7 Analysing everyday conversation
Gill Francis and Susan Hunston
INTRODUCTION
The system of analysis presented in this chapter was developed for an
undergraduate course in Discourse Analysis taught by the authors at the
National University of Singapore. Students on the course were required to
analyse a five-minute stretch of recorded talk, using a system outlined for
them in lectures and further discussed in tutorial sessions.
From a pedagogical point of view, our aim was to define precisely the
analytical categories so that the students could apply them with confidence,
but at the same time present a system which would be flexible and adaptable
enough to cope with a wide variety of discourse situations: casual
conversations between friends and family members, child—adult talk,
commercial transactions, professional interviews, radio phone-ins, and
even air-traffic controllers’ talk. From a theoretical point of view, we
sought to interpret, integrate and systematize the various adaptations and
refinements of the original Sinclair—Coulthard model (1975) which have
emerged from Birmingham over the past ten years. The sheer quantity
and range of our data (over a hundred transcripts) provided us with an
opportunity to formulate a substantially revised version of the model
which, we feel, reflects accurately the nature of different types of talk
while remaining true to the spirit of the original model and its fundamental
underlying principles.
In the ensuing discussion, it is assumed that the reader is familiar with
Sinclair and Coulthard (1975); Sinclair and Brazil (1982); and Coulthard
and Montgomery (1981), especially the chapters by Coulthard and Brazil
(ch. 4), Stubbs (ch. 5), Berry (ch. 6), and Brazil (ch. 7). The first of these
(Sinclair and Coulthard 1975) provides the theoretical background to our
own approach and presents with great clarity the system as it was conceived
at that stage.
It is in Coulthard and Montgomery (1981) that problems which arose
when the system was applied to other data are discussed, and certain alterations
proposed. Some of these adaptations have far-reaching implications for the
system as a whole, yet nowhere is the revised system set out with the