| |
|
Bureau
of Educational and Cultural Affairs
OFFICE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAMS
Home > English
Language Programs > Teaching
Pragmatics > Talking on a Second Channel
Talking on a Second Channel Using Parentheticals in English Discourse
Wayne B. Dickerson
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States
Level: Advanced level students
Time: 30 minutes
Resources: Teacher-prepared text materials, handouts and/or overheads
to use in the exercises
Goals: To learn to pronounce a range of parentheticals appropriately
(Parentheticals are expressions used to direct a message, to tell a listener
how the speaker feels about a message, to manage the interpretation of
the main message, to exemplify something, or to show deference or express
something politely.)
Description of the Activity
The teacher helps learners understand what parentheticals are, what kinds
are typical, what functions they have in discourse, and what they must
sound like to be understood as parentheticals. For this purpose, the teacher
gives examples of different types of parentheticals in dialogues, emphasizing
their unique pronunciation. Students may also offer examples. The teacher
models spoken parentheticals in context and asks for group and individual
mimicry. Students then work in pairs to embellish pre-fabricated dialogues
with phrase-final parentheticals selected from a range of choices. They
rehearse their respective turns in order to achieve the desired sound
qualities then use the dialogues as roleplays for the class. The teacher
and classmates monitor the quality of delivery, offering suggestions and
corrections as necessary.
Procedure
- The teacher prepares an overhead and/or handout listing the types
of phrase-final parentheticals common in conversation, with examples
of each. Six of 10 types of parentheticals are listed in the following
table, with examples. (See the Alternatives section for the remaining
four).
|
Final address forms
...(student's name)
...sir ...Dr. Evans
|
Final reporting expressions
...she said ...he whined
...he replied ...they shouted
|
Final assessment expressions
...I expect ...I'm afraid
...I hope ...I'll bet
|
Final exemplifiers
...for example ...and the like
...and so on ...for instance
|
Final sentence adverbials
...fortunately ...actually
...though ...in fact
|
Final polite expressions
...thank you ...if you could
...if you would ...please
|
- The teacher comments on the function of these final parentheticals,
emphasizing their role as a secondary message channel to direct the
message (address forms), to tell the listener how the speaker feels
about message itself (assessment expressions, sentence adverbials),
to manage the interpretation of the main message (reporting expressions,
exemplifiers), and to show deference (polite expressions).
- The teacher demonstrates the four auditory clues speakers use to
tell listeners to switch channels from the main message to the secondary
message. In final position, parentheticals (1) occur after a slight
pause, (2) do not carry primary stress (the heaviest stress of the phrase),
(3) are spoken with low volume, and (4) stay in the low pitch range,
having no major pitch change except, possibly, a very slight rise at
the end. The teacher makes the point that listeners depend on these
cues to interpret a word or a word string as a parenthetical. Without
these clues, listeners will at first take the word or word string as
part of the main message. When the main message does not make sense,
listeners will have to try to sort out primary from secondary messages.
This process may interfere with understanding.
- The teacher gives to pairs of students dialogues containing hints
about the appropriate category of parenthetical to use at the ends of
phases, and the teacher provides a list of the parentheticals for each
category from which students may make a selection . The lists can be
on an overhead for all to see. Students are directed to be appropriately
expressive in their use of the parentheticals they select, to rehearse
the dialogue aloud using appropriate sound characteristics, and to prepare
to roleplay their dialogue. An example dialogue illustrates the task.
|
Bare-Bones Dialogue with Hints
[Two friends talking]
A. How's your uncle? (address form)?
B. He's doing better. (assessment expression). The
accident wasn't as serious as it might have been. (sentence
adverbial).
A. Can I help in any way? I could bring over some food,
do the shopping, pick up his mail. (exemplifier).
B. It's nice of you to offer. But I think we can manage
OK., (polite expression).
|
Choices for Parenthetical Categories
Final Address Forms
...(student's name)
Final Assessment Expressions
...I suppose ...I guess
...I think ...I believe
Final Sentence Adverbial
...thankfully ..fortunately
...actually ...though
Final Exemplifiers
...for example ...for instance
...etcetera ...and so on
Polite Expression
...thanks ...thank you.
|
- Students perform their rehearsed dialogues in pairs while the teacher
and students monitor the quality of delivery, focusing on the presence
of clear clues to the listener that a parenthetical is present. Feedback
is provided.
Rationale
Conversationalists communicate their attitudes and feelings through the
use of parenthetical comments attached to their phrases and sentences.
When removed, the basic message remains intact. When present, these brief
additions offer a variety of information that enlivens and personalizes
the interaction, develops solidarity, and provides intimate glimpses into
the relationship of the co-speakers.
