The Television Series Conversation

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

By

KaiTing Huang

Introduction

In the traditional language classroom, the emphasis of teaching is often placed on the importance of the teaching of language structure and fails to address the importance of communicative competence (Carlo, 1994). We often found that second language learners of English who are well equipped with knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, syntax and phonology still fail to be adept as real conversationalists even though they speak in a way which is grammatically correct and even fluent (Jeon, 2003). Teachers often teach the language and not about the language (Carlo, 1994), and quite often learners’ learning is out of context. What conversation involves is more than manipulating the language itself (Jeon, 2003). One way of taking this into consideration is to instruct learners with materials and strategies derived from authentic foreign TV programmes, video-tapes, news broadcasts and drama which place language in context (MacWilliam, 1986).

Along with the use of authentic materials in the classroom, discourse analysis helps by raising awareness of the target language, which enables learners to engage in conversations more like native speakers.

In this article I will first define the concept of discourse analysis followed by a discussion of approaches of spoken discourse analysis. Dialogues from the television series ‘Friends’ will be used as examples of analysis, and discussion, implication and application will also be explored.

Literature Review

What is discourse analysis?

Hicks (1995) defines discourse as a ‘dialectic of both linguistic form and social communicative practice’ (p.51). McCarthy (1991) construes that ‘discourse analysis is concerned with the relationship between language and the context in which it is used’ (p.5). The concept of ‘context’ is important in discourse. It refers to the situation which gives rise to the discourse, and within which the discourse is implanted (Nunan, 1993). As Bakhtin (1986) puts it ‘speech is always cast in the form of an utterance belonging to a particular speaking subject, and outside this form it cannot exist’ (p.71).

The scope of discourse analysis is not only concerned with the account and analysis of spoken interaction but also interested in the organization of written interaction (McCarthy, 1991). Hicks (1995) elaborates that discourse can be analysed in terms of oral and written communication after the fact and social context that are constructed in moment-to-moment interaction. However, this article will only address the aspects of spoken discourse.

Approaches to analysis of spoken discourse

Discourse analysis originates from different discipline including linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology (McCarthy, 1991), and researchers with backgrounds in ethnomethodology, sociolinguistics, philosophy, structural-functional and social semiotics have had enormous interest in studying spoken interaction in daily life (Eggins & Slade, 1997). Relevant approaches to the analysis of spoken discourse have therefore been developed. Figure 1 provides the brief typology of the approaches that are relevant to the analysis of spoken discourse. The approaches lead us to the study of spoken discourse; however, due to the limitation of this article, only two very important theories relevant to spoken discourse will be discussed: the Birmingham Model and Conversation Analysis.

ethnomethodological

Conversation Analysis

socioliguistic

Ethnography of Speaking

Interactional Sociolinguistics

Variation Theory

logico-philosophic

Speech Act Theory

Pragmatics

structural-functional

Birmingham Model

Systemic Functional Linguistics

social-semiotic

Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical Linguistics

Figure1 Relevant approaches to the analysis of casual conversation

Note. From Analysis Casual Conversation (p. 24), by S. Eggins & D. Slade (1997), London: Cassell.

Birmingham Model

The Birmingham Model is one of the most powerful approaches to the study of spoken discourse. It was proposed by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) at the University of Birmingham. Their research investigated school classrooms and further developed an exchange structure model of classroom interaction. The basic unit of conversation in this model is exchange. An exchange involves three moves. However, different writers name the moves differently. Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) refer to the three moves as ‘Opening, Answering, and Followed-up moves’ (p. 44). Sinclair and Brazil (1982) call the three moves ‘Initiation, Responses, and Follow-up’ (p.49). For the purpose of consistency here we label the three moves ‘Initiation, Response, and Follow-up’. The first move, Initiation (from whoever speaks first) (McCarthy & Carter, 1994, p. 185), has the function of bringing others to participate in an exchange (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). The second move, Response (from whoever responds in some way, either by word or an action like nodding his or her head) (Jeon, 2003, p.10), has the function of being a suitable response in the terms set down by the initiating move (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). The third move, Follow-up, occurs when the initiator comments on the response in some way (McCarthy & Carter, 1994).

