§9.3.3: Manufacturing Discourse Data: Pretend telephone calls or other interactive tasks (and roleplays) can be a good way to get data about how people tend to speak in certain situations. You’ll need to have a couple of scenarios planned, because the first one will probably be very artificial. The participants will relax and produce more relaxed and spontaneous interactions as they warm up to the task. Discourse prompts where people are given a topic and asked to talk about it may also work, though I haven’t tried it and my suspicion is that this method would work better when participants do not know each other.
§9.5: Further reading
- Dynamics of Folklore (Barre Toelken)
- Talking on the Page: Editing Aboriginal Oral Texts (Laura Murray and Keren Rice)
- In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translations (Mona Baker)
- Discourse as Structure and Process and Discourse as Social Interaction (Van Dijk)
- Frog Stories: Mercer Meyer