- 266 - The third example is from Fariba’s Story B:
2021 And
WHEN Father Christmas went DOWN
he TOLD, 22
“Do - DID you WON the GAME?”
23 And he [the ‘girl’s’ son] SAID,
24
“NO, I DIDn’t.”
This is the negative, first person counterpart to the positive assertion of the previous example; however, the exclamatory force is missing and so is the rhetorical usage of the
yes-no question. Nevertheless, the “no” is evaluative as a dramatized first person denial. If 24 were expressed in indirect speech it would be something like, “And he said that he
didn’t” or “he said that, no, he didn’t” but the immediate impact of the denial would be lost.
6.5.3 “Please”, “Now”, “Well”, and “O.K.”
Our first example is from Fariba’s Story B, the section immediately preceding that of the last example quoted.
1315 So he SAW a GIRL LAUGHing and she SAID,
16
“MY team - my SON is NOT WINning
17
and he has NONE GOAL
. 18
Now, PLEASE will you GO to the MATCH this AFternoon?”
19 And they DID.
Number 18 is a direct request from the girl for Father Christmas to accompany her to the football match. She has explained the situation and now she wants him to see it for
himself. Fariba uses “go” when she means “come” because, in 13, she is narrating an event from outside the story and then, in 16–18, she switches to direct speech and the girl’s
perspective from inside the story, but fails to switch the verb accordingly. The “now”, according to Schiffrin 1987, “marks a speaker’s progression through discourse time by
displaying attention to what is coming next. Both its focus on the speaker, and on the upcoming talk, reflect the proximal quality of the deictic now” p. 266. The “please” is not
lengthened as in Shvinder’s version above; it marks the utterance as a direct request, but without the degree of urgency exhibited by Shvinder’s Father Christmas.
Our examples of “well” both come from Shvinder’s Story A:
- 267 - 11
And he [Mr. Wong] said, 12
“THERE’S NONE RICE LEFT.”
13
“SO WHAT can we DO-O?” [asked Mr. s Wong]
1415
“WELL, I DON’T KNO-OW,”
SAID Mr. WONG. Number 1415 is a response to Mrs. Wong’s question, “So what can we do?” Mr. Wong
hasn’t the faintest idea. Schiffrin 1987 states that, in her data, “well is more frequent when a larger set of answer options is encoded through the form of the question” p. 105. Mrs.
Wong obviously expects her husband to know what to do and assumes that he has a set of possible options available to him; he hasn’t, so prefaces his answer by “well”. “Well is used
when respondents do not match questioners’ assumptions as to what constitutes the ideational content of an answer - when they do not fulfil the question options” pp. 107–
108. Mr. Wong certainly disappoints his wife’s expectations. 53
“PRESents will he give me some RICE?”
[asked Mr. Wong] 545
“WELL if you send him a LETter he MIGHT.”
[answered the Snowman] This time the “well” is used as a delaying tactic, or deferral, to preface a somewhat tentative
response by the Snowman. Mr. Wong is expecting a categorical “yes” or “no”, but the Snowman is not in a position to give either; all he can do is to offer a suggestion. In
number 53 we also have an example of an exclamation where Mr. Wong picks up the last phrase of the previous utterance in which the Snowman explains that Father Christmas
makes children happy: 52
beCAUSE he GIVES them PRESents.”
This is dramatic storytelling, because the impact of the exclamation is to stress the sense of urgency in Mr. Wong’s mind. Shvinder’s version is far more telling than the original at this
point “O.K.” has the function of a “pre-closing item”, or a “pre-closing offer” to close a
conversation. For our discussion we will take the two examples from Sheiba’s Story D: 89
So he GOT up and PUT on his CLOAK and his SHOES 10
and he TOLD WHITE CHRISTmas 11
and HE SAID, 12
“O.K., Father CHRISTmas, GIVE me your PRESents
- 268 - 13
and I’LL give them to the CHILDren EV’ry DAY.”
1415
“So can I have a HOLiday?” said FAther CHRISTmas.
16
“YES,”
SAID the WHITE CHRISTmas. Father Christmas has been telling White Christmas why he was fed up with delivering
Christmas presents; White Christmas’ “O.K.” acknowledges his problem by cutting him short, and also prefaces his own suggested solution to that problem which Father
Christmas clarifies briefly and then accepts. White Christmas then takes on the job himself but gets really tired in the process:
19 So FAther CHRISTmas SAID,
201
“DON’T WORry, YOU can have a HOLiday NOW
22
and I can have one toMORrow.”
23
“O.K. then, BYE,”
SAID the WHITE CHRISTmas. In this example, the “O.K.” prefaces the actual goodbye which indicates the taking up of
the offer of a day’s holiday, and there is no reciprocal “O.K., goodbye” from Father Christmas in acknowledgement. The “then” has a bridging function: it points back to the
offer 21 and forward to the “bye” 23 which accompanies the act of leaving that concludes the story.
There is very little to say about the use of Direct Address table 6.10, p. 263 apart from a comment on those examples which are particularly striking as lexical items, such as
Sakander’s “My Dearie” E25 and Sheiba’s “Silly Billy” E25, 26. They are not prompted by anything in the original version of the story but may well have been remembered from
songs and rhymes: e.g. there is a rhyme which ends with: “Silly Billy hid a shilling,
Isn’t Billy Silly?” In chapter 3, section 3.6.1, we mentioned rhymes and songs as a rich source of memorized
language chunks or prefabricated patterns; they are used quite widely in the Infant School programme and are especially helpful with second-language learners. Shvinder’s “Darling
dear”, however, does seem to be an original combination of “darling” and “dear” which she had previously heard as two separate endearments.
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6.6 Lexical Intensifiers and Other Lexical Items
