ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION – UNIT I
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Subject Name Linguistics Subject Coordinator Professor Pramod Pandey, JNU, New Delhi Paper PRAGMATICS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Professor Imtiaz Hasnain, Department of Linguistics, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh Paper Coordinators Professor Rajneesh Arora, Department of Linguistics and Contemporary English, EFL University, Lucknow Campus
Module Name Ethnography of Communication Unit I 1) Dr. Saumya Sharma, Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics and Contemporary English, EFL University, Lucknow
Content Writers Campus and 2) Syed Ghufran Hashmi, Research Scholar, Aligarh Muslim University
Email id [email protected] Mobile 09935480150 E-text Self Learn Self Assessment Learn More Story Board
Prerequisites: It is expected that students are familiar with the concepts of Structuralism and linguistic competence and have read the unit on speech acts.
Objectives: The module will acquaint students with the Ethnographic Approach to Communication
Keywords: communicative competence, speech acts, speech events, speech community, components of speech
Contents
1.0. Introduction 2.0. Hymes‟ Framework of Communication 2.1. Speech Community 2.2. Speech Situation
2.3 Speech Event 2.4 Speech Act 2.5 Communicative Competence 3.0. Components of Speech (SPEAKING) 3.1 The Setting and Scene (S) 3.2 The Participants (P) 3.3 Ends (E) 3.4 Act sequence (A) 3.5 Key (K) 3.6 Instrumentalities (I) 3.7 Norms of interaction and interpretation (N) 3.8 Genre (G) 4.0. Summary 5.0. Self Assessment 5.1. True/False 5.2. Multiple Choice 5.3. Questions 6.0. Points to Ponder 7.0. Did You Know? 8.0. Weblinks 9.0. Glossary 10.0. References
Story Board: Animation in the form of matchstick figures can be shown for each participant/speaker in all the dialogues given in the unit
1.0. Introduction
You will readily agree that in our everyday life it is more important to understand how language is used rather than the description and analysis of its syntax, semantics, phonology or morphology. This is because learning to use a language means how to use it in order to do certain things with that language and not merely the ability to produce or to judge grammatically correct sentences. The idea in the above lines is precisely the subject matter of an approach in anthropological linguistics known as ethnography of communication.
Ethnography deals with the description and analysis of ethnic groups. Thus ethnography of communication represents an intersecting discipline to be found at the junction where linguists become ethnographers to collect data on the language patterns and speech styles of different communities. This approach finds its origin in the works of Dell Hymes and John Gumperz in the early 1960s. Hymes (1986) rejected abstract analysis of language and grammar and emphasized the analysis of language in social settings. This approach was concerned with finding out the “universals of language use” just as Chomsky‟s concern was with the universals of grammar (Figueroa 1994: 42) and thus helping in describing the speaking practices of tribal and non-tribal communities. Hymes has also labelled his approach as “socially constituted linguistics” (1999: 14) because he believed that the meaning of an utterance can be understood only in relation to its socio-cultural setting. He made this clear by saying “[t]o put it in grossly simplified form: in seeking structure, Saussure is concerned with the word, Chomsky with the sentence, the ethnography of speaking with the act of speech” (Hymes, quoted in Figueroa 1994: 40). The ethnographic model assumes further importance for second-language speakers, like English for us, precisely because it tells us that we not only need general linguistic knowledge but social and cultural knowledge that governs what we say to whom and why. This means that the norms of speaking vary across cultures. For example it may be all right in some speech communities to address a teacher or a superior at a workplace by her name but do you think is it appropriate to call your teacher or your boss at her office by her name in the Indian context?
2.0. Hymes’ Framework of Communication Hymes, while formulating the framework of communication, deals with notions such as “speech community, speech situation, speech event, speech acts, components of speech events, functions of speech, etc” (Hymes 1986: 53). Let us discuss these notions in detail and why they are important in Hymes‟ model.
