Recent Posts from my Friends and Family, page 2

This does not count as a post but I thought I'd show you what I found in a shop.

 (see next two entries for LIN318 homework)

Is this the last post or the last we have a deadline for?  Why does last never really mean last?

 

I was remembering the phone conversation Dr Myers shared with us in class and I remembered two typical conversations:

1. Elevator.

A: Morning, how are you?

B: Ok thanks

A: Everything ok at home and all?

B: Yes

A: So you are getting better?

B: Yes

 

2.  Little girl and Dad

Dad: What are you doing?

girl: something

Dad: What is something?

girl: something means I am not just doing anything.

 

I was thinking of adjacency pairs and how we so subconciously comply to them.  In conversation 1, B may not be giving the expected answers, but even if he or she does not want to give an answer, a silence would be worse.

In the second conversation, I also thought of the maxims being broken, can you tell me which they are. (This was a real conversation between a father and his daughter)  There are also some implicatures for the second sentence the gilr uttered, can you think of them? 

I thought the article we read about the silence in Japanese language was very interesting.  Initially I thought it didn't seem that different from the conversations American speakers have.  In other words, I feel like American's use body language once in a while, but now that we read this article, I have been paying attention and I think that it is extremely rare for American speakers to be silent.  Silence is usually awkward and filled with a face that represents "this is awkward, what should we say now."  After talking with another girl in our class who has witnessed Japanese conversations, she said that they honestly use silence very often and it seems somewhat awkward to American's listening because it makes you wonder why no one is speaking when in reality they are using body language, smiles, nods, etc.. to converse.  Just thought I would share my thoughts on that article. :)

To make sure I understand adjacency pairs, I've decided to give a few examples. 
 
From class:
How are you?
Fine, thanks. How are you?

Hey, there.
Hey!

You're cute.
Thank you.
(would "your're cute too" be expected as an adjacency pair?)

Let's grab a drink tonight.
Okay, when and where?

What time will you be here on Sunday?
11:00.

I missed you so much!
I missed you too!

So preference organization would be the possibility of having a few different answers to the questions, correct?  So for What time will you be here on Sunday?  The Preferred answer would be a time.  The non-preferred would be something like "oh I"m not coming anymore."  Or for You're cute. The preferred answer would be, "Thanks, you're cute too" or "You're not so bad yourself."  The non-preferred answer would be "No I'm not" or "Wish I could say the same." Haha. 

After reading the article about Japanese conversation, I have noticed the role that silence plays in my conversations. Instead of being comfortable and "cool" with it, I tend to freak out and go directly into awkward mode. I will end up saying things that don't make sense or things that are cmpletely random. Perhaps the most damaging is when I attempt to be funny to fill the awkward silence and fail miserably. This proves to me that if there are any backchannels during these awkward conversations, they are not positive ones. Americans are simply not comfortable with silence in a conversational/social setting.

So, obviously this one is a follow up to my previous post. Here The discussion on lexical and syntactic ambiguity goes a bit further. And, you know, since I am writing a paper on how these two facets of ambiguity negatively affect communication between customer/employee relations, I have to say that it is intriguing to "propose a rigorously defined language w/out Syntactic or Lexical ambiguity." But, in reality, Who could live w/out puns and "delightfully sexy double entendres"? 

Good Day!

MY LAST TWO POSTS WILL BE DEDICATED TO MY ALL TIME FAVORITE COMIC, WHICH I NEVER WOULD HAVE FOUND HAD I NOT BEEN STUCK ONE DAY TRYING TO FIGURE OUT SOMETHING TO POST.

so, on that note, here come t-rex........

So, what T-Rex is saying is that since he has the free will to change what he hears into something personally appealing, he never has to hear anything bad again. Of course Utahraptor easily dispels any quasi-logic that T-Rex is trying to use. I picked this one because of Utahraptor's brilliant speech. Although, I will admit that I'm extremely conflicted between the two. I guess if I went with T-Rex I would be violating almost every maxim in the book. Oh well!

Good Day!

I believe there are certain adjacency pairs that are always used at the beginning of a phone conversation.  Upon saying hello, the speaker usually asks "So what are you doing?" and then listener replies "Oh nothing (or whatever they are doing), what are you doing?"  It is occurs in almost ever phone conversation.  However, my dad and brother do not follow this adjacency pair rule.  When I talk to them on the phone I say "What are you doing?" and then they always say "What are you doing?"  Is there an echo?  I get so frustrated because they never actually answer my question, and just ask me the same question.  It is a total violation of the adjacency pair rule. 

I have a friend that never fills in the backchannel on a phone conversation.  I'll be in the middle of an intense story and she'll just sit there.  When I leave gaps she doesn't say anything.  Then I always end up saying 'Tori?' and she'll say 'Yeh, I'm here.'  So I'll say 'Are you listening' and she always replies with 'Yes, I was just letting you talk.  Finish the story.'  I think it's ironic because she thinks by interjecting on my story it would be rude, but I think by just sitting there she is being rude and not listening.  I think it's important to produce backchannel fill ins on the phone so the speaker knows you are engaged in the conversation.

When I was reading the article on overlapping and interruptions, I couldn't help remembering my childhood.  It was very common to hear "Kristina, don't interrupt!" from my father, but my mother would never tell me that, and we would just speak at the same time and understand each other.
With my best friend it is the same, only we can understand each other when we are talking overlapped.  Everyone says we are crazy and they don't understand how we can talk so fast and at the same time and still pay attention.
That's why I think it has a lot to do with culture but also with the personal relationship you have with your listener.

I also thought of the news, whenever a foreign speaker was being interpreted into Spanish and I could hear both languages overlapping, I could basically listen to the conversation twice, because the translation was always a little delayed from the speech, overlapped, and if I could listen to both at once, why would I not be able to listen to two conversations, mine and someone else's or even two other speaker's in the same language at once?