Language in Use 225-226
This unit considers the way in which we use language simply to establish and
maintain social contact with other people. What is said is much less important
than the attitudes to the other person we indicate by our way of saying it. The
unit examines what happens in that common situation when two or three strangers
are brought into contact with one another by chance, and shows how speech is
used to avoid the awkwardness and unease of such a situation. The aim is to
show pupils how such commonplace talk forms an essential part of the fabric
of living
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[1] In this session, the class should divide into small groups to prepare short sketches which will show what they think is likely to happen when a few people are thrown together in a situation where they feel impelled to say something. The sketches should be presented to the whole class. Before the last two groups present their sketches, they can be sent out of the room and the class asked to say what they expect them to talk about. In discussion, the class should consider why people talk at all in such a situation, why there seem to be almost set patterns of talk available to us for just these situations, and what would happen if no one talked at all. The situation needs to be a very simple one, like people gathering at a bus-stop, or sitting in i train much delayed, or being in the room while a repair is carried out.
[2] The aim of this session is to explore, again by using the small
groups to epare and present sketches, the kind of situation in which people
feel that they have to keep talking because the situation requires it. Examples
include car driver and hitch-hiker; cricket commentator during various intervals;
guests at a wedding; preliminary to business meeting; receptionist greeting
patient or candidate. After watching the sketches, the class should consider
such questions as:
(a) what is the difference between talk
(i) where the audience is limited to one or two ((he hitch-hiker)
(ii) where the audience may be only one person but the context
is formal, public or social (the wedding)
(iii) where the talk is merely preliminary.
(b) what subjects are not acceptable?
(c) what else are we conveying while talking and what are we discovering about
other people?
[3] The aim of this session is to explore what happens when we want
to break off social talk in a situation where the other person is determined
to go on. Ask the groups to take up one of the sketched from [I] or [2] and
add someone who does not know when to stop or who talks about a highly personal
matter like losing his job, or assumes that his listeners share his political
views. In discussion, the class should consider:
(a) how the others react
(b) how he can be stopped
(c) why talk of this kind is unacceptable in the context
(d) why a person might talk in this way in an inappropriate context.
See Glossary (Social Talk).
This topic may also be explored in literature by examining ways in which playwrights and novelists make use of it.
Related topics may be explored in C8, H6, H8, and H9.