Discourse Analysis of Verbal Speeches: Bahir Dar City in Focus

The objective of this study is to show the way communicants communicate and interpret speech utterances and the role of context in the actual interaction. Language use aspects of marketers conversation was under close scrutiny. Ten different bargaining interactions were recorded and transcribed. Observation was used as a salient instrument to collect the data in the study. Taking an instance of conversation and illustrating its implications in various social,cultural and economic contexts was the salient emphasis of this study. Conversations were grouped in three phases: openings, middle parts and closings. Next,the data were transcribed and the speeches were segmented. Then, data were analyzed and interpreted, involving the linguistic and paralinguistic features. The results revealed out the following issues. The social values of greetings were given less privilege(attention). Bargaining was the common practice and there were peculiar usage of languages (jargons) in the market places. Market places were used as forums of discussing economic and social issues This might give clues to conduct more studies in other areas such as sociology, anthropology and related fields.