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Spoken Language Study

Decent Essays

Spoken Language Study

Lord Sugar’s idiolect stands out in this transcript because it’s completely different to the candidates. His language features are very informal which is surprising considering they are in a boardroom and you would expect everyone to be professional, especially Lord Sugar, as he is the boss.

Alan’s informality is shown with his cockney accent and the fact he uses elision and slang in his dialect, such as “dunno”, “talkin” and “should’a”. This shows that is so assured with his position of power and authority over the contestants that he doesn’t have to use upwards convergence to bring him closer to the contestants by changing his idiolect and giving people a more highly regarded perception of himself because …show more content…

The candidates simply don’t have the authority to do that.

However, between the candidates there is a power struggle as they fight for their place, although they are always polite and don’t shout. This is to create a good impression because it would be disrespectful to shout at each other in the boardroom as it wouldn’t been seen as professional behaviour by Lord Sugar

Zoe shows that out of the candidates she’s the most dominant and powerful. She directly questions both Tom and Melody throughout the conversation “what were the daring ones” whilst using direct eye contact which shows she is confident and assertive.

Tom shows that he is less powerful than Zoe because he doesn’t use direct contact all the time when she is questioning him which means he is feeling intimated by her but, because he see’s Melody is less powerful that him, he talks over her “which was mooted down by every single person”.

Melody shows that she is the least powerful candidate; she constantly gets spoken over, partially by Tom “if I may if I may just finish what I’m saying” this shows that Tom is overpowering her, which puts her in a more venerable position.

During the conversation, the candidates never use question tags, this is because they don’t want feedback

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