Linguistic and discourse analysis of a dinner-conversation

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Speech Science / Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, 17 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In this paper I present two transcripts that I have taken out of a dinner conversation I had with my boyfriend. My objectives are twofold. The first is to analyze the data linguistically with methods that were introduced by conversational analysis, and the second is to interpret the findings from a pragmatic point of view, thus employing an approach that is close to interactional sociolinguistics. Therefore, the approach to discourse analysis by Gee (2005), which he called 'D/discourse analysis', is taken into account. He established the notions 'discourse' as 'language-in-use', and 'Discourse' with a 'big D' that is the 'discourse' together with non-linguistic devices in order to perform specific identities and activities. In the beginning of this paper, the terms of conversational analysis will be defined, with a concentration on the definitions given by the classical article 'Systematics for the organization of turn-taking' by Sacks, Schleghoff & Jefferson, as well as the more recent and differentiated article by Ford & Thompson. The next part is devoted to the application of the theory to my data. The defined notions of conversational analysis will be applied, while the pragmatic point of view will be taken into consideration for the interpretation. Furthermore, each of the transcripts will be analyzed individually, and the discourses that they feature will be examined. That is for the first transcript the discourse of corrections, and for the second one, the narrative strategies. [...]

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