Lexis in Spoken Discourse

Lexis in Spoken Discourse
A presentation by:
Haneen Dhafir Hameed
2020-2021
Introduction: Lexis as Discourse Phenomenon
The role of lexical patterns in written texts
The significance of the multiple ties among

words in written texts
No equal amount of attention was devoted to

everyday spoken language.
Lexis and Register
One of the differences between written and
spoken language is the difference in lexicon
(register).
Register refers to the variation in lexical

choices with respect to context.
Lexical choices are made based on Halliday’s

three meta functions; field, mode and tenor.
Written and spoken discourses differ in terms
of:
 Lexicon
 Word frequency = frequency spectrum
 The order of lexical items in the frequency lists
Word frequency in BNC:

 % 65 are in both lists.
 % 35 are unique.
Word Frequency in BNC
Q/ What is the nature of these differences
between spoken and written lexicons in BNC?
 The top 50 most frequent words in a spoken
corpus differed from the top 50 in a written
corpus of the same size.
 Written data: nouns indicating facial

expressions like grimace, scowl, smirk and
pout appear.
Nouns indicating facial expressions
Spoken data
 Discourse markers; know (you know), think (I

think), right, well and just.
 Pragmatic functions
 Certain morphological clusters as in evaluative

adjectives ending in –y such as yucky, stroppy,
comfy and grumpy.
Evaluative adjectives ending in –y
Lexical items in discourse: chunks
 Lexical chunks are strings of words may have integrated
meanings.
 They are often not syntactically complete units
 Fixed expressions = multi-word units = routine formulae =

lexicalized stems = formulaic sequences = chunks = lexical
bundles
 There are two basic principles that operate in the enactment of

meaning:
1. The open choice principle
2. The idiom principle
Chunks
Chunks have various forms:
 Collocations  heavy rain
 Compounds  fingerprint
 Prepositional phrases  in a few days
 Phrasal verbs  get across
 Simile  as dry as a bone
 Idioms  to kill two birds with one stone
 Proverbs  A stitch in time saves nine. (Hutz,
2018:136)
 The most frequent chunks in CANCODE (5M):
 you know
 you know what I mean
 that sort of thing
 the rest of it
Q/ What is the role of those chunks?

 Speakers’ assumptions
 Creation of adjacency sequences
 Discourse management like (so anyway/ right then)
 Discontinuous chunks (the x thing is …) signalling
stances
Lexical repetition and relexicalisation
There are two cases of repetition:
1. Within the speaker’s turn (Persson 1974)
2. Across turn boundaries
Q/ What is the purpose of the 2nd type?

 to create and maintain cooperative
conversations.
 to support the speaker’s utterance.
 to reinforce positive politeness.
 to mark a conversational (pre-)closure.
 to acknowledge understanding or a problem in
understanding.
Patterns of lexical repetition:

a. Direct repetition, as in:
 Yeah it’s nice isn’t it.
 Yeah. It is nice.
 Nice nice present.
b. Relexicalised form (synonyms), as in:
 “… but he ‘s a very nice fellow now, very nice
chap.”
 I think he’s a brilliant actor.

 Yeah. He is very good.
 He’s a really great actor.
 Yeah.
An example:
 God have you eaten that already?
 Yeah. I’m surprised he didn’t choke.
 I wouldn’t say he wolfed it but he lioned it.
 Catted it.
 He lioned it.
 Yeah.
 Tigered it.
 Or something like that.
Examples:
 Corfu is awful is it?
 Er not really no parts of it are okay.
 Predicting what a speaker is about to say:

 What was it in the little box?
 Oh I dunno.
 Oh those little erm+
 The charms.
 Those little charms.
Overlap rather than an interruption:
 Well quite honestly I said I despair coming

down off the bus I thought well if this is the
future | generation…
 | Future generation. Yeah.
 God help us.
Lexical triggers
Evaluative adjectives = contradiction and challenge
Evaluative claims are likely to trigger speaker

change.
 A: I don’t always agree the customer’s always right
I don’t think that’s true.
 B: But you’ve got to create an environment such as

service level agreements, er monitoring meetings
things like that.
 A: Right let’s get on to the positive one then,
your holiday.
 B: Yes it was brilliant.
 A: Good.
 B: We went on the fourth of June ….
Vague language items
 Such as (and) things like that, or whatever, and
so on, (and) that sort/kind of thing.
A: Jim yeah. Yeah. And we also monitor er er

