Talk is the most common thing that defines a human being. Talk is part of our everyday life. We are unique in the sense that we have the ability to communicate highly than the other living organisms.
One of the articles that tackles this issue is the paper on Human Development from Simon Fraser University entitled: “A Social Pragmatic Model of Talk: Implications for Research on the Development of Children’s Social Understanding. There are two goals on that paper: to provide a model of conversation and to demonstrate the relevance of the model of conversation for research on the development of Children’s Social Understanding.The paper refers talk both to the activities by which people together construct this universal form of social interactions (Turnbull, W. ).
Many subtopics on that paper were discussed and one of the topics is the Talk-as-Spoken –language. On that topic three postulates were made. On the performance based, talk is spoken language, the oral and imperfect competence. Why imperfect, this is because talk does not have the exact rules. This depends on the performance of the one involved.
On the next postulate the paper give emphasis on the indirect approach or the non-literal meaning.Spoken language is the overt form into which and from which covert thoughts (conceptualized as information) are encoded, transmitted, and decoded (Turnbull, W. ). The next postulate is to convey information. Obviously this is one of the reasons why people talk or speak and talk sometimes exist just for the sake of communication or building a relationship and sometimes just for no reason.
The author also stated that if talk will be given a distinction that it can only be use if a relevant information is to be transmitted; talk will be minimized or ignored.One unique with talk is the nature of that talk have. Talk does not merely involved words and the literal meanings. The hidden ones are sometimes the best information that the speaker is trying to convey. Even with just a blink of an eye a message can possibly be transmitted, this what they call the mutual understanding.
Gestures, facial expression, the mode of transmission and etc should be included in the considerations or in interpretation of someone’s idea. On the other hand another writing of Turnbull was released entitled: Language in Action: Psychological Models of Conversation, chapter 2.One trivial fact on that paper is the thing that the general communication model first came not from psychology but from engineering. This is due to the transmission of data through the form of codes such as the mores code. In mores code messages are put into codes and then decoded by the receiver; this is very important in transmitting confidential information.
On the issue of talk, Turnbull wrote that the addressee actually is not decoding but interpreting. Interpretation is more than the nature of decoding knowing that talk does not only involve words but emotions as well.On his paper, five central attributes of talk was presented. With that five, Turnbull concluded that talk is sequential, manifest, co-constructed, recipient-designed, and indexical accomplishment.
After the evaluation of first paper of Turnbull, I notice that most parts of his work were based on the works of other people and we can notice that he quoted several works. Although this is sometimes good but what is best is to create a new study on that particular issue. In that way the work of other people will be double checked for the validity.On his next writing, under the code model of talk topic, we see that there are some irrelevance discussions; it is when he stated the process of transmitting and receiving the information to the point that he elaborates the biological process of transmitting and receiving information.
Although for the sake of explanation it could be important but the preceding explanation can already understood even if he did not mentioned the biological process. On his second example on the Talk-as-Spoken-Language he gives an interpretation on the said conversation but he gives only one possible interpretation.He should give also another interpretation to avoid bias. Another possible interpretation is that the mother really agreed on the son’s outfit and the son, for the sake of having the best outfit, compares the other look.
Both the two papers really justified with each other. In other words the first and second papers further explained the topics. Base on his works one important of talk as what the two writings convey is that everything falls as a model of talk knowing that talk surpasses the setup codes.
