Conversational analysis

The form of the piece of writing is – a conversation between a policeman and an eye witness. The main purpose of the conversation is based upon: transactional language which was driven by the needs and wants of the authoritative speaker, as the policeman needed information about the accident. The tone of the conversation has a high register as it’s a dominant figure asking questions about the event; however the high register juxtaposes the low register from person – B.

Throughout, the conversation it is clear that person: A is a figure of authority, for instance – a policeman. We see this through the use of interrogatives used within the conversation, ‘did you see what happened?’ this signifies that this person has power, the use of formal lexis gives the impression that the speaker is of a higher class, oppose to the second speaker. Whereas speaker – B, uses everyday lexis showing they don’t have much authority or may not have been well educated when younger, they also use taboo/colloquial language: ‘bloody’, which shows their informal persona. It seems like speaker – B, was an eye witness as he acts like he is in shock due to all the pauses taken when speaking, therefore could still be scared of what he just encountered.

 The conversation occurred because an accident arose, therefore speaker – A, needed to discover as much information as possible as to what had happened at the scene of the accident. The non-fluency features used from speaker – B, also help to show he was still in shock as he couldn’t really get his words out to answer speaker – A, who appears to be the dominant as he dictates the conversation the entire time. The use of the words: ‘umm’, ‘err’, - the non-fluency words, interrupt the flow of the conversation, whereas the figure of authority is straight to the point and knows exactly what he is going to say. Person – A and person – B, are demonstrating: turn-taking, as person – A, is purposely pausing so person – B is able to join in with the conversation, however most of the time we see a domineering person throughout the conversation, in this case, person – A, is dominating the conversation.  

Person – B also uses the technique: hedging, ‘he must have’, this technique is used to show uncertainty, it is used to weaken the force of what is being said, and this could have been used because the eye witness may not have been certain and confident about what he saw and he doesn’t want to give false evidence. One of Grice’s maxims is used within the conversation: relevance, which means – the conversation is kept relevant to the topic being discussed. Therefore the policeman is only asking the eye witness relevant and significant questions about the accident, there is no straying off topic, only appropriate information. Also, there is a huge use of – deixis within the conversation, focusing on: distal, these deictic expressions include: that, there and then. These are mainly used by: person – B, ‘then then this car comes racing down the hill’, and ‘I turned around there was a bloody body’. The repetition of ‘then’, shows he is still in astonishment from the event, as he can’t seem to tell the series of events fluently.