Commentary on the film 'Save The Last Dance'.

Throughout all 3 extracts turn taking is present. Each character takes a turn in both listening and speaking. Characters go out of their way to make one utterance relevant to another character, applying the co – operative principle. Such as ‘I don’t get you guys’ (extract 1), here Sara involves Derek on her thoughts about him and Malakai.

According to an American linguistic philosopher H Paul Grice, there are four particular ways, which people co-operate in conversation, now known as Grice’s Maxims.

These maxims are widely kept by all the characters. The four maxims are as follows, Maxim of Quality, Quantity, manner and relevance.

Keeping to the maxim of quality the characters tell the truth and do not say what they think is false or make statements, which lack evidence. An example of this is where Sara tells the truth ‘I think Malakai’s scary’. However Snookie goes against this maxim (known as conversational implicuture) to Malakai when he tells him ‘did I tell you…how chill it is to have you back’. He obviously does not think this but feels that this is what Malakai wants to hear from him.

The characters mainly keep the maxim of quantity, keeping to sentences neither too long nor too short eg, ‘I thought you would like it’ (extract 2). However by all characters except Malakai break this maxim at some point. In extract 1 Derek tells Sara of his history with Malakai. He talks a lot about it whilst she does nothing but listen. In extract 2 Sara speaks for a long time about her mother. Whilst in extract 3 Snookie also breaks the maxim, when he tells Derek about how he should go back to his girlfriend.

The last two maxims are closely related, the maxim of manner and of relevance. The only character who goes against these is Snookie, he rambles on without sticking to the point whilst creating obscurity and ambiguity. An example of this is when he tells Derek in extract one, ‘that was harsh the way she cancelled your ass, like a stamp for that Howard U dude.’

Other features of turn taking are present such as overlapping, when two characters say something at the same time. In extract 1 Derek says ‘I know’ at the same time as Sara says ‘Derek’. However this only occurs twice, the other time Snookie says ‘no good’ whilst Malakai shouts ‘Medicine man’ however this is due to the fact that he thinks himself superior to Snookie and feels he can cut off his conversation.

In all the extracts I feel that there is equal discourse rights between the characters. In extracts 1 and 3 Derek holds the floor, he shows this by talking about himself and also by asking, the other member of the conversation, questions. However Sara takes the floor in extract 2 whilst talking of her mum.

Paralinguistics are noted in my transcript as the action the squared brackets. These help to interpret the explicit and hidden meanings in what a character is saying and thinking. When Sara looks at the ground it is because she is hiding something from Derek. Along with paralinguistic features are prosodic features, including intonations, rhythm and pitch. These help to convey the impression of punctuation. Other suprasegmental features could not be noted in my transcript. However the characters raise the pitch opf their sentence whilst excited such as when Snookie is excited to see Malakai he speaks in a higher pitch than normal. The characters also speak faster when speaking for a larger time than usual, but I think this is to maintain the audiences interest. Stress is added to words such as ‘mother fucker’ and ‘fuck’, in my opinion this is just to emphasise their rebellious attitude.