Abstract
The study entitled. “Language and Interactional Discourse: Deconstructing the Talk - Generating Machinery in Natural Conversation,” is an analysis of spontaneous and informal conversation. The study, carried out in the theoretical and methodological tradition of Ethnomethodology, was aimed at explicating how ordinary talk is organized and produced, how people coordinate their talk –in- interaction, how meanings are determined, and the role of talk in the wider social processes. The study followed the basic assumption of conversation analysis which is, that talk is not just a product of two ‘speakers - hearers’ who attempt to exchange information or convey messages to each other. Rather, participants in conversation are seen to be mutually orienting to, and collaborating in order to achieve orderly and meaningful communication. The analytic objective is therefore to make clear these procedures on which speakers rely to produce utterances and by which they make sense of other speakers’ talk. The datum used for this study was a recorded informal conversation between two (and later three) middle- class civil servants who are friends. The recording was done in such a way that the participants were not aware that they were being recorded. The recording was later transcribed in a way that we believe is faithful to the spontaneity and informality of the talk. Our finding showed that conversation has its own features and is an ordered and structured social day by- day event. Specifically, utterances are designed and informed by organized procedures, methods and resources which are tied to the contexts in which they are produced, and which participants are privy to by virtue of their membership of a culture or a natural language community. Keywords: Language, Discourse and Conversation
Highlights
Talking is something most of us do all the time and enjoy doing
Mama Nkechi’s response in “what is it, Mama Udoka,” and “Oh! Is it the bombings and killing of innocent citizens of the country by Boko Haram?”, functions to signal to Mama Udoka that she was following the talk and understood the “topic” of the talk .part of the structure of conversational opening has to do with the positioning of topics within the conversation (Schegloff and Sacks 1973)
As intimate friends and neighbours, Mama Udoka knows that Mama Nkechi will certainly respond to her question in some way or by asking for further information or clarification
Summary
Talking is something most of us do all the time and enjoy doing. This is because we conduct virtually all our day - day business through the medium of talk-in-interaction (conversation) which could be transactional (for the purpose of getting something done) or interactional (for the purpose of maintaining social relationship). Bygate (1987:Vii ) aptly captures it : “teaching speaking skills is in many ways undervalued”. He goes ahead to argue that speaking is a skill which deserves every bit of attention as much as literacy skills
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