An example of slang on James’ behalf is “// nah, I aint done it”, He uses ‘nah’ instead of no or nope and ‘aint’ instead of haven’t. This would imply that James is young and/or is post modern orator.
An example of an interruption is featured in the extract below.
“Sara: (4) You’ve been doing work all day… (.)
and you don’t know what the date is…//
James: //Nah…”
The (.) represents a one second pause which could be accounted for, by a moment of thought, by Sara thinking about what she would say next. After Sara says her next sentence, James interrupts with slang. “//” represents slang, the notation for slang starts when the person is interrupted, at the point at which they were interrupted, and is used again to show the point at which the interrupter interrupts.
Scripted English is very different from spontaneous English as scripted English lacks non-fluency features, and all the features of spontaneous spoken English, mentioned above. Because each person or actor that has scripted lines knows what he/she will say before he/she even says it / before it goes ‘live’. This shows that the speakers have rehearsed and that there will be no spontaneous spoken English features.
Being a spontaneous piece, there are not a lot of pauses, which shows that both people are quick thinkers and are used to the situation of the human interaction & act of conversation. That they are expecting, in a sense, the answer or question that the other one gave. With so little pauses, the conversation seems rather professional.
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The two people speaking in my transcript have a relationship of teacher and pupil. Sara, As mentioned earlier, is a teacher who maintains an isolation room, who is 43 years of age; James is a pupil who has been put into isolation, and is 13 years of age. The difference in age, of 30 years, influences the conversation quite dramatically. Sara does not really alter the language of which she uses, and neither does James, but evidently, they both use rather different language. The language choices don’t merge; this could be because of the relationship between the two people, or the environment of which the two people are in. It’s plausible to say that the two people are not really from the same class of people, but do belong in the same region as each other. Their speech mannerisms are notable similar, in a sense, but in other senses, they differ completely. How ever in another transcription between people of various classes, regions, ages or gender, these languages choices may be apparent.
An example of the merge of linguistic choices between the two speakers in the transcript is apparent below.
“Sara: (9) So what’s this you’re doing? Have you done your English yet //
James: // nah, I aint done it //
Sara: // You ‘aint’ done it? You’re doing an English piece(.) You need to use decent grammar?”
As shown above, the evident difference between the linguistic choices is rather apparent. Sara uses full and proper English, while James uses slang. Sara’s sentences are properly structured and use full and proper English, but she pauses for quite long lengths of time. While James doesn’t use many, but his sentences are poorly structured, short and feature a lot of slang. It seems that Sara, with her level of maturity compared to James’ has developed her skill of conversation which is quite evident in the transcription.
The language choice and use from James differs quite a lot from standard spoken English, as he’s speaking in slang and is possibly annoyed to be isolated, away from his friends, and his normal routine. No semantic fields are used in the conversation covered by my transcript, this is possible because a specific subject is not the subject of conversation; The conversation is quite general, and is speaking only about English, and because Sara isn’t a English specialist teacher, and also because of the fact that the conversation doesn’t get very detailed into the actual work being done, no semantic fields are used.
If a third party were to read this transcript I’m confident that he/she would understand it, as it starts from the start of the conversation, and ends when the conversation dies. There are no semantic fields to understand, the and conversation isn’t that detailed, so it should be rather simple to understand. Everything spoken about is pretty self-explanatory and for this reason, it’d be easy to comprehend.
If a third party were to be introduced to, and try to understand the transcript, I don’t really think it would help much for said third party to be present at the time of the conversation.
The nature of the spoken English in my script is a general day-to-day conversation between an teaching adult at a school, and a pupil that’s been entered into isolation. The purpose of this conversation is to motivate James (the pupil) to continue with his work, and make the most of his time in school, and not waste it.
