Although both pieces are clearly interviewing one person (so there are fluent adjacency pairs throughout), because the Extract A is a transcript of spontaneous interaction, the language will be largely informal, and have many voice-filled pauses (“it’s er the latest raid er”) and other paralinguistic features. Extract B on the other hand will have been semi-scripted, and typically magazine articles tend to print answers given in interviews in Standard English, and eliminate voice filled pauses and other informal speech features to so the graphology of the interview looks credible and professional.
Turnball is clearly in the dominant role in Extract A and we can see this by the way he opens the conversation to inform the audience about the interview and current information the police have on the heroin investigation. He then gives the cue to the police officer, Garett by saying, “so er twelve thousand pounds worth ey er Mr Garett”. By indirectly allowing Garett to speak, it tells the audience that Turnball is leading this conversation. Turnball also asks the questions, therefore deciding the topic of the next response he receives. Although Garett does not have lengthy, developed answers he does not change the topic (therefore creating a topic shift) nor does he interrupt Turnball when he is speaking. It is most likely that Turnball is allowing Garett to speak largely to keep the audiences attention on the police investigation. The more information the public is given, the more inclined they are to continue listening to the programme.
This clear dominant role is seen in Extract B also- there are set questions asked and in no way dictate the direction of the conversation. Overend’s role is predominantly subordinate. He obviously has no intention of interrupting the interview and trying to hold the “floor”. The fact that the questions are printed in bold in comparison to normal font of the answers shows the questions are leading the interview.
The spontaneous spoken interaction between Turnball and Garrett are full of non fluency features for example, words are typically elided throughout “contuinin’” “gatherin’” “watchin”. This is most likely due to accent and habit and possibly because words are easier to pronounce when they are elided. Extract B however betrays no elision or ellipsis which could be due to more than one reason. The cyclist consistently uses low frequency lexis and polysyllabic words “high-performance” “efficient” “suspension” “participation” which suggests he is eloquent and educated. It may be that he pronounces words in their entirety even during spontaneous speech. On the other hand, the magazine editors may have deliberately edited the interview as it would be a lot harder to read it if the utterances were typed out exactly as they were said.
The semantic field of both the extracts are extremely different: where one is full of police jargon “intelligence” “source” “inspector”, the other uses word specific to the field of bikes “suspension systems” “hardtail”. By using words such as intelligence and source, it makes Garrett sound as though he is deeply involved with the case. Likewise, the semantics of Extract B helps the Overend sound in his element and professional. He is using language that only other serious cyclists will probably understand.
Sabiha Museji
15/12/2008 15:15:00 -