Good evening ladies and gentlemen!
More than a week has gone since I wrote to you last time and it's time to reflect on my current situation a bit, right? This week has been... Well, crazy as always. How should I start describing it then?
Last week I spent five full days with my thesis project since I had it opposed this week. (It's not ready yet, this was just about the plan of my thesis.) I spent a few days transcribing and after that already analyzing my transcription. It was yesterday when I found out I had been working for nothing. You see, I got the material for my thesis from a reseacher who already wrote her thesis about it and now she's working on her doctoral thesis based on the very same material. Since I got my material from her I'm supposed to ask which parts I can or cannot use in my own thesis. It was only after I already wrote 10 pages I found out that I won't be able to use them because the area I'm interested in is too close to her interests. I understand the point of course but it still sucks! It really does...
Last Friday, when I was still carefree and knew absolutely nothing about my coming problems concerning my thesis, we travelled to the countryside to finish the last arrangements for our wedding. We were supposed to paint our wedding plaques. (You have no idea how many wedding words I've been learning lately!) We've also been busy with designing party props for group pictures. (They are so cool!) On Saturday I was going to have the rehearsal hair dresser and the make up. Just before I was leaving my parents home, a strange looking car showed up in their front yard. A bunch of young men wearing black suits and sunglasses came knocking on our door and when I opened the door I found out that they were our friends from the University and high school. They literally stole my fiancé and took him out from the shower without any cash or phone or anything to his bachelor party. Later I heard they were travelling with my uncle's saunabus, a strange bus where there's a real sauna inside. They made my boyfriend play a role in wich he was a Russian investor who wanted to invest on Finnish beer business. He was wearing a big fur coat and leather pants...
I was surprised when they took him out like that but I was even more surprised when my friends showed up when I was having my make up done. You see, my parents live in a small city and there's no reason why my friends from the University would pop up there just like that! The make up artist was not ready with my other eye yet and it was almost impossible to keep my eyes closed knowing that my friends were staring at me at the same time! They gave me all kind of tasks that I was supposed to do. For example, I was supposed to behave as if I was a tourist guide in that little town. I was also supposed to collect pieces of advice for our marriage from people we met on the street. Later that night we went to this party place they had rented and we had a foot massage and a sauna there. I was also supposed to do some tasting with cheese and wine since I work in a wine store. It was so much fun! At night we went to the disco downstairs and came home only after four o'clock in the morning. I'm going to remember this surprise for sure!
This week has been, more or less, stressing out about everything: about the thesis, about the wedding, about the fact that I've too many courses going on! And of course stressing out about the Sandy Storm. That's how I've been practicing English this week. My friend from Angola (her father is a popular Angolan writer and he sent his daughter to study in Portugal, that's how I met her) is living in New York at the moment and she's been discribing the storm in Facebook. She also sent us some photos. They are frightening! I hope she and everyone else in the storm area is going to be okay! So I've been watching some news and reading news papers... That's about it. See you on Friday!
keskiviikko 31. lokakuuta 2012
sunnuntai 21. lokakuuta 2012
The last piece of pie
How do you know that you're too conscientious with your studies or with your work? The answer is that you never get sick except on vacation! I wasn't feeling good during our last lesson before the autumn brake and in the very same evening I got this flu. It isn't fair now, is it? At least there's no need to go downtown this week. (Unfortunately it seems I might miss most of the Cinemaissí because I can't leave the house. Cinemaissí is a really nice film festival where they present Latin Americal films.)
I understood on Friday that my critique on an article "Preference" still needed some evaluation and it's good that we started to write a second version of it during our lesson. I realized that what I wrote last time was not actually a critique but a summary. (I guess I was a little bit too fascinated about the theory since I was reading about it for the first time.) Now I've had time to think more about the preference theory and I've actually got something critical to say about it. I'll present some of the ideas here and after that I'll place the whole critique on Moodle. So here we go:
Maybe the biggest problem of the theory of preference organization is that it makes the world and the interaction between people look too simple. It says that rejections, disconfirmations, disagreements or correcting other person's speech are always, and in all kinds of situations unpreferred. But are these kind of responses always unpreferred? I don't think we can make such a generalization when we are talking about the real world and it's colorful, diverse conversation situations. I'll give some examples. One classic situation that conversation analysists use when describing the contexts where multiple preferences operate is a self-deprecation situation. The context of multiple preferences is a context where different preferences are in conflict with one another. Let's imagine a situation where your friend says that he thinks he is fat. After your friend said this kind of argument all different answer options suddenly start to bounce inside your head. In a normal situation it would be preferred to avoid a disagreement but... Wait a minute here! If you say you agree that your friend is fat he's propably going to get hurt. So in a self-deprecation situation there are at least two different preferences that are in conflict with one another and normally the disagreement answer wins. When I say normally I mean normally but not always. We'll get there later.