The Birmingham Model represents a rank scale pattern where larger units are made up of smaller units as expressed as follows (McCarthy, 1991, p. 22):

TRANSACTION

EXCHANGE

MOVE

ACT

This model is useful for describing talk in and out of the classroom and is useful for analysing patterns of interaction that are well structured, such as teaching or doctor-patient interactions (McCarthy, 1991). However, problems will be arise if it is applied in more complicated contexts such as informal, casual, and spontaneous conversation (McCarthy, 1991). In these situations, it is not easy to predict who will speak when and who will answer, who will interrupt, who will open and close, and so on, because everyone has a role to play in these kinds of conversation (McCarthy, 1991).

Conversation Analysis

Conversation Analysis is one of the approaches to discourse analysis and is often related to a group of scholars known as ethnomethodologists (Jeon, 2003). Conversational analysts underscore the importance of real data. They view discourse as a developing process, rather than an end product. They begin at the local level and try to see how participants manage interaction in conversation (Jeon, 2003). Therefore, conversational analysts are interested in areas like ‘how pairs of utterances relate to one another (the study of adjacency pairs), how turn-taking is managed, how conversational openings and closings are effected, how topics enter and disappear from conversation, and how speakers engage in strategic acts of politeness, face-preservation, and so on’ (McCarthy, 1991, p.24). In the following section, some of the important features of conversation will be described and the implications and application of conversational analysis for language teaching will also be explored.

Adjacency pairs

Adjacency pairs are the basic structure unit in conversation (Coulthard, 1977), and they elucidate how meanings are communicated and interpreted. Adjacency pairs are utterances which are produced by two consecutive speakers and the second utterance is expected to follow-up the first. The first utterance forms a first pair part and the following utterance forms the second pair part (Richards, 1980). The classic adjacency pair is the question / answer sequence (Eggins & Slade, 1997); however, there are more adjacency pairs in our daily conversation, such as greeting / greeting, summons / answer, complaint / denial, complaint / apology, request / grant, request for information / grant, offer / accept, offer / reject, and so on (Richards, 1980). As a matter of fact, there are two types of second pair part. One is the preferred second pair part whose responses incline to be ‘briefer, linguistically simpler, supportive or compliant and oriented toward closure’ (Eggins & Slade, 1997, p. 28). The other is the dispreferred second pair part whose responses incline to be ‘longer as respondents may seek to apologize, explain or otherwise justify their dispreferred response’ (Eggins & Slade, 1997, p. 28).

We have seen that the functions of utterances rely on the co-existence of both first and second pair parts which also point out the limited value of teaching single utterances (McCarthy, 1991). Equipping students with the formulaic expressions of language which native English speakers have not only provides students a survival kit at the most elementary level but also enables them to be more active in real life discourse (McCarthy, 1991).

Turn taking

Conversation usually involves two or more people; however, the distribution of talking among participants has rules. Turn taking conventions determine who talks, when, and for how long (Richards, 1980). Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974) proposed that the basic rules of conversation are that only one person speaks at a time and speaker change recurs. While engaging in conversation participants need to constantly evaluate each other’s utterances and to judge the appropriate places to take up the turn to talk (Richards, 1980). Topic-nomination is also closely linked to turn-taking, since the participant who is currently talking may have something to contribute to the topic or he / she might want to change the topic (Richards, 1980).

Openings and closings

Like written text, conversation has its openings and closings. Openings and closings form the organizational units through which conversation is structured (Richards, 1980). Openings inform the participants of the kind of activity is about to take place. As McCarthy and Carter (1994) maintain that openings orient participants at three levels: ‘the ideational or topical (what are the participants going to talk about), interpersonal (what kind of relationship is being established between participants, whether informal, distant, etc), and the enabling or textual level (how are we going to communicate about the matter in hand, is it a business letter, a telephone call, a face-to-face talk)’ (p.63). In casual conversation, the adjacency pair greeting / greeting is probably the most common way to open a conversation (Richards, 1980).

Related to closings, speaker signals to other participants that the conversation should come to end are pre-closings. Discourse markers such as ‘anyway’, ‘so’ (with downward intonation), and ‘OK…..’ serve this kind of function in English (McCarthy & Carter, 1994; Richards, 1980).

Both openings and closings may raise difficulties for language learners due to the culture differences. Some utterances might sound too blunt or intrusive; however, the formulaic phrases are learnable for language learners (McCarthy & Carter, 1994).

