analysis of open-close dominance and interruption

8/3/2019 Analysis of Open-close Dominance and Interruption

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C. THE ANALYSIS OF A CONVERSATION

In this paper, the authors want to analyze a video which consists of

conversation between male and female that is existed in a scene of a movie

entitled Letters to Juliet. There is no specific reason of why the scene is chosen

to be analyzed, but it has proper information regarding to a conversation between

genders and its following parts.

The conversation that is existed in the video can be transcribed as follows:

Participants : Sophie and Charlie

Setting : at the front of the house and the balcony

(Sophie runs from the party at the backyard to the front of the house. Charlielooks at Sophie and runs after her. But, he does not find Sophie, and then he callsher.)01) CHARLIE : Sophie?(He runs to the front of the house)02) CHARLIE : Sophie?(He looks around)03) CHARLIE : Sophie?(he still moves forward without any result until he turns back and finds Sophie atthe balcony)04) CHARLIE : (looking at Sophie) Of course! A balcony!05) SOPHIA : (looking at Charlie) Well

06) CHARLIE : What are doing up there?07) SOPHIA : (expressing sadness) Im gonna go08) CHARLIE : (surprised) Why??

SOPHIE : (talking sadly with tears almost falling down on her face)09) Because this is so painful.10) I..I...should realize it soon but I didnt.11) Oh, I guess may be I couldnt.12) But..emm.. Victor and I are not together anymore...(Charlie is smiling, seems that he is happy to hear that news)13) and I guess I came back hoping that

14) CHARLIE : Wait! Wait! Youre notengaged.

15) SOPHIE : (shaking her head) No butits too late.16) Its clearly too late.17) And it really doesnt matter anymore because, honestly, I love

you.(Charlie is smiling).18) I cant believe I just said that.(Sophie is trying hardly to smile, but it doesnt work, she keeps crying)19) But I do, I love you.


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20) It doesntI mean itIt shouldnt be a matter to you becauseyoure

21) youre here with Patricia

22) CHARLIE : (upset) Patricia?!

23) SOPHIE : And you should be back with her right now.24) CHARLIE : Patricia is my cousin. Shes my cousin!25) SOPHIE : (being upset) How is that legal?

26) CHARLIE : (being awkward) No oohh! Sophie, no oohno..nonolet me explain!

27) Sophie, Im so stupid.28) Therere two Patricias.29) Theres my cousin who is in here, and the one that I completely

forgot about.30) More importantly, theres only one Sophie.31) Now, would you please come down?

(Charlie takes off his suit and quickly climbs the tree to get closer with Sophie.)SOPHIE : (being upset with what Charlies been doing)32) Wait..Charlie..Charlie stop. Whatre you doing?(Charlie is still climbing the tree)33) Charlie, whatre you doing?34) CHARLIE :Listen to me! Listen to me!35) Very very carefully.36) I live in London, a gorgeous, vibrantly, historic city that Id love

to living in.37) And you live in New York

which is highly overrated.

38) SOPHIE : Pardon me?39) CHARLIE : Listen..I..I40) ..because the Atlantic ocean is a bit wide to be crosses everyday,

swimming, boating, or flying, I suggest we flip for it. 41) SOPHIE : (smiling) What do you saying?42) CHARLIE : If the follows terms are not acceptable, leaving London would

be a pleasure, as long as youll be waiting for me on the otherside.

43) SOPHIE :yeah (smiling)44) CHARLIE : The truth is, Sophie, Im madly, deeply, truly, passionately in

love with you.