Another situation conversation analysists use as an example of a multiple preference situation is the "last piece of pie". Normally it's not appropriate to refuse an offer but this situation makes an example when multiple preferences start to operate. If you say "yes" to a last-piece-of-pie offer you might 1) seem greedy and 2) there's a possibility that the host of the house gets angry. He might have actually wanted to eat that last piece by himself but offers it now to you because it's polite. So normally the guest would just say "no" or "thank you but I'm totally full already" or something similar. And now we are finally getting to my point: I'm quite sure that people not always give a disagreement when there is a self-deprication situation and they don't always refuse to take the last piece of pie.
A good friend of mine was staying with us last week and he actually sayd "okay" right away when the last piece of cake was offered. Thanks to him I realized something very important about preference. The thing that I figured out was this: preference stops working when people are very close to each other! People can be very straightforward with their familiars and with people they trust. Just think about it! How often do close family members can say to each other: "Yes I think you've gained a little more weight" when the other one is complaining about that (a self-deprication situation) or "Yeah, thanks I could have the last piece of pie. I'm still feeling hungry". So the biggest problem of Preference theory is that it ignores warm and friendly relationships in which people sometimes forget all kind of preference rules and say what they really think and how they really feel. I think there's a big whole in the whole theory that should be filled with more knowledge about close relationships. It would be so interesting to study conversations between close family members or lovers for example.
I have to say, after I wrote this I'm so excited! I think I know what I would like to study in my thesis now...
P.S. http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2011/02/14/rsa-animate-language-window-human-nature/
This was funny! I think I'll try to find more presentations about language!
I understood on Friday that my critique on an article "Preference" still needed some evaluation and it's good that we started to write a second version of it during our lesson. I realized that what I wrote last time was not actually a critique but a summary. (I guess I was a little bit too fascinated about the theory since I was reading about it for the first time.) Now I've had time to think more about the preference theory and I've actually got something critical to say about it. I'll present some of the ideas here and after that I'll place the whole critique on Moodle. So here we go:
Maybe the biggest problem of the theory of preference organization is that it makes the world and the interaction between people look too simple. It says that rejections, disconfirmations, disagreements or correcting other person's speech are always, and in all kinds of situations unpreferred. But are these kind of responses always unpreferred? I don't think we can make such a generalization when we are talking about the real world and it's colorful, diverse conversation situations. I'll give some examples. One classic situation that conversation analysists use when describing the contexts where multiple preferences operate is a self-deprecation situation. The context of multiple preferences is a context where different preferences are in conflict with one another. Let's imagine a situation where your friend says that he thinks he is fat. After your friend said this kind of argument all different answer options suddenly start to bounce inside your head. In a normal situation it would be preferred to avoid a disagreement but... Wait a minute here! If you say you agree that your friend is fat he's propably going to get hurt. So in a self-deprecation situation there are at least two different preferences that are in conflict with one another and normally the disagreement answer wins. When I say normally I mean normally but not always. We'll get there later.
Another situation conversation analysists use as an example of a multiple preference situation is the "last piece of pie". Normally it's not appropriate to refuse an offer but this situation makes an example when multiple preferences start to operate. If you say "yes" to a last-piece-of-pie offer you might 1) seem greedy and 2) there's a possibility that the host of the house gets angry. He might have actually wanted to eat that last piece by himself but offers it now to you because it's polite. So normally the guest would just say "no" or "thank you but I'm totally full already" or something similar. And now we are finally getting to my point: I'm quite sure that people not always give a disagreement when there is a self-deprication situation and they don't always refuse to take the last piece of pie.