capture er letters of praise and thank-yous and
things like that.
B: Bouquets.
A: Er yeah. Em and of course we also have er the
er Community Health Council drop in on us from
time to time.
Lexis and turn-openings
Turn initiators/ turn-initial items:
 Responsive items such as (yeah, yes, no, oh)
 Linking words such as (and, but and so)
 Backchannel items such as (mm)
 Discourse-organizing words such as (well and
right).
 Chunks based around (the) such as (the thing is,
the trouble is, the only thing is)
 The have a textual function (Archer, Aijmer and
Wichman, 2012: 78).
Response tokens as discourse items
Response
tokens
backchannels lexical items

such as mm such as right
and uhum and good
Adjectives
/ adverbs
Examples:
A: Okay. Erm er you just want me to send these
on presumably.
B: Yeah. If you wouldn’t mind.
A: That’s fine
B: Okay. Thanks.
A: Okay then.
B: Bye.
A: Bye.
Fine, certainly, right pragmatic functions.
Non-minimal response tokens
A:Two bedroomed, no? Round Arford, Johnston and
Milford
B: Yeah we ‘ve got quite a few actually.
A: Have you?
B: Mm
A: Good good good good good. Thank you.
 “They are mainly adjectives or adverbs that indicate

interest in or comprehension of the interlocutor’s
utterance and thus signal good listenership.” (Quaglio,
2009: 104)
:Researchers developed the following
 Backchannels  mm, good, right, I see.
 Responsive actions  body language,

vocalisations, single words, chuncks, longer
utterances.
Lexical chaining within and across speaker
boundaries
Lexical chains are made up of (near-) synonyms and
relexicalised forms as in:
A: Ah well I went on holiday as you know.

B: Mhm.
A: That was fantastic that was. Oh dear it was brilliant. I
didn’t wanna come back at all. Oh it was nice. Mm.
Beautiful sunshine beautiful beaches. Oh everything was
nice.
B: Mm.
A: It was really nice.
 Relexicalisations  within the same turn
 Exact repetitions  across turns
A: Probably needs adjusting but I’ll check that.

B: Oh right. That’s lovely.
A: Okay.
B: Yeah, that’s nice.
A: They’re nice aren’t they.
B: Yeah they are nice.
A: Very very nice. Thank you.
References
 Archer, Dawn, Aijmer, Karin and Wichman, Anne. (2012).
Pragmatics: An Advanced Resource book for Students.
Oxon: Routledge.
 Crystal, David. (2008). A Dictionary of Linguistics and

Phonetics. 6th ed. Malden: Blackwell.
 Hutz, Matthias. (2018). ‘Focus on Form—The Lexico-

Grammar Approach’, in Surkamp, Carola and Viebrock,
Britta (eds.) Teaching English as a Foreign Language:
An Introduction. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, pp. 133-158.
 Mahlberg, Michaela. (2014). ‘Corpus linguistics and
discourse analysis’, in Bublitz, Wolfram, Jucker, Andreas
H. and Schneider, Klaus P. (eds) Pragmatics of Discourse.
Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 215-238.
 Quaglio, Paulo. (2009). Television Dialogue.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
 BNC website: https://www.english-corpora.org/bnc/

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Lexis in Spoken Discourse

The role of lexical patterns in written texts

The significance of the multiple ties among

No equal amount of attention was devoted to

Register refers to the variation in lexical

Lexical choices are made based on Halliday’s

Word frequency in BNC:

 Written data: nouns indicating facial

 Discourse markers; know (you know), think (I

 Certain morphological clusters as in evaluative

 Fixed expressions = multi-word units = routine formulae =

 There are two basic principles that operate in the enactment of

Q/ What is the role of those chunks?

Q/ What is the purpose of the 2nd type?

Patterns of lexical repetition:

 I think he’s a brilliant actor.

 Predicting what a speaker is about to say:

 Well quite honestly I said I despair coming

Evaluative claims are likely to trigger speaker

 B: But you’ve got to create an environment such as

A: Jim yeah. Yeah. And we also monitor er er

backchannels lexical items

 “They are mainly adjectives or adverbs that indicate

 Backchannels  mm, good, right, I see.

 Responsive actions  body language,

A: Ah well I went on holiday as you know.

A: Probably needs adjusting but I’ll check that.

 Crystal, David. (2008). A Dictionary of Linguistics and

 Hutz, Matthias. (2018). ‘Focus on Form—The Lexico-

 Quaglio, Paulo. (2009). Television Dialogue.

 BNC website: https://www.english-corpora.org/bnc/

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