COMM 414 Quiz 2 with verified answers
to pass
How does Bonnie and Jim's telephone conversation help us overcome our misleading
commonsense that when we talk, we just "talk about topics". (How does it help us to see that a
lot of conversation is about "doing things" rather than "talking about topics"?) (3 sentences) -
correct answer ✔✔A topic is not what gives us a stretch of talk coherence. It is adjacency pairs
that do that. Examples of adjacency pairs are greetings, question and answers and requests and
compliance. These pairs can vary across many different topic as long as each of the speakers are
performing the correct conversational maintenance to keep the flow of the conversation.
Explain, in terms of the STRUCTURE of the conversation why Speaker B says "Sorry" in line 14.
(Don't just explain it in terms of commonsense but rather in terms of a general law of social
interaction—think about adjacency pairs.) (about 2-3 sentences) - correct answer ✔✔Speaker B
says sorry to present speaker A an excuse for not having an answer to Question 1. He has asked
2 questions and received answers, yet he never gave speaker A the courtesy of an answer to
question 1, so he must say sorry and present an excuse which is then accepted by speaker A.
This is the proper format of the question and answer structure of adjacency pairs
What makes something gossip? (be very specific) - correct answer ✔✔Gossip commonly takes
place between people who are in an equal relationship, focuses on differences between
people's public behavior and their private behavior and helps maintain norms of morality,
cements relationships
How is gossip related to maintaining moral worlds? - correct answer ✔✔When two people
gossip about something, it is typically something that they deems to be morally unacceptable,
so therefore the very act of gossiping about tit reinforces the idea that this behavior is not
"okay"
How is gossip a GOOD thing? (about 4? sentences total) - correct answer ✔✔It is partly because
people fear being the object of gossip that they do desirable activities and refrain from do ing
to pass
How does Bonnie and Jim's telephone conversation help us overcome our misleading
commonsense that when we talk, we just "talk about topics". (How does it help us to see that a
lot of conversation is about "doing things" rather than "talking about topics"?) (3 sentences) -
correct answer ✔✔A topic is not what gives us a stretch of talk coherence. It is adjacency pairs
that do that. Examples of adjacency pairs are greetings, question and answers and requests and
compliance. These pairs can vary across many different topic as long as each of the speakers are
performing the correct conversational maintenance to keep the flow of the conversation.
Explain, in terms of the STRUCTURE of the conversation why Speaker B says "Sorry" in line 14.
(Don't just explain it in terms of commonsense but rather in terms of a general law of social
interaction—think about adjacency pairs.) (about 2-3 sentences) - correct answer ✔✔Speaker B
says sorry to present speaker A an excuse for not having an answer to Question 1. He has asked
2 questions and received answers, yet he never gave speaker A the courtesy of an answer to
question 1, so he must say sorry and present an excuse which is then accepted by speaker A.
This is the proper format of the question and answer structure of adjacency pairs
What makes something gossip? (be very specific) - correct answer ✔✔Gossip commonly takes
place between people who are in an equal relationship, focuses on differences between
people's public behavior and their private behavior and helps maintain norms of morality,
cements relationships
How is gossip related to maintaining moral worlds? - correct answer ✔✔When two people
gossip about something, it is typically something that they deems to be morally unacceptable,
so therefore the very act of gossiping about tit reinforces the idea that this behavior is not
"okay"
How is gossip a GOOD thing? (about 4? sentences total) - correct answer ✔✔It is partly because
people fear being the object of gossip that they do desirable activities and refrain from do ing
