THE PRAGMATICS OF CONVERSATION

Analysing text using concepts

- Conversation analysis
- Interactional sociolinguistics

Text

Scrabble

This extract is taken from British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-
GB). A mother and daughter are not the mother’s house, eating, chatting, and playing
Scrabble (a game in which players score points by putting rows of separate letters on squares
of a board to form words’

1 Mother I don’t know what you’re doing on that.

2 Daughter Oh no.

3 Mother No.

4 Daughter No fear I should say =

5 Mother = Well, do it somewhere else. I mean , look there’s plenty of other

6 places to put it. How about here? // I like it like that.

7 Daughter // Uhm it’s OK. Oh God you don’t –

8 first of all you don’t score so much, and secondly you only get rid of

9 two letters // and you make your chances of picking up anything better

10 Mother // Uhm

11 Daughter that much more reduced by not // you know, getting rid of as many as

12 Mother // Uhm

13 Daughter you can. Two four six-seven twenty-four is eleven. I mean you could

14 do so much better that that if // you’d only.

15 Mother // Yeah. I’m busy eating as a matter of fact

16 Daughter Oh

17 Mother I didn’t really like that sandwich

18 Daughter (laughs) I wouldn’t have noticed (laughs). You’ve // packed away most

19 Mother // No but I

20 Daughter of it (laughs) all the same.

21 Mother kept hoping it would get better and it got worse. (laughs) salty. Don’t

22 like salty things.

23 Daughter No.

24 Mother Have some banana bread.

25 Daughter Look. I’m not that much of a banana bread eater // and I wish you’d

26 Mother // Oh I forgot //

27 Daughter Stop bothering.

28 Mother Never mention it again.

29 Daughter Yes, I mean, you know, I know where these things are. If I’m that

30 interested I’ll ask if I may have a piece and then you can tell me you

31 haven’t made any for months or don’t make it any more (laughs) I’ve

32 got a whole load of my own banana bread in the fridge. I don’t know.

33 Mother Do we have ‘sana’ SANA?

34 Daughter No, We have ‘sauna’ SAUNA. Right we have (unclear). A funny game.

35 That’s a funny game. ‘Go’ and ‘ox’. And the ‘ox’ is uh sixteen.

36 seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty.

37 Mother Mm. Mm.

38 Daughter You’re now eighty behind. If you’d listened to me (laughs) you’d only
39 be seventy behind. Anyway what else did linda have to say for herself

40 Mother Oh a lot. Never left off. When she’s // finished with the kids, she

41 Daughter // Oh.

42 Mother goes back to felicity and all her achievements. Actually you probably

43 wouldn’t have enjoyed it here. (laughs)

44 Daughter What do you mean about felicity and achievements, is it?

45 Oh no // I have been inured to that // for years.

46 Mother // How wonderful she is, you know // how she talks.

Explanations

The first comment to make about this excerpt is to emphasise that speakers are mother
and daughter: they know each other very well and they are alone together in an informal
environment. The 'interpersonal relations' and the situational context have a significant
influence on how the conversation flows. They share background know-ledge about the
daughter's lack of interest in banana bread (`Oh I forgot. Never mention it again') and about
the mother's friend Linda and her children (`do you mean about Felicity and her
achievements?'). They know each other well enough to criticise how they play Scrabble (lines
7-14), to tease about how they eat (lines 18-20), and to pretend to take offence (lines 26-28).
The criticisms and teasing are interspersed with laughter and they are not dwelt on.

CA says that this piece of talk shows that they know each other well, but not that their
knowing each other well makes them talk like this. Indeed, in a more formal context and
talking about less personal topics, the signs of their knowing each other well might not be so
obvious. Whereas pragmatics, discourse analysis, and interactional sociolinguistics say that
all background context influences what interactants say, CA says that only some contexts are
relevant in the understanding of the talk. If we come to this real-life conversation and try to
make it fit the a priori exchange structure, we find that the conversation is far too 'chaotic',
especially as there is not one person with the role or status to initiate (as in teacher, doctor,
quiz mas-ter) and the other to respond, and nor does the situational context require it. The
only follow-up that stands out is the mother's responses — `1.11un' (lines 10 and 12), and
`Mm. Mm' (line 37) — and they are more backchannelling and agreeing rather than
evaluating what her daughter is saying.

