In this lecture-tutorial, i've learnt for the first time in my 21 years of life that in a telephone conversation, the very first 'Hello' is in response to the ring! I'm sure i wasnt the only one who is ignorant of that. Most of us taking GEK1036 will have been enlightened by this lesson, but i bet many others out there do not know that. That is the wonders of this course. It piques my interest, and teaches me to observe/listen to conversations, because i'll realise that there exist patterns in them. These are discoveries I never knew or never would have bothered with until im enrolled in this module. Little also did i know that phone conversations have a certain framework in which we followed unknowingly, and that different cultural groups direct a different approach to it. I was just thinking about the outnumbering reactive expressions made by Australian English versus that of Mandarin Chinese; perhaps its because in the English language there are a larger variety of words to play with than the Chinese language, thus explains the same old few words to respond, just variations of 'shi' and 'dui'.
I have to admit, this week's topic is rather dry comparative to the previous weeks. BUT! I still did learn new and interesting things, and thats whats most important. I like it that im bringing home with me more facts and knowledge every Friday after 5pm. haha. :)
MELISSA KHOO
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Yeh, some good speculation that the more limited number of listener response tokens in Chinese may be behind the more infrequent use of listener responses. I'm thinking of whether Chinese speakers would use fewer LRs when they converse in English.
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