A good friend of mine was staying with us last week and he actually sayd "okay" right away when the last piece of cake was offered. Thanks to him I realized something very important about preference. The thing that I figured out was this: preference stops working when people are very close to each other! People can be very straightforward with their familiars and with people they trust. Just think about it! How often do close family members can say to each other: "Yes I think you've gained a little more weight" when the other one is complaining about that (a self-deprication situation) or "Yeah, thanks I could have the last piece of pie. I'm still feeling hungry". So the biggest problem of Preference theory is that it ignores warm and friendly relationships in which people sometimes forget all kind of preference rules and say what they really think and how they really feel. I think there's a big whole in the whole theory that should be filled with more knowledge about close relationships. It would be so interesting to study conversations between close family members or lovers for example.
I have to say, after I wrote this I'm so excited! I think I know what I would like to study in my thesis now...
P.S. http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2011/02/14/rsa-animate-language-window-human-nature/
This was funny! I think I'll try to find more presentations about language!
keskiviikko 17. lokakuuta 2012
British vs. American
Hello! I hope you're having a pleasant week. I've been busy as always. I've finally gotten started working with the material for my thesis and it means hours and hours of work, of course. I spent almost my whole weekend transcribing the clips but on Saturday night we had a pause with my two friends and some friends-of-a-friend Erasmus exchange students. We went out for a beer and then dancing some latin rhytms and I had a chance to practise my English for a change. (One of the guys was Brazilian and with him I spoke Portuguese, of course.) I also happened to dance salsa with many Spanish speaking men but we always spoke Spanglish instead of Spanish. Does it count?;)
I've been looking for those links we talked about in class and I've been thankful for these tips they give for learning. Speaking about phonetics, I'm a lucky person since I had to learn phonetic alphabet during my Portuguese studies. (There are still some phones in English that don't exist in Portuguese. Those I should learn, of course.) Electronic Journals could actually help with thesis, as well. And.... oh my God, I just noticed that there's a podcast of James Joyce's Ulysses! It was just translated in Finnish for a second time. (That's one of the books I will read when my thesis will be ready. I call that kind of books my "trophy" books.) I don't know if I would have the courage to read Ulysses in English. Maybe I could try after finishing the translated version. I loved "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" so I should try, shouldn't I? The rice game was fun of course but maybe the most useful link thinking about the future was the Cambridge Dictionary. I've been looking for a good online dictionary because of my thesis and now I can finish my search.
One thing that is concerning me a bit now is the fact that I must use British English and American English mixed together all the time. I'm in a hard situation since we were taught to speak and write the British way when I was in high school but ever since I got to the University I've been reading almost exclusively American articles. (Literature courses made an exception on this matter.) It doesn't help that many of the films we are watching come from the States. Nor the fact that I actually never thought so much about the difference between British and American English before this course. I don't think I'll manage to change my whole speaking or writing during this semester but at least I can try to be more conscious about it. What else about this week? We watched "How I met your mother" again and then some films. That's about it. See you on Friday!
P.S. Actually I did forget something! I've been thinking about different reading techniques a lot and I got in to one conclusion: those fast reading techniques just don't work for me. I mean, of course it's a good idea to skim through all the headlines of an article and only after that decide if you want to read it or not but if I decide to read the text I have to read it properly. Otherwise I get the feeling that I'm missing something very important and I don't get the big picture. They actually did one critical survey about fast reading techniques in the University of Turku so I might have a point here. What do you think?
I've been looking for those links we talked about in class and I've been thankful for these tips they give for learning. Speaking about phonetics, I'm a lucky person since I had to learn phonetic alphabet during my Portuguese studies. (There are still some phones in English that don't exist in Portuguese. Those I should learn, of course.) Electronic Journals could actually help with thesis, as well. And.... oh my God, I just noticed that there's a podcast of James Joyce's Ulysses! It was just translated in Finnish for a second time. (That's one of the books I will read when my thesis will be ready. I call that kind of books my "trophy" books.) I don't know if I would have the courage to read Ulysses in English. Maybe I could try after finishing the translated version. I loved "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" so I should try, shouldn't I? The rice game was fun of course but maybe the most useful link thinking about the future was the Cambridge Dictionary. I've been looking for a good online dictionary because of my thesis and now I can finish my search.
