conversational language. In what follows, characteristics of conversational grammar and distinctive grammatical elements connected with those components are underlined. As grammatical aspects have functional association with these situational features, these grammatical features are ubiquitous in communication. 1. Conversation takes place in real time; Conversation is a social act, it involves more than one participant, it takes place in real time, in the case of everyday informal talk, and it is unpredictable (Jones, 2018: 9). Cornbleet and Carter (2001:26) argue that most everyday conversation is spontaneous, unplanned and unrehearsed. As Clancy and McCarthy, 2015) argue “Conversation is quintessentially coconstructed. Furthermore, McCarthy (2010) puts it that conversation also meets the demands of creating and maintaining ‘flow’, and more specifically, ‘confluence’, that is to say, a perception of a jointly produced fluency over and above that achieved by any individual speaker. According to Leech (1983:67) the principle that helps speakers adapt to the scarcity of planning and processing time (Real-Time Processing) is the Economy Principle and described as follows: The Economy Principle (“Be quick and easy”) can be regarded as a valuable precept not only for h [the hearer] but also s [the speaker]. If one can shorten the text while keeping Türk & İslam Dünyası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi /The Journal of Turk & Islam World Social Studies Yıl: 7, Sayı: 27, Aralık 2020, s. 41-50 44 Grammatıcal Features For Organızıng Conversatıon the message unimpaired, this reduces the amount of time and effort involved both in encoding and in decoding. The processes include forms of reduction both on the phonological and the syntactic level. Phonologically reduced forms include verbal and negative contractions, conversational contractions such as gonna and gotta, and forms of situational ellipsis (cf. Quirk et al., 1985:896). As Quaglio and Biber (2006:702) put it “Perhaps the most obvious situational characteristic of conversation is the pressure resulting from the quick production of language.” Indeed, considering the conversation in view of time, there will be time related issues in order to organize and bring together the assertions if it is looked from the point of speakers. Thus speakers involved in this conversation will depend on reduced structures and features as well with vague reference rather than fuller grammatical pattern so as to continue the dialogue. Unlike written registers, the need for accuracy in conversation is much less significant than written forms. In order to carry out a successful communication, apart from contractions, devices such as that omission, ellipsis, and non-clausal utterances are administered. Furthermore, applying these devices are simple, which are pronouns and vague pronouns for instance, stuff, thing; as hedges, kind of, sort of, like; and, coordination tags for example, and stuff like that. On important aspect to be taken into consideration is the success of applying these vague references mostly depend on context; otherwise, these devices would be meaningless without context. In Bieber et al. (1999: ch. 14) the aspects which referred to as ‘performance phenomena’ are: dysfluencies, the add-on strategy, and non-clausal units. A discussion of these features is below. 1.1. Dysfluencies It is true that often spontaneous spoken language does seem to be grammatically chaotic mainly because of the well-known phenomena of dysfluency that afflict a speaker trying to cope with the pressures of on-line processing. (Leech, 2000:2) These include pauses, restarts, hesitators, repeats, incomplete sentences, and false starts, and so on, which are found in almost any conversation. Aspects such as silent and filled pauses are realized through er, erm, uh and uhm often referred to as “hesitators.” The items indicated in the following example uh and uhm which are usually spelled er and erm, are strongly associated with production pressure in spontaneous conversation and usually display hesitation. Biber et al. (1999: 1092). <KEITH:> Oh, shit, David, I'm so sorry. What can I do? <DAVID:> Uh, nothing. Thanks. But, uh, I have to stay here. <KEITH:> Listen, uh, if you need anything, don't hesitate to call me. <DAVID:> Sure. (SFU_1) Biber et al. (1999: 1092) point out that “filled pauses have been claimed to have various functions, e.g. they buy the speaker time to think about what to say next, to find the right words and in the meantime signal that s/he wants to hold the floor and keep his/her turn.” In addition to filled pauses, repetition represent common features which are associated when speakers are under planning pressure. For example I- You - you repetition. Türk & İslam Dünyası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi /The Journal of Turk & Islam World Social Studies Yıl: 7, Sayı: 27, Aralık 2020, s. 41-50 45 Grammatıcal Features For Organızıng Conversatıon <WEEVIL:> Okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait, look, look. I'm sorry man, uhm, for, you know, taping you to the - the flagpole. I'm sorry. <WALLACE:> All right. (VM_1) Omission is much more common in conversation than e.g. in academic English: In conversation, omission is the norm, and retention is rare (Biber et al. 1999: 680). The subordinator that can generally be deleted when that-clause functions as a direct object, complement, or extraposed subject. These clauses are then called 'zero that-clauses. That-deletion, shortens