Year: 1980
Type: book
Abstract: Petra 13 Rhoda and they just store 'em all over there.Mmmmm (very high, rising) These boats,/this /yeah, uhuh From Japan?These?No? I think those are the ones they don't, they don't use * em at all anymore.14 Rhoda: They have uh, uh, a docks down there where they bring in the, the boats that, that, just sit there year after year after year, they don't know what to do with 'em.(Extended pause, 7 seconds) 15 Stacy: Does this look like Colombia, Petra?Researchers investigating the speech addressed to foreigners have found that it is characterized by slow pace, careful pronunciation, simplified vocabulary and syntax, frequent questions, and paraphrase.Rhoda's remarks on the mothball fleet exhibit many of these characteristics, most strikingly the last one.She manages to come up with a half dozen semantically overlapping words and phrases for "obsolete": old, left over, just sitting, not used, just stored (the passivization is mine; Rhoda avoids it), year after year.For "boats" there is "ships"; for "docks" there is "where they bring in the boats that just sit there."R ep ro d u ced with p erm ission of the copyright ow ner.Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm ission .There is repetition of locatives: "out here," "here," "over there," "down there," "there."There is repetition with slight variation of sentences: "they store 'em here," "they just store 'em all over there" and "old boats that they don't use," "the ones they don't, they don't use 'em at all anymore."The usefulness of paraphrase is obvious; it makes Rhoda's talk easier to understand by increasing redundancy and providing Petra with a little more processing time.The question that I would like to address is a different on e .Why does paraphrase occur in foreigner talk in the particular form that it does?For instance, why does Rhoda offer a paraphrase immediately after (7) "They're boats, that're all left over from World War II"?What kinds of indirect checking is she doing to discover whether Petra understood the original formulation of the message?What kinds of feedback is Petra supplying her with?Finally, what are the pressures that keep Rhoda's checking and Petra's feedback indirect?Con ceivably Rhoda could have asked directly at that point, "Do you understand?" Or, "Do you know what 'left over' means?"And there are several points later in her paraphrase at which a direct verbal check might conceivably have been undertaken.Conceivably also Petra could have spoken up at any point, acknowledging that she didn't understand and asking for a repair.
Author: Peggy McCurdy
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W746315678