One thing that is concerning me a bit now is the fact that I must use British English and American English mixed together all the time. I'm in a hard situation since we were taught to speak and write the British way when I was in high school but ever since I got to the University I've been reading almost exclusively American articles. (Literature courses made an exception on this matter.) It doesn't help that many of the films we are watching come from the States. Nor the fact that I actually never thought so much about the difference between British and American English before this course. I don't think I'll manage to change my whole speaking or writing during this semester but at least I can try to be more conscious about it. What else about this week? We watched "How I met your mother" again and then some films. That's about it. See you on Friday!
P.S. Actually I did forget something! I've been thinking about different reading techniques a lot and I got in to one conclusion: those fast reading techniques just don't work for me. I mean, of course it's a good idea to skim through all the headlines of an article and only after that decide if you want to read it or not but if I decide to read the text I have to read it properly. Otherwise I get the feeling that I'm missing something very important and I don't get the big picture. They actually did one critical survey about fast reading techniques in the University of Turku so I might have a point here. What do you think?
perjantai 12. lokakuuta 2012
About Rome and Woody Allen with love
Ciao! Buona sera! You know the feeling when the autumn goes further, evenings become darker and the first quadmester of the University is almost at it's end? You start to get a little bit tired and bored with all the responsibilities you have. This was the feeling that I had today after a long week at the Uni. It doesn't help that we have now more and more writing assignments and at the same time I should be transcribing more than four hours of speech with phonetic alphabet for my master's thesis. Transcribing speech is very slow... (I'm not sure if I mentioned it but I finally got the research material with Portuguese and Finnish speaking family members together. What a fantastic material indeed!) Anyway, there're only two cures for that kind of feeling I was having. First, you can go to see a movie or second, you can have a beer or one glass of wine with your friends. Since my friends weren't available (they are also working on their theses) I decided to choose the first option and I'm happy that I did! What could ever make you feel better on a dark and chilly night than Woody Allen's movie that's placed in warm and sunny Rome? Nothing! And that's also why you are going to get my personal movie review tonight:
Woody Allen's "To Rome with love" (2012) was, from my point of view, a brilliant film. I was a little bit biased this time since I wasn't really a fan of the latest Woody film that I saw. (Yes, I know some crazy Woody fans would like to hit me for this comment.) So let's just say that "Midnight in Paris" (2011) wasn't my favourite film. "To Rome with love" was, on the other hand, one of the greatest films I've seen this year. (Now I ironically have to add that last week we were watching Spider man III so I might not be the best person to ask about films at the moment...) For me this one proved that Woody's still making really good films!
So these are just some of the points I really liked about. I liked the fact that the film was layered. Just like in "Midnight in Paris" there were two different time levels in the film. Moving in time was the main point of the story where an old man speaks to his younger self and tries to convince him not to start a relationship with a young and unstable American actress. Narration in the film also has a layered character as it consists of four different stories. One is about an American couple who comes to Rome to meet their daughter's fiancé and the fiancés Italian family. Two fathers, an old, already retired American gentleman (played by Woody himself, of course) and an Italian mortician find just one thing in common: the Italian really loves to sing in the shower and the American happens to love his voice... I won't tell you more since I don't want to ruin the story in case you haven't seen the film yet. The second story is about a young Italian couple who comes to Rome because they have an intention to start a new life there. Let's just say that things don't go exactly as planned and in the end they decide to go back where they originally came from.
The third story was one of my favourites! It was pure criticism of our time and a criticism of today's media. There was this boringly normal, middle aged man. There was nothing special about him and his family but suddenly, by mere accident he was made a celebrity. His life turned out to be a farce where journalists ask him what he has for breakfast, or other stupid questions. Since nothing special actually happens in this man's life he answers with extremely boring answers. The climax of the story is the moment when the man realises that he doesn't want to be famous anymore. Allan's story makes you think about today's reality shows and how ridiculous it is that we make people celebrities when they didn't even earn their publicity with talent. The fourth story was about the older and younger self dialogue. This was also a great story. I thought Woody managed to capture something important about young people's relationships that are too often superficial. Besides the critisism and even cynicism that you can find in the film, Woody Allan seems to have a lenient and humorous attitude towards humanity. Most of all this film was hilarious!
