Transcription of a communication exercise:

Sam (S)

Ruby (R)

The task was to describe, using only words, an abstract drawing to your partner who could not see the drawing. Making it very difficult for you to explain, which somehow led to you using slightly peculiar instructions.

S: Okaayy, aand go!

R: Okay. Start in the top right corner.

S: Yep

R: And draw a small triangle that’s like facing diagonally. (0.2) to (0.1) to the left. (Pause) Yeah (?)/

S: /Oh yeah

R: Like, yeah

S: The points at like the top/yeah

R: yeah (0.1) Okay then down from there (0.1) continuing diagonally. There’s another one. (0.1) like medium

S: Yerp

This is just an extract from the entire transcript; it is the first few lines where you can see instantly how we accommodate our language to fit with each other. For example, several words are used as fillers but also as forms of backchanneling in order to keep the ‘instructor’ going. When I am describing one of the triangles to Sam my speech is full of pauses as I am unsure of my instructions, and I start to slow down “…diagonally. (0.2) to (0.1) to the left.(0.1)…” , Sam keeps me going by saying “yeah” underneath my speech to help me recognise that what I am saying makes sense. These ‘filler’ words are very important because they are a way of communicating a mutual understanding of what is happening and keeps each person going, if someone were to be given this transcript along with a pen and paper I highly doubt they would be able to replicate the drawing as well as Sam did because a lot of the communication was in the tone of voice etc… Another word which is used out of context is “like”, for example “…like medium” when explaining the size of the triangle. Now, medium is not a very informative/descriptive word but adding the word ‘like’ in with it helps in no way what so ever. But as you can see from the extract we both understood each other and managed to develop my instructions. ‘Like’ is used as we were both unsure of what we were saying, we did not want to be definite. I (being the instructor) would use ‘like’ as I wanted Sam to be careful and not draw instantly, which she understood. However, if I were explaining this drawing to someone else perhaps a teacher, I would use a higher register and use more words in order to describe what was happening much better. As you can see from this extract we both ended up using as little words as possible, which were very hesitant: “…diagonally. There’s another one. (0.1) like medium”, being under pressure where every word is important seemed to result in a lack of sophistication.