Topics

The dimension of conversational organization is constructed by the way topics are chosen for discussion and the strategies that speakers use to introduce, develop, or change topics within conversations (Richards, 1980). Some people engage in conversation because they like the topic. Others engage in the topic because it arises during the conversation (McCarthy, 1991). Participants engaging in conversation need to be aware of the interactive features of topics, such as ‘anyway’, ‘well’, ‘by the way’ which may signal a shift of topic. Phrases like ‘that reminds me of the time’, ‘now that you mention it’, ‘speaking of that’, and so on are the topic-linking expressions. To return to a previously nominated topic might be signalled by the expressions like ‘to get back to what I was saying’, or ‘what I was trying to say was…’(Richards, 1980).

Repairs

In the context of conversation, repair refers to the efforts which the speaker or the hearer make to ensure the intended messages have been communicated and understood, and repair can be initiated by the speaker or the hearer (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977). Checkers such as ‘huh’, ‘what’, ‘one more time’, ‘I’m sorry’ (Richards, 1980, p. 426) may be used to signal the necessity for repair. Paralinguistic features such as facial expressions, gestures and eye movements can also be used to signal the need for repair (Richards, 1980).Sometimes the speaker will repeat a word or phrase which is misunderstood and the other conversational participant explain or replace it with another easier expression and this technique is referred to as ‘echoing’(Richards, 1980). Fillers and hesitation devices such as well, erm, I think, you know, you see, Now let me see, The thing is… and so on used to fill the pause, to delay and to gain time during the conversation are useful strategies of repair technique (Brown & Yule, 1999).

Discourse markers

Discourse markers are signalling devices. They not only indicate the attitude of the speaker towards the topic but also act as signposts for the exchange of information between the interlocutors (Renkema, 2004). The analysis of discourse markers is part of the analysis of discourse coherence and to look at ‘how speakers and hearers jointly integrate forms, meanings, and actions to make overall sense out of what is said’ (Schiffrin, 1987, p. 49). Discourse markers mostly can be found at the beginning or the end of the utterance because they are not the propositional content (Renkema, 2004). Discourse markers that can be found in English are: information management (oh), markers of response (well), discourse connectives (and, but, or), markers of cause and result (so, because), information and participation (y’know, I mean) (Schiffrin, 1987).

Grammar, vocabulary and lexis

The most salient difference feature between spoken and written language is probably the ungrammatical structure in spoken language (McCarthy, 1991). Conversation usually does not consist of grammatically complete sentences. On the contrary, it is full of verbless clauses, informal words, ellipsis, false start, slips of the tongue and change of direction in the middle of a grammatical structure (McCarthy, 1991). Although spoken language is syntactically much simpler than written language, its complexity lies in the ways in which clauses are joined together by using and, but, then rather than using subordinate clauses (Bygate, 1987).

Modality refers to ‘a range of different ways in which speakers can temper or qualify their messages’ (Eggins & Slade, 1997, p. 98). Modality is often associated with a closed class of modal verbs such as must, can, will, may, etc.; however, many lexical words (nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs) possess identical or similar meanings to the modal verbs, for example appear, assume, doubt, guess, look as if, suggest, think, adverbs such as actually, certainly, inevitably, obviously, possibly, and nouns and adjectives related to these (McCarthy and Carter, 1994).

Another prominent feature is that the spoken language is full of ‘non-specific or vague words and phrase such as a lot of, got, do, nice, stuff, chap, guy, place, something, somewhere, things like that, the thing is…, sort / kind of …and a bit like…’ (Channel, 1994 quoted in Jeon, 2003). Hedging is also frequently used in spoken language. By hedging the speaker modifies what s/he says and helps the speaker ‘avoid going straight to the point, avoid being blunt, avoid appearing authoritative, and avoid committing him/herself’ (Stenström, 1994, p.128).

Methodology

In order to understand what dimensions make up a conversation and how does conversation works in the real world, we need to know what native speakers do when they make conversation. This also leads us to depend on the studies of spoken discourse that provide insights into what conversation is and what constitutes successful conversation (Jeon, 2003).

