The English of Conversation.ppt

西方语言学院 小教班 马春阳 2012062014 About Conversation Conversation refers to the act or an instance of talking together. For example, a familiar talk between friends; a verbal exchange of ideas, opinions, etc. between businessmen; an informal conference on a problem or area of interest by representatives of governments, parties, etc. Generally speaking, daily conversations have something in common: Informality Inexplicitness Normal non-fluency Lexical banality Syntactic looseness Randomness of subject matter The English of Conversation phonological features lexical features syntactic / grammatical features semantic featurres Phonological Features音韵学特点 In daily conversations, the participants naturally use different phonological devices, such as pitch, short or long pauses, slow or quick tempo, elision, stress, and different kinds of intonation patterns. Another phonological feature is the frequent use of contractiions. Such as dont, Im, hes. Overlapping of words or phrases of the participants is also very common in conversation. Normal non-fluency is very common in conversation. Apart from the use of phonological devices, participants in a conversation often resort to some para-linguistic devices, such as smiles, laughters, sobs, crys. Lexical Features词汇特点 Stylistic features of daily conversation at the lexical level are very obvious. The most noticeable one is the use of informal, monosyllabic, Anglo-Saxon words. Another obvious feature at this level is the use of colloquial words, such as yeah(yes), cos (because), kinda(kind of). Colloquial expressions and idioms, such as in the same boat(in the same situation), face the music(meet the worst). Phrasal verbs, such as to come up against(to meet), to look into(to investigate). Slang and jargon words. Such as to dig (to understand), a rat (a first year student). General words. Such as thing, do, colors, go, come. Pronouns, especially first and second person pronous, often occur in conversation. Syntactic / Grammatical