I have decided to deal with topic 5 which is about LA

COMUNICACIÓN ORAL. ELEMENTOS Y NORMAS QUE RIGEN EL

DISCURSO ORAL. RUTINAS Y FÓRMULAS HABITUALES.
ESTRATEGIAS PROPIAS DE LA COMUNICACIÓN ORAL. The topic
Hill be divided as follows:

0. Introduction
1. Conversation as a social activity
2. Elements and rules that govern spoken language
3. Routines and formulae of spoken language
4. Strategies of oral communication
5. Conclusion
6. Bibliography

Let´s start with the introduction:

We live in a literate society. That means that we have two main forms
of communication: oral and written.
It is obvious that written communication is not only the written form
of oral communication; we speak in a different way than we write.
Oral and written communication have different features. Written
language is permanent, because it consists of marks on a surface,
and it is space-bound. It does not receive immediate feedback.
Spoken language, on the other way, is non-permanent and it is
usually spontaneous and unplanned. It is time-bound, and speakers
receive immediate feedback, because they interact face to face. It
can be considered as a kind of social relationship. In this topic, we
will focus on oral language and its main features.

1. CONVERSATION AS A SOCIAL ACTIVITY

Communicative acts can be analysed from two different points of
view: in terms of meaning (which is the intended meaning, how it is
transmitted, whether the listener understands it or not …..) or as a
form of interaction among people. Now we are interested in the last
aspect.

Conversation is a social activity. For that reason, all the rules and
norms that govern social interchanges do also apply in conversation.
Among them, we will highlight:

 Consideration for others, that is to say, avoiding offence.

Edmonson stated it in his “hearer-support maxim”: allow the
listener to take part in the conversation, and don´t challenge or
interrupt him/her too often.
 Phatic communion. It is fulfilled by those utterances whose
only function is to keep the channel open and to show a nice
relationship, such as greetings and farewell formulae.
 Cooperative principle (Grice 1975), for a conversation to
develop smoothly, four co-operative maxims have to be
respected:
1. quantity: provide enough information for the
conversation to develop, but do not provide unnecessary.
2. quality: do not say what you believe to be false, or you
lack adequate evidence
3. relation: be relevant
4. manner: be perspicuous, orderly, brief and clear. Avoid
ambiguity and obscurity of expression.
In order to be able to take part in conversations, moreover, students
have to achieve communicative competence, which is studied in topic
number 4.
 2. ELEMENTS AND RULES THAT GOVERN SPOKEN
LANGUAGE

In spontaneous speech, we do three things at once:

- planning what to say next
- saying what we have already planned
- monitoring what we are saying
If we are not expressing the meaning we intended to express, we will
self-correct. All these actions, performed at the same time, influence
and, to some extent, govern our speech.
In this point we are going to analyse the main elements and features
of spoken language, which are governed by the above mentioned
elements.
a. Features
- Non-fluency features, such as hesitations, false starts,
repetitions, fillers……. They are considered to be normal,
so that they are usually not noticed by the interlocutor.
One of the most common ones is the constant use of
“and” as a linking device.
- Grammar features. In oral language, we use simple and
incomplete sentences, little subordination, use of active
rather than passive forms, theme-rheme structure,
repetition of basic syntactic structures and discourse
markers.
- Lexical features. The vocabulary is less sophisticated in
oral than in written language, and we make a frequent
use of generalized vocabulary such as “thing, stuff,
place…”. Oral English is also characterised by the frequent
use of multi-word verbs. In general, according to
Halliday, spoken language presents a “low lexical density”
 contrary to written language, which is characterised by a
“high lexical density”.
All these features are influenced by the context, which is usually
informal in natural conversations; these features appear to a bigger
or a lesser extent according to the formality of the situation, for
example, the grammar structure and vocabulary of a pub
conversation will be different than that of a job interview.
From another point of view, we cannot forget that spoken language is
also influenced by paralinguistic features such as facial expressions,
gestures, voice, quality effects…….

Once we have dealt with the different features that characterise

conversations, let´s gonna focus on the rules that govern these oral
interactions.
Searle and Austin devised the theory of the speech act which would
govern oral interactions.

Any speech act consists of three different acts:

- Locutionary act, i.e., the real meaning of the utterance
together with the fact of actually uttering it.
- Illocutionary act, i.e., the effect the speaker wants to
achieve.
- Perlocutionary act, i.e., the effect the act has on the hearer.

When the locutionary act and illocutionary acts are different, the
speech act is called “indirect”.

“Have you got a dictionary?” is not usually intended to be a question

but a demand.

