sociolinguistics unit 2

The ethnography of SPEAKING

and the structure of

conversations

Theme 2


The etnography of speaking

=

The ethnography of communication

What is it?

Studies the norms and rules for using language in

social situations in different cultures, nonverbal

aspects of communication, e.g. distance between

speaker and hearer, eye contact, etc.

Important for cross-cultural communication and to

account for its relation to communicative

competence.


Deals with aspects such as the different

types of language to be used under different

circumstances.

how to make requests, grant permission,

ask a favor;

how to express opinions or interrupt your

interlocutor;

how and when to use formulaic language

(greetings, thanking, etc. ), etc.


The ethnography of speaking:

An approach

A theoretical perspective

A method

To/in the study of culturally distinctive means

and meanings of communication.


Uses of the approach

To produce research reports about locally

patterned practices of communication, and

focus attention primarily on the situated uses

of language.


The approach is concerned with:

The linguistic resources people use in context

(the socially situated uses and meanings of

words, their relations, and sequential forms of

expression)

The way verbal and nonverbal signs create and

reveal social codes of identity, relationships,

emotions, place, and communication.


As a theoretical perspective, it offers a

range of concepts for understanding

communication in any possible scene and/or

community.


As a method it offers procedures for

analyzing communication practices as

formative of social life.

The methodology involves:

participant observation in the contexts of

everyday social life

interviewing participants about

communication in those contexts.


Ethnography of Communication

The study of communication in its widest

cultural and social context, including rules

of language, norms of appropriate

language use in particular settings, and

evaluations given to various speech styles


What are the central questions guiding the

ethnography of communication?

What are the means of communication

used by people when they conduct their

everyday lives?

What meanings does this

communication have for them?


Speakers make choices as to the language

they use based on class, gender, race etc. the

context of the speech event, the topic of

discussion, and their goals.

What kind of ´implicit´ knowledge do speakers

need to have in order to make their choices?


o The cultural rules for appropriate

interaction - What should and should not

be said in particular contexts

o Information about the speakers - class,

gender, race etc.

o Code used by speakers

o Setting or context of the speech event


o Form (conversation, tale, debate)

o Topics

o Attitudes

o The function of the speech event (the goals of

the speakers)

o cultural messages of shared values and

expectations and presuppositions


hats the effect of the implicit knowledge

mentioned above on the speakers?

They use the guidelines to shape their own

behaviour and to evaluate the actions of

others


How to use the ethnography of speaking or

communication as a method to analyze

speech events?

EOC can be used as a means by which to

study the interactions among members of a

specific culture speech community


The model devised by Hymes can be best

explained as ´SPEAKING´


S: What are the setting and scene of the

communication practice

o This component explores two aspects of

context: the physical setting in which it

takes place, and the scene, i.e., the

participants’ sense of what is going on

when this practice is active.


P: Who are the participants in this practice?

o Communication is conceptualized as an

event in which people participate, moving

away from typical encoding and decoding

models (senders and receivers of

messages.)


E: What are the ends of this practice?

o This asks about two ends: the goals

participants may have in doing the practice,

and the outcomes actually achieved.


In the event of joke–telling, many of us are

familiar with an off–color joke, the goal of

which was to entertain, with the outcome

offending.

Communication practice, generally, may target

some goals, yet attain other outcomes

(intended and not).


A: What act sequence is involved in and for this

practice?

o The order of events that take place during the

speech

o A careful look at the sequential organization of

the practice, its message content, and form is

important (telephone conversation).


K: How is the practice being keyed?

o The overall tone or manner of the speech.

o What is the emotional pitch, feeling, or

spirit of the communication practice?


e.g. funerals are mostly keyed as reverent and

serious. Others can be keyed as more light–

hearted.

The ways practices are keyed, and the ways

the key can shift from moment to moment, are

questions raised and analyzed with this

component.


I: What is the instrument or channel being

used in this communication practice?

The form and style of the speech being given.


o The oral mode may be necessary, or it could

be prohibited in favor of a specific gesture or

bodily movement.

o Is a technological channel preferred?

o Should the practice be conducted in print or

via a face–to–face channel?


