Speaker D And M example essay topic

Discourse Analysis Assignment This conversation involves four females, M, J, S, and D, aged between 19 and 20 years, they are all first language English speakers, the mood of the conversation is friendly and light-hearted. The main topic revolves around the idea that beautiful women are always with fat and ugly men, in music videos or in real life. The conversation begins with all of its speakers participating, then gradually only D and M contributes, but S and J are listening to the conversation as they laugh altogether. S starts the conversation but does not continue to participate in it, she laugh with the others but does not seem to be interested, the reason for such a reaction could be that she is watching the music video. J is another participant who play a minor role, she makes two utterances in the entire conversation. One of them is a minimal response (16), and the other (10) is agreeing with speaker D. D and M are the two main participants, as they dominate and direct this conversation.

Before 17, the conversation is smooth because everyone is agreeing that beautiful women are with fat and ugly men. D is agreeing and not paying full attention to the conversation, as can be seen from the mix up of name in 14, she said J instead of M, showing signs that she could be watching the music video. After 17, D starts to disagree with M, she is very persistent and does not give up her view for a compromise easily. As can be seen from the emphasis she placed on the words!

^0 fat! +/- and! ^0 see! +/- in her last two utterances. And D makes witty insults or replies, it lightens the mood and everyone laughs about it. But in a way, it seems to be attacking M, it made her more embarrassed and does not know how to express her self clearly, as can be seen from 20 and 25, many pauses in between her words. This shows us M!'s personality, before 17, she speaks fine, there is no significant pauses in her utterances, but after 17, when the conversation only involves her and D, and when D starts to disagree with her, she begins to express herself in an unclear way.

She begins to pause and use fragmentary words, such as! ^0 I mean, I think! +/-, and minimal response words! ^0 um! +/- for a regulatory effect, and hedge words, such as! ^0 like! +/-, these all appear after 17, when there is disagreement between her and D. The turn taking in this conversation is generally smooth, there is no directed questions therefore any speaker can self select whether to participate or not. In 20 and 25, M shows many pauses, it could be that she is signalling for a TRP to the others but they are not responding. There is no interruption, showing that they are not overly interested or involved in the conversation.

Turn holding strategies are used mainly by M because she speaks the most, she holds the floor. In 4 and 5, when D overlaps with her, she continue to go on, and in 15 and 16, when J overlap with M, M takes the next turn, she holds the floor of the conversation. Although there are some signs of overlapping present in this conversation, the degree in which it overlaps is not intense, as the original speaker maintains the floor in the end. In 4 and 5, D agrees with a minimal response, while overlapping M, but M carries on speaking.

The other overlapping occurs at 15 and 16, where J and M are both agreeing with D, but J stops speaking and M carries on with her speaking again, showing signs that she is really interested in the subject and highly involved. The main topic of the conversation is about beautiful women and ugly men. There are five sub-topics. The first utterance is the first sub-topic made by S, its spontaneous from watching the music video. The second sub-topic is made by D, utterance 8, it shifts from fat woman to fat man, and makes fun of Father Christmas. The third sub-topic is made by M, utterance 11, how fat singer!'s music video is packed with beautiful women.

And D makes the fourth sub-topic again, utterance 14, how fat men are married beautiful wives. The last sub-topic is made by M, on her view of Heavy D, this is know as! ^0 Speaker Topic! +/-, in which she express her opinion. D and M both made 2 topic shifts, they are the more active participants in the conversation, whereas S started the conversation and J did not perform any topic shifts. S and J responded minimal amounts, no interruptions, no topic shifts, and hardly any participation on their parts. Before the change of a topic, there is a usually a time lapse, before the second sub-topic, it is indicated that a silence of 0, 7 of a second is present, and before the fourth sub-topic, there is a short silence of less than half a second.

Topic development is spontaneous, dynamic and unplanned. Anything can trig the change of a topic. In conclusion, this conversation is between four friends, with no intense arguing and minimal responses on two of the participants. And five sub-topics in total, with minimal turn taking, overlapping.

M has the floor most of the time. Overall it is a friendly conversation.