45) SOPHIE : (smiling) You are?46) CHARLIE : (nodding and smiling) I am(Both are silence for a while and smiling)47) SOPHIE : Are you going to kiss me?48) CHARLIE : Yeah(Charlie climbs the tree further, until he cannot handle the tree and falls downfrom the balcony)


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Later, the conversation between Charlie and Sophie will be analyzed in

terms of the openingclosing conversation, dominance, interruption, turn taking,

and topic raising.

a. Opening-closing conversation

Firstly, the term that is going to be analyzed is the process of opening and

closing of the conversation. To open the conversation, Sacks and Schegloff (1973)

stated that people use adjacency pair where it is a unit of conversation that

contains an exchange of one turn each by two speakers. The turns are functionally

related to each other in such a fashion that the first turn requires a certain type or

range of types of second turn. .In the video, the conversation is begun by the

opening strategy which is known as summon-answer which is shown by the

utterances as follow:

03) CHARLIE : Sophie?(he still moves forward without any result until he turns back and finds Sophie atthe balcony)

04) CHARLIE : (looking at Sophie) Of course! A balcony!05) SOPHIA : (looking at Charlie) Well

Based on the conversation above, the man calls the woman by shouting her name

while looking for the woman. Beside that, he also emphasizes the place where the

woman appears. The woman then responses the mans summon to indicate that

she is at the balcony and the man has found her. After that, the conversation is

begun.

After the conversation is begun, the man and woman continue to talk

about some topics regarding to their feeling to each other. The conversation runs

smoothly and it also followed by some acts to support their intended utterances.

And then, the conversation will be closed after they finish utter their intention.

The conversation is going to be closed when, according to Schegloff and

Sacks (1973), the people feel that they have to terminate the conversation.

Moreover, Sacks and Schegloff (1973) also implicitly categorized the steps of

summon

answer


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closing a conversation, they are: (1) pre-closing which takes a role as indicator

that the conversation is ready to be ended but is offering an opportunity to open

another topic of conversation, (2) recapitulation which involves a brief

summarizing or it can be said as the further implication of the topics discussed

and/or arrangements made, and (3) final closing is the actual ending of the

conversation.

According to the video, the closing of the conversation can be analyzed as

follows:

(1) pre-closing

The pre-closing can be seen on this part of the conversation:

44) CHARLIE : The truth is, Sophie, Im madly,deeply, truly, passionately in lovewith you.

45) SOPHIE : (smiling) You are?46) CHARLIE : (nodding and smiling) I am

The utterance 44 which is uttered by Charlie is actually a

conclusion of the topics discussed by him and Sophie. Since it is a

conclusion, it indicates that the conversation can be terminated. Then it isfollowed by Sophies utterance number 45 which shows that she wants to

make sure Charlies previous utterance and it also opens opportunity to

make another topic aroused. However, in this conversation, theres no new

topic aroused after the utterance number 45 but Charlie only responds to

Sophies by doing certain expressions and saying the utterance number 46

to convince Sophie that he tells the truth.

(2) recapitulation

This part of the conversation can be considered as the

recapitulation of the conversation:

47) SOPHIE : Are you going to kiss me?48) CHARLIE: Yeah

The utterance 47 shows the effect of the topics that are aroused in the

conversation. Since the topics in the conversation are related to the

feelings of the man and woman who are in love, so influenced by romantic


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situation the woman asks the man to kiss her. It also may caused by the

effect of the prior knowledge of the speakers about the romantic scene of a

well-known drama Romeo and Juliet which took place at the balcony as

what they do when they are speaking.

(3) final closing

The final closing of this conversation is not uttered. It is done by actions

where Charlie climbs the tree further to get closer with Sophie in order to

kiss her. However, he finally falls down from the tree as one of the funny

actions in this movie.

b. Interruption

Interruption can be seen as situations in which one person intends to

continue speaking, but is forced by the other person to stop speaking, at least

temporarily, or the continuity or regularity of that persons speech is disrupted.