N: What norms are active when

communication is practiced in this way and

in this community?

What is socially acceptable at the event?


o This component distinguishes the two

senses of norms that may be relevant to a

communication practice: what is done

normally as a matter of habit, and what is

the appropriate thing to do.


norms for interaction norms of

interpretation

Norms for interaction framed as a rule for how

one should properly interact when conducting

the practice of concern: e.g., silence


Norms for interpretation formulated as a rule

for what a practice means: e.g., sitting in

silence with an elder counts as respecting

that elder.

Both norms are analyzed through this

component.


G: Is there a genre of communication of which

this practice is an instance?

o Might involve identifying the practice as a

type of a formal or informal genre such as

verbal fighting, or a riddle, or a narrative.


Summary

1. What can you say about the norms of linguistic

behavior?

Speech is used differently by different groups of

people, so each group has its own norms of

linguistic behavior.

The !Kung (Importance of talk)

Western Apache (The meaning of silence)


2. What does Hymes offer in his SPEAKING

formula?

A reminder that talk is a complex activity, and

that any particular bit of talk is actually a piece

of ‘skilled work’.

It is skilled in the sense that, if it is to be

successful, the speaker must reveal a sensitivity

to and awareness of each of the eight factors

outlined before.


3. What’s the major value of the ethnography

of speaking to sociolinguistics?

To set up an approach to language that goes

far beyond the attempt to account for single

written or spoken sentences.

It widens the scope to include all aspects of

the speech event (the structure of

conversations)


What’s the purpose of conversations?

According to Brown and Yule (1983)

conversations have two main purposes:

Transactional vs Interactional

The structure of conversations

Transactional – spoken language used to

obtain goods or services – also referred to

as service encounters;

Interactional – spoken language used to

allow people to interact with each other –

which features a phatic use of language

whose purpose is to establish an

atmosphere and allow people to socialize


Macro and micro structure of conversations


Macro structure of conversations

Opening section (sociability)

Main body or substance section (shifting

topical focus . topical organization)

Closing section (sociability)


Micro structure of Conversations

Made up of a number of features that make

up human conversation.

What features can we consider?


1. Turn-taking and turn allocation

2. Feedback

3. Turns: adjacency pairs

4. Insertion sequence

5. Error and repair

6. Overlap in speeches

The Cooperative Principle

The Principle of Politeness

- Tag questions

- Preferred/dispreferred responses

4. Insertion


1. Turn-taking and turn allocation

Turn taking mechanisms may vary between

cultures and languages.

• When the current speaker selects the next

speaker, the next speaker has the right to

and is obliged to commence the turn


• If the current speaker does not select the

next speaker, any one of the speakers has

the right to self-select and become the next

speaker

• If neither the next speaker selects the next

speaker nor the next speaker self-selects,

the current speaker may restart his or her

turn Sacks, Schegloff and Jeffeson (1974:704)


Turn Construction Unit (TCU) - the

fundamental segment of speech in conversation.

It describes pieces of conversation, which may

comprise an entire turn.

Transition Relevance Place (TRP -the end of a

TCU), marks a point where the turn may be go to

another speaker, or the present speaker may

continue with another TCU. The change of turn

occurs only in the TRP.


Transition Relevance Place

Change-of-turn points in discourse: TRPs differ

from social group to group

• TRP features: speakers 1. cooperate or

2. fight for floor

Floor: "the right to speak", who controls the

floor has the turn


Pauses:

• Enable elegant transition of turns

• Long pauses: 1st speaker hands over

turn, 2nd speaker: silent

• Short pauses overlaps


Overlaps:

• occur often initially (both speakers start)

• shared rhythm mismatch: repeated start-

overlap-stop pattern

• younger speakers: permanent overlap

signals closeness

• competing speakers: overlap seen as

interruption appeal to conversation rules

"Could I make this point, please?"


Two major types of conversational style:

1. high involvement style: active talk, almost

no breaks, some overlap

2. high considerateness style: slower rate,

longer pauses, no overlap, no interruption


2. Feedback

Participants show they are participating and

following the utterances of other participants

by providing feedback.