As mentioned above, there are a number of approaches related to the analysis of spoken discourse, and an appropriate approach must be applied in order to explore how conversation happens in the real world and to understand the contextualised linguistic information within the conversation. Conversation analysis is an analytic approach seeking to ‘describe and analyze social actions, the organisational features of various, naturally occurring, interactional phenomena’ (Psathas, 1995, p.45). The selections from among the variety of interactional phenomena for study are not based on pre-defined theorizing, for this might designate matters of greater or lesser importance (Psathas, 1995). In the light of this, naturally occurring data such as conversations, news interviews, telephone calls, dinner table talk or television programmes are the potential data for conversation analysis for they are not produced for the purpose of study.

Selection and analysis of television dialogues

Television dialogues are rich, authentic sources of natural conversation and supply various aspects that can be exploited in a classroom. In this study, the two dialogues are taken from the American television series ‘Friends’. ‘Friends’ is a very popular television series not only in America but also in different parts of the world, and it produces ‘natural’ conversations among friends and also in a wider range of situations. As McCarthy and Carter (1994) indicate, dramatized data are not written for displaying or teaching language forms, hence they are often considered by consumers as ‘natural’. The two dialogues I have chosen draw our attention to the features of natural conversation. They are also in accordance with the criteria that Voller and Widdows (1993) suggest, namely that films with too much detailed background knowledge of a subject or culture should be avoided for using as teaching materials and also compatible with King’s (2002) observation that entertaining films are enjoyable and relevant to learners’ appreciation of popular culture and therefore students’ motivation and interest are increased. In the light of the abovementioned reasons, the two television dialogues are chosen and the Conversation Analysis method is applied in order to analyse the features of conversation in great detail.

Sample 1: Greeting and introducing people

This sample of conversation (see Appendix 1) shows the interaction between three people, two of whom (Ross and Rachel) are very close friends. The close relationship between the participants leads to a very informal style of conversation. Rachel arrives at the airport to pick up Ross but does not expect to see Ross getting off the plane with his new girlfriend, Julie. This short conversation comprises many features of spoken language. We have informal and colloquial language (Turn 1and10: Oh, my god, Turn 3: There you are. Turn 11: wanna ) and useful routines (Turn 1: Excuse me.). We have ample examples of ellipsis (e.g. (It is) Emergency, what happened (to you)? (It is) Enough about me, these (flowers) aren’t for you. These (flowers) are for you, (Are we going to the) Baggage Claim?), repetition or non-fluency features (Turn 1: Oh, my god. Oh my god. Move, move. Turn 5: so, so…, Turn 6: It was, it was great, Turn 11: Enough about me, enough about me, I wanna hear everything! EVeryTHing!, Turn 13: These are, these aren't for you. Ah, um, these are for you. ). We have conversational routines and adjacency pairs used for greeting and introducing people (Turn 4-5: Hey! Hi!, Turn 5-6: so, so, how was China? It was, it was great. Turn 12-13: This is Julie. Julie, this is Rachel. Hi!, Turn 13-14: Welcome to our country. Thank you. ). We have repair in Turn 7 (What?) where Rachel asks for clarification of Ross’s question. In terms of topic management, discourse markers such as ‘Anyway’ (Turn 11) signal the intention of changing the direction of the conversation. With regard to turn-taking mechanisms, we have time-buying devices (Oh well so…) and fillers (ah, erm) to plan the conversation or search for the right expression.