If we come to this real-life conversation and try to make it fit the a priori exchange
structure, we find that the conversation is far too 'chaotic', especially as there is not one
person with the role or status to initiate (as in teacher, doctor, quiz master) and the other to
respond, and nor does the situational context require it. The only follow-up that stands out is
the mother's responses — `Uhm) (lines 10 and 12), and 'Mm. Mm' (line 37) — and they are
more backchannelling and agreeing rather than evaluating what her daughter is saying.

The 'chaotic' nature of the conversation can be seen if we look at it using

conversation analysis, which is designed to look at how real data unfolds and utterances
affect each other. We cannot talk of turn-taking in the sense of respecting transition
relevance places. Only in the middle of the excerpt, lines 28-39, do the speakers wait till the
other has finished talking before they answer or contribute to the conversation. This is
because the daughter is ranting about not wanting banana bread and telling her mother how
far behind she is.

About half of the turns contain overlaps and interruptions (indicated withal! in the
text), and this is quite a high proportion, even for a casual conversation between familiars:

o In lines 6-7, the daughter takes the turn from her mother, with `Uhm it's OK. Oh God
you don't — First of all you don't score so much ...' and she holds the floor arguing
with her 'lesson' on Scrabble tactics, until line 14.
o In line 14, the mother interrupts and takes the turn back, with her 'Yeah. I'm busy
eating as a matter of fact', and thus does not allow her daughter to extend her 'lesson'
any further. Although the daughter overlaps and seems to take the floor in line 18, the
mother takes it back with another interruption in lines 19-21: 'No but I kept hoping it
would get better ...'
o In lines 40-45, the daughter interrupts what her mother is saying about Linda and her
talking about her children and Felicity, because she cannot and does not want to wait
to say that she knows all about it: 'I have been inured to that for years.'

An analysis of the adjacency pairs shows that there is not a neat pairing of utterances or
turns. The exception could be in lines 18 and 20 in which the daughter 'accuses', with 'You've
packed away most of it all the same' and then the mother 'defends' in lines 19 and 21, giving
the preferred response: 'No but I kept hoping it would get better ...' More frequent is the
dispreferred response:

o in line 13, the daughter 'advises', with '1 mean you could do so much better than
that if only you'd but the mother neither `accepts nor 'rejects' the advice; she
justifies her poor playing in line 15: 'Yeah. I'm busy eating as a matter of fact.'
o Again, in line 24, the mother 'offers' her daughter some banana bread, but instead
of an 'accept', she is faced with a 'reject' ('Look. I'm not that much of a banana
bread eater.), and the reject goes on for several lines.

This is not to say that there is a fight going on, to hold the floor. No offence is taken at the
interruptions or the dispreferred responses, as it is an amicable exchange. There may,
however, be the slightest of power struggles, in the sense that the daughter seems to need to
show independence: she knows about Scrabble and she does not have to wait to be asked if
she wants to eat. Likewise, the mother ignores the show of independence: her `I'm busy
eating as a matter of face shows that she is unimpressed, as does her 'Do we have "sane
SANA'?
Analysis of the sequences of the conversation shows that there are no 'opening' or
'closing' sequence, as this excerpt is part of a longer conversation. There are no pre-
sequences, which is possibly a reflection of close relationship and the triviality of the task
that they are engaged in: neither needs to prepare the other for a suggestion or invitation. It
could be said that there are insertion sequences, however:
o In lines 15-32 the sandwich and the banana bread topics come as an insertion
sequence within the main topic of playing Scrabble.
o In Line 39 onwards about Linda and her family come as another.
Yet, it could also be said that the Scrabble commentaries are the insertions. It depends
whether, in their mind, the chat is the background to the Scrabble, or the Scrabble is the
background to the chat. The analyst cannot tell.
Returning to the relevance of the interpersonal relations and the situational context,
we can analyse the conversation from the interactional sociolinguistics point of view and
notice that the contextualisation cues point with imprecise reference to the knowledge that
they share. The daughter's 'I know where these things are' refers presumably to other foods
that the mother tends to offer and to the cupboards or shelves in the refrigerator where they
are kept. Similarly, the mother's 'Actually you prob-ably wouldn't have enjoyed it here (lines
42-42) uses exophoric reference with a personal pronoun 'it' and a demonstrative adverb
'here', which only have meaning for them because they know the referring items because of
their intertextual knowledge. The mother's `you know how she talks' (line 46) is another
example of the way that they refer to their shared knowledge in a way that would exclude an
outsider. This is interactional talk claiming common ground with vague reference, whether
there is a mini power struggle or not, is marker of their friendship.
COOPERATION AND RELEVANCE

