As you get further down his answer he gets more honest with what he’s saying and talks about the lesson he learnt and the fact that he would never do that with his children. He corrects himself saying ‘I think that was (.) just didn’t exist. He is not always grammatically correct, for example, when he says ‘were very very kept under wraps’. He sounds quite intelligent and well educated, for example, ‘they really were entering into a time in their lives where they should have been putting their feet up’.
Towards the end, however, he uses a lot of pauses when he’s talking about his future with his kids, for example, ‘(.) whereas in my (.) childhood (.) I think that was (.)’. He also uses lots of fillers such as ‘eh’, ‘you know’, and ‘sort of’. He also uses elision such as ‘weren’t’ and ‘there’s’ which is a sign of informal, more colloquial, speech and also is a sign of spoken language in the fact that he hasn’t thought about what he’s saying. Along with when he corrects himself it shows that he’s just saying what comes into his head, it’s more spontaneous than written language.
The extract is an example of written language. It is an extract from Charlotte Bronte’s novel ‘Jane Eyre’ in which Jane is talking to another girl who lives in the school that Jane has just been sent to. There are two speakers in the extract.
The first speaker is Jane. Jane is the dominant speaker in the conversation and we know this because she asks all the questions and keeps the conversation going, for example ‘and what are the other teachers called?’ Jane is more childlike than the second speaker and sounds more naïve with all the questions she asks such as ‘Then why do they call us charity-children?’ She’s very open with what she asks and doesn’t hold back. She wants to know everything. She’s a lot less educated than the second speaker and less formal in her speech which is sometimes structured in a way which is different from the way we naturally talk which makes it harder to read aloud, for example ‘then this house does not belong to that tall lady who wears a watch, and who said we were to have some bread and cheese’. She also says unnatural things such as ‘that tall lady who wears a watch’, however; when we speak we would say that woman over there.
The second speaker is much more formal in her speech and uses much more complex vocabulary, for example, ‘Different benevolent-minded ladies and gentlemen in this neighbourhood and in London’. This also suggests that she is more educated than Jane and she also seems a lot older and a lot more knowledgeable. She starts off quite patient with Jane’s questions and answers her quite patiently but towards the end she seems to be getting a lot less patient and her answers get a lot shorter such as when Jane asks if she likes the teachers and she answers ‘well enough’. She also seems quite cold and matter of fact when she’s speaking such as when she says to Jane ‘are not either your father or your mother dead?’ The second girl is also less honest and open, for instance, when Jane asks her if she’s happy she answers ‘You ask rather too many questions, I have given you answers enough for the present: now I want to read.’ This as quite a tired tone and suggests that she is not entirely happy there but doesn’t want to tell Jane that.
This extract is much more structured than the transcript. The sentences in the extract are much longer with one complex sentence lasting 6 lines. The use of language is different for both speakers and the use of different tones and sentence length makes each of the speakers sound very different. However, both the transcript and the extract are similar in the respect that the use of pauses and tones in both pieces give a good idea of the feeling of the people talking. In the transcript the use of the pause in the sentence ‘we had these (.) three aunties and uncles’ gives a sense of reflection and suggests that he is thinking about his past and is a very reflective tone. In the extract, sentences such as ‘What is Lowood Institution?’ suggests Jane’s naivety and youth whereas sentences such as ‘Because fifteen pounds is not enough for board and teaching, and the deficiency is supplied by subscription’, suggests the other girls knowledge of her surroundings and the use of language suggests she is well educated.
