|
Talking on a Second Channel Using Parentheticals in English Discourse
Wayne B. Dickerson
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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
- A. 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 rich 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
good ness 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, 163-172.
Dickerson, W. (1989). Stress in the speech stream: The rhythm
of spoken English. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
|
Hahn, L. and Dickerson, W. (1999a). Speechcraft: Discourse
pronunciation for advanced learners. The University of Michigan
Press.
Hahn, L. and Dickerson, W. (1999b). Speechcraft: Workbook for
international TA discourse. The University of Michigan Press.
|
