Lengthy lag Essay Example for Free

Lengthy lag Essay From regular lag, another type of lag can developÐ ° delay that becomes too long for one of the speakers Lengthy lag occurs when Ð ° speaker perceives that the ensuing verbalizing or silence is taking too much time and reacts verbally or nonverbally. Typically this produces one of two results, the speaker who is uncomfortable begins to talk again, creating Ð ° pause, or exhibits some discomfort while waiting. In this example, which occurs moments after the meeting begins, the Professor explains that she scheduled Ð ° TV/VCR for next weeks class to show the Students ASL story. 4 After waiting one second, while the interpreting occurs, the Professor begins to speak again. The Professor speaks one utterance and pauses. Meanwhile, an interpretation into ASL is produced which lasts one line segment (Ð ° full second), and then the Professor speaks again. Later, in while viewing this portion on videotape, she indicated that she continued for Ð ° reason: І am waiting for Ð ° response, and it doesnt seem to come, so І say something. The lag becomes lengthy, not because of Ð ° time count, but because of the Professors perception that the ensuing silence lasts too long. One of the factors that may have prompted the Professor to continue talking is that, after the interpretation, the Student begins to respond by nodding his head. As the Professor finishes in line 65, she hears nothing for Ð ° full second, although it is possible that she sees the interpreter signing. This lack of any speaking may have increased the perception of silence (or that there might not be Ð ° response) by the Professor. The Professors wait for Ð ° response in this example becomes important in the light of future silences. The next example of Ð ° lengthy lag, Ð ° segment that occurs near the end of the meeting, is when the Professor waits but signals her discomfort nonverbally. Interestingly, however, she continues to wait without adding more talk. The Student wants to hand his paper in at Ð ° later date. The Professor wants to see if other students in the class are finished with their transcripts the following week rather than today. After two line segments, the Professor is finished. The Interpreter is interpreting from what was said before and continues interpreting for the Professor. The Interpreter actually starts interpreting this segment on line 187 and continues for six lines. The interpretation continues on and on while the Student says nothing and the Professor says nothing. At line 192, after waiting for three and Ð ° half lines or transcript or more than three seconds, the Professor turns, looks at the Interpreter, and then looks back to the Student. Her movement and her facial expression seem indicative of Ð ° sense of puzzlement, but she does not initiate any talk and continues to wait for Ð ° response. І consider this another example of lengthy lag because of the discourse time that elapses and also because of the discomfort displayed by the Professor. It is not hard to note examples of lengthy silences during which primary participants display uneasiness. In her interview, the Professor commented several times that because she heard no response in what seemed to her Ð ° reasonable delay, she continued talking. This can be attributed to her own conversational style of faster pacing and pausing discussed in her book Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk among Friends (Tannen 1984). More interesting, however, is that her tolerance for Ð ° reasonable delay grew from Ð ° length of two clauses to five clauses or from one second to slightly more than five seconds. Learning about Lag From studies of ordinary discourse we know that although participants begin to talk in Ð ° context, they continue to contribute to contextual features, changing the context as the interaction proceeds (Goffman 1981; Gumperz 1982, Schiffrin 1994). In so doing, they learn how to interact with their conversational partners. Thus, it is not unique to learn that primary speakers who lack experience with interpreters seem to learn about interpreted interaction as they progress through Ð ° meeting. However, it is unique in the sense that this learning, for the most part, remains un-described and unaccounted for. In this meeting, the Professor learns how interpreted conversations proceed so that her tolerance for lag and her wait for Ð ° response grow, gradually increasing in length. At the beginning of the meeting, she turns several instances of lag into pauses by speaking again. As the meeting continues, she tolerates longer periods of silence but still turns these delays into pauses. Later, she accepts another long silence which the Student changes into Ð ° pause to shift to Ð ° new subtopic. Toward the end of the event, she waits for Ð ° response even when it becomes longer than she normally tolerates. Here are segments of talk demonstrating that the Professor is learning about lag through the course of the event. The first example has already been presented as turning lag into Ð ° pause by adding more talk.