and simplifies the production process and thus allows for quicker interaction Pauses, which are also called fillers2 are words and utterances like “er,” “well,” “hmm,” and “um” that do not have a specific meaning but rather fill time and allow the speaker to gather his or her thoughts (Willis, 2003). Backchannels3, on the other hand, are words and utterances like “uh-huh,” “oh,” “yeah,” and “I see” that are used to acknowledge what the speaker is saying and encourage him or her to continue (Stenström, 2004). Both fillers and backchannels are common in English conversation because they serve important communicative and interpersonal functions, and it would be both difficult and awkward to have a conversation without them (Willis, 2003). Reduced forms are verb contractions (e.g. I'm), negative contractions (e.g. don't), other morphologically reduced forms (e.g. gonna). They are often cited as typical features of speech, saving the speaker time and effort, though there are no absolute differences between speech and writing (e.g. Biber et al., 1999). Verb contractions occur with forms of the primary verbs be and have as well as with the modal verbs will and would. Subject pronoun + verb' contractions: 'm, 're, 's (be), 've, 's (have), 'd (have), 'll, and 'd (would). False starts occur most often when a conversation becomes intense, with many speakers speaking at once, or after a speaker is interrupted. It is also associated with changing your mind, or getting confused, and what you want to express. For example: İklim Ozum and I drove.. at least I think we did .. or was that Pinar?.. no, that was the zoo.. well, anyway, we went to Paris last week. 1.2. The add-on strategy Here, speakers produce long utterances that consist of a sequence of finite clause-like units. Quaglio and Biber (2006: 703). I think probably of the reason why Gloria and I are still so close is because… when I ca= when I divorced my husband and moved out here from New Jersey she was just divorcing her husband and I moved into one half of the duplex and she moved into the other half and for five years we were neighbors and raised our kids together. As in the example above, it is clear that these long utterances are developed without any problem during the conversation, and what is more, it is also easy for listeners to understand these 2 They have also been called 'fillers' Clark, Herbert H. and Jean E. Fox Tree (2002): "Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking". Cognition 84 (1), 73–111. Fillers: words that give you time to think, create a pause, or indicate you’re not finished talking 3Backchannels: words that show you are listening and understand what someone else is saying Türk & İslam Dünyası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi /The Journal of Turk & Islam World Social Studies Yıl: 7, Sayı: 27, Aralık 2020, s. 41-50 46 Grammatıcal Features For Organızıng Conversatıon long structures. As Bieber et al. (1999: 1068) put it “these utterances should be understood as sequences of clause-like chunks, rather than a single structure with multiple levels of embedding.” 1.3. Non-clausal units These are discourse markers, polite formulas, minimal responses, ellipses, non-clausal questions, and vocatives, serving significant discourse organizing functions. As far as discourse markers are concerned, the examples you know, as I was saying, by the way, speaking of, on the other hand, basically, actually, let’s see, you see, and cos and because, I mean, and like are prototypical. They play a significant role in conversation. <Lorelai and Rory walk in.> <LORELAI:> Hi, Taylor. <TAYLOR:> Well, hello there. Lorelai, Rory, what can I get for you? <LORELAI:> Oh, well, gosh, look at all the choices, really hard to pick. I think I'll try a scoop of "Butter Brickle Crunch." Rory? <RORY:> I'll try the "Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate." <TAYLOR:> Coming right up. <LORELAI:> Listen, Taylor, while I have you here, uhm, I received this letter in the mail, and I'm having kind of a blond day, and I wonder if you could explain it to me. <TAYLOR:> Well, it says you have to get approval before you can start construction on the inn. <LORELAI:> That's what I thought it said. Well, I have to tell you, Taylor, I'm a little concerned because we have a construction crew coming Monday, so... <chuckles> yikes. <TAYLOR:> Well, the <sighs> Dragonfly is a historical building, Lorelai. <LORELAI:> Yeah, but the whole town is a historical building, Taylor. I mean… Biber et al. (1999: 1086) define two dominant functions as follows: Discourse markers [...] are inserts which tend to occur at the beginning of a turn or utterance, and to combine two roles: (a) to signal a transition in the evolving progress of the conversation, and (b) to signal an interactive relationship between speaker, hearer, and message. According to Schiffrin (1987: 304), the discourse marker I mean marks modifications of both propositional information and speaker intention." It is used when a speaker wants to correct him-/herself, explain, exemplify, specify, or elaborate something which has just been mentioned. Ellipsis is the omission of elements of a certain structure and is found in both spoken and written English, situational ellipsis, however, omitting items that are apparent, given the immediate situation—is much more common in spoken English. Unlike textual ellipsis, situational ellipsis often results in the omission of subjects and verbs, which is not common in written English (Carter and McCarthy, 