visiting paris - mike and sophia

Question 1

visiting paris - overview

Answer 1

• part of a set of multi-speaker and one-speaker discourse involving three speakers isabelle, mike and sophia talking about their memories of visiting or living in Paris
• all 3 are students at a university in the East Midlands
• mike and sophia born in the uk, but isabelle born in france and lived there until she was a teenager

Question 2

visiting paris - lexis and semantics

Answer 2

• mike uses intensifier “2 hours to actually get onto it” to show how frustrating he found his wait in the queue for the lift at the eiffel tower, while sophia counters this with a filler to add emphasis to her own recollections (“next time i was like (.) no i’m going to have a challenge”)
• later in the dialogue the language oscillates from talking in cliches using conventions of romance and perfection (p52-53) to exploring the dangerous aspects of the city
• both use the vague plural pronouns ‘they’ or indefinite pronoun ‘someone’ to repeatedly denounce the criminal underworld of the city.
• there is a sinister feeling of anonymity, as they cannot pinpoint who is responsible as well as a suspicious town where they believe they need to watch every passerby

Question 3

visiting paris - discourse

Answer 3

• both speakers are very supportive of each other and use politeness features such as back channelling - seen throughout the text in minimal responses (‘really’, ‘yeah’, ‘right’) to signal their engagement in each other’s stories
• some back channelling such as Sophia’s ‘hmm’ in response to Mike’s story of four men threatening him (p54) more ambiguous and could be interpreted as being disbelieving or sympathetic

Question 4

visiting paris - phonology

Answer 4

• paralinguistic features such as laughter from both speakers, imply that they agree about several ideas about Paris

Question 5

visiting paris - grammar

Answer 5

• in keeping with the speakers competitive desire to represent their Paris experience as the most extreme - at points as the best, at others as the worst
• repetition for a total effect is frequent in the dialogue
• Mike makes use of conditional utterances to convey the experience or a UK visitor in Paris - “if you say (.) sometimes they’ll realise you’re English” (p51) to note how he was marked out as a tourist

Question 6

visiting paris - GRAMPS

Answer 6

G - transcript
R - informal
A - originally closed audience, speakers aware it could be shared with wider audience
M - spoken
P - share information, recount experiences
S - visiting Paris