Australian Review of Applied Linguistics. Supplement Series - Volume 11, Issue 1, 1994

The following brief survey attempts to discuss the scope, research bases, methodologies, outcomes and applications of studies of spoken discourse in Australia. The survey is not exhaustive but aims to capture the diversity of research work being carried out in different areas of spoken discourse studies in Australia. One feature which stands out in the range of studies is that research into spoken discourse in Australia is motivated by social and communicative needs and opportunities for such investigations.

This paper explores the effects of institutional communication on highly regular casual conversation routines. The institutional environment chosen is radio telephone conversation or talkback radio. Systematic variations from mundane telephone conversations were found in the closing sections and pre-closing environments of radio talkback segments. The variations are discussed in the light of the unequal status and differences in access of the participants, as well as the constraints imposed by the medium, (discourse analysis, broadcasting, talkback, routines, power)

This paper argues that the linguistic analysis of gossip reveals not only a great deal about the social role and function of gossip in our society and is therefore important to social theory, but that an analysis of the language of gossip can provide insights into the analysis of casual conversation in English. This paper provides a generic analysis of gossip. The analysis demonstrates that gossip is a culturally determined process with a distinctive structure which can be described. It argues that, in order to describe gossip and other forms of casual conversation, two perspectives are needed: a synoptic approach which looks for complete, static, unified products or texts (generic approach) and a dynamic approach to conversational analysis which focuses on the processes by which moves succeed moves. The latter perspective then focuses on the dynamic unfolding of the interaction which occurs in a gossip text. It allows us to describe how the interactants in conversation can expand, in principle, indefinitely move by move.

The use of advance organisers (Clyne 1987) are common in English. In this article, we divide advance organisers into two types – those that signpost the structure of the discourse for a listener and those that signpost the content of the discourse for the listener. Data of extended spoken discourse in Modern Standard Chinese (MSC) shows that, while advance organisers that signpost structure are common in MSC, advance organisers that signpost content are rare. Implications of this for language teaching and cross-cultural communication conclude the article.

The first part of this paper presents the view that ordinary conversation is the most basic form of talk, and that Conversation Analysis (CA) in the ethnomethodological tradition, whilst widely known in Australian applied linguistics, has been very little used here as a set of research tools. The distinctiveness of the CA approach is presented, and it is argued that CA has the potential to make a more substantial contribution to applied linguistic research than it has hitherto. Second, the paper considers how some basic CA research – into receipt tokens such as mm, yeah, oh and others in Australian English – might be applied to a language teaching, and specifically into the development of teaching materials in an adult ESL context. It is argued that CA has the potential for wider application in Australian applied linguistics alongside some of the more widespread and better known qualitative research methods.

This paper presents findings based on a study of talk that occurred in a sample of 21 interactions during the 1992 Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) Italian Oral Common Assessment Task. The purpose of the study reported here is to examine the interactions between assessors and students through a study of two features of sequence organisation – namely post sequences and insertion sequences. Five recurring types are described: student initiated repair via the clarification check, confirmation request and request for rephrasing; assessor initiated repair; sequences leading to emotional reaction; word supply; and the aside.

This paper uses conversation analysis to examine a feedback session between a postgraduate student of TESOL and a university supervisor who had just watched her lesson. The feedbacsk session seemed unsatisfactory to the supervisor and the analysis suggests that this could have been due to the role of trainee being resisted by the teacher. Evidence for this in the talk is examined in detail, in particular the number and shape of dispreferred responses found. It would seem that the rules of ordinary conversation may influence these feedback sessions just as much as the conventions connected with the institutional setting of the talk.

Many studies have been concerned with sequence organisation, adjacency pairs and preference organisation in English conversations. However, there is a need to investigate how these structures apply to other languages, and this paper undertakes such a task in analysing a French telephone conversation. In the conversation analysed, the two base parts of an invitation sequence, the invitation and its acceptance, are separated by 113 turns of talk. The methodology uses the Jeffersonian transcription system and Conversation Analysis techniques. What is remarkable about the data analysed in this study is its striking similarities to an English conversation examined by Schegloff (1990). The parallels with Schegloff’s single case analysis constitute evidence of a phenomenon equally occurring in French, with a massive delay between the first pair part (FPP) and the second pair part (SPP) and the complex local organisation and expansion sequences that result from it.

This research investigates the turn-taking system used in an English conversation across different cultural backgrounds: between an Anglo-Australian female and a Khmer-background female. Throughout the data there is evidence of both speakers’ orientation to the rules of turn-taking as described by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974). The normative speaker reveals nonnative speakerlike features in her grammar, but on an interactive level the turn-taking system is working smoothly and without hitches. Both speakers have the skills to interactionally coordinate speaker transitions in a systematic and orderly way, following the rules and using the resources described by Sacks et al. It is particularly striking that in this conversation, the nonnative speaker’s language reveals many nonnative features, but the turn-taking system operates on a native speaker level.