P.S. I didn't want to see what others have written about "To Rome with love" before I wrote this review so I stayed out of review pages in purpose. Now it's time to see whether the reviewers liked it or not...
Woody Allen's "To Rome with love" (2012) was, from my point of view, a brilliant film. I was a little bit biased this time since I wasn't really a fan of the latest Woody film that I saw. (Yes, I know some crazy Woody fans would like to hit me for this comment.) So let's just say that "Midnight in Paris" (2011) wasn't my favourite film. "To Rome with love" was, on the other hand, one of the greatest films I've seen this year. (Now I ironically have to add that last week we were watching Spider man III so I might not be the best person to ask about films at the moment...) For me this one proved that Woody's still making really good films!
So these are just some of the points I really liked about. I liked the fact that the film was layered. Just like in "Midnight in Paris" there were two different time levels in the film. Moving in time was the main point of the story where an old man speaks to his younger self and tries to convince him not to start a relationship with a young and unstable American actress. Narration in the film also has a layered character as it consists of four different stories. One is about an American couple who comes to Rome to meet their daughter's fiancé and the fiancés Italian family. Two fathers, an old, already retired American gentleman (played by Woody himself, of course) and an Italian mortician find just one thing in common: the Italian really loves to sing in the shower and the American happens to love his voice... I won't tell you more since I don't want to ruin the story in case you haven't seen the film yet. The second story is about a young Italian couple who comes to Rome because they have an intention to start a new life there. Let's just say that things don't go exactly as planned and in the end they decide to go back where they originally came from.
The third story was one of my favourites! It was pure criticism of our time and a criticism of today's media. There was this boringly normal, middle aged man. There was nothing special about him and his family but suddenly, by mere accident he was made a celebrity. His life turned out to be a farce where journalists ask him what he has for breakfast, or other stupid questions. Since nothing special actually happens in this man's life he answers with extremely boring answers. The climax of the story is the moment when the man realises that he doesn't want to be famous anymore. Allan's story makes you think about today's reality shows and how ridiculous it is that we make people celebrities when they didn't even earn their publicity with talent. The fourth story was about the older and younger self dialogue. This was also a great story. I thought Woody managed to capture something important about young people's relationships that are too often superficial. Besides the critisism and even cynicism that you can find in the film, Woody Allan seems to have a lenient and humorous attitude towards humanity. Most of all this film was hilarious!
P.S. I didn't want to see what others have written about "To Rome with love" before I wrote this review so I stayed out of review pages in purpose. Now it's time to see whether the reviewers liked it or not...
perjantai 5. lokakuuta 2012
Preference
Hi! Long time no see, huh? This week has been extremely busy. It all started on Sunday when we finally managed to arrange a meeting with our parents about... well, our wedding of course! Since I had worked all Friday and Saturday my plan was to catch the last bus to Helsinki on Sunday evening after our final meeting before the wedding. Well, guess what? I missed the final bus! I thought it would take two or three hours to plan a wedding reception for 160 people (now you must think I'm silly, right?) but it took more than that. At 8 o'clock when I finally arrived at my parents home I realised that the last bus was gone. When we at last got home on Monday morning I had to hurry: I had three articles and 100 pages of grammar waiting for me back home...
Besides watching "How I met your mother" on the TV at night with my boyfriend, when we were both so tired that our brains just weren't working anymore, I've again been reading all my articles in English. This week we were told to take one of the articles to the lesson with us. Afterwards we were told not to reflect on it yet. I'll do so anyway. (I'll promise to take a new article with me next time.) You see, I've noticed it's such a good way of memorizing stuff like words and new information when I write them down here. So this time I would like to reflect on an article called: "Preference" written by Anita Pomerazt from the University of Albany and John Heritage from University of California. The article was published in Tanya Stivers' and Jack Sidnell's book called "Handbook of Conversation Analysis".
