MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.THESIS A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF TURN-TAKING IRREGULARITIES IN “ROMEO AND JULIET” BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (Phân tích ngữ dụng về sự bất thường trong các lớp chuyển vai của vở kịch “Romeo và Juliet”) NGUYEN THANG QUYEN Field: English Language Code: 8.01 Hanoi, 2022 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.THESIS A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF TURN-TAKING IRREGULARITIES IN “ROMEO AND JULIET” BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (Phân tích ngữ dụng về sự bất thường trong các lớp chuyển vai của vở kịch “Romeo và Juliet”) NGUYEN THANG QUYEN Field: English Language Code: 8.01 Supervisor: Dr Nguyen Thi Van Dong Hanoi, 2022 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled “A Pragmatic Analysis of Turn-taking Irregularities in Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare” Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master in the English Language. Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work is used without due acknowledgement in the thesis. Hanoi, 2022 Nguyễn Thăng Quyền Approved by SUPERVISOR Dr Nguyễn Thị Vân Đông Date: / / 2022 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To complete my thesis, I have been happy to receive a great deal of useful and practical support and encouragement from many people during my time doing the research. My deepest thanks and appreciation give to my supervisor, Dr Nguyễn Thị Vân Đông.
Her knowledge and logical way of lecturing have great value to me. I gratefully acknowledge all the lecturers at Hanoi Open University for the precious and helpful lessons they have delivered. I want to express my sincere thanks to my colleagues at Open University for their helpful contributions and cooperation in completing the questionnaire. Finally, My heartfelt thanks reserved for my family and friends for their love and support have encouraged me to carry out this research.
ii TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY……………………………….ii TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………………….Vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……………………………………………….Vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES…………………………………………….Viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION………………………………. Aims and objective of the study………………………………………. Methods of the study……………………………………………………………2 1. Scope of the study………………………………………………………………3 1.
Significance of the study………………………………………………………. Structure of the study…………………………………….……………………3 CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………………………………………………6 2. Review of previous studies……………………………………………………. Theoretical background of Pragmatics………………………………………….
An overview of Pragmatics…………………………. Context in Pragmatics…………………………………. Turn-taking Irregularities……………………. The characters of “Romeo and Juliet”….24 CHAPTER 3: TURN-TAKING IRREGULARITIES IN “ROMEO AND JULIET”…………………………………………………………….
Frequencies and percentage of types of turn-taking irregularities in “Romeo and Juliet”………………………………………………………………. The Frequencies of the Occurrence of Types of Turn-taking Irregularities in “Romeo and Juliet”. The Frequencies of the Occurrence of reasons of Turn-taking Irregularities in “Romeo and Juliet”. Types of turn-taking irregularities in “Romeo and Juliet”.
In terms of Interruption in “Romeo and Juliet”……. In terms of overlap in “Romeo and Juliet”…………………………………. Reasons of turn-taking irregularities in “Romeo and Juliet”…………………. Reasons of Interruption in “Romeo and Juliet”…………………………….
Reasons of turn-taking overlap in “Romeo and Juliet”……………. Signaling Urgency…………………………………………………………47 iv 3. Desire to correct…………………………………………. The main characters’ personality trend through pragmatic analysis of turn- taking irregularities in the “Romeo and Juliet” play……………………………….
Summary………………………………………………………………………64 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION……………………………. Limitation of the study…………………………………………. Recommendations and suggestions for further research………………………67 5.70 v ABSTRACT The thesis has analyzed the irregularities in taking turns in the play "Romeo and Juliet". The writer has found anomalies of alternating turns in the form of interruptions and overlaps of some authors such as Zimmerman & West, Murata and Jefferson.
In addition, the authors analyzes the causes of irregular rotation of Murata (1994) and Cook (1989). It used qualitative and quantitative methods. According to this method, the writer has taken data from the speech of some characters in the play "Romeo and Juliet". When gathering the data, the writer used the script of the play to get the data.
The figure is then classified, analyzed and then concluded. The thread shows there are 41 irregular turns, of which there are 21 interruptions and 20 overlaps. Then, the writer also found some reasons leading to irregularity in taking turns, such as agree, support, clarify, disagree, change subject, change subject, report signals discomfort, urgency, and desire for repair. Finally, the writer concludes the people in the play "Romeo and Juliet" often take irregular turns for a variety of reasons.
The type of turn-based anomaly most characters use is intrusive interruptions, and the reason is disagreement. Through the analysis of abnormalities in the dialogue classes of the characters in the play "Romeo and Juliet", the writer has partly mentioned and explained the character's tendencies. Finally, the writer recommends the following researchers to analyze alternation abnormalities, especially discontinuity and overlap should be discussed in depth. Researchers may also use different theories and more diverse subjects, so it is hoped that they will produce richer findings.
vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS FT: Floor-taking SA: Signalling annoyance TC: Topic change TR: Transitional CL: Clarification T: Topic AG: Agreement IN: Intrusive AS: Assistance S: Setting SU: Signalling urgency PR: Progressional DS: Disagreement IR: Irregularity I: Interruption O: Overlap CO: Cooperative TC: Topic change P: Participant TC: Desire to correct (//): Overlap (=): Interruption TRP: Transition Relevance Place TTI: Turn-taking Irregularity RE: Recognitional vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: The Frequencies of the Occurrence of Types of Turn-taking Irregularities in “Romeo and Juliet”……………………………………….31 Table 2: offers a specific figure of the frequencies and percentages of each type of season in “Romeo and Juliet” the play that is shown below………….32 Table 3: shows the purposes of turn-taking irregularity of 14 characters in the ‘Romeo & Juliet’ play………………………………………………….………64 viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Since prehistoric times, humans have known to use actions, sounds, and gestures to convey messages to each other. They lived in an organized population and interacted with each other in a common community. The interaction is the foundation to establish a society with institutions used to combine and bind members.
