Conversation structure

     When we talk, we possess a thing calls floor, which is the right to speak. Having control of floor is called a turn. Everyone wants to have a control of turn, which is turn-taking. After one person talk, it is the turn for the second person to talk. During transition, long silence and overlap are possible. If the second person doesn’t talk, it is attributed to the second person, which is an attributable silence. At the same time, some people hold the floor for a long time to prevent other people from talking. Yet, the speaker still expect their partners are listening which can be indicated by doing backchannel signals or backchannels. The person who is active in a conversation is called high involvement style while the person who doesn’t talk a lot is engaging in  a high considerateness style.

        In daily conversation, adjacency pairs occur frequently. The utterance of a first part immediately creates an expectation of the utterance of a second part. If the first part is a request, invitation, or an offer, the preferred social act which is shown in the second part is accept. If a person refuse or decline, it is considered dispreferred social act.

Speech Acts

According to Yule (chapter 6) speech acts are actions performed via utterances. Forms of speech acts include but are not limited to apologies, commands, requests, promises and warnings.

Humor

According to the powerpoint seen in class last week, Humor is "a verbal utterance that contains two incongruent scripts and provide a resolution for this incongruence." Therefore, when a speaker expresses humor, they express two ideas that are like propositions. The listener analyses both propositions, the speaker then violates the cooperative principle. Humor joins in both politeness and the cooperative principle because when creating humor, one may play between saying something or not saying nothing at all. In addition they are violating Grice's Maxims at different levels to make create humor. It is easier to tell a joke to a friend than a stranger, although comedians share humor with strangers, which it a bigger task. Trying to make humor for an audience is much more difficult than sharing a joke to your friend. The concept of closeness and/or politeness is always at play in humor. Imagine standing in a different part of the word, what your culture may find humorous may not be in another.