What I noticed when I first got
interested in this type of research was
that a lot of the work that's been done on
couples talk was done by social psychologists.
When social psychologists
study couples interaction
and affection in couples interaction they produce a
lot of data but that also means
frequently that you have to rely on
interview questions and kind of certain
ideas about what affection means.
It doesn't quite allow you to notice very
idiosyncratic creative ways of
expressing affection and I think that's
exactly what we can do in linguistic discourse analysis.
My work especially is interested
in spontaneous interaction so I really
tell participants usual just to
record how they talk with one another so
I don't give them any instructions.
Really what's so lovely in this data from this
particular couple is that they've got so
many fun ways of expressing affection
for one another, they hardly ever say I love you.
One of the main ones is that
they have these playful insults such as
you're dumb, you're stupid, you're cupid then
they start rhyming or they're switching
into a baby voice, they do that a lot
she says things like to him like you ghust face
you maas face which means
so ghust, maas is Sylheti, it means fish or chicken.
and face is English so they've got both
languages together so essentially she
calls him a chicken face.
If couples have got these recourses
like a different language
then they can work with these
resources to show affection so it's
this playfulness that comes out of the
data and I think a lot of that we could
potentially miss if we come with certain
a priori ideas about how people express
affection so this is why it's important
that we don't just transcribe what people say
we have to transcribe when the voice changes
we have to transcribe pauses
really the next stage of my research is
now to work with more couples so this is
just a first study
this whole question
about what language were reveals about
identity is at the core of what we teach
here at Goldsmiths