Sample 2: Leave-taking and closing

This conversation (Appendix 2, Sample 2) takes place after Ross has finished talking with Chandler and Monica and Rachel has interrupted to request a talk with Ross. Here we have examples of leaving-taking, adjacency pairs and conversational routines used in closing rituals. Closing rituals start with the pre-closing ‘Well, I gotta go’ to indicate Ross’s intention of closing the conversation and followed by ‘Bye’ (Turn 1) and Chandler responds by saying ‘Ya’. The closing ritual is broken by Rachel’s interruption in Turn 6 (Well, erm can I talk to you for a second?). In order to hold her turn (Turn 9), Rachel uses devices (First of all, second of all) indicating she is making a series of remarks. Other features related to continuing to talk include speakers’ chaining their statements together by using ‘and’ (Turn 9, Turn 10 and Turn 12) sometimes in conjunction with fillers (‘Um’, ‘well’, ‘erm’). We also have discourse markers such as ‘Oh’ to express emotional states such as surprise, fear, or pain (Oxford English Dictionary, 1971). Here the utterance of ‘Oh’ (Turn 4) indicates Rachel’s surprise of Ross’s leaving. Another discourse marker ‘well’ has different labels such as interjection, filler, particle, hesitator, and initiator (Svartvik, 1980) as seen in Turn 6, 9, 12. Schlegloff and Sacks (1973) also observe that well is used as a pre-closing device before conversational closure such as in Turn 1 (Well, I gotta go). Y’know is used to reach a situation in which the speaker shares the knowledge with the hearer (Schiffrin, 1987) as seen in Turn 12 (Y’know I always have …) and Turn 14 (Y’know someone, someone who makes you…). I mean indicates a speaker’s forthcoming modification of the meaning of his / her own previous talk (Schiffrin, 1987) as shown in Turn 12 ( I mean I, I, I actually …). As for formal features of spoken language, we have examples of repetition or non-fluency features (Turn 11: No, no no no no no no, Turn 12 : I think, I think the guy is scum …I mean I, I, I actually... and and you are you are way..., Turn 14: …how how funny and sweet…Someone who who wakes up …, I'm I’m with Rachel Y’know, someone, someone who …, like, like the way …, Turn 15: I think I think that was, that was the whole all, Turn 16: Ok! Ok!), informal, colloquial language and vague expression (gotta , idiot, guy, scum, way too good, sweet, sexy), hedging (kinda, just, actually, I think ) to soften what the speaker has to say. In this conversation we also have the backchannel signal ‘Really!’ in Turn 13 which encourages the speaker to keep talking. A useful routine is also can be seen in Turn 8 (What's going on?). After Rachel’s interruption, there seems to be nothing more to talk about between Rachel and Ross; therefore they agree to the ending of pre-closing rituals. Ross indicates that he is leaving (Turn 16: Here I go.). Rachel thanks him for his talking with her and then Ross leaves, which brings the conversation to a mutually satisfying end.

Discussion and Implication

It is often considered that learning to talk is one of the most difficult skills for a language teacher to equip students with. In the real world conversation is full of slips, ellipsis, errors, incompleteness, and conversation occurs here-and-now, under pressure of time, while speakers need to concentrate on what has just been said and simultaneously what they are just about to say. This moves spoken language to the performance end of the competence-performance distinction (Brown & Yule, 1999). Moreover, the notion of ‘correctness’ is not so evident in conversation. It is about the performance of language, which indicates the difficulties of teaching learners to talk. However, viewing language as discourse enables us to reveal the cultural differences that prevent learners from performing the target language in the way they should not to. As Scollon and Scollon (1979) suggests, different conversational discourse systems between languages can resulted in serious misunderstanding when interaction takes place between people from different cultures. Furthermore, by analysing actual conversational English, language awareness can be aroused (Carter & McCarthy, 1994).

Foreign language learners often learn the target language out of a native-speaking context, and most of the acquired language is for transactional purposes. A possible way for language teachers to instruct learners is to teach them how to participant in conversation. Television dialogues provide indispensable example of facets of natural conversation that non-native English speakers or learners need to know and understand as a basis of developing conversational proficiency (Jeon, 2003). The strategies or devices which are presented in the television dialogues should be acquired by language learners and applied effectively in order to be good conversationalists.

Furthermore, the design and selection of teaching materials and classroom activities could be based on the features of conversational discourse (Jeon, 2003). As Boxer and Pickering (1995) maintain, language learners will receive accurate accounts of the rules of speaking in a second or foreign language only through materials that reflect how we really speak.

Application

The notion of conversation is closely related to the presentation of self. In other words, it involves communicating an image of oneself to others (Gumperz & Roberts, 1980; Scollon & Sollon, 1979 quoted in Richards, 1980). Therefore this implies that the teaching of real conversational skills cannot be achieved simply by the parroting of dialogues. The focus should be placed on strategies of conversational interaction and equip learners with a good command of conversational features such as adjacency pairs, openings and closings, turn-taking, discourse markers and repair strategies to initiate and develop conversation with skill and confidence (Richards, 1980). Television series provide a ‘context and a reason for communication as well as realistic models and examples to practise with or imitate’ (Jeon, 2003, p.30). The television dialogues that I have discussed can be provided for practising specific speech acts like greeting, introducing people or leave-taking, and some strategies such as repair, turn-taking and discourse makers can also be prepared for learners.

