Transcript Analysis Mahri and Juddah

Transcript Analysis– Mahri and Juddah

At the start of the transcript, there is formation and confirmation between Juddah and his dad, quoting “here’s mahri” “is this mahri”. When Mahri speaks, she stutters through what she says, repeating ‘I I I was’ ‘me c c could’ and ‘pa park’ which somewhat suggests that Mahri has not completely processed what she wants to say, therefore when speaking her language is postponed as the mouth actions are moving faster than her brain process.  Despite this, Juddah manages to understand the core of the sentence and replies, however also repeating words and by saying
“where. Where’s that. That means” suggests confusion in what she says, he also uses ‘wh’ interrogatives, signs from the telegraphic stage in life.

Mahri uses hedges in response “uh to the park” this shows once again she has to think whilst producing an answer. Juddah responds with “I will get” then corrects himself by saying “I will come” which suggests that Juddah is now in the post-telegraphic stage where his language is more grammatically correct. Supporting the theorist Lakoff, women use more hedgers and fillers then the male gender, despite their age this is already recognisable by Mahri constantly having an incompletion of words, “an an an’ or using “uh” or “hu” when pausing mid-speech. Linking to gender and power, this transcript reflects the dominance of the male, Juddah offers more developed responses, declarative sentences such as ‘ We’ll go to the park’ which is a declarative future simple, this will happen in the future and Juddah understands the sentence structure for this to make sense in conversation.

Juddah uses consonant clusters when using the words such as ‘the, there, they’. An example is that Juddah says “see der you” which represents the struggle in which he has to pronounce the ‘th’ sound. Mahri throughout is using Grice’s maxims, by responding to Juddah with “Yeah” or “OK”.  The children are both present in the post telegraphic stage, due to their ability to combine clause structures by using coordinating conjunctions for example in the transcript 'and' or 'an'.

Both children have managed to grasp the use of determiners at this age, for example they are able to use quantitive measures, identity and significance in their speech, "the park", "da car", "the road". Due to their young age, Juddah and Mahri are using ellipsis in their speech unconsciously in the adjacency pairs. An example would be "Which park shall we go", using the clipping of certain words and pulling words from a sentence yet still understandable for one another. Mahri and Juddah are both able to use tag questions in the phone call to ensure of the use of adjacency pairs. An example would be "we have to cross the road" or "talk to daddy".

 Towards the end of the transcript it becomes more phatic talk, meaning 'small talk', the children are lacking in conversational topics and therefore their speech becomes limited and imitated or repeated.