Recognizing and understanding indirect speech acts is very important

for oral conversations to develop smoothly, since a participant must
be aware of what his / her interlocutor wants in order to be able to
continue the conversation.
We must also know the conventional way of expressing intentions in
the different languages. For instance, in English talking about the
weather is used to “fill the gap”, i.e., it has a phatic function.
Later on, speech acts were classified in two main groups: primary and
secondary.
- Primary speech acts have an explicit performative verb:
I promise you I will clean the mess
- Secondary speech acts do not seem to have any
performative verb, but they do in an implicit way:
I like singing ( I say that I like singing)

This classification means that any utterance is, in fact, a speech act.
Speech acts, considered in this wider sense, fall into 4 categories:
1. Eliciting speech acts, which require a linguistic response: What
´s your name?
2. Informing speech acts, which offer some information.
London is the capital city of England
3. Acknowledging speech acts, which provide for feedback
A: I truly believe this
B: I see
4. Directing speech acts, which ask for future action
Tom, tidy your room!

We cannot conclude this point without making reference to another

important feature of oral interactions. We are talking about “minimal
pairs” or also called “adjacency pairs”. They consist of two fixed
turns, that is to say, at least two interventions which follow one
another in a fixed order, having thus a fixed structure.
Greeting – greeting / question - answer
Minimal pairs are very important in oral conversation, because once
an adjacency pair is started, it needs, to be completed for the
conversation to develop smoothly. That means, in practice, that one
of the speakers is restricting the supposed freedom of the other one:
when s/he starts a minimal pair, he is selecting to some extent the
kind of intervention of the other speaker.

Coultard distinguishes 8 different kinds:

- Greeting – greeting
- Summons – answer
- Question – answer
- Farewell – farewell
- Compliment – acceptance
- Complaint – apology
- Offer – accept / reject
- Request – grant / put off / challenge / refusal

3. ROUTINES AND FORMULAE OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE

In this point, I will follow Goffman´s theories on spoken language.

According to this author, the following routines and formulae can be
found in oral language:

1. Discourse markers ( you know, ok, so, well, look, yeah). The
main function of these forms is to continue the conversation by
avoiding any empty space. If a speaker doesn´t know how to
go on, s/he will use one of these discourse markers in order to
have time to think, rather than remain silent. These elements
may also have other functions, such as linking utterance, or an
interpersonal function: expressing agreement or disagreement,
or directing the text.
2. Openings and closings. They are closely related to the phatic
function. They depend on various factors, such as the intimacy
between interlocutors, the channel and the context ( a face to
face conversation, a lecture, a phone conversation..). They can
be verbal ( hello, good morning, bye) or non-verbal ( nodding,
a teacher knocking on the table…).
3. Back channel signals. They indicate that the message is
getting through, so that they provide feedback. They can be
linguistic (uhm, yeah, I see..) or non-linguistic (eye contact,
nods..)
4. Turn-over signals. They allow for the smooth exchange of
turns, signalling who the next speaker will be. They can be
direct ( what do you think, Mary?) or indirect (slowing down the
tempo, vowel elongation, falling intonation…)
We should teach our students that Spanish and English turns
are different. In general, in English there is less overlap than in
Spanish, because it is frequently necessary to listen to the end
of the utterance in order to get the complete meaning while in
Spanish the freer sentence-order allows for thematisation.
5. Side sequences. They are used to introduce a secondary
topic, and they are very frequent in casual, highly dynamic
conversations, where speakers have a lot to say. They are
usually signalled by an element like “by the way, incidentally..”,
because otherwise a complete change in topic would be
impolite.
6. Pre-empt signals. In casual conversation, sometimes any of
the speakers interrupts the ongoing message either to disagree
or to ask for more information or clarification. So as to avoid
impoliteness, pre-empt signals are used. ( excuse me, oh,
but..)
 5. STRATEGIES OF ORAL COMMUNICATION

Oral communication is interactive and dynamic. For this reason, it is

affected by different constraints. In order to smooth these
constraints, we will use the following strategies:
- Real time constraints. What we say is constrained by
the fact that we have only a little time to think before
speaking. Strategies to gain a little time are hesitations
and filling pauses like “ eh, ah, uhm, let me see”.
- Organizational constraints. Our discourse has to be
organised and coherent. In order to achieve this, we use
strategies such as openings and closings, or discourse
organizers, such as “ first… second…on the other hand…
on the other…”
- Interactional constraints. Interruption and overlaps
can harm the conversation, so to avoid it we can use
formulae like “ oh, sorry. Go on, please… Well”.
- Interpersonal constraints. We have to indicate the
kind of relationship we have with the other participant
and, in addition, we have to adapt our discourse to his /
her reactions. Typical strategies are: address terms,
vocatives and disjuncts as frankly, honestly.

6. CONCLUSION

We have studied unprepared oral speech, but we have to take into

account that oral speech can also be prepared, as it is the case in
political speeches, lectures or sermons. But, if this is the case, this
oral speech usually shows the characteristics of written discourse,
because it has been prepared beforehand.
It is important to practise conversation with our students, because it
is the normal means of communication they will have to use in
contacts with native speakers. But students in general feel uneasy
with conversation, and they have a high risk perception. In order to
help them feel comfortable, we must teach them and offer them
plenty of opportunities to use the most common greeting and farewell
formulae, commonly adjacency pairs and the most common
strategies and formulae which a native speaker would use.