Learners of English have a natural tendency either to stress heavily
or equally all content words (main nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs)
or to stress the last content word in a phrase more heavily. When they
do so with final parentheticals, the parentheticals sound like part of
the main message rather than like part of a tangential communication.
For example, in the dialogue above, a speaker who puts heavy stress on
the addressee, "How's your uncle Chárles?" will appear
to be referring to Uncle Charles, rather than addressing the question
to Charles, "How's your úncle, Charles?" This interpretation
occurs because listeners expect the main message to have heavy stresses
and final parentheticals to be destressed and spoken quietly on a low
pitch.
Without drawing special attention to the sound features of parentheticals,
learners will miscue listeners unintentionally, signaling them to stay
on the main message channel rather than switch to the secondary message
channel. The consequence for listeners of not switching is that the mix
of main and parenthetical messages on the main channel may not make sense.
The primary phrase stresses are in the wrong place so that incorrect inferences
may be drawn about what listeners should pay attention to. Communication
is disrupted as listeners try to sort out the mixed messages. In the course
of the conversation, intelligibility can suffer as the listeners' attention
is diverted from the ongoing flow of messages.
Conversational parentheticals are not unique to English; they are part
of the language experience all learners of English bring to class. Therefore
the idea of a parenthetical is not new. What is new is the means of communicating
the presence of a parenthetical in a fashion recognizable by native English
listeners. The means -the low pitch, low volume, monotone delivery - runs
counter to the natural inclinations of most learners. For this reason,
explicit guidance in the area of pronunciation is needed. Although few
pronunciation textbooks deal with this topic, the kind of guidance that
students need is straightforward and clear. Furthermore, the task of creating
materials can be minimized because most existing dialogues can be embellished
with parentheticals. Once students gain control of the appropriate signals,
they begin to hear parentheticals more accurately and use them more effectively
in conversation.
An early discussion of the sound characteristics of parentheticals can
be found in Bing (1980). A more recent and fuller discussion of the topic
from the point of view of ESL/EFL instruction, is in Dickerson (1999).
Alternatives and Caveats
Another way to begin the lesson is to present a dialogue with or without
the stress marked and have the students read it aloud, as in the following
colloquial dialogue:
A: What were you doing on Saturday?
B: I was looking for a ten speed bike--a used one.
A: So you cruised the garage sales.
B: You're right, and I found a really nice one.
A: What did you pay for it?
B: 35 bucks!
The dialogue can then be presented a second time, expanded to include
parentheticals. In this second model, the stresses are marked to show
the students that the stress remains on the last content word of the sentence
or phrase. Students also read this dialogue out loud practicing the intonation
pattern. After this step, learners can take over the creative combination
of parentheticals that indicate their own intentions and interpretations
of dialogues as outlined above.
A: What were you doing on Sáturday, Bill?
B: I was looking for a 10-speed bíke--a úsed one, of
course.
A: So you cruised the gárage sales, I'll bet.
B: You're ríght, as a matter of fact, and I found a really
níce one, luckily.
A: What did you páy for it, you skinflint?
B: 35 búcks, can you believe it!
In a follow-up lesson or lessons, learners could be introduced to the
four additional types of parentheticals: final solicitations, final epithets,
final exclamations, and mid-sentence and final repair phrases. Final solicitations
tend to follow a question and function as an invitation for the listener
to take a turn. These include examples such as "Is it okay, do
you think?," "What makes it so difficult, would you say?,"
and "How long is it, would you guess?" (See also the
following table.) Final epithets characterize the addressee, often in
a pejorative or deprecating way (as in the use of "you skinflint"
in the dialogue above. Final exclamations often show speakers' feelings
about what they have said, and they are often idiomatic as in "What
more does he want, for crying out loud? and "I've had enough
of that nonsense, for goodness sake." Finally, mid-sentence
and final repair phrases give speakers, including learners, a way to signal
a repair and to inform the listener to disregard the indicated portion
of the spoken utterance and to substitute different content as in "We'll
start with the classical, I mean, the traditional art form"
and "She's the last…the only candidate, that is."
Because these last four types of parentheticals have such distinct functions,
they might be integrated into different conversational lessons. What links
all 10 types of parentheticals is their stress and intonation, which provides
instructions for listeners on how to interpret the expression.
|
Final solicitations
...do you think?
...would you say?
...would you guess?
Final epithets
...silly
... you klutz
|
Final exclamations
...for crying out loud
...for goodness sake
...if you can believe that
Mid-sentence and final repair phrases
let's make that
that is
I mean
|
References and Suggested Readings
Bing, J. (1980). Aspects of English prosody. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Linguistics Club.
Dickerson, W. (1999). The sound and substance of conversational commentaries.
In L. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning Monograph Series,
9, pp. 163-172.
Back to the top
|
