Communicative Strategies in Interaction

Communicative Strategies

• Communicative strategies are plans for sharing information to achieve a social, political, psychosocial, or linguistic goal.
• Implicit rules govern conversations.
• Strategies are crucial for starting and maintaining conversations.
• Grammar is a key strategy for maintaining conversation.

Nomination

• Nomination is a strategy to collaboratively introduce a topic.
• When starting a new topic, use greetings, news, inquiries, and announcements.
• Keep the topic open for discussion until it naturally ends.
• This signals the start of a new topic.

Restriction

• Restriction involves limitations on what a speaker can say.
• Classroom, meetings, and social interactions often have specific rules.
• Examples include teachers' instructions or specific topic boundaries.
• Speakers should stay on topic to avoid communication breakdown.

Turn-Taking

• Turn-taking is the process of deciding who speaks and when.
• Conversation has a code where people take turns.
• Speakers should keep their contributions brief and acknowledge others.
• Avoid dominating the conversation by hogging the floor.

Topic Control

• Topic control manages how formality affects topic development.
• Formal settings (meetings) may have specified turn-taking rules.
• Casual conversations allow more flexibility in taking turns.
• Topics should be developed cooperatively, avoiding interruptions.

Topic Shifting

• Topic shifting is moving from one topic to another.
• The previous topic must be developed enough.
• Conversational transitions can help signal a shift.

Repair

• Repair is how speakers address problems in conversation.
• Repair mechanisms aid in understanding and correcting errors.
• Self-initiated repairs are done by the speaker experiencing the trouble.
• Other-initiated repairs are done by someone else.

Termination

• Termination is the process of ending a conversation.
• Topic initiators are often responsible for ending the topic.
• Conclude meaningfully by discussing takeaways.
• Agreement from other participants often signals completion.

Communicative Competence

• Communicative competence involves effective language use.
• It's more than just grammar, it includes appropriateness.
• Different speech contexts and purposes require different styles.

Speech Style and Forms

• Speech context affects formality.
• Speech contexts are either in-person or mediated.
• Speech may be formal or informal.
• Specific speech acts affect context.

Speech Acts

• Locutionary acts are what is said.
• Illocutionary acts are the speaker's intention.
• Perlocutionary acts are the listener's response.

Speech Context, Style, Act, and Strategies

• Language form varies in formality.
• Conversation duration depends on how things progress.
• Speaker-receiver relationships affect communication.
• Delivery modes (extemporaneous, impromptu, memorized, manuscript) exist.
• Different messages convey different information.