Personal Narrative: Anna

Context

• The text is a personal narrative placed in the format of a transcript. The transcript was recorded in 2013, as a part of a set of narratives recorded by a woman named Zara and her mother Anna about their experiences of Paris.
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• Both Anna and her daughter Zara draw comparisons between London and Paris, which suggests that their audience already has an experience of London. Anna's comments about Paris and London are:
• London is built around high streets, with lots of houses where nothing much goes on, whereas Paris has shops and bars with residential buildings, so you are always somewhere 'interesting'.
• In Paris, there aren't any monotonous rows of terraced housing. Instead, streets go off in different directions; 'big wide avenues' and 'cobbled streets' with lots of character.
• More broadly, Anna talks about the following relating to London and Paris:
• architecture
• street layout
• travel - Paris metro and London Underground

Mode, Genre, Audience and Purpose

• The mode of this text is spoken.
• The genre of this text is a transcript, which uses paralanguage, such as pauses noted by '(.)' and '(2)
• The audience of this transcript is primarily people who have little experience of Paris, as much of what Anna talks about would otherwise be obvious to people who already live in Paris or have already visited.
• This text has the purpose of informing its audience about Paris and persuading them to visit, with a small entertainment value.
• Genre conventions:
• pauses punctuate it into paragraphs
• notation of paralanguage [ (.) and (2) ]
• non-fluency feature, 'y-you're', line 7
• dialogue only
• non-standard English, 'coz', line 9
• These features show the subjectivity and spontaneity of the discourse, as many of these features aren't planned for a particular effect.

Structure

• Opening: '(3) I feel like I should say hi (.) so (.) hi' - shows awkwardness, introductory and informal greeting, reveals to audience that this is an informal and subjective POV

Features of Spoken Language

• phatic language, 'hi', line 1
• paralanguage, lots of pauses punctuate speech
• topic marker, 'I'm going to talk about Paris', lines 1-2
• topic shifters, 'and let's see (1) travel', lines 19-20, 'what I like about Paris architecturally', line 4
• hesitation indicators, 'erm' repeated throughout, lines 4, 9 & 18
• fillers, 'and let's see', line 19
• non-fluency features, stuttering; 'y-you're', line 7