INFORMATION ON PREPARATION OF REPORTS

The reports will be held as planned:

18.06.1998, 7: Speech act analysis - 10 minute reports

25.06.1998, 8: Exchange analysis - 10 minute reports

02.07.1998, 9: Conversation analysis - 10 minute reports

General information

• Presentations should be prepared singly or in groups of two or maximally three people.
• Check through the bibliography and select the books which are most relevant to your topic.
• Check the topics (and related terms) using a web search machine to find further materials.
• Select dialogue data to describe; if you wish, you can record a dialogue from radio or television, or record your own dialogue. Keep the recordings short (two or three minutes).
• The report itself should cover the following:
  • Introduction: Describe the main theme of your paper, the data you will be using, and the literature you have selected, and the structure of your presentation (i.e. what will be the topics of the following sections of your presentation).
  • Body of paper: Each section should describe one topic, for example characterising theoretical points and defining basic terminology; the scenario of the dialogue, aspects of the recording, the basic orthographic transcription, further markup where relevant; description of the transcription in terms of the theoretical categories you have introduced.
  • Conclusion: Overview of results, problems encountered, possible applications of your analysis.
• Prepare clearly structured overhead projector transparencies for presentation in class (about 10 minutes).
• Give me the word processor text (WORD, WordPerfect, or in RTF format) for placement on the web.
• Practice your presentation with your group partners as if you were applying for a good job!

Make sure that all three topics are covered by different groups.

Notes on the specific topics:

• Speech act analysis. Speech acts are the basic functional units within individual utterances, such as questions, answers, comments ... For detailed information, see in particular the overviews in the books by Saeed and Levinson; your basic reference will be to Searle, however.
• Exchange analysis. An exchange is a sequence of utterances by two or more speakers. You will find useful material on exchanges in the works cited above, but in particular in works by David Brazil, and by Malcolm Coulthard.
• Conversation analysis. A conversation, or dialogue in general, may consist of many exchanges, organised into episodes, topical phases and so on. In addition to the works already cited, take a look at works by Schiffrin.