Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T18:34:09.374Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - The Realism of Conversation in Literature

from Part I - Literature and Spoken Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2019

Christian Jones
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
Get access

Summary

This chapter analyses conversations from a corpus of literature in order to uncover the extent to which these conversations contain typical features of spoken language, such as vague language and discourse markers. Such features have long been identified as key features of spoken language in corpora based on unscripted conversations (Carter and McCarthy ). The extent to which naturally occurring spoken language is similar to and different from literary conversations has been researched within the field of stylistics (e.g. Hughes ; Semino and Short ), but the extent to which conversations in literature could provide a useful model for learners of English as a Foreign Language and English as a Second Language (EFL/ESL) is less clear. Drawing upon corpus data from the CLiC Dickens corpus (Mahlberg et al. ) and the BYU-BNC spoken corpus (Davies ), this chapter seeks to explore how often common features occur and whether the frequency of occurrence is significant in comparison to data from unscripted conversations. We also explore the data qualitatively to examine whether the functions of common spoken language features differ or are similar. In doing so, we hope to uncover the extent to which conversations in literature can offer a plausible model of spoken English for EFL or ESL learners.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adolphs, S. and Carter, R. 2013. Spoken Corpus Linguistics: From Monomodal to Multimodal. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aijmer, K. 1984. ‘“Sort of” and “kind of” in English conversation’, Studia Linguistica 38: 118128.Google Scholar
Amador-Moreno, C. P. 2010. ‘How can corpora be used to explore literary speech representation?’, in O’Keeffe, A. and McCarthy, M. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Abingdon: Routledge, 531544.Google Scholar
Baker, P. 2010. ‘Corpus methods in linguistics’, in Litosseliti, Lia (ed.), Research Methods in Linguistics. London: Continuum, 93113.Google Scholar
Barnbrook, G. 1996. Language and Computers: A Practical Introduction to the Computer Analysis of Language. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. and Finegan, E. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: LongmanGoogle Scholar
Brezina, V. 2018. Lancaster Stats Tools Online. Available at: http://corpora.lancs.ac.uk/stats/toolbox.php (Accessed 22 July 2018).Google Scholar
Buttery, P. and McCarthy, M. 2012. ‘Lexis in spoken discourse’, in Gee, J. P. and Handford, M. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Abingdon: Routledge, 285300.Google Scholar
Carter, R. 1998. ‘Orders of reality: CANCODE communication, and culture’, ELT Journal 52(1): 4356.Google Scholar
Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. 1997. Exploring Spoken English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. 2006. Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. 2017. ‘Spoken grammar: Where are we are and where are we going?’, Applied Linguistics 38(1): 120.Google Scholar
Carter, R. and McRae, J. (eds.) 1996. Language, Literature and the Learner: Creative Classroom Practice. Oxford: Routledge.Google Scholar
CLiC. 2018. Corpus of Linguistics in Content. Available at: https://clic.bham.ac.uk/ (Accessed 1 May 2018).Google Scholar
Council of Europe. 2001. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Language, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davies, M. 2004. BYU-BNC (based on the British National Corpus from Oxford University Press). Available at: https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/ (Accessed 2 May 2018).Google Scholar
Firth, J. R. 1957. Papers in Linguistics 1934–51. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Greaves, C. and Warren, M. 2010. ‘What can a corpus tell us about multi-word units?’ in O’Keeffe, A. and McCarthy, M. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Abingdon: Routledge, 212226.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. and Matthiessen, C. 2013. Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar (4th edn). Oxford: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hart, M. 2019. Gutenberg, Project. Available at: www.gutenberg.org (Accessed 26 February 2019).Google Scholar
Hoey, M. 2005. Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hughes, R. 1996. English in Speech and Writing: Investigating Language and Literature. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hunston, S. 2002. Corpora in Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, C. and Waller, D. 2015. Corpus Linguistics for Grammar: A Guide for Research. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jones, C., Byrne, S. and Halenko, N. 2017. Successful Spoken English: Findings from Learner Corpora. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leech, G., 2000. ‘Grammars of spoken English: New outcomes of corpus-oriented research’, Language Learning 50(4): 675724.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leech, G. and Short, M. 2007. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. 1993. The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and the Way Forward. Hove: Language Teaching.Google Scholar
Lin, Y. L. 2013. ‘Vague language and interpersonal communication: An analysis of adolescent intercultural conversation’, International Journal of Society, Culture & Language 1(2): 6981.Google Scholar
Mahlberg, M. and Smith, C. 2012. ‘Dickens, the suspended quotation and the corpus’, Language and Literature 21(1): 5165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mahlberg, M., Stockwell, P., de Joode, J., Smith, C. and O’Donnell, B. 2016. ‘CLiC Dickens: Novel uses of concordances for the integration of corpus stylistics and cognitive poetics’, Corpora 11(3): 433463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, M. 2010. ‘Spoken fluency revisited’, English Profile Journal 1(1): 115.Google Scholar
McCarthy, M. and McCarten, J. 2018. ‘Now you’re talking! Practising conversation in second language learning’, in Jones, C. (ed.), Practice in Second Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 729.Google Scholar
McEnery, T. and Hardie, A. 2012. Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McEnery, T., Xiao, R. and Tono, Y. 2006. Corpus-Based Language Studies: An Advanced Resource Book. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
McRae, J. 1991. Literature with a Small ‘l’. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
O’Keeffe, A., McCarthy, M. and Carter, R. 2007. From Corpus to Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Oakes, M. P. 1998. Statistics for Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Rayson, P. 2018. UCREL’s Log-Likelihood and Effect Size Calculator. Available at: http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/llwizard.html (Accessed 22 July 2018).Google Scholar
Rühlemann, C. 2007. Conversation in Context: A Corpus-Driven Approach. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Schmitt, N. 2010. Researching Vocabulary: A Vocabulary Research Manual. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segundo, P. R. S. 2016. ‘A corpus-stylistic approach to Dickens’ use of speech verbs: Beyond mere reporting’, Language and Literature 25(2): 113129.Google Scholar
Semino, E. and Short., M. 2004. Corpus Stylistics: Speech Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Writing. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Short, M. 1996. Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Short, M. 2012. ‘Discourse presentation and speech (and writing, but not thought) summary’, Language and Literature 21(1): 1832.Google Scholar
Stubbs, M. 2008. ‘Conrad in the computer: Examples of quantitative stylistic analysis’, in Carter, R. and Stockwell, P. (eds.), The Language and Literature Reader. London: Routledge, 230243.Google Scholar
Tannen, D. 1990. ‘Ordinary conversation and literary discourse: Coherence and the poetics of repetition’, Annals of the New York Academy of Science 583(1): 1530.Google Scholar
Thornbury, S. and Slade, D. 2006. Conversation: From Description to Pedagogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Timmis, I. 2013. ‘Spoken language research: The applied linguistic challenge’, in Tomlinson, B. (ed.), Applied Linguistics and Materials Development. London: Bloomsbury, 7994.Google Scholar
Tognini-Bonelli, E. 2001. Corpus Linguistics at Work. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Wiegland, V., Mahlberg, M. and Stockwell, P. 2017. CLiC 1.61 User Guide. Available at: www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-artslaw/elal/clic/CLiC-1-6-1-documentation-2017-11-08.pdf (Accessed 23 August 2018).Google Scholar
Wray, A. 2002. Formulaic Language and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×