Стр. 60 - Skurikhin_Communicative style

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COMMUNICATION ACTIVITIES
INFORMATION FOR STUDENT A
CONVERSATION CODES
Any discussion of English conversation, like any English conversation, must begin
with The Weather.
Comments about the weather are phrased as questions (or with an interrogative
intonation) because they require a response. English weather-speak rituals often sound
rather like a kind of catechism, ‘Cold, isn’t it?’, ‘Yes, isn’t it?’, and so on.
The Reciprocity Rule
The Context Rule
The English talk about the weather all the time, that it is a national obsession or
fixation, but this is sloppy observation: in fact, there are three quite specific contexts in
which weather-speak is prescribed. It can be used:
• as a simple greeting
• as an ice-breaker leading to conversation on other matters
• as a ‘default’, ‘filler’ or ‘displacement’ subject.
So another important rule of English weather-speak: always agree.
The Agreement Rule
The English have clearly chosen a highly appropriate aspect as a social facilitator:
the capricious and erratic nature of our weather ensures that there is always something
new to comment on, be surprised by, speculate about, moan about, or, perhaps most
importantly, agree about.
The Guessing-game Rule
It is not considered entirely polite, for example, to ask someone directly ‘What do
you do?’
Similar guessing-game techniques are often used to find out where people live,
whether they are married, what school or university they went to, and so on. Some direct
questions are more impolite than others. It is less rude, for example, to ask ‘Where do
you live?’ than ‘What do you do?’, but even this relatively inoffensive question is much
better phrased in a more indirect manner, such as ‘Do you live nearby?’, or even more
obliquely ‘Have you come far?’
The most important ‘rule’ to remember is that irony is a constant, a given, a normal
element of ordinary, everyday conversation. The English may not always be joking, but
they are always in a state of readiness for humour (abridged from K.Fox “Watching the
English” [Fox, 2005]).
CONVERSATION SKILLS QUOTES (STUDENT A)
Here are the missing words from your partner’s quotes:
communication │emotions│ I │listen │reply│ themselves│ understand │why?
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