COMM 2400 Midterm Study Guide

80 points

You can

take the exam any time within the 24-hour time frame but you can only take the exam ONCE. As

an online exam, this test is open book and open note. However, this exam will be timed. Once

you start taking the test, you will have to complete and submit it within the 90-minute time limit.

So you should review the course materials thoroughly before beginning the exam. If you have

provided the appropriate documentation for additional time on your exams, extra time will be set

up for you.

1. There will be 30 objective questions on the exam, each worth 2 points (60 points total). These

include multiple choice questions, and true/false statements.



The exam covers lectures, class discussions, research readings, and Chapter 1-5 from the

textbook

Everyday Talk

. Test questions with an application component may build on

readings and transcriptions that we’ve read in class, but will not ask about the specific

content of these materials.



The exam is designed to assess your grasp of particular facts (e.g. the use of transcription

symbols) and check understandings of key course terms and theoretical relationships.

Most importantly, it will assess your analytic skill with these concepts. Can you

appropriately apply the concepts to examples we discussed in class as well as novel

communicative situations?



Many of the questions relate directly to what we did in class, because lectures are

designed to reinforce and expand understanding of the text. At the same time, we cannot

cover everything from the text in class, and you are responsible for understanding the

concepts and issues in the text that have not been discussed in class.

2. In addition to the objective questions, there will be 2 short essay questions that will be worth a

total of 20 points. These essay questions will require you to apply course concepts to a transcript

of interaction, or to explain course concepts using your real-life examples. To complete these

questions, follow the instructions and be sure to address each part of the question

.

Research articles: You should use the discussion questions posted on Canvas course files as

a study guide to prepare for exam questions based on these readings.

Midterm exam will

cover two research articles we discussed in class, namely, Kitzinger (2005) and Billig (2001).

Important Terms to Know

This list is not exhaustive of all the terms covered in class or in the book, but these highlight the

most important ones we’ve covered in class.

Identity

Tacit knowledge

Explicit knowledge

Grice’s 4 conversational maxims

Conversational implicatures

Identity-work

Utterance

Content meaning

Interactional meaning

Contextualization cues

Speech acts

Frame

Face (3 domains: competence, autonomy,

solidarity)

Face-threat

Facework

Positive face

Negative face

Master identities

Interactional identities

Personal identities

Discursive practices

Altercasting

Self-presentational

Rhetorical perspective

Phronesis

Cultural perspective

Speech communities

Interpersonal ideologies

SPEAKING framework

Personal address (and 5 types)

Generic he

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Membership categorization device

5 categories of speech acts (John Searl)

4 principles of speech acts

Reproaching

Constructive criticism

Accounts & accounting (and 2 kinds)

Disclaimers

Joking

Metadiscourse

Transcription

Stable features of voice

Variable features of voice

Paralinguistic markers