Interruptions, therefore, can be seen as consisting of three essential ingredients:

intention of the main speaker to continue, entrance of the other person into the

conversation, and disruption or stopping of the main speaker, at least temporarily.According to the transcription of conversation in the video, the

interruption is represented by a symbol . The frequency of interruptions which

are done by the man and the woman in the conversation can be seen in the table as

follows:

Gender

(participants)

Freq. of

interruption

Male (Charlie) 5 timesFemale (Sophie) 2 times

Table 1. The frequency of interruption between Charlie (male) and Sophie (female)

From the table 1, it can be obviously seen that male in the conversation interrupts

more than female. Then, the next analysis is on the types of interruption that

showed by the speakers in the video which is shown in the table as follows:


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Gender

(participants)

Utterances of

interruptionTypes

Male (Charlie) - utterance number 6- utterance number 14- utterance number 22- utterance number 26- utterance number 39

- competitive- competitive- competitive- competitive- competitive

Female (Sophie) - utterance number 38- utterance number 43 - competitive- cooperative

table 2. The types of interruption between Charlie (male) and Sophie (female)

Yang (2005) argues that competitive interruptions are often closely tied to

relevance, urgency, degree of importance, and interest in the current topic. In

conversation, speakers often feel the need to express something which is

emotionally significant to them. It is showed by Charlie in his utterances number

6, 14, 22, 26, and 39. In the utterance number 6, Charlie feels that it is important

to know what is Sophie doing at the balcony. The utterance number 14 shows

Charlies interest in the previous statement uttered by Sophie. It supported by the

way he utters the statement in which it is uttered vibrantly. The utterance number

22 Charlie asks for more explanation related to the previous utterances stated by

Sophie. He feels that he needs to know the relevancy between him and the woman

named Patricia, as what is mentioned by Sophie. The utterance number 26 is

included in competitive type of interruption because Charlie needs to explain

something significant about the truth between him and Patricia. And the last

interruption is showed in utterance 39 where Charlie wants to handle the

conversation by asking Sophie to listen to his further explanation. So, by noticing

the interruptions made by Charlie, it can be concluded that men often do

competitive interruption in conversation.

Unlike Charlie, Sophie interrupts less than Charlie and use cooperative

interruption in one of her interruptions. Yang (2005) defines cooperative

interruption as a type of interruption which is more supportive of the main

speakers floor rights, and the intention is usually to keep the attention on the

main speakers point. The cooperative interruption is showed by her utterance

number 43. She agrees with Charlies previous utterance (42) and supports it with


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positive answer. Beside that, the utterance occurs at lower or medium pitch levels

than competitive interruption. However, she uses competitive interruption in the

conversation on the utterance number 38. It happens because she feels

inconvenience with Charlies utterance number 37 who compares London better

than America. But, it still can be seen that female has fewer interruptions and has

less power than men in handling a conversation.

c. Dominance

The participants in a conversation use a number of strategies to achieve

their conversational goals. The goal may be to dominate other participants of the

speech situation. Kunsmann (2001) points out that one of the obvious strategies

for achieving this goal, as we have seen, is the use of interruptions.

In the conversation between Charlie and Sophie, it is clearly seen that

Charlie (male) interrupts more than Sophie (female). Beside that he also often

uses competitive interruption which is more powerful and highly influence in the

conversation to stop his partners speaking. In contrary, Sophie (female) has fewer

interruptions than Charlie (male) and uses cooperative interruption which has

lower intonation and less affects to the conversation. Thus, male has greater

dominance than female in a conversation.

References:

Sacks, H. and Schegloff, E. 1973. Opening and Closing in Semiotica, Vol. 8,

pp. 289-327.

Yang, Li Chiung. 2005.Interruptions and Intonation. Washington, D.C.:

Georgetown University. http://www.asel.udel.edu/icslp/cdrom/vol3/685/a685.pdfretrieved on November, 28, 2011.

Kunsmann, Peter. 2001. Gender, Status, and Power in Discourse Behavior of Men

and Women.http://www.linguistik-online.de/1_00/KUNSMANN.HTM. retrieved

on November, 28, 2011.
http://www.asel.udel.edu/icslp/cdrom/vol3/685/a685.pdfhttp://www.linguistik-online.de/1_00/KUNSMANN.HTMhttp://www.linguistik-online.de/1_00/KUNSMANN.HTMhttp://www.linguistik-online.de/1_00/KUNSMANN.HTMhttp://www.asel.udel.edu/icslp/cdrom/vol3/685/a685.pdf

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