ANALYSING SPEECH AND ITS REPRESENTATION
OLIVER PRICE

Text A is a spontaneous transcript of two friends talking in a friendly, personal, informal context. Text B, on the other hand, is an interview between Denzel Washington, and actor, therefore this transcript would have more structure and formality. Text A’s audience is just the two speakers, whereas in B there is a mass audience, as the media will record it and pass it on to many more people. The purpose of Text B A is for the interviewer to gather more information about Denzel Washington for the entertainment of media consumers. However, the purpose can be portrayed differently using Denzel’s perspective, this interview may have the purpose of explaining how he isn’t a ‘hob-knobbing”, “high profile” celebrity. Text B’s overt purpose is to explain the feelings of financial stability, and career paths between two friends.

The two texts address their audiences very differently. Kirsty, in Text B doesn’t seem to want to ask questions outright, at first, so begins with a phatic utterance “So what” to establish a conversation before launching in. This demonstrates her feelings of intimacy, probably because she is familiar with the audience, as seen by this fact that she wants to keep the informality. Conversely, Text A launches in immediately to the point “Actually, even within the industry, I don’t have any actor friends” which demonstrates that he has an attitude that conciseness and precision are important, an attitude he wanted to convey in order to achieve his implied purpose of gaining support or possibly even sympathy. In Text B, Kirsty says “yanno”, conveying the information in an informal way, typical of spontaneous speech, particularly, with a familiar audience, such as in this case.

The language in both texts contrasts clearly. For example, for the most part, a fairly low lexical density, typical of spontaneous speech, where vocabulary can’t be thought about beforehand, is seen in Text B. For instance, “yanno” and “erm” convey the information much more informally, due to the familiar context. However, there is some higher lexical density in Text A, such as “My wife and I were raised right.” Text A has a very high lexical density, in contrast to the Text B, such as “For whatever reason, I never befriended and white actors”. This conveys his feelings in an explanatory tone, essential for the context, because Denzel is expressing his attitude towards his relationship with other actors. Text A doesn’t convey feelings quite as strongly, with less emotive adjectives being used, such as “cool”. This is most likely due to the familiar audience, so colloquial words are more likely to be used and an emotive adjective would be out of place.

The styles of delivery are also different in conveying information, attitudes and feelings. In Text B, for example, fillers are used: “erm” in order to give the speaker thinking time, so that she can deliver the most accurate information. This is typical of spontaneous speech, as the person had to think on the spot. Text A, because it is an interview, the interviewer had had time to think about how to convey the desired questions. Therefore, there are no fillers, as there are in Text A. Colloquial language is used in both texts, “Schmoozer”, and “yanno”. Due to the fact that neither of them are prepared speeches, a high level of formality isn’t needed, so therefore the speakers can elaborate using informal techniques, including taboo in Text A “Butt Kisser.” Text B also uses intensifying adjectives to convey attitudes more powerfully “you would”. The intensifier “would” conveys this attitude with more vigour, due to the purpose of explaining her feelings about her future financial status. Due to the audience being familiar, she can express strong attitudes without fear of offense. Text B uses more complex techniques than Text A to give strength to the attitudes displayed, because he wants to appear intelligent.

The structure to