One of the activities of practising discourse skills can be applied in the classroom, such as the following ‘know how to use discourse markers’ (Activity 1).

Activity 1: Focus on the discourse markers (for advance learners)

Fill in the missing parts of this dialogue using the phrases given, as in the example.

You know, I mean, well

S1: …he thought it would be best if he wasn’t living with his family. Then the husband and wife obviously split up.

S2: Oh.

S1: And then +

S2: How sad

S1: +________ he he went with friends obviously for a drink to ________ drown his sorrows.

S2: Yeah.

S1: And ended up +

S2: On the street.

S1: + on the street. And she doesn’t know where he is or anything.

S2: Could’ve just cracked. _______ it must have been he did crack.

S1: _______ yes. Yes.

S2: Because everything collapsed round him. He was obviously a very responsible chap. He [unintelligible] bread-winner.

S1: He was fine. _______ no different from the rest of us.

(Note: From From Corpus to Classroom: Language Use and Language Teaching (pp. 173-174), A. O’Keeffe, M. McCarthy, and R. Carter (2007), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ).

This activity is only one of many possibilities of applying television dialogues in the classroom. Other activities based on the television dialogues that I have discussed can also be contrived to develop different aspects of conversational skills. For example, teachers can design an activity to develop students’ abilities to hold their turn by using the devices (First of all, second of all) that indicate he /she is making a series of remarks, or provide dialogues for role-plays. Students are also encouraged to make up their own dialogues based on the same materials.

Conclusion

It has been argued that the distinctive features of conversation differentiate it from written language in terms of linguistic and discoursal features. It has also been suggested that television dialogues are rich, authentic natural sources of natural conversation and offer various possibilities that can be exploited in a classroom (Jeon, 2003). Most importantly, television dialogues place language in context (MacWilliam, 1986). By using natural conversation, we exposed learners to discourse in different contexts and therefore engaged them in thinking through concepts and situations (Carlo, 1994). As McCarthy and Carter (1994) put it, ‘knowing how language works and how people use it is a first and indispensable step towards deciding what shall be taught’ (p.3).

Discourse analysis provides a tool for language teachers to understand the principles of everyday language used in the real world and gives insights into ways to deal with the language for real purposes beyond the sentence level. Accordingly the gap between the language itself and the language in its actual use is bridged (Jeon, 2003). The television dialogues provided in this study are only a few examples of natural conversation. Language teachers can be flexible in choosing other materials such as film dialogues or soap operas, which are also available authentic materials that can be employed in the classroom to help involve students in the natural contexts of conversation and promote their discourse and cultural awareness.

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Appendix 1:

Sample 1: Greeting and introducing people: in informal context (From Friends)

Setting: At the airport

Participants: Rachel, Ross, Julie (Ross’s new girlfriend)

Context: Ross was in love with Rachel, but every time he tried to tell her, something kind of got in the way. When Ross was in China on his dig, Chandler let it slip that Ross was in love with Rachel. So she went to the airport to meet him when he came back, but what she didn't know was that Ross was getting off the plane with another woman.

1 Rachel: Oh my god. Oh my god. Move, move. Emergency! Excuse me! (Rachel didn’t expect to see Ross getting off the plane with his new girlfriend, so she tried to run away and fell)

2 Ross: Rach! (Rachel stood up, and Ross saw her)

3 Rachel: Oh, there you are!

4 Ross: Hey!

5 Rachel: Hi! Oh, so, so, how was China? You!

6 Ross: It was, it was great. Oh, what happened?

7 Rachel: What?

8 Ross: You're bleeding.

9 Rachel: I am?

10 Ross: Oh, my god.

11 Rachel: Oh, look at that, yes I am. Anyway. Enough about me, enough about me, Mr. Back from the Orient. I wanna hear everything! EVeryTHing!

12 Ross: Well, erm where do I start? Oh. This is Julie. Julie, this is Rachel.

13 Rachel: Hi! Oh. These are, these aren't for you. Ah, erm, these are for you. Welcome to our country. (Rachel spoke slowly and gave Julie the flowers which were prepared for Ross )

14 Julie: Thank you. I'm from New York.

15 Rachel: Oh well so, not a problem. I'll just use them to stop the bleeding. Ok. Baggage Claim? (Rachel took the flowers back and used them to stop the bleeding of her forehead)

16 Ross: Ok.