Uhhh Usain Bolt idk
Discuss ways in which the speakers are using language here to communicate and how their language is affected by the context. You should refer to specific details from the transcription, relating your observations to ideas from your wider study.
The situation here is a television interview directed by Piers Morgan, in which Usain Bolt, a renowned athlete and dubbed “the fastest man in the world” is the interviewee. It’s interesting to see how the language here plays out and the chemistry between the two.
The first thing that is most clearly apparent is the way Piers Morgan feels about Usain Bolt. Morgan gives Bolt praise and acclaim for his achievements and going beyond just the content, its obvious Morgan is excited to meet Bolt. This is evident through Morgan’s emphasis in words in phrases such as “YOU’RE my hero” and “the hundred-metre dash is the GREATEST test of a man.” Initially, Bolt does not react with a lot of words, which makes it clear that he’s heard all of these things before, and as a renowned athlete, he’s clearly been interviewed many times. Morgan aims gives Bolt the recognition he feels Bolt is deserving of. The recognition is shown in Morgan’s choice of words: champion, even taking the time to emphasize his status as a “great champion.” In addition, all of Morgan’s questions for Bolt are related to Bolt’s status as a world-class athlete, not just any old athlete. Of course, someone like Usain Bolt gets reactions like this all the time, being a record-setting champion, but it is interesting that interviewers rarely address things like Bolt’s personal life.
Bolt, on the other hand, uses a tone that could be best described as positive and optimistic. When asked about what it takes to be a “champion… a great champion,” Bolt goes into detail about a story a few weeks before the record-setting in which he was defeated by another runner, yet was encouraged by his peers to continue training and never give up. It’s clear that this positive outlook has brought Bolt a lot of his success. He’s also relatively nonchalant for being a record-setting athlete, such as when he says “i just did that” after describing a lot of the things he had to do to get where he is now. He seems as if to feel his accomplishments in the past are not as great of a deal to him as they are to others. This is all reasonable, because leading a life like that, you’d get used to a lot of things the average person is not aware of. Another thing that factors into the way Usain Bolt speaks is his level of humility. At times he seems, as stated, nonchalant about his accomplishments, yet he has to address that there are in fact a lot of people who look up to him as a hero. Bolt says, “a LOT (.) a lot of people (2) especially when i travel.” His emphatic stress on the first usage of “LOT” maybe makes him realize that he sounded a bit cocky, and so then repeats the phrase in a way that could be interpreted as less full of himself in which he doesn’t emphasize the phrase “a lot.”
The interaction between the two is very friendly, demonstrated in the [laughs] and [smiles] before each of Bolt’s answers and descriptions, which pairs with the thoroughly interested and invested Morgan.
The situation here is a television interview directed by Piers Morgan, in which Usain Bolt, a renowned athlete and dubbed “the fastest man in the world” is the interviewee. It’s interesting to see how the language here plays out and the chemistry between the two.
The first thing that is most clearly apparent is the way Piers Morgan feels about Usain Bolt. Morgan gives Bolt praise and acclaim for his achievements and going beyond just the content, its obvious Morgan is excited to meet Bolt. This is evident through Morgan’s emphasis in words in phrases such as “YOU’RE my hero” and “the hundred-metre dash is the GREATEST test of a man.” Initially, Bolt does not react with a lot of words, which makes it clear that he’s heard all of these things before, and as a renowned athlete, he’s clearly been interviewed many times. Morgan aims gives Bolt the recognition he feels Bolt is deserving of. The recognition is shown in Morgan’s choice of words: champion, even taking the time to emphasize his status as a “great champion.” In addition, all of Morgan’s questions for Bolt are related to Bolt’s status as a world-class athlete, not just any old athlete. Of course, someone like Usain Bolt gets reactions like this all the time, being a record-setting champion, but it is interesting that interviewers rarely address things like Bolt’s personal life.
Bolt, on the other hand, uses a tone that could be best described as positive and optimistic. When asked about what it takes to be a “champion… a great champion,” Bolt goes into detail about a story a few weeks before the record-setting in which he was defeated by another runner, yet was encouraged by his peers to continue training and never give up. It’s clear that this positive outlook has brought Bolt a lot of his success. He’s also relatively nonchalant for being a record-setting athlete, such as when he says “i just did that” after describing a lot of the things he had to do to get where he is now. He seems as if to feel his accomplishments in the past are not as great of a deal to him as they are to others. This is all reasonable, because leading a life like that, you’d get used to a lot of things the average person is not aware of. Another thing that factors into the way Usain Bolt speaks is his level of humility. At times he seems, as stated, nonchalant about his accomplishments, yet he has to address that there are in fact a lot of people who look up to him as a hero. Bolt says, “a LOT (.) a lot of people (2) especially when i travel.” His emphatic stress on the first usage of “LOT” maybe makes him realize that he sounded a bit cocky, and so then repeats the phrase in a way that could be interpreted as less full of himself in which he doesn’t emphasize the phrase “a lot.”
The interaction between the two is very friendly, demonstrated in the [laughs] and [smiles] before each of Bolt’s answers and descriptions, which pairs with the thoroughly interested and invested Morgan.
In summary, Piers Morgan’s language is very heavily in praise of Usain Bolt’s accomplishments, as Morgan, like so many other people, sees Bolt in a commendable light for the accomplishments and records he’s achieved. Bolt’s choice of words along with the relatively high number of pauses he makes and nonchalant way of speaking gives more of an introspective tone and general awareness of his level of humility.
Julian.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I do not know how strict Cambridge will be on word count but your blog is just a few words shy of 600. This can easily be fixed by phrasing things longer so I wouldn't be too worried about it but it's just something to look out for. Furthermore it feels like you are focusing on content more than the conventions of language. You do give quotes and describe how infliction impacts what is being said which is very important so there is good things. What I did notice is how you never mentioned the fact that this is spontaneous speech, which is a big part of the transcript. A big part of this is the convections, and you do show some understanding of them, but it could go further. You did show how context did play in a role in the conversation which is very good and the fact that you did talk about their feelings based on how they are speaking is very good. I think that the blog would be around a band four. Cambridge seems to wants the conventions and a very precise analysis of the intricacies of language. What you have here is a good start, but I think they would want more.
Julian,
ReplyDeleteTo start off I would most likely give this blog a band 4. Right off the bat, the first thing that stuck out to me was your third body paragraph, which consisted of one sentence. What you said in this sentence was good, but if you added at least a few more sentences and included words such as “paralinguistic features” I think it would fix that hole in your blog. Not only would it add to the content of the blog, but it would also help the word count that Joseph mentioned. In addition to this, I think you needed to use more proper terms when discussing the language of the text. One example would be paralinguistic features, as I already mentioned. One good thing I would say about your blog is that for the part of the prompt where it states, “how their language is affected by the context” you did great at. However, I would focus on the language a bit more. Overall though I think this is a decent blog for our first paper 4.