Analysing text using concepts

o Observing maxims
o Flouting/violating
o Relevance theory

Text

Visiting Louise

1 Lisa Oh your mum and dad er popped round last night to see Louise. 
2 Guess what time they went round? 
3 Melvin About nine - ten o'clock? 
4Lisa Quarter past eight. She was in bed. She normally goes to bed about 
5 half past seven. They said that's the earliest they could get there. 
6 I said that's a load of rubbish I said, cos they have fish and chips 
7 on a Friday night. 
8 Melvin Yeah. 
9 Lisa So she didn't have to cook. 
10 Melvin Ah they would have had to wash up the plates and the knives and 
11 forks. But she's just one of those women who don't like leaving 
12 stuff around, you know what I mean? Once they've had something, 
13 they've got to do it before they go, can you believe? She's a right 
14 Pain in the arse sometimes, me mum. That's why they don't go 
15 anywhere, you see. Yeah, that's why theY don’t, come out and 
16 visit his brother very often. So why did they want to see Louise? 
17 Lisa It was her birthday, 
18 Melvin Oh yeah. They should have gone as soon as they got 00 01 wok. 
19 Lisa Yeah. And they could have got fish and chips on the way home, 
20 couldn't they? 
21 Melvin Yeah. 
Explanations
Visiting Louise 
Because Melvin and Louise seem to share such a lot of cultural background know-ledge and
interpersonal knowledge, we can assume that they know each other and each other's worlds
fairly well, and because of their shared knowledge, they can flout the maxims freely, in the
certainty that they will each be able to infer the other's implied meaning.
o When Lisa says that Melvin's mother and father arrived at Louise's house or flat at
quarter past eight, she adds, 'She was in bed. She normally goes to bed about half past
seven. They said that's the earliest they could get there' (lines 4-5), which implies that
it was not actually 'the earliest they could get there', and she feels that this was
inconsiderate of them as they knew that she had to go to bed early and they wittingly
disturbed her sleep. All of this information is not mentioned and yet it can be inferred
by Melvin: the maxim of quantity is flouted.
o The maxim of relation may be flouted in the utterances 'They said that's the earliest
they could get there. I said that's a load of rubbish I said, cos they have fish and chips
on a Friday night' (lines 6-7), since the fact that they have fish and chips does not
seem immediately relevant to their getting there early, yet Melvin infers it. Flouting
too the maxim of quantity, Lisa omits the reference to the fact that they would have
bought fish and chips in a chip shop, which would have meant that they did not have
to spend time preparing, cooking or washing up, which in turn implies that they could
have arrived before half past seven. Melvin corrects her, even though she said nothing
about washing up: 'Ah they would have had to wash up the plates and the knives and
forks. But she's just one of those women who don't like leaving stuff around, you
know what I mean?' (lines 10-12).
o Melvin flouts the maxim of quantity when he says minimally, 'They should have gone
as soon as they got out of work' (line 18). Lisa appears to infer that he means that they
could have got there before 7.30, made a special effort for the special occasion and
broken with their routine; her answer 'they could have got fish and chips on the way
home' (line 19) shows that she is following on his idea.
o There is one example of the flouting of the maxim of quality: 'She's a right pain in the
arse sometimes, me mum. That's why they don't go anywhere' (lines 13-15). This
starts with a metaphor that is so well established that it has become a fixed expression
and is no longer anything to do with pains or arses. The second part is a hyperbole; it
 is an exaggeration which his very next utterance would seem to contradict if we did
not know that he was flouting the maxim of quality: 'that's why they don't come out
and visit his brother very often' (lines 15-16).

