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Access to Electronic Thesis Author: Tamara Jones Thesis title: Failed Active Listening in The Real World: A Study of Dominance in Casual Conversation Qualification: PhD Date awarded: 17 January 2011 This electronic thesis is protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No reproduction is permitted without consent of the author. It is also protected by the Creative Commons Licence allowing Attributions-Non-commercial-No derivatives. If this electronic thesis has been edited by the author it will be indicated as such on the title page and in the text. Failed Active Listening in The Real World: A Study of Dominance in Casual Conversation Tamara Jones Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) School of Education, University of Sheffield September, 2010 ii Abstract Native-English speakers generally appreciate a certain amount of supportive feedback from their listeners. However, occasionally, a positive listener response actually causes the speaker to become threatened and revert to floor-saving measures. Speakers whose first language is not English may be at a disadvantage when involved in interactions with native-English speakers because they may not be equipped with the tools to exercise conversational power, if they wish to do so. Consequently, with the goal of creating educational materials that can be easily used in English Language Teaching (ELT), this thesis examines instances of listener support which are not appreciated by the speaker. For my corpus, I pulled 69 conversations from a popular American reality TV show, The Real World. These conversations were selected because of the presence of floor-saving strategies in the wake of seemingly benign listener commentary. I adopt a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach with multimodal elements aimed at exploring issues of power in the struggle for conversational dominance inherent in the act of listener talk and speaker rejection of this support. These issues were exposed when I watched the video excerpts repeatedly and responded to questions set out in my framework for analysis. In this thesis, I first examine the terminology used to describe listener talk and control of the conversational floor. I propose more opaque terms, Active Listening Attempt (ALA) and, for instances in which the speaker reacts negatively to the ALA, I propose failed ALA. Moreover, I propose that the non-verbal also be considered as a ―turn.‖ In the second section of this thesis, I find that ―statement ALAs‖ are the most threatening to speakers. Moreover, surprisingly, I determined that the person who speaks the most is not always the holder of the conversational power and the listener‘s intention may have no impact the success of his/her ALA whatsoever. In the third section of this thesis, I focus on the impact gender may have on the failure of an ALA. Specifically, I find that female speakers display greater conversational defensiveness, even in conversations with other females, than males. In the final section of my thesis, I propose some implications for ELT pedagogy. iii Acknowledgements I want to express my gratitude to those who have supported and helped me as I worked on this thesis. First, thanks to my parents for instilling in me a thirst for education. In addition, I need to acknowledge the important contribution many of my students have made to the materials I have created as a result of this research. They were my inspiration, as well as my enthusiastic guinea pigs. I would also like to thank my supervisor, Dr. David Hyatt, for his support and valuable feedback. Finally, thanks to my wonderful husband. Without his encouragement and innovative distractions, I would not have been able to finish this project. iv Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Contents iv 1. Introduction 1 2. Critical Literature Review 9 2.1 Listener Talk – Important Definitions 13 2.2.1 Overlap and Interruption 13 2.2.2 Turn and Floor 18 2.2 Language and Power 22 2.3 Listener Talk and Gender 30 2.4 Language in Context 39 3. Methodology 48 3.1 The Ontology and Epistemology that Position this Research 48 3.1.1 Ontology 49 3.1.2 Epistemology 51 3.2 Possible Heuristic Methodologies for this Research 54 3.2.1 Conversation Analysis 54 3.2.2 Pragmatics 58 3.2.3 Interactional Sociolinguistics 61 3.3 Critical Discourse Analysis 64 3.4 Procedure 66 3.4.1 The Real World 66 3.4.2 Ethical Issues 73 3.4.3 Transcription and Multimodality 76 3.5 Framework for Analysis 87 3.5.1 Listener Talk 91 3.5.2 Language and Power 96 3.5.3 Listener Talk and Gender 106 3.6 The Analysis 115 v 4. Findings 117 4.1 Defining Speaker and Listener Talk 118 4.1.1 Overlap and Interruption 118 4.1.2 Turn and Floor 122 4.1.3 Active Listening 131 4.1.4 Failed ALAs 136 4.2 Failed Active Listening