Question Details

Week 2 – Assignment

Conversation Analysis: Conversational Implicature and Contextualization Cues

[

Prior to beginning work on this assignment, read Chapter 3: Intention and Interpretation in your textbook Discourse Analysis, and watch the videos Politeness Theory and Pragmatics and Gricean Maxims. In this assignment, you will write a paper exploring the notion of discourse as a social practice by analyzing a conversation between two speakers. You will consider how speakers’ intentions shape discourse, how hearers interpret meta communicative signals, and how both speakers and audiences contextualize what they say and hear.

To begin this assignment, you will choose one of the short video clips listed below. Watch the clip several times, considering how the conversation portrayed illustrates some of the key concepts discussed this week.

Choose one of the following:

·         Seinfeld - The Keys (Do You Ever Yearn?) 

·         Fresh Prince of Bel-Air - Will’s Father Leaves

·         Office Space (1/5) Movie CLIP - Did You Get the Memo? (1999) HD 

·         Stranger Things 2x06 - Max and Lucas Talk [HD] (With English Subtitles) 

·         Monty Python - Repressed Citizen 

·         The Pursuit Of Happyness - Job Interview 

·         Stranger Things / Eleven And Mike “Will You Be Like My Brother?” Scene 

In your paper,

·         Apply Grice’s cooperative principle and the four maxims to the conversation.

o    Where do you see examples of quantity, quality, relation, and manner? Where do you see any of the maxims violated?

o    Apply Lakoff’s rules of politeness to the conversation.

o    Where are they maximized or violated? Do any utterances in the exchange provide examples of positive face, negative face, or face-threatening acts?

o    Analyze two contextualization cues or discourse markers that contribute to the speakers’ meaning(s).

o    Evaluate two rhetorical strategies used by the speakers that contribute to their persuasiveness.

o    Assess the ways in which the discourse is a performance or  verbal art.

o    Consider the aesthetic nature of the discourse and of the hearer’s response.

o    Evaluate the interplay between intention and interpretation in the conversation.

o    What is each speaker’s intention? Is the speaker interpreted correctly? Why or why not?

The Conversation Analysis paper

·         Must be three to four double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s APA Style 

·         Must include a separate title page with the following:

o    Title of paper

o    Student’s name

o    Course name and number

o    Instructor’s name

o    Date submitted

For further assistance with the formatting and the title page, refer to APA Formatting for Word 2013 (Links to an external site.).

·         Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.

·         Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper. For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Ashford Writing Center resources.

·         Must document any information used from sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.) (Please note that the use of sources outside of the course textbook and other required weekly resources is optional. You should, however, document any references to your course textbook and the required multi-media excerpts within your paper, and remember to include those resource on your references page.)

·         Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. See the Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Ashford Writing Center for specifications.

1. Report As Dispute