"The core idea of preference is that participants follow principles, often implicit, when they act and react in a variety of interactional situations." (p.2) By participants the authors mean individuals who participate in a conversation or in some other interactional situation such as playing a board game. Sacks started the discussion of preference organization in conversation in his lectures in 1969 and 1971. He identified a number of rules considering conversation situations. One of them is recipient design, the fact that an individual designs his speech for the audience he has at the moment, in other words, orients to recipients. "If possible, select a description that you know that the other knows", he says. (Sacks 1992: II:148). This rule becomes visible when, for example, an individual identifíes a person. If the recipient knows the reference, the person they are talking about, it's common to use that person's first name as a referent. Otherwise you could say for example: "My neighbour" or "My friend". In his lecture (1992) Sacks also created questioner-preferred answers.These answers are given to polar questions or in other words, yes/no questions. Questions can be built to expect a preference to yes or no answers (ex. "You don't want that last piece of pie, do you?") and the preference is "If possible, avoid or minimize explicitly stated disconfirmation in favor of confirmation". This means we usually like to please the other person and if it's not possible to please we try to do as little damage in our relation to that other person, as possible.
How do we avoid outright disconfirmations in conversations then? We shape our responses and make them look like, at least, partial confirmations. So, if someone would ask you for a visit today but you know you're not gonna make it you could answer for example: "Oh, I'm afraid I can't do it today, but what about tomorrow?" Disconfirmation is not a problem only for a person who says "no" (the recipient) but it's also a problem for a person who made the invitation. We have different kinds of ways to predict someone is going to say "no" to our proposal just like delays, mitigations, understated components and accounts. "They also may have partial or weak versions of agreements/confirmations/acceptances incorporated in them." So if you hesitate to answer to your friends question ("Would you like to come over today?") your friend might guess you won't be able to come and quickly reformulate the sentence: "Or is tomorrow night better for you?" (I have to admit that I made up all these example sentences on my own and they are not part of the summary. It's just the easiest way of explaining the phenomena of spoken language with examples that could be part of real conversations.)
Besides disconfirmation, what other things are not preferred in conversation? One preference principle is "to minimize explicitly correcting the other's talk and/or action, if possible". People solve this kind of problems with an embedded correction. This means for example that if I would do a mistake in English grammar you wouldn't correct me directly but would hide the correct form into the next sentence, or in other words, you could repeat the correct form in your next turn. Another thing people avoid is making requests. There are ways to make a request indirectly such as to ask information or describing a problem and "providing opportunities for the co-participant to offer the goods or services".
Besides watching "How I met your mother" on the TV at night with my boyfriend, when we were both so tired that our brains just weren't working anymore, I've again been reading all my articles in English. This week we were told to take one of the articles to the lesson with us. Afterwards we were told not to reflect on it yet. I'll do so anyway. (I'll promise to take a new article with me next time.) You see, I've noticed it's such a good way of memorizing stuff like words and new information when I write them down here. So this time I would like to reflect on an article called: "Preference" written by Anita Pomerazt from the University of Albany and John Heritage from University of California. The article was published in Tanya Stivers' and Jack Sidnell's book called "Handbook of Conversation Analysis".
"The core idea of preference is that participants follow principles, often implicit, when they act and react in a variety of interactional situations." (p.2) By participants the authors mean individuals who participate in a conversation or in some other interactional situation such as playing a board game. Sacks started the discussion of preference organization in conversation in his lectures in 1969 and 1971. He identified a number of rules considering conversation situations. One of them is recipient design, the fact that an individual designs his speech for the audience he has at the moment, in other words, orients to recipients. "If possible, select a description that you know that the other knows", he says. (Sacks 1992: II:148). This rule becomes visible when, for example, an individual identifíes a person. If the recipient knows the reference, the person they are talking about, it's common to use that person's first name as a referent. Otherwise you could say for example: "My neighbour" or "My friend". In his lecture (1992) Sacks also created questioner-preferred answers.These answers are given to polar questions or in other words, yes/no questions. Questions can be built to expect a preference to yes or no answers (ex. "You don't want that last piece of pie, do you?") and the preference is "If possible, avoid or minimize explicitly stated disconfirmation in favor of confirmation". This means we usually like to please the other person and if it's not possible to please we try to do as little damage in our relation to that other person, as possible.
