Learning by heart

Sometimes it's nice to live on campus. And sometimes it's not nice to live on campus. Let me tell you why. On Monday I was sitting in a bus. I was coming home from my classes and I was carrying that big white thing also called a wedding dress. When I arrived to the campus of the Helsinki University of Technology, next to the place where I live, someone suddenly said: "Hey there, can I ask you something?" "Well, of course", I said and he continued: "I was wondering if you wanna be friends with me. I know you Finnish people don't make friends easily (is it really true?) but you're going to know me better." I have to say I was a little bit astounded at that moment. I was also in a hurry since I was still holding my wedding dress and it was about to start raining again... Nevertheless I gave him my phone number, maybe just because I was so confused and I wanted to prove Finns are not always shy and suspicious.

The next day I had already forgotten the episode. I was sitting in a bus again and guess what happened? He, whose name is Ali by the way, came sit next to me, we chat and he told me he comes from Middle India, from a small town next to Bombay. He told me he is studying and working here at the University of Technology and that he has already been living in Helsinki for five years. He told about his trips to Russia and other countries in Europe. In the end of the bus trip he had invited me to his place for dinner. We were told to actively hunt opportunities to communicate in English. Well it seems I don't even have to hunt for those opportunities! Then I have to tell the dark side about living on campus. Sometimes early in the morning (today it was about 5 A.M.) people come back from a party or from a club and I can tell you the noise is horrible. Since we're living in a student apartment, we're living with lots of other students around and it's really easy to hear them sometimes... That's also why I'm writing my blog at 7 A.M.

Another reason why I started writing was that I can't do it in the English class today. I have to work for the whole day until ten o'clock, hopefully only this one time during this autumn. At least we can say I'll be actively improving my English with customers. Instead of going to class today I could write my second essay about an academic article. It's called "Pre-expansion" (2007) and it's written by Emanuel Schegloff, one of the founders of conversation analysis. So here it comes:

In his article "Pre-expansion" (2007) Emanuel Schegloff writes about certain types of utterances or sequences in conversation. These sequences are called pre-expansion or pre-sequences because they are situated before some particular pair type, for example: an invitation, an offer, a request or an announcement. Human psychology is interesting. Did you ever notice that for example asking for a favor from another person isn't easy? It's also hard to say "no" if someone invites you to a party. At least harder than to say "yes". Schegloff and his co-workers found out that this difficulty of sayng "no" or asking for a favor is actually an observable part inside a language. This difficulty gains it's form, for example, in type-specific pre-sequences such as pre-invitations, pre-offers, pre-requests and pre-announcements. These are pre-sequences " and what they commonly project, what they are regularly preliminary to, what they are pre-expansions of, is the specified base sequence." (p.29).

Another important thing to note is that some responses to these pre-sequences lead to the production of a base sequence and some don't. I'll give you some examples of different kinds of pre-sequences. Lets start with the most readily recognizable pre-sequence, the pre-invitation. If someone asks you in the phone: "Are you doing anything?" or "What are you doing?" you normally don't start with the factual description of what you are doing. What you probably produce is an answer like: "Nothing" or even "Why?" Questions like "What are you doing?" are then not understood like questions themselves but as preliminaries to something else like an invitation. If you want to inform your buddy that you are going to say no to the prospective invitation, the invitation can also be discouraged already in the preliminary phase. In that kind of situation the answer to the first question: "What are you doing?" could be for example: "Well, I'm just about to leave.." or "I'm being busy with...". Schegloff says: "If the prospective invitation is to be discouraged, if (for example) it is likely to be declined, then the answer to the preliminary- to the pre-sequence- should be selected accordingly, for example, "yes, I have a term paper to finish."

What we also should remember when we are talking about conversation analysis is the importance of preference. It's preferable to say "yes" to an invitation than to say "no". A "no" always insists some kind of explanation and that kind of sequences are usually longer. Instead of saying "Nothing" you have to give a long explanation to project to the person-who-asked why you are probably saying "no" to his future invitation. Schegloff lists three different response types which serve as a response to the pre-sequence. These are: 1.) "Go ahead"-response, 2.) "Blocking"-response, and 3.) "Hedging"-response. The "Go ahead" response "promotes progress of the sequence by encouraging its recipient to go ahead." This kind of response could be for example the "Nothing" that was mentioned earlier. The encouraged individual who produced the pre-sequence, the first question, could then continue to the base sequence, for example: "Do you want to go shopping?". The second response type is "Blocking". It raises the possibility that the invitation will be declined or rejected and "thereby discourages or blocks the invitation from being tendered at all." Pre-sequences are then designed to avoid rejection or "to help interaction to avoid a sequence with a rejected base." Third response type is "Hedging" "which can make a full response contingent on what the invitation is going to be." For example, if someone asks: "What are you doing?" you could answer: "I'm doing my homework. Why?" meaning that you can still change your mind if the other one has something great to offer.

I thought the article was really interesting. I'm quite excited to open this new box of knowledge this autumn and I'm really happy I chose conversation analysis as the subject of my Master's Thesis. These phenomena I'm reading about were always there, in everyday conversations, but it's only now that I'm starting to pay attention to them. Another funny thing is that I never thought that I could profit from this English class so much! It actually makes me understand the articles better when I have to read them twice. First for my own good and then again to make a reference to this log. I couldn't possibly imagine a better way to learn these things by heart.