A violation of the cooperative maxims is much harder to detect. It could be that Louise does
not in reality go to bed at 7.30 normally, but that she goes at 9.30, and that Lisa is therefore
lying, violating the maxim of quality. Note that Melvin asks if they went at nine or ten
o'clock. It could be that the mother is a diabetic and needs to eat at fixed times, and that
Melvin knows this but is not saying it, in which case he is violating the maxim of quantity.
One would have to know the speakers and their context very well to know if they were trying
to deceive each other and intentionally generate a misleading implicature.
There are no obvious examples of a speaker infringing a maxim because of imper-fect
linguistic performance. Nor is there an instance of either speakers opting out of a maxim:
neither of them refuse to give information, for ethical reasons, and apologise for it, for
example. On the other hand, it could also be said that cooperative maxims are not flouted,
violated, infringed or opted out of. For example, Lisa's,

She was in bed. She normally goes to bed about half past seven. They said that's the
earliest they could get there. I said that's a load of rubbish I said, cos they have fish and chips
on a Friday night. 
(lines 4-7)

shows that she is in fact observing the maxim of quantity and giving Melvin just the amount
of information that he needs, just as she is at the end of the excerpt. Sperber and Wilson
would say that Lisa's utterances are held together by relevance, and indeed Melvin does not
question the connection. Relevance theory holds true for this little passage: Lisa and Melvin
communicate successfully, interpreting the connections between utterances as meaningful,
making inferences drawing on their own background knowledge of Louise, the parents,
birthdays, fish and chips, and so on and selecting the relevant features of context. Each new
fact mentioned is relevant to something already known, and the interactants appear to recover
the facts effortlessly, understanding each other by drawing on accessible information
belonging to the context. This stops what they say being ambiguous and helps them fill in any
incomplete parts of the utterance and infer the meaning.
THE PRINCIPLE OF POLITENESS
Analysing text using context
o Negative and positive politeness
o Maxim of politeness

Text
Imperialism
This excerpt features a lecture on European imperialism delivered by Dr Iain Smith.
1 Many of you here today are not from Africa but you are, many of you, 
2 from parts of the world that have been affected by one of the great global 
3 forces at work in world history — what we loosely call imperialism. And 
4 that is why I thought 'chat I should try to talk to you about today is this 
5 phenomenon of imperialism, not just in terms of the nineteenth and 
6 twentieth centuries, and as you will see, not just in terms of the impact 
7 of Europe on the non-European world. 
8 Because what we are grappling with in the phenomenon of imperialism is 
9 a phenomenon that in various forms is as old as the formation of state 
10 systems by human beings. So I'm going to, er, at considerable risk er to 
11 myself, try to set this phenomenon in a rnuch wider, er, more global 
12 perspective. I hope that might be of interest to many of you who have 
13 either been subjected to what you consider imperialism, or indeed have 
14 been part of states and societies that have themselves been imperialistic 
15 or are still being so. /.../ 
16 I think we have to begin by facing up to the fact that today we live in an 
17 age of anti-imperialism. All over the world there is a reaction against the 
18 things which we associate with the phenomenon of imperialism: the 
19 domination of the weak countries or societies by the strong; the economic 
20 exploitation of the natural resources of often poorer countries er in the 
21 world, by the rich industrialised parts of the world; the gross, and in many 
22 parts of the world, the widening gap in terms of political, military and 
23 economic power and standards of the living between the rich and the poor 
24 countries; the belief, in one society, of the absolute superiority of its 
25 culture, its values and its beliefs and the attempt to impose these upon the 
26 people of other cultures and often of different races. 
27 Today in Europe and America, in the countries of the ex-Soviet Union and 
28 in Asia, as well as in all those areas of what used to be called, the Third 
29 World which were until so recently under European influence or indeed 
30 colonial rule, imperialism is regarded as a bad thing. To call someone an 
31 imperialist is a term of abuse, like calling him a racist or a fascist. 
32 The yen/ word imperialism, I think you'll agree, is loaded with emotional 
33 and ideological overtones. If I say, for instance, that recently I have been 
34 studying and contributing to a new Oxford History of the British Empire, 
35 which I have, that is a clear, concrete and perfectly respectable historical 
36 subject to study. It was indeed the most powerful and extensive empire in 
37 world history. But if I say I'm studying and writing about the history of 
38 British Imperialism, that's already a somewhat different thing. The kind of 
39 books that are written about it are different too.

