Pragmática y discurso en lengua inglesa Year 2021-2022
Prof. Nuria Calco Cortés
Exercises on Conversation Analysis
Read the following conversations and analyse how turn taking is organised, how the
preferred or dispreffered responses are used and how conversation is damaged and
repaired. Also, analyse the texts from a Discourse Analysis point of view, analysing how
coherence and cohesion are achieved in both texts.
Transcripts extracted from: Redston, C and G. Cunningham (2006). Face 2 Face Intermediate.
Cambridge University Press.
Conversation 1
Context: a group of people are discussing the organisation of a music festival on somebody’s
farmland.
Sarah Clark: ….telling us a bit more about the festival.
Terry Gibson: Please, call me Terry. Well, we’re planning to put on a 3 day festival at Mr
Davidson’s farm on the last weekend in August. We are hoping to have a capacity of 30,000
people and there will be_
Felicity Richards: Sorry, do you mind if I interrupt?
TG: Sure, go ahead
FR: Did you say 30,000 people?
TG: Yes, that’s right.
FR: Well, how do you expect our little village to cope with that many people? It seems to me
that you have not thought about local residents at all.
TG: That’s not true, actually, Felicity.
FR: Mrs Richards.
TG: Sorry, Mrs Richards. We’ve been running festivals for over 10 years and we’ve always had
a very good relationship with local residents. This festival will bring thousands of people to the
area, which will help local businesses and provide jobs for local people.
FR: Well, I’m not sure about that. The people who go to these festivals aren’t the kind of
people we want in our village. It seems to me that the only thing you care about is_
Paul Davidson: Can I say something here?
FR: If I could just finish making this point. The only thing you people care about is making
money. You do not care about local residents at all.
SC: Paul you had something you wanted to say.
PD: Yes, tahnk you. I just wanted to point out that my farm is over 4 miles from Coleford, so
most of the festival-goers won’t pass through the village at all. You’ll never know it’s
happening.
SC: What’s your opinion, Sergeant?
this is a much more formal conversation but we're seeing how the speakers are jumping into each other since they are discussing a problematic topic and they're
getting angry.
There is one moderator: Sarah Clark that is moderating the turns of the speakers, she is organising the turns.
a polite way of interrumping. Here it's obvious that Terry was planning to continue talking.
On the contrary, we can see how this transitions is made in a good way since this sentence is
finished.
In these following three sentences we have an interruption with a correction.
it means that the sentence is unfinished so there
is no transition.
