ENGLISH TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT ANALYSIS
‘bout 5 centimeters (3)
then below the start of that line about towards the bottom just up from the
bottom (2) draw (.) like (.)an opening or closing bracket but like horizontal and
on it’s side, so like a curved line over the top’
At the start of this excerpt the speaker shows their local dialect in
how they say ‘about’ in that they cut off the ‘a’ out of habit. This serves to
quicken the rate at which they speak. It can also be inferred that as they are
speaking informally to the other person as they are talking in their local
dialect.
After this, there is a 3 second pause (which during a conversation is a
considerable length of time) when the speaker waits for the other person to
catch up to the point they have explained to, whilst simultaneously trying to
think what to say for the next part of the explanation. The pause also allows
the conversation to keep going, despite temporarily stopping, as the other
person can catch up without having to interrupt the flow of the conversation by
asking the speaker to stop. From that you can infer that the speaker is
instructing/explaining the other person on how to do something as they are
taking care to make sure the other person is able to keep up with what they are
saying as well as from the nature of the way they are talking to the other
person.
The speaker also uses fillers in their speech (in this case ‘like’),
punctuated by short pauses, as they quickly think of how to explain the next
part of the task to the other person coherently and so they can follow the
instructions given, It also allows the speaker to utilise simile’s in their
explanation. The example of this in this excerpt is ‘(.)like (.) an opening … bracket’ which gives more detail when
explaining what the thing is and allows the other party to visualise what they
need to do. The use of similes in this context (explanation) is that it makes
the other person image in their mind which is easier than having to explain it
with words.
A really good section to select and you focus on some significant aspects. Check the difference between dialect and accent. I really liked your exploration of the pause - it would be useful to comment that the other participant does not need to take a turn and so surmise that the pause was the right length, showing the sensitivity of the speaker to the task and what the other participant could accomplish: a difficult task since they (you) could not see one another. Also check its/it's as used in the quote. Do you think "like" is a filler here? I read it as part of a simile but it could be a filler in a metaphor, potenitally. You could weigh it up. There are micropauses areound the first one, which would make me lean towards 'filler' but the use of the second "like" without them just after suggests that this speaker is using similes to create imagery in order to communicate the abstract shapes. This kind of discussion is very high level.
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