How do we avoid outright disconfirmations in conversations then? We shape our responses and make them look like, at least, partial confirmations. So, if someone would ask you for a visit today but you know you're not gonna make it you could answer for example: "Oh, I'm afraid I can't do it today, but what about tomorrow?" Disconfirmation is not a problem only for a person who says "no" (the recipient) but it's also a problem for a person who made the invitation. We have different kinds of ways to predict someone is going to say "no" to our proposal just like delays, mitigations, understated components and accounts. "They also may have partial or weak versions of agreements/confirmations/acceptances incorporated in them." So if you hesitate to answer to your friends question ("Would you like to come over today?") your friend might guess you won't be able to come and quickly reformulate the sentence: "Or is tomorrow night better for you?" (I have to admit that I made up all these example sentences on my own and they are not part of the summary. It's just the easiest way of explaining the phenomena of spoken language with examples that could be part of real conversations.)
Besides disconfirmation, what other things are not preferred in conversation? One preference principle is "to minimize explicitly correcting the other's talk and/or action, if possible". People solve this kind of problems with an embedded correction. This means for example that if I would do a mistake in English grammar you wouldn't correct me directly but would hide the correct form into the next sentence, or in other words, you could repeat the correct form in your next turn. Another thing people avoid is making requests. There are ways to make a request indirectly such as to ask information or describing a problem and "providing opportunities for the co-participant to offer the goods or services".
torstai 27. syyskuuta 2012
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.
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.
maanantai 24. syyskuuta 2012
Storytelling
I couldn't keep my promise, after all. Yesterday afternoon after reading the article I was just weary. This week is going to be even worst than the last one. I'll have to finish reading four articles, write three essays, and write the first two pages of my Master's. (I still have no idea what I'm going to write about.) On the top of it all, my boss just happened to give me some extra-hours of work on Friday and Saturday... Still, lessons and writing assignments are not the only reason I'm feeling busy right now. Next weekend after work we, my fiancé and I, are going to travel to the countryside to meet the reverend. Today after lessons I had to run to the other side of the town to pick up my wedding dress... Did I mention we're getting married on November? Oh my, there's still so much to do before that!
This week I decided to kill two flies with one swat and write about the article called "Sequential Aspects of Storytelling in Conversation" written by Gail Jefferson in 1978. As the title reveals us, it's an article about conversation analysis based on Harvey Sacks' lectures about story telling and it's structure. In the beginning of the paper Jefferson reminds us about Labov's and Waletsky's theories of spontaneous stories. These two men suspected that spontaneously told stories could also be subjects to formal analysis and found out that this kind of stories had formal properties. What Labov and Waletsky also mentioned was the relevance of social context when spontaneous stories were told. (Labov & Waletsky, 1966, pp. 12-13.)
The third person Jefferson mentions in his article is Harvey Sacks who has focused on the contexted occurrence of stories that are told in conversations. He points out that stories are sequenced objects that articulate with the particular context in which they are told. This means for example that the structure of a story depends on where, when and to whom it is told. Storytelling might or might not involve the following: A preface where a teller projects a forthcoming story, a second turn where a listener aligns himself/herself as a recipient, the next turn where the story is produced, and the next turn in which the recipient gives reference to the story that was just told. (Sacks, 1972b, Lecture 2.) (I guess it's important to mention that conversation analysis is built on turn-by-turn talk and that kind of talk was just represented in the earlier sentence.)
Jefferson says that: "Stories emerge from turn-by-turn talk, that is, are locally occasioned by it, and, upon their completion, stories re-engage turn-by-turn talk, that is, are sequentially implicative for it." (p. 220.) By saying that stories are local occasioned he means two different things. 1.) Something said in a conversation can remind a participant of a story that may (or may not) be topically coherent with the earlier talk. For example, you could be talking to me about the muffin you're eating and that could remind me about the cake I baked yesterday. (Not topically coherent.) 2.) A story can be methodically introduced into turn-by-turn talk.
What kind of techniques are there to inform the recipient that there's a story to be told? One technique is the use of a disjunct marker such as "Oh" or "Incidentally". Disjunct markers are signals that show us that the following talk (the story) is not topically coherent with the prior talk. The other technique is an "embedded repeat" meaning a form like "Speaking about X" or "Saying X". Disjunct markers and repetition can also cooperate together or the repetition of the X-word can appear in the end of the story and tie it with the prior talk. Another way to show the recipient that there's a story to come is the use of a temporal locator ("New Years we..."). These kind of techniques of informing the recipient that a story is about to begin are called "Story prefixed phrases" by Jefferson.