Explanations
Imperialism 
At first sight, this text might seem a strange one to use for the analysis of politeness. It is not
a dialogue; it is not interactional; nobody is trying to order or suggest or invite; there is
nothing said off record and nothing bald on record. Yet there is something friendly about the
tone that the lecturer, Dr Smith, sets. 
On close analysis, there are elements of what we have been looking at, through-out
the excerpt. Let us start by noticing that there are examples of positive politeness strategies. 
He establishes that his audience may have common ground with the topic of his
lecture:
o by referring directly to the students, showing how what he has to say is going to be
relevant to them (lines 1-3): 'Many of you here today are not from Africa but you are,
many of you, from parts of the world that have been affected by one of the great
global forces at work in world history — what we loosely call imperialism.'
o by involving the students by using the pronoun 'you' three times (lines 1, 2 and 3), and
emphasising the wide appeal of his lecture by saying 'many of you' twice. In
paragraph two, he again addresses them with 'many of you' (line 12). 
 o maintaining his friendly tone of positive politeness throughout this excerpt by the use
of the inclusive pronoun 'we': 'Because what we are grappling with . (line 8) and 'I
think we have to begin by facing up to the fact that . . .' (line 16).
o using 'here today' (line 1) to bring out the closeness and solidarity by drawing their
attention to the fact that they have common ground together in time and space.

He then appears to attend to the hearers' interests, wants and needs:

o by suggesting that it was because of the international consciousness and awareness of
the students themselves that he chose the topic — 'And that is why I thought what I
should try to talk to you about today is . . .' (lines 3-4). Note the repetition of 'today'.
o by using expressions that capture their attention, as in: 'I hope that might be of interest
to many of you . . .' (line 12).
He exploits the politeness maxims:
o of agreement, by trying to win the students over to his point of view, and even
assuming that they already have his point of view: 'as you will see' (line 6) and 'I think
you'll agree' (line 32).
o of modesty, by suggesting tentatively that he is doing his best to serve the students in
a very unassuming way: 'I thought what I should try to talk to you about today is . . .'
(line 4) and 'I hope that might be of interest to many of you . . .' (line 12), and he even
plays down the fact that he is writing an important book, adding the information in
something that amounts to an 'aside', an afterthought: 'If I say, for instance, that
recently I have been studying and contributing to a new Oxford History of the British
Empire, which I have, ...' (lines 33-5).
o of generosity, saying: `So I'm going to, er, at considerable risk er to myself, try to . . .'
(lines 10-11), and maximising the expression of cost to himself, with-out explaining
exactly why it is a risk. It could be that this is in itself a ploy to make what he is
saying interesting and intriguing for his audience
Finally, the lecture contains a liberal sprinkling of negative politeness, in the sense that there
are hesitations phenomena and hedges, minimising the imposition of his information and
views, as it were:
o And that is why I thought what I should try to talk to you about... (lines 3-4) • So I'm
going to, er, at considerable risk er to myself, try to set this phenomenon in a much
wider, er, more global perspective. (lines 10-12)
 o I think we have to begin by facing up to the fact that . . . (line 16)
Of course, as an experienced lecturer, Dr Smith is not using these linguistic phenomena by
chance. They reflect the friendly, relaxed attitude and welcoming tone that he is intentionally
adopting, so as to make his lecture both more enjoyable and easier to understand. However, it
is interesting that such an unlikely piece of data contains so many of the positive and negative
politeness features and adheres to so many of the polite maxims.