2.1. Speech Community Speech community is a difficult notion to define and scholars have defined it differently but it is important because “it postulates the unit of description as a social, rather than linguistic, entity” (Hymes 1986: 54). A speech community in the Ethnographic sense may be defined as “a community sharing rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech, and rules for the interpretation of at least one linguistic variety… both conditions are necessary” (Hymes 1986: 54). One cannot claim to be a member of a speech community simple by sharing of grammatical (variety) rules. Hymes said that one could grammatically identify someone‟s language but not understand the message because one may be “ignorant of what counts as a coherent sequence, request, statement requiring an answer, requisite or forbidden topic,
marking of emphasis or irony, normal duration of silence, normal level of voice, etc.” (Hymes 1986: 54). Hymes therefore defined a speech community as: “[t]o the extent that speakers share knowledge of the communicative constraints and options governing a significant number of social situation, they can be said to be members of the same speech community” (1986: 16). This implies that “[m]embers of the same speech community need not all speak the same language nor use the same linguistic forms on similar occasions. All that is required is that there be at least one language shared so that speaker can decode the social meaning carried by alternative modes of communication” (ibid.).
Figueroa (1994) and Scherre (2006) are of the view that the notion of speech community can be viewed from three perspectives: structural linguistics; sociology of language and ethnography of communication; and Labovian sociolinguistics. A speech community in the first sense means the existence of a single language. In the second sense it means a speech community where people are united by symbolic integration, creating a dense network of communication (Gumperz 1999). Gumperz and Hymes (1986) both believe that the existence of at least one shared linguistic system is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. In the third sense, being a part of a speech community means sharing same attitudes and values towards a language.
It is clear by now that speech communities are constituted not just by a shared variety or language, but shared sets of norms and conventions of language use. For instance a second language speaker of English, like we are, together with the native speaker of English would form a speech community only if we also share norms (socially accepted and culturally appropriate linguistic behaviour) of language use.
2.2. Speech Situation Other essentials in the ethnographic framework are the notions of speech situation, speech event and speech act. These are hierarchical units where a speech act is part of a speech event and the event is part of a speech situation. The example that Hymes (1986) gives is of a party (speech situation) that includes a dinner (speech event) and someone cracks a joke (speech act). Ceremonies, fights, hunts, meals, lovemaking, and the like are some of the situations given by Hymes.. A hunt, e.g., may comprise both verbal and nonverbal events and the verbal events may be of more than one type (Hymes 1986).
2.3. Speech Event Speech event is “the basic unit of analysis” while speech community, within which speech events are embedded are “the social unit of analysis” (Gumperz 1986: 16-17). This entails that “…any speech
governed by norms of behavior would be a speech event” (Figueroa 1994: 50). Examples of speech events are interviews, buying and selling goods in a shop, sermons, lectures, and informal conversation (Lillis 2006). While explaining the term, Hymes says that speech event is:
[R]estricted to activities or aspects of activities that are directly governed by rules or norms for the use of speech. Such an event may consist of just a single speech act, or of several: a speech act may be the whole of a speech event, and of a speech situation (say, a rite consisting of a single prayer, itself a single invocation). (Hymes 1986: 56)
It may be noted that the same type of speech act may recur in different types of speech event, and the same type of speech event in different contexts of situation. Thus, a joke (speech act) may be found in a private conversation, a lecture, a formal introduction (Hymes 1986).
2.4. Speech Act The speech act is the smallest unit of the three. A speech act is that bounded unit which achieves some social action. Hymes considers the speech act to be a minimal unit is different from a sentence but maintains the same tone or key and the same rules for interaction with the same set of participants. It can be both verbal and non-verbal. It is important to note that although speech act may “seem similar to speech act in the sense of Austin‟s as an action, a reply, a request, a question, a command, etc.,” (Figueroa 1994:50) but it is more likely that Hymes used it in a broader sense as a joke, greeting etc. Gumperz (1999) says that at this level decisions are made about the more immediate discourse tasks such as narrating, describing, requesting, which make up everyday activities.
2.5. Communicative Competence Another important concern of Hymes is to define what it means to be a fluent speaker or skilled language user. It would be instantly clear that appropriate communication can only take place if the speaker follows socially acceptable and culturally appropriate norms of communicative behavior. For example, we are constrained by unwritten rules of communication as students in a classroom for we are governed by the classroom setting and by the teacher‟s behaviour. The notion of communicative competence is central to ethnography of communication (Hymes 1986). Communicative competence of a member of a speech community is his or her knowledge of rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech, as opposed to the grammatical competence that consists of speakers‟ ability to interpret a linguistic variety (knowing the phonology, grammar, and semantics of a language or dialect). Troike (1982) is of the view that it includes both knowledge and expectation of who may or may not speak in
social settings. The notion of communicative competence challenged Chomsky‟s notion of linguistic competence (knowledge of grammar rules) because Hymes refused Chomsky‟s idea of an ideal speaker- hearer community where perfect communication took place devoid of any form of distraction, internal or external (Lillis 2006). On the contrary he postulated that communication was governed by degree of acceptability, grammaticality, feasibility and possibility in a social context.
