Informal syntax, spoken discourse and social purpose

Syntax that travels light

Informal syntax favours economy and immediacy: ellipsis ('Want one?'), sentence fragments ('Absolute bargain.'), strings of clauses joined by coordination ('and', 'but', 'so') rather than dense subordination, interrogative tags ('good game, wasn't it?'), and declaratives doing the work of questions through rising intonation ('You're coming↗'). Non-standard forms ('youse', 'me and Sam went') may also appear and can signal group identity as much as informality.

How conversation is organised

Spoken discourse has architecture. Turn-taking is managed at transition points; adjacency pairs (greeting–greeting, question–answer, compliment–response) structure exchanges; openings and closings are ritualised ('anyway, I'd better run'). Listeners give minimal responses/backchannels ('mm', 'yeah', 'right') to show engagement without taking the floor. Overlapping speech can be cooperative (enthusiastic completion, supportive laughter) or competitive (floor-grabbing) — say which, with evidence. Prosodic features (pitch, stress, intonation, tempo, volume) and vocal effects (laughter, whisper) carry attitude and manage turns.