A.A. 2010-11
LINGUA INGLESE 1 LM
session:
Autunnale (Settembre 2011)
name:
Giorgia Vetrano
corso di laurea:
LLEA
n.credits:
12
area of study:
Benjamin Button + celebrity talk shows
Evaluation:
Giorgia, I think you can improve this mark a lot. I appreciate the work you have put in
and you have understood a lot. The technical descriptions of tellability are fine but the
analyses are just not quite right.
Benjamin Button
Story 1 – not interrupting and not asking qustions does not mean that you are not
showing interest; interesting stories are often listened to in rapt silence. Your point
about the interruption at the end is a good one. Since this is a monologue you need to
show how the tellability markers are used. You describe then but do not explain them.
For example, how are the imagery and details used.
Story 2 – you are right about the entertainment but, again, you need to explain how
the entertaining effect, “bizarre” as you say, is achieved. You are right that the images
are important but “viper” on it own is not enough. The bizarreness is the lack of
narrative detail and tellability. These horrific events are narrated with extreme
simplicity in terms of lexis and structure. It is this contrast which makes it bizarre and
funny.
Story 3 – it seems to me that the key elements of tellability in this story are the highly
colloquial language (standard collocations and phraseology like “lil’ fat bastard”) as
well as hyperbole, repetition and direct speech (connected to colloquiality). You
mention the direct speech but do not explain how it is used. He uses a very hyperbolic
style – all those exclamations and phrases like “all father wants to do”, “we all
know”, “the only one” – and you did not really pick this up.
Story 4 – the story is used to illustrate the claim “I feel like I’m with a virgin”; You
suggest the connection is about a feeling of experience but the story describes doing
something for the first time, i.e. not being experienced. Nice comment about the story
being a report of thoughts and feelings. You are right - not much tellability here. I am
not even sure that the yellow shaded area is imagery/detail. There are actually very
few visual elements, just details such as “two miles” which are rather abstract.
Story 5 – yes, the key to this story is the interaction between the two rather than the
narration itself, which relates information. The silence, attributable to B, is obviously
very important in this. You need to be careful in interpreting silence psychologically.
You talk about the function of the silence as “shock” and “hostility”. It may not be
hostile at all.
FINAL MARK /10: 8
Celebrity talk shows
The transcriptions are extremely accurate. There are a few details missed but nothing
which affects your analysis. The problem is that you make a lot of good points and
show some interesting differences but in the end seem to think that the talk shows are
all rather similar. Though I appreciate the work you have put in, I find this a bit
confusing.
De Generes - good analysis of the beginning though I think the confusion, hesitation
and non-cooperation is all part of the way the celebrity talk “works” in this show. So
in a way there is cooperation in this staged non-cooperation. Do you think this is
similar to the “exemplary individual” kind of performance that we discussed in
lessons?
Letterman –You are right about the control of question and the asking of question by
the IE: Isn’t this fairly typical of the Letterman show? The ones we did in class
showed the same kind of flexibility. I think you should have looked at the turn-taking
in more detail as it’s crucial in Letterman. You make isolated points about questions
and answers but as this interview is a bit like a game of tennis (more so than the
others I think) the analysis should have been more systematic. I appreciate the length
of the transcript and the amount of transcription you have done
Leno – I think you start the analysis very well but then you finish with “the rest of the
interview is very similar to the other talk shows”. Well, I’m not sure about that – it is
not just a question of topics but of how they are treated. You really need to explain
this better. There are major differences between Leno and Letterman.
King – very good point about not having the chance to transgress; this makes the
show much more of a question and answer session. I agree with you about “being an
ordinary person”. I think you could have said a bit more about her narrative style. I
think your comment about topics and questions being more or less the same needs
supporting with evidence. A lot of these question in the LK show are quite new.
Conclusions – After all this analysis I am a bit disappointed that you say that shows 1,
2 and 3 are very similar because you have shown that they aren’t. The shows have
clearly different styles of dialogue and you should have spent more time looking at
these in detail.
I think this is a potentially excellent piece of work but it needs more analysis.
FINAL MARK /10: 8