Incongruous Short Answers

[JuanTwoThree]

Lolwhites mentioned in passing that short anwers are not always congruous, which got me thinking:

"Shall we dance?" "Yes, we shall." is very weird

"Might I be of assistance?" "Yes, you might" odd

What about the mismatch brevity-wise of "Coming?" "Yes, I am" ?

More please.

[lolwhites]

"Can you tell me the time?" "Yes, I can." (= please slap me)
"May I open the window?" "No, you may not." (Hey, I was only asking...)

If someone asks me "Are you a teacher?" I'll probably answer "Yes, I work at..." i.e. expand a little. "Yes, I am," sounds uncooperative, as though I only wished to give a bare minimum.

[abufletcher]

What your getting at here is the ACTION performed by the "first pair part" actually vs. its syntactic shape.

A: Do you have the time? (Conventionalized request)
B: It's 10:30. (Granting of the request)


A: Do you have the time?
B: Yes, I do. (Treats prior turn as question not request)

Furthermore, by doing any action other than the systematically preferred next action (a granting following a request) B foreshadows the doing of a dispreferred next action (refusal).

The answers to all these things and more can be found in the literature on Conversation Analysis. Too bad that these things will remain a mystery for the vast majority of the world's EFL teachers.

[lolwhites]

The answers to all these things and more can be found in the literature on Conversation Analysis. Too bad that these things will remain a mystery for the vast majority of the world's EFL teachers.

You're preaching to the converted. I don't think they're a mystery to most of the regulars here.

[JuanTwoThree]

"John, can you spell thorough?"

Me (John) "Yes, I can." (silence)

"John, do you know how to say oak in Spanish?"

"Yes, I do"

[fluffyhamster]

Abu, you expressed an aversion to grammatical terminology, but you sure don't mind throwing around a fair bit of terminology yourself (though from CA rather than grammar per se)! That being said, I'll admit that it might be functionally illuminating, those sorts of labels, for those who get into the habit of bandying them around...but ultimately, like lol's said, you're preaching to the converted, and I think we can come to a few reasonably sound conclusions just through exercising our intuitions (despite what you might have said about intuition).

[abufletcher]

Thinking and talking about stuff in an online forum is a fine thing and to be encouraged. But it would be pretty ridiculous if someone who was interested in, for example, the teaching of grammar or listening or process writing never actually read any of the literature in those fields and instead just spent his or her time reinventing the wheel.

But that seems to be exactly what people do when it comes to the organization of conversation. For example, how many people here have read the following seminal publication?

Sacks, H.,Schegloff, E.A., &. Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turntaking in conversation. Language, 50(4), 696-735.

BTW, this article has been cited more frequently that ANY OTHER paper ever to have appeared in Language. I've used the terminology of CA a number of times in posts on this forum to try to suggest that there is indeed a fully developed literature in this field if people are really interested.

[abufletcher]

For those interested in going beyond forum discussions, I would also strongly recommend the following:

Atkinson, J. M. & Heritage, J. (Eds.). (1984). Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This edited volume, though not directly related to EFL, gives a very good feel for the sorts of issues that anyone teaching conversational interaction should absolutely be familiar with.

Not knowing this stuff is equivalent to an ESL/EFL teacher having no clue about verb tenses. In fact, I'd say that "preference organization" is as fundamental (if not more fundamental) to spoken interaction as traditional ideas like "word order."

[fluffyhamster]

Not knowing this stuff is equivalent to an ESL/EFL teacher having no clue about verb tenses.

I don't think anyone would argue that having at least a nodding acquaintance with Discourse Analysis, CA etc can be interesting and useful for a language teacher, but I'm not sure that I myself would particularly want or need to read beyond whatever general textbooks (of which I've bought more than a few) are currently available on these matters (i.e. I'm probably not going to be hunting down journals from 1974, or possibly out-of-print books from 1984, sorry!).

[strider]

I'm not sure if this is congruous or just plain flippant:

How many people work in your department?

- About half of them!

[Stephen Jones]

A simplest systematics for the organization of turntaking in conversation.

What does it call what we often see in this forum, where abufletcher often takes his turn, and everybody else's as well?

[tigertiger]

[/quote]
I don't think anyone would argue that having at least a nodding acquaintance with Discourse Analysis, CA etc can be interesting and useful for a language teacher, but I'm not sure that I myself would particularly want or need to read beyond whatever general textbooks (of which I've bought more than a few) are currently available on these matters (i.e. I'm probably not going to be hunting down journals from 1974, or possibly out-of-print books from 1984, sorry!). [/quote]

In addition to the above
How many of us have bought books only to find they are not so useful afterwards?
How many of us can afford to drag a lot of books around Asia?
How many of us find it really valuable to plug into the years of knowledge, experience and insight that you guys can offer?
How many of us have the time?

[tigertiger]

So you're a teacher?
Yes.

What do you teach?
Children mostly?

[abufletcher]

What does it call what we often see in this forum, where abufletcher often takes his turn, and everybody else's as well?

If you'd read the most cited article ever in Language, you'd know the answer: Self-selection (Rule 1b). And when no next-speaker selects at the end of this turn (i.e. if no one responds), current speaker may continue speaking (Rule 1c).

And your post represents a rude and hostile example of Rule 1a: Current speaker selects next speaker.

[JuanTwoThree]

I'm not sure that waiting 6 minutes at 4.30 in the morning GMT is exactly an application of 1c

In fact the norms of turn taking on a web forum are very interesting. You can't indicate by body language who you think should answer (so 1a is tricky). You can be in a dialogue but get an answer from a third person and do nothing about it. You can be in a dialogue and not get an answer for days. For some reason though double postings are frowned on. Repair strategies even include editing an original post. And so on.

So I can ask this question, directed at one particular person but have no expectations of getting an answer, or can expect to get an answer from a complete unknown:

Abufletcher, has it occurred to you that some people prefer to keep their learning, such as it is, under wraps and to ask the occasional faux-naif question in a vaguely Socratic manner, although they know more, though in my case not much more, about something than they seem to Perhaps they prefer to keep things simple on a forum such as this. After all, it is only too easy to unintentionally sound self-important and know-it-all.

So how can you tell the difference between naif and faux-naif? Tricky that one. It's probably best to err on the side of caution and not tell people what they are getting at when they might know what they're getting at but aren't for some reason letting on that they do know what they're getting at.

Look, it's round and if you attach four to that sledge thing then you can pull it more easily.