Attempts and Power 145 4.2.1 Measuring Power 145 4.2.2 Power and Failed ALAs 159 4.3 Failed Active Listening Attempts and Gender 173 5. Implications and Applications of my Research for Education 192 5.1 Implications and Applications for Pedagogy 193 5.2 Implications and Applications for Educational Policy 211 5.3 Implications and Applications for Research 216 6. Conclusion 223 6.1 My Research Questions Revisited 224 6.2 Limitations of this Study 229 6.3 Areas for Further Study 233 6.4 Final Thoughts 235 Bibliography 238 Appendix 1 – The Real World 266 Appendix 2 – My Framework for Analysis 273 Appendix 3 – Spreadsheet Sample 275 1 1. Introduction Native English speakers learn from a very early age not to interrupt others when they are talking. Furthermore, if asked, most speakers would claim that they do not like to be interrupted. It is, therefore, logical to assume that a discussion among native English speakers in which more than one person talked at one time would collapse into chaos, as it would be difficult to listen and follow any one train of thought. Most speakers would agree with the following opinion held by a cast member of a popular North American reality TV program and the source of data for this research project (see Appendix 1). Shavonda: I don‘t like being interrupted when I speak. I can see her, ―aa‖, ―the‖, just waiting. And I‘m like … MJ: The wheels are turning. Shavonda: The wheels are turning. And I‘m like, ―Just listen to me.‖ The Real World – Philadelphia What is particularly intriguing about the above conversation is that Shavonda is actually interrupted by MJ while she is complaining about how much she hates being interrupted. In fact, as one studies transcriptions of conversations, it becomes increasingly clear that a great deal of speech overlap exists in casual, spontaneous exchanges. People are constantly speaking while others are speaking. This overlap is so pervasive in North American native English speaking culture that if one adhered to the ―one-at- a-time‖ rule (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, 1974) in a conversation, one would run the risk of appearing distant, unfriendly, or uninterested. However, a more focused attention to instances of overlap reveals that not all forms of interruption are customary in casual conversations. Clearly, people can‘t always be speaking at the same time as others without the conversation resulting in the previously mentioned chaos. One has only to observe a group of friends chatting or a couple in a discussion in order to get the sense that, while people do speak at the same time, there are occasions that this overlap is appreciated and occasions that it is clearly not. 2 An understanding of the norms that govern overlap in a conversation is valuable to English as a Second Language educators for a number of reasons. First, as language teachers, ―the more we understand about what is actually going on in language, the better position we are in to facilitate understanding in learners of how and why language is used to particular ends‖ (Hyatt, 2000, page 5). Thus, in order to teach our students about English, it is important for us to understand how native speakers use everyday language to accomplish social goals. Furthermore, it is ill-advised to teach the English that we instructors think we speak to students as, so often, we do not say what we think we say. Specifically, our suppositions about spoken English may not always be reflective of the way we actually speak in informal conversation, as ―[w]e don‘t know our own language‖ (Widdowson, as quoted by Hyatt, 2001). Finally, ESL students have a vested interest in learning about natural, spontaneous, spoken English and the subtleties and unspoken norms that govern it. In other words, we need to offer our students information about more than just grammar rules, pronunciation and vocabulary. We need to make available the results of research regarding how the target language is used to accomplish things and to create and maintain power structures. ―Discursive practices are defined as a set of tacit rules that regulate what can and cannot be said, who can speak with the blessings of authority and who must listen, whose social constructions are valid and whose are erroneous and unimportant‖ (Kincheloe and McLaren, 2005, page 310). An understanding of the ‗rules‘ which govern overlap and the fallout that may occur when these rules are violated is certainly part of discursive practice. Moreover, discursive practices are not necessarily cross-cultural. Researchers, such as Ladau- Harjulin (1992), Berry (1994), Iwasaki (1997), Kasper and Rose (2002) and Kogure (2007), have determined that subtle, but significant, cultural differences exist between active listening and interrupting styles.

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