Sociolinguistics Quiz: Discourse Analysis

Which statement most accurately describes the main focus of Conversation Analysis (CA) in discourse studies?

• Assessing ideological attitudes in written public texts

• Analyzing turn-taking and the organization of speech sequences

• Describing historical changes in word meanings

• Determining standard grammar in complex sentences

A researcher wants to conclude interaction patterns from phone recordings without an initial hypothesis, based solely on audio data. Which approach is most appropriate?

• Deductive Critical Discourse Analysis based on power theory

• Inductive Conversation Analysis based on recording evidence

• Formal Pragmatics relying on speaker intuition

• Variation Sociolinguistics focusing on dialect frequency

In the framework of introductory pragmatics and discourse analysis, which pair of concept–goal is the most aligned?

• Pragmatics—assessing the social structure of media texts

• Interactional Sociolinguistics—explaining meaning through contextual cues

• Conversation Analysis—criticizing ideology in political speeches

• Critical Discourse Analysis—mapping turn-taking in conversations

If you analyze how error correction occurs in the midst of a conversation, what aspect are you researching according to CA?

• Mechanisms of repair in the sequence of interaction

• Lexical choices in semantic changes

• Cohesion markers in written paragraphs

• Persuasion strategies in public discourse

In CA, the statement "each turn depends on the previous turn and forms the next one" most accurately means what?

• Conversations follow a fixed, standard script

• Meaning is locally constructed based on the sequence of turns

• A single speaker determines the entire conversation

• Context is established before the conversation begins

Which statement best describes how context arises in conversation according to CA?

• Context is determined by the initial topic of the meeting

• Context is created turn by turn by the participants

• Context only comes from external social background

• Context is established only by the closing of the conversation

A speaker says "Hi" and the interlocutor replies "Hello". What does this illustrate in CA?

• Delayed self-repair

• Adjacency pair of greeting response

• Long opening preface

• Competing overlapping turn

Which of the following is NOT a common example of adjacency pairs?

• Question followed by a relevant answer

• Request followed by acceptance or rejection

• Compliment followed by a routine rejection response

• Farewell followed by a similar farewell

What is the main purpose of adjacency pairs in conversational organization?

• To create longer and more complex turns

• To keep the conversation smoothly coordinated

• To eliminate the need for nonverbal cues

• To record systematic speech errors

Responses that are dispreferred, such as rejection or silence, usually require what?

• Immediate reiteration of a new topic

• Additional explanation or supporting reasons

• Verbatim repetition of the question

• Automatic speaker change