Topic 11 - Conversational structure and character (Session A) > Analysing Major Barbara > Task B > Answer

Analysing Major Barbara

Task B - Our answer

Stephen has 15 and Lady Britomart 16 (see the table in our answer to Task A). As there are only two participants in the conversation, their turn-distribution is bound to be pretty even, and so nothing really significant can come out this comparison. The biggest factors are our decisions about where to start and finish the extract and whether to treat turns 2 and 3 as one turn or two.

There is, however, a bit of an issue about whether Lady Britomart effectively has another, non-linguistic, turn just before Stephen's first turn. We will return to this in our comments on Task E.

Home ¦ Outline ¦ Contents ¦ Glossary