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Informal Discourse

Decent Essays

Informal (speech) discourse markers include, but, like, still, well and because, the formal (written) equivalents that I often overuse include although, however, and. whereas. Recently, I have noticed a desire to use “so.” “So,” when reading Giridharadas (2010) article on “Follow my Logic” made me examine recent conversations. It seemed to be most often used in work settings during project team meetings. The following are two examples, “so, let me repeat what you said to check my understanding” another instant, “so to add to what … was saying”. Both examples align with Dr. Bolden statement, “suggests that we are concerned with displaying interest for others and downplaying our interest in our own affairs.” I wonder do women use “so” more than men do? Previous research between sexes determined that women prefer to come to consensus …show more content…

I was able to quickly eliminated all of the “you know”, and “um” along with all the “so” with the exception of the second “so” in line 19. Next, approximately every other “and” in the beginning of each line can be removed, and the piece will still have clear meaning and humor. However, the words “before” and “because” are important connectors. The repeating of phrases within the context was used to establish an expression of excitement and humor into the written piece. I was unsure of the phrase “all this” in line 15 and 22 although these statements did not add clarity they did add as a means of measurement (amount—a lot of candy). Lastly, in this except “like” seems to change to replace different parts of speech and its meaning in each line. In line 26 “they’re like all of these teenagers” replaces “were” or “are” however, in line 20 “she’s like” replaces “she said”. The choice of discourse markers in this story make it easily recognizable as informal conversation connecting to a segment of the population most often overusing the discourse markers "like", "so",

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