When we communicate with one and other on a day to day bases there are different ways in which we do this. The two ways of communication I am talking about in this assessment is a spoken conversation and a text messaging conversation. When we speak to one and other we use these devices which are used for many reasons. Some devices are distinctive to only that type of communication and some are used for both. The devices are used for a variety of different reasons which I will explain and display shortly. The main difference between these two ways is that in spoken conversation you can see the person you are talking to whereas in text conversations you can’t. I agree with the statement that these two ways of communicating are very creative, and I hope you agree with me after reading my piece of writing.
Spoken conversation is speaking to someone when we are in there company/presences. This gives us an idea of the environment (setting) we are in which can affect the way we behave and talk, for example if you are in a place where you feel in danger evidently you won’t talk so loudly. The first device I will being talking about today is a filler. Fillers are items of speech which allow you time to think, pause, or just too even keep the flow of the conversation. People want to keep the flow of the conversation being as it keeps the person to stay engaged and not lose interest. For example in my transcript Levi uses the filler ‘ermmm’ while he is trying to think of the lesson he has next and what pupils are in his class. Nearer to the end of the conversation Levi starts using this device to be humorous by the repetition of it. This is very creative because he has used the device for not only one reason (which is the main reason we used it), but he has made it humorous by using it as well. This is a very creative device because within the 2-5 seconds pronouncing the filler you have thought of your answer, kept the conversation flowing and not managed to lose the listeners interest. The second device I would like to talk about is a rising terminal inflection which is quite similar to the one explained above. A rising terminal inflection is when we raise the tone of our voice on the last syllables of a sentence. This is used when asking a question or when someone is confused about a certain topic so you can keep them engaged. It may also be used to highlight the most important part of the sentence. This feature is distinctive to a spoken conversation because obviously you cannot change the tone of your voice by texting being as you’re not with the person. Alfie uses this device when asking a question ‘did you get that homework, the sheets’. The words in bold are the syllables in which he changes the tone of his voice. By using this device Alfie has evidently maintained to grab my attention and checked if I am still engaged. This is creative for the pure facts that he has got my attention, I have identified that the sheets are an important part as well. The creativity is that by just raising his tone of voice he has managed to do this. These little things that we do in spoken language make a big difference too many aspects of the conversation.
Text messaging has only evolved within the last 30 years or so and is becoming an increasing way of communication in this modern society. Texting is all about transferring information to each other quickly being as we are limited to the amount of characters we can write. The first device I want to talk about is an abbreviation. Abbreviations are when we use a shorten form of the word or phrase which can still be understood. Example of this from my transcript are ‘wbu=what about you? Hw=homework, G2G= got to go, yh=yeah’. These are very creative devices because instead of wasting time and characters in the message allowed you have managed to shorten the work/phrases and still made it understandable. This device is probably the most common device in the text conversation being as we try to transfer information quickly in which this succeeds that. The second device I want to talk about is emoticons. An emoticon is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using punctuation and letters. Examples of this from the transcript would be ‘:’(=crying face, :D=big smile, :p=tongues out face’. As you can see the pictorial representation makes up a facial expression. Using the crying face as an example the colon is the eyes of the face, the apostrophe is the tear (because they are crying), and the close bracket is a displaying a sad face. This is very creative because from not seeing someone’s face in the conversation we are still able to transfer facial expression through these punctuation marks and letters which are also easily identified. These two devices are used to transfer important information across a simple text which were created because without them texting would be much longer (time consuming) and harder to express emotions.
I would now like to talk about sarcasm and explain how it is showed in both types of communications. Sarcasm is not a distinctive feature like the ones above, but it is displayed differently in both forms of communication. Sarcasm is identified in spoken conversation by your body language and tone of voice. Body language and tone of voice are distinctive features to spoken conversation so we have had to adapt to displaying that we are being sarcastic over a texting format. Ways of displaying sarcasm through text messaging is you can simply add a sarcastic emoticon on the end of it. This emoticon has only come around recently so people had to display sarcasm by using a different method. An example of this would be ‘yehhhhhh school is soo funnnn!!!!’. You can generally tell this person is being sarcastic by the words being over pronounced which would be how you would say it in spoken conversation. Other ways of identifying sarcasm is the use of 4 exclamation marks when the general attitude towards school is that it’s boring and disliked by many students. This is creative because by using different devices in both ways of communication we can tell sarcasm is present.
React!