1995; McCarthy and Carter, 1995). For example, fixed phrases and routines such as “sounds good” and “absolutely right” McCarthy and Carter (1995). Here, speakers take advantage of “combination of informality and shared context” (Cullen and Kuo, 2007, 368), enabling speakers to reduce the length and complexity of their speech (Leech, Türk & İslam Dünyası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi /The Journal of Turk & Islam World Social Studies Yıl: 7, Sayı: 27, Aralık 2020, s. 41-50 47 Grammatıcal Features For Organızıng Conversatıon 2000). Thus, it helps them cope with the real-time pressures of conversation by speaking in shorter phrases. For example (Cullen and Kuo, 2007: 368): Been anywhere nice? (Have you ever been anywhere nice?) We in business? (Are we in business?) Conversation is typically carried out in face-to-face interaction with others, with whom we share a great deal of contextual background (Biber et al., 1999: 1042). Thus, throughout this process, a large amount of specific social, cultural, and institutional knowledge is shared. Pronoun reference represents only the most common variety of grammatical reduction that typifies conversation, others being use of ellipsis and of substitute pro-forms (e.g. one/ones substituting for a nominal and do it/that substituting for a verb of verb phrase) (Biber et al., 1999:1042). According to Biber et al. (1999:1047), the interactive nature of conversation extends to the use of polite or respectful language in exchanges such as requests, greetings, offers, and apologies. Here certain inserts have a formulaic role in marking polite speech acts, for example, thanks and thank you, please, bye, and sorry, Pardon?, sorry?, Excuse me?, Thank you, You’re welcome, no problem, Good luck, and Congratulation. The use of non-clausal or grammatically fragmentary components in speech is another type of grammatical reduction (Biber et al, 1999:1043).Vocatives n constitute a ‘lone’ non-clausal unit, with or without accompanying insert (Bieber et al., 1999:1101): Darling! Hey Martin. Yes I’m coming in a moment darling. As far as lexical bundles are concerned, these are prefabricated sequences of words used as extended lexical building blocks, facilitating real-time production. They are defined by Biber and et al. (1999:990) as ''recurrent expressions, regardless of their idiomaticity, and regardless of their structural status''. In other words. They usually do not represent a complete structural unit. In conversation, for example, a large number of lexical bundles are constructed from a pronominal subject followed by a verb phrase plus the start of a complete clause, such as 'I don't know why' and 'I thought that was.' Through these lexical bundles, effective and successful communication is realized, creating discourse coherence which assists and supports students. When looking at the ways speakers, repetitions are also considered as a reflection real-time production. They ae also used as interactive purposes, reflecting speaker involvement, and conveying participatory or ratifying listenership (Tannen, 1989). Conclusion This paper once more has outlined grammatical characteristics of conversation from the aspect of real-time conversation, contributing to the development of fluency, concentrating on specific features i.e., disfluencies such as pauses, restarts, hesitators, repeats, incomplete sentences, and false starts, and depict their usefulness in meeting the demands of a successful communication. Incorporating activities concerning the devices discussed throughout the paper into English classes, both teachers and speakers/learners will take advantage in interacting in English fluently and help them acquire both the language and the techniques to accomplish daily conversation Türk & İslam Dünyası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi /The Journal of Turk & Islam World Social Studies Yıl: 7, Sayı: 27, Aralık 2020, s. 41-50 48 Grammatıcal Features For Organızıng Conversatıon successfully. Thanks to these strategies that speakers use to administer and participate in conversations, such authentic materials including these devices can be incorporated into classes. It can be noticed that speaking competences mentioned above are complex skills that require to be improve consciously. Thus, practice is the best key to develop those skills in classroom through activities, enabling interaction among learners. To reach this goal, participation and motivation by means of entertaining, original and interesting materials are important. The key element is to provide learners a chance and encourage them. REFERENCES Brazil, D. (1995). A grammar of speech, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Biber, D. and et al. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow. Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. (1995). “Grammar and the spoken language”, Applied Linguistics 16 (2): 141–158. Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. (1997). Exploring Spoken English. Cambridge University Press, England. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/tr/s%C3%B6zl%C3%BCk/ingilizce/conversation Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. J. (2006). Cambridge grammar of English. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Celce-Murcia, M. et al. (1995). “Communicative competence: a pedagogically motivated model with content specifications”, Linguistics, 6 (2), 5-29. Cornbleet, S. and Carter, R. (2001). 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