Spoken Language Terminology

• Monologue


  A long speech made by one person in a group
• Dyadic


  An interaction between two people (DI-adic)
• Multi-party talk


  Speech that involves multiple people
• Scripted


  Speech which has been fully planned and pre-written
• Spontaneous


  Speech which has not been planned and is made up on the spot
• Prepared


  Speech which has been thought about but not fully written out
• Turn-taking


  When one speaker hands over speaking to another person and vice versa
• Adjacency Pairs


  Regular, typical two-turn exchanges in spoken discourse. e.g.: A: How are you? B: I'm fine, thanks. And you?
• Insertion Sequences


  Small asides in between adjacency pairs before returning to the main topic
• IRF structure


  Initiation, response, feedback
• Transition relevance point


  A point at which it is natural for another speaker to take a turn
• Interruption


  When a speaker begins to talk before the previous speaker has finished, in an attempt to take over the conversation and gain control.
• Simultaneous speech


  Two or more participants speaking at the same time
• Opening and Closing sequences

  The way in which conversations are began or finished
• MLU (Mean length of Utterance)


  Linguistic measurement of morphemes using in an utterance
• Discourse markers


  Words, phrases or clauses that help to organise what we say or write (e.g. OK, So, "As I was saying...").
• Nomination


  Selecting or calling on somebody to speak
• Tag questions


  Questions added to the end of a declarative statement (eg. You know?)
• Back-channeling


  Active listening technique such as "Go on," "Uh huh," and "Tell me more."
• Active listening


  Empathic listening in which the listener echoes, restates, and clarifies.
• Non-fluency


  Features of speech that disrupt or repeat spoken discourse
• Paralinguistics


  All aspects of spoken language except the words themselves (Eg. facial expression, gestures and volume)
• Prosodics


  How we use rhythm, stress, intonation and pace in speech to create particular effects
• Politeness


  Communicating in ways that save face for both senders and receivers
• Grice's Maxims


  Quality, Quantity, Relevance and Manner
• Topic management


  The control of the conversation in terms of speaking and topic
• Topic initiation


  Introducing topics for discussion
• Topic dominance


  The idea that the most knowledgeable person about a topic will control the conversation
• Accent


  The manner in which people speak and the way words are pronounced in different parts of the world
• Dialect


  A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation
• Sociolect


  A language style associated with a particular social group
• Idiolect


  Language use that is typical of a particular person
• Standard English


  English that is the same in all regions; formal English
• Americanisms


  Examples of language use distinct to American English speakers
• Pidgin


  A simplified form of speech developed from two or more languages
• Creole


  A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated
• Communities of practice


  Groups of people who share an interest, problem or trait and bond over it
• Point of grammatical completion

  The point at which someone has finished an utterance and it’s somebody new’s time to speak
• Phatic talk

  Small talk
• Schema (Goffman)


  Unwritten rules for conversation eg. phatic talk