The created language is a useful tool for people to share their feelings, emotions, needs, and intentions through communication. Communication has become an essential need that exists in all forms of human society. Through communication, one can know a person's background knowledge, intentions, and personality. It allows people to give and receive information every second, every minute for certain purposes through verbal communication.
When people take part in a conversation, they take turns speaking: one talks, then the other talks, then another. Levinson (1983:296) states that a dialogue is characterized by taking turns. Alternation happens in a conversation where one person listens while the other speaks. As the dialogue progresses, the roles of listener and speaker are exchanged altogether (a round of speaking).
Furthermore, there are processes in conducting the conversation. The turn-based process is similar to the gameplay process. Procedures maintains the same as the game. This principle is similar to when speakers talk to each other.
People should speak when it is their turn and not interrupt the current one when it is their turn. The other one should wait until the current one has finished his turn before starting to reply. Thus, Cutting (2002:29) states that there should be cooperation in conversation, and that cooperation should be managed by all participants through taking turns. Cooperation in taking turns often indicates that a conversation is going well.
Nevertheless, there are no clear principle for running conversations. Unlike in a game, disturbance often occurs in a conversation. In contrast, in the game, there is rarely a disturbance because players already know the rules of the game. Since there are no clear principles for running a conversation, there are no clear penalties 1 for those who interrupt the dialogue.
In a conversation, disturbance usually occurs when the next participant starts speaking at the time the current participant is speaking. The existence of dialogue disturbance is inseparable from the purpose for which people make it. Many reasons happen to disturb conversations such as positive reasons such as consent, clarification, correction or support, and negative reasons such as changing the subject, taking the other's point of view, expressing annoyance, expressing urgency and disagreement. Zimmerman and West (1975:114) suggest two types of disturbance in conversation, they are interruption and overlap.
The difference between discontinuity and overlap is in where the disturbance happens. An interruption occurs when the next participant begins speaking in the middle of the current participant's speech. Whereas, duplication occurs when the next participant starts speaking at a time when the current participant has almost finished his or her speech. Irregularities in conversation are mostly considered impolite or inappropriate.
Moreover, it is interesting to study the reasons for the anomaly in the spins. People need to know how to speak politely or appropriately, they also need to understand people's personality tendencies. For this reason, the issue of turn-taking irregularities is very interesting to study, and the topic “A Pragmatic Analysis of Turn-taking Irregularities in Romeo and Juliet” is chosen by the researcher for this thesis. This research analyzes an interesting play entitled Romeo & Juliet which contains a lot of attracting conversations for the thesis.
This research chooses Romeo & Juliet because of the story of the play which is supported the existence of anomalies in the dialogues between the drama roles. A lot of dialogues contain arguments and contradictions. Therefore, the drama roles in the play tend to interrupt and steal other people's turn to fulfill certain targets. Addition to, the complex relationships between the roles and the different age and gender help the play very compelling.
The setting of this play's story also directly makes their conversations often heated. Aim and objective of the study The study is aimed at suggesting Vietnamese learners of English have more reference material about turn-taking irregularities in “Romeo and Juliet” The study is also aimed at suggesting the students who are learning at Hanoi Academy of Theatre and Cinema have more reference material about Turn-taking irregularities in “Romeo and Juliet” to open wider than the scope of studying about their theatre and cinema. To gain the target above, the study concentrates on dealing with some mean objectives as follows: - To identify the types of turn-taking irregularities reflected in Romeo & Juliet. - To find out the reasons for the occurrences of turn-taking irregularities done by the characters in the play.
- To identify The main characters’ personality trend through pragmatic analysis of turn-taking irregularities in “Romeo & Juliet” - To suggest Vietnamese learners of English use turn-taking irregularities in terms of pragmatic analysis of turn-taking irregularities effectively. Research question To fully achieve these above aims, the research focuses on dealing with the following questions: 1. What types of turn-taking irregularities are found in Romeo & Juliet? 2. What are the reasons for the occurrences of turn-taking irregularities in Romeo & Juliet? 3.
What is The main characters’ personality trend through pragmatic analysis of turn-taking irregularities in “Romeo & Juliet”? 1. Method of the study To achieve the aims of studying, quantitative and qualitative were used in this study. They help to count and classify the number of turn-taking irregularities that happen in the play. The quantitative approach focuses on the statistical or numerical data collected via the play.
The Qualitative approach applied in this study 3 concentrates on an in-depth exploration of what kind of turn-taking irregularities and based on data collected from the play, the researcher analyses the data and shows off the purposes for the occurrences of turn-taking irregularities done by the roles of the play. Finally, the writer also attempts to show off the main characters’ personality trend through analysis of turn-taking irregularities in the play. Scope of the study The study is within the limit of pragmatics, a subject of linguistics that deals with the research of language in drama context. The research focus on the alternation abnormalities in conversation.
As said before, the conversations in Romeo & Juliet have many turn anomalies. Based on the unusual alternating behaviors of the characters in the play, several matters can be found.