Ellipsis as a Marker of Interaction in Spoken Discourse

Abstract

<jats:p>In this article, we discuss strategies for interaction in spoken discourse, focusing on ellipsis phenomena in English. The data comes from the VOICE corpus of English as a Lingua Franca, and we analyse education data in the form of seminar and workshop discussions, working group meetings, interviews and conversations. The functions ellipsis carries in the data are Intersubjectivity, where participants develop and maintain an understanding in discourse; Continuers, which are examples of back channel support; Correction, both self- and other-initiated; Repetition; and Comments, which are similar to Continuers but do not have a back channel support function. We see that the first of these, Intersubjectivity, is by far the most popular, followed by Repetitions and Comments. These results are explained as consequences of the nature of the texts themselves, as some are discussions of presentations and so can be expected to contain many Repetitions, for example. The speech event is also an important factor, as events with asymmetrical power relations like interviews do not contain so many Continuers. Our clear conclusion is that the use of ellipsis is a strong marker of interaction in spoken discourse.&#x0D; </jats:p>

On the Discourse of Online Sports News Headlines

“…It may be for the sake of brevity that prepositions and participles are used: marathons called off, …out after knee surgery, Spain drawn with Russia . Past participles appear in elliptical constructions that function as a stylistic device to indicate a certain degree of orality, as it appears that ellipsis is mostly common in spoken discourse (White 2013) . Verb phrase ellipsis is believed to be frequent in news discourse, as pointed out by Hakobyan (2016) and Altarabin (2020) .…”

Ellipsis As Aesthetic Formal Marker of the Short Story Das Brot

“…In the short story Das Brot, the ellipsis has an assertive function (Busler and Schlobinski, 1997) because of the decisiveness of the wife character. But, it has also the function of intersubjectivity (White, 2013) because in that case, doch is used by the wife character to oppose her husband's opinion that she can not eat just two loaves of bread. White also stated that intersubjectivity here refers to sharing or negotiating an understanding on a strand of interaction.…”

Topic- and mode-sensitive interaction strategies: functions of ellipsis in oral communication

“…Now we move onto the interactive strategies that appear in the two corpora. White (2013aWhite ( , 2013b analysed the functions of ellipsis in the two corpora described above, respectively. As discussed in White (2013aWhite ( , 2013b, out of the strategies noted above, one from Darhower (2002) was discounted, namely Off-task Discussion (they are found, just not in elliptical form).…”

“…White (2013aWhite ( , 2013b analysed the functions of ellipsis in the two corpora described above, respectively. As discussed in White (2013aWhite ( , 2013b, out of the strategies noted above, one from Darhower (2002) was discounted, namely Off-task Discussion (they are found, just not in elliptical form). The Use of L1 strategy has also been discounted, as we are specifically looking for data in English, and the speakers all have L1s other than English.…”