Using the techniques and theories that you already know, what interesting conclusions can you draw about the situation, participants and their roles in the conversation (Unofficial Essay - Unmarked)

 In the transcription, there are a large group of females talking about a range of topics, the focus being on one girl’s house. The speakers frequently speak over each other, both interrupting and overlapping in order to get their points heard, suggesting that there are multiple dominant personalities in the group. It could also suggest that the speakers don’t have a very good co-operative relationship and cannot clearly converse without overlapping each other. This doesn’t conform to many theorists that suggest that women speak less and do not contribute as much to conversations, deciding instead to simply use back channelling (e.g. Speaker 2 – line 32, Speaker 9 – line 65) and paralinguistic features. Robin Lakoff (1973), a professor of linguistics, argues that women do not speak as often as men due to a lack of confidence and being less certain of themselves. This isn’t represented in the transcript because the conversation is completely dominated by women. As well as this, Lakoff believed that a sense of humour in women was lacking and that they didn’t joke as much or understand them. Again, this is contrasted in the transcript as Speakers 2, 3 and 4 make jokes which the rest of the group laugh at, suggesting that the transcript doesn’t conform to her theory. 

 

Despite Lakoff’s theory that women don’t speak as often, there was a male (Speaker 10) present in the room who didn’t contribute at all to the conversation except to laugh at jokes made. He defies theorists’ ideas such as Otto Jespersen (1922), who believed that women had a smaller vocabulary than men and that women have a preference for “indirect expressions” which prelude from being as effective as men. We see this opposed simply by Speaker 10 not uttering a word as it subverts the idea that men have a larger vocabulary as they do not tend to speak at all compared to the women in the extract who all has a large vocabulary that allowed them to talk about a range of subjects. Also, in reference to the “indirect expressions”, the speakers in the extract are all very outspoken and say exactly what they think, even venturing to use hard expletives such as “fuck” multiple times during the chat, even in a conversational manner and used as a descriptive adjective. This also subverts Cheris Kramen’s (1974) theory on weak expletives and Robin Lakoff’s theory of how women are more likely to use weaker expletives (e.g. “blimey”, “golly”, or “good lord”) rather than ones seen in the extract. This could present the speakers as bold, uncaring of their brash attitudes but could also be perceived as quite ‘chavvy’ and uncontrolled, reflecting the stereotypes of where they’re from, Essex. 

 

The transcription suggests that all of the main speakers (these being Speakers 1, 3 and 4) all know more about the subject than the others and are fighting for the spotlight for it. This is shown by a series of false starts made by Speaker 5 as she tries to get her point across but because she cannot personally relate – she hasn’t been to Speaker 1’s house – the others do not pay her much heed. This is representative of a social imbalance in the relationship where members of the group may think they are better/smarter than Speaker 5 on the current topic and are therefore purposefully choosing to ignore her, suggesting problems in the relationships. As well as this, the false starts used by the main speakers are mostly all continued into actual sentences, suggesting that the speakers are simply in a rush to get out what they are trying to say. This is suggestive of a chaotic group and that the speakers know they must rush to speak before others decide to, which tends to cause a lot of interruptions and overlapping, both of which are shown in the transcription. In addition, Speaker 4 is the only person to use tag questions such as “isn’t there?” and “is it?”. These are both suggestive of her trying to keep the conversation open and to allow people to contribute to what she is saying. Furthermore, Cameron and Coates’ (1988) theory on tag questions supports this idea and agrees with women purposefully opening the conversation in order to add clarity and to form more of a relationship with the others in the conversation.

Teacher Comments: This could have come from an AS examinations You've done so well to combine theory with analysis of the transcript. Good Job. Could Include Maltz and Borker in the final paragraph.