Unit 3 Section A — Spoken Language: paralinguistic features and turn-taking

Unit 3 Section A asks you to analyse a transcript of spoken language — an interview, conversation, or dialogue. Beyond identifying accent and dialect (covered in U3.SP.SK1), you must explain how speakers use paralinguistic features and manage turn-taking to communicate meaning and manage relationships.

What are paralinguistic features?

Paralinguistic features are the non-verbal elements of communication that accompany spoken words. In a written transcript, they appear as annotations:

• Pauses: (.) = micro-pause; (2) = 2-second pause. Signals hesitation, thought, or deliberate emphasis.
• Stress and emphasis: CAPITALISED words indicate stress — the speaker highlights that word for meaning.
• Latching: = symbol shows no gap between turns — speakers follow on immediately.
• Overlapping speech: [brackets] show where two speakers talk simultaneously.
• Fillers and hesitation: "er", "um", "erm" signal the speaker is thinking; frequent fillers may indicate uncertainty.
• False starts: "I was — I mean — what I'm saying is..." — the speaker self-corrects mid-utterance.
• Laughter: ((laughs)) — indicates rapport, nervousness, sarcasm, or deflection.
• Rising/falling intonation: rising (↑) signals question or uncertainty; falling (↓) signals statement or finality.

What is turn-taking?

Speakers take turns to speak, managed by Transition Relevance Places (TRPs) — moments where it is appropriate for someone else to speak (usually at the end of a sentence or intonation contour).

Adjacency pairs: many conversational turns come in linked pairs:

• Question → Answer
• Greeting → Greeting
• Complaint → Apology or Justification
• Compliment → Acceptance or Deflection

Interruption vs cooperative overlap:

• Interruption: one speaker starts before the other reaches a natural completion — often face-threatening or dominant.
• Cooperative overlap: brief additions that signal agreement ("mm", "right") without taking the floor.

Back-channelling: small verbal signals showing the listener is engaged: "mm", "right", "uh-huh". These do NOT take the conversational floor.

Analysing spoken transcripts

1. Read the whole transcript once to understand the context.
2. Identify key features: pauses, overlaps, fillers, adjacency pairs.
3. Comment on function, not just presence: "The speaker pauses for two seconds before answering" → "This pause suggests the speaker is carefully controlling their response..."
4. Consider power dynamics: who initiates topics? who interrupts? Power asymmetry is often visible in turn-taking patterns.