Animals- Of Mice and Men

Animal Cut-outs (Of Mice and Men)

Podcast PowerPoint

Spoken Word Conventions/Key

Transcripts are usually accompanied by a key that indicates, to the reader, what has taken place during the exchange. Please see below for symbols. Please also note that we refer to each participant's contribution as a 'turn'. This is because of the phenomenon of turn-taking. In conversation, we apparently abide by this. Although some people do this to a lesser or greater degree than others. 

So, for example, in your response, you could write something like the following:
'In turns 3 and 5, Steve and Mary use vocabulary that is consistent with a Northern  dialect. Clearly they have done this unconsciously because of their cultural ties. They are both from... It is apparent that audience is the strongest influence on language choice because the transcript is peppered with other dialectal terms.  


(.)= pause

(3)=timed pause 

//=interruption

PowerPoint- Spoken Word (2)

Comments on the previous posts- gender, social distance/solidarity and interruption vs overlap

Dear all,

I have posted all the texts you should have had access to in either yesterday or today's class. I would like to reiterate what I said in class. These texts provide you with perspective on the spoken word. These give you an understanding of how you could analyse some of the things you observe in the transcripts. One of the points you have to cover is how audience affects how we interact with our audience/interlocutors. As discussed, we can make assertions about how we perceive overlap/interruption. You may argue that the two concepts are distinctly different because the conversation between the Asian ladies proves this. Their discussion and overlap in speech is a sign of solidarity and agreement in thought because of a shared cultural identity. Equally you may comment on the ratio of female speakers to male speakers in the Lancashire text. I would argue that one speaker is female and she appears to say the least. Your knowledge of how men and women speak- 'rapport talk' vs 'report talk' may encourage you to analyse the words chosen in the conversation.

You may also have identified use of dialect in the Lancashire speech. What is the reason for its use? Is it because this is an informal speech situation and they feel comfortable not to use the standard variety? Do these students use their dialect because it is an age related norm: the idea that young people adopt a young way of speaking? I hope this shows that there are a range of ways of analysing each transcript. There is no right or wrong answer; you just need to be able to develop a sound argument.


I hope that this helps you to understand how to develop your response. Remember the controlled assessment response is on the penultimate slide of the PowerPoint. I will be uploading this shortly.

Gendered Language Text