Advances in Spoken Discourse Analysis

Towards an analysis of discourse 31

the pupil response we get a bound initiation. Of course teachers can and do
use this exchange when they have heard but want a reply repeated for other
reasons. The structure is IRIbRF.

THE STRUCTURE OF TRANSACTIONS

Transactions normally begin with a Preliminary exchange and end with a
Final exchange. Within these boundaries a series of medial exchanges occur.
Although we have identified eleven types of medial exchanges we cannot
yet specify in detail how they are ordered within transactions. We can specify
that the first medial exchange in a transaction will normally be selected
from the three major teacher-initiated free exchange types—Inform, Direct
and Elicit. Following a selection of one of these types, characteristic options
occur in the rest of the transaction.
From now on what we say will be much more speculative and we will
be talking about ideal types of transaction. We have not yet done sufficient
work on transactions to be sure that what we suggest here will stand up to
detailed investigation. We provisionally identify three major transaction types,
informing, directing, and eliciting. Their basic structures will be outlined
below. We do not, however, in an analysis of texts yet feel sufficiently
confident in the identification of these structures to make the labelling of
these transaction types a major element of coding.

Informing transactions

E – Boundary

E – T-Inform

T (‹E›)n – T-Elicit

(‹E›)n – P-Elicit

E – Boundary

(The round brackets indicate that an item is optional, the diamond brackets
that it occurs inside the previous item.) During a lengthy informing exchange
from the teacher, the pupils do little but acknowledge. However, embedded