The rest of the article treats different kind of examples of storytelling taken from real conversations that Jefferson has recorded with his cooperators. From my point of view reading this article was very useful. I have to mention that I was excited to read for the first time something that Jefferson himself wrote since he was along with Sacks and Shegloff one of the founders of conversation analysis. He was the one who invented the transcription now used in our area, a real genius indeed. Since this was the first time I read about storytelling from the conversation analysis' point of view, I noticed I had some difficulties with the terminology and I had to read some parts twice. In the end I felt like I got the idea and I'm now understanding the complex world of conversations a little bit better. How do I find this theory about storytelling then? I think Jefferson's ideas (and Sacks' and Schegloff's) are brilliant! Those things he notices in real conversations are actually quite easy to notice in daily conversations. Soon I won't be able not to think about these theories every time I'm talking with someone!
This week I decided to kill two flies with one swat and write about the article called "Sequential Aspects of Storytelling in Conversation" written by Gail Jefferson in 1978. As the title reveals us, it's an article about conversation analysis based on Harvey Sacks' lectures about story telling and it's structure. In the beginning of the paper Jefferson reminds us about Labov's and Waletsky's theories of spontaneous stories. These two men suspected that spontaneously told stories could also be subjects to formal analysis and found out that this kind of stories had formal properties. What Labov and Waletsky also mentioned was the relevance of social context when spontaneous stories were told. (Labov & Waletsky, 1966, pp. 12-13.)
The third person Jefferson mentions in his article is Harvey Sacks who has focused on the contexted occurrence of stories that are told in conversations. He points out that stories are sequenced objects that articulate with the particular context in which they are told. This means for example that the structure of a story depends on where, when and to whom it is told. Storytelling might or might not involve the following: A preface where a teller projects a forthcoming story, a second turn where a listener aligns himself/herself as a recipient, the next turn where the story is produced, and the next turn in which the recipient gives reference to the story that was just told. (Sacks, 1972b, Lecture 2.) (I guess it's important to mention that conversation analysis is built on turn-by-turn talk and that kind of talk was just represented in the earlier sentence.)
Jefferson says that: "Stories emerge from turn-by-turn talk, that is, are locally occasioned by it, and, upon their completion, stories re-engage turn-by-turn talk, that is, are sequentially implicative for it." (p. 220.) By saying that stories are local occasioned he means two different things. 1.) Something said in a conversation can remind a participant of a story that may (or may not) be topically coherent with the earlier talk. For example, you could be talking to me about the muffin you're eating and that could remind me about the cake I baked yesterday. (Not topically coherent.) 2.) A story can be methodically introduced into turn-by-turn talk.
What kind of techniques are there to inform the recipient that there's a story to be told? One technique is the use of a disjunct marker such as "Oh" or "Incidentally". Disjunct markers are signals that show us that the following talk (the story) is not topically coherent with the prior talk. The other technique is an "embedded repeat" meaning a form like "Speaking about X" or "Saying X". Disjunct markers and repetition can also cooperate together or the repetition of the X-word can appear in the end of the story and tie it with the prior talk. Another way to show the recipient that there's a story to come is the use of a temporal locator ("New Years we..."). These kind of techniques of informing the recipient that a story is about to begin are called "Story prefixed phrases" by Jefferson.
The rest of the article treats different kind of examples of storytelling taken from real conversations that Jefferson has recorded with his cooperators. From my point of view reading this article was very useful. I have to mention that I was excited to read for the first time something that Jefferson himself wrote since he was along with Sacks and Shegloff one of the founders of conversation analysis. He was the one who invented the transcription now used in our area, a real genius indeed. Since this was the first time I read about storytelling from the conversation analysis' point of view, I noticed I had some difficulties with the terminology and I had to read some parts twice. In the end I felt like I got the idea and I'm now understanding the complex world of conversations a little bit better. How do I find this theory about storytelling then? I think Jefferson's ideas (and Sacks' and Schegloff's) are brilliant! Those things he notices in real conversations are actually quite easy to notice in daily conversations. Soon I won't be able not to think about these theories every time I'm talking with someone!
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