Can you think of the feedback you normally

give your interlocutor?


3. Adjacency Pairs

Pairs of utterances that normally occur together

and help structure a conversation.

A.P. contain an exchange of one turn each by

two speakers. The turns are so related to each

other that the first turn requires a range of

specific type of response in the second turn (a

sequence that contains functionally related

turns)


Question – Answer Pair Q. When will you be home

A. At 5 o’clock

Greeting – Greeting Pair G. Good morning Sam.

G: Good morning.

Request – Acceptance/Rejection R: Can I use your pen for one minute.

A: Yes, please have it/ R: I am sorry. It’s the only one I have


Inform – Acknowledgement I: You have to see the head of department before he leaves

for the Senate meeting at 4.

A: Okay.

Apology – Acceptance/Rejection App.: I am sorry, I could not make the appointment

Acc.: That’s okay, we can fix another time/ Rej.: You have no

excuse. You just kept me waiting.

Congratulations – Thanks C: Congratulations on your PhD. T: Oh, thanks


In an adjacency pair, the first pair part invites,

limits, and partially determines the meaning and

range of possible second pair part.

- Tag Questions

Play a special role in adjacency pairs. How a tag

question operates depends very much on

intonation and the context it is used in


Tag questions can indicate a desire for agreement

or support:

‘this is a nice colour, isn’t it?

They can also be assertive devices for prompting a

response or for directing what the response should

be:

‘you’re not leaving now, are you?


Adjacency pairs are

normal in conversations,

but sometimes they do

not necessarily occur.

Do you know why?


Some instances may affect the flow of adjacency

pair. e.g. when a person decides to ask another

question after being asked a question, the flow is

disrupted.

This is called an insertion into what would have

been a normal sequence of conversation. This is

called insertion sequence.


4. Insertion Sequence

Conversations usually occur in pairs, for instance we

have question-answer, request acceptance/rejection,

invitation-acceptance/rejection, and so forth.

An insertion sequence is a sequence of turns

intervenes between the first and second parts of an

adjacency pair.

.


It is a kind of delay in which the response expected is not

given, rather, an entirely different, though related

response is given- e.g.

1. Sam: When are you traveling back to London?

2. Eve: Why do you ask?

3. Sam: I would like to send you with a parcel to my

auntie in Woolwich.

4. Eve: Okay, I will be going in a week’s time.


A: shall I wear the blue shoes?

B: you’ve got the black ones.

A: They’re not comfortable

B: Yeah, they’re the best then, wear the blue ones.

Insertion sequences occur in situations when

people do not want to provide a direct response to

an elicitation until they are sure of the intention of

the speaker as we can see in the conversation

pieces above.


- Preferred and dispreferred responses

Questions are expected to be complemented by an

answer. (preferred response)

Not to answer a question, or to answer at

inappropriate length, either too shortly or at

excessive length, or to answer a question with

another question, are considered dispreferred

responses and tend to interrupt the smooth flow of

a conversation.


5. Error repair Mechanisms

In conversation, we do not always say things the

correct ways we desire to say them. When we did

not say what we ought to say, we still have a way

of saying them. This is called error repair – used

by both participants to ensure:

- co-operation

- full understanding


6. Overlap in speeches

An overlap in speech occurs when two or more

interlocutors are talking at the same time. It can

also be described as occurrences of two or more

participants trying to take their turns at the same

time after the previous speaker had finished or is

about to finish his turn.


The real overlap occurs when the two

participants start their turns simultaneously and

none of them relinquishes the floor for the other.

This is not always the case in a normal

conversation.


Conversations are orderly, because speakers will

naturally take turns. An overlap in speech may

occur in any of the following situations:

• when a speaker deliberately comes in while

another speaker is having turn,

• when a speaker thought another speaker had

finished his/her turn and decided to come in.


sociolinguistics unit 2

Documents

ethnography of speaking

ethnography of speaking

meanings of communication

study of communication

communication practices

means of communication

etnography of speaking

crosscultural communication