3.0. Components of Speech (SPEAKING) Each speech event can be described in terms of its components that Hymes captures in his mnemonic SPEAKING. Ethnography of a communicative event is a description of all the components that are relevant in understanding how that particular communicative event works. It also provides a framework for comparing different speaking practices across communities (Hymes 1986; Troike 1982). Hymes identified sixteen components that are as follows:
3.1. Setting and Scene (S) Setting refers to the time and place, i.e., the concrete physical circumstances in which speech takes place. Your class of sociolinguistics (time: 10:00 to 11:00 a.m., the classroom in the department of Linguistics, the teacher and the board on which she writes etc.) is one example of a setting. Scene on the contrary refers to the abstract “psychological setting or the cultural definition of the occasion.” (Hymes 1986: 60) Within a particular setting, of course, participants are free to change scenes, as they change the level of formality. Your teacher might be serious while explaining the theoretical basis of the ethnography of communication but might get angry if the students are not serious or she might evoke laughter by cracking a joke if it is necessary to change the mood of the class. Change in the kind of activity also brings a change in the scene for instance the teacher might shift from lecturing to explaining how to tackle a potential question in the examinations. Another example, provided by Hymes (1986), showing a change in the scene while the setting remains constant is that of a shift in the dramatic time in a play or a movie.
3.2. Participants (P) The threefold division of a speaker, hearer, and the topic postulates a dyad, speaker-hearer (or source-destination, sender-receiver, and addressor-addressee) (Hymes 1986). However, there are certain situations that require specification of three participants [addressor, addressee, hearer (audience), source, spokesman, addresses; etc.]. Think of a conversation between say you and your friend. It involves a speaker and hearer whose roles change. Recall the last lecture you attended at a seminar or a conference and think of the roles people were engaged in that particular speech situation. Surely they differed from a simple speaker-hearer dyad. In fact the people there were addressors who addressed an audience with
limited opportunity for change. Now recall the last wedding or a prayer you attended. Was the priest a speaker? Not really. In uttering the Holy Scriptures the priest is not the source of his utterance and therefore cannot be properly called as the speaker. A prayer obviously assigns one role each for the God or the deity, himself and the audience. Hymes therefore came up with the term participant. Participants include various combinations of speaker–listener, addressor–addressee, or sender–receiver.
3.3 Ends (E) Ends refer to (1) the conventionally recognized and expected outcomes of an exchange, and (2) the personal goals that participants seek to accomplish on particular occasions. Outcomes are public while goals are personal and the two often clash. There is, perhaps always, a tug of war between the socio- culturally expected outcomes and the outcomes that you desire by becoming a participant in a particular speech event or speech act. You may like to be appreciated after a wonderful performance at your college theater last evening but the next morning you wake up to find pamphlets pasted all over on the walls of your college demanding an apology over the use of sexist language in the play. Emphasizing this demarcation between outcomes and goals, Hymes (1986) says that the purpose of an event from the community‟s stand points may differ from those of the participants as in the event of litigation where both parties desire to win. You must have observed in politics as also in business negotiations take place with the participants having different ends in their minds.
3.4 Act sequence (A) Act sequence refers to the precise words used and how they are used to express a particular topic at hand. The former is labelled as the message form and the latter as message content. No speech can take place without a form and it is this necessity that makes it fundamental. Think of a speech like greeting for example. You could say a „hello‟ or a „good morning‟ but you can also wave, nod, bow or just smile and still you will not be accused of being rude. In both instances you have used a definite message form (in one instance verbal and in the other non-verbal) to carry out the act of greeting. Many serious errors occur when there is a mismatch between form and content and his is because we ignore the fact that “…how something is said is part of what is said” (Hymes 1986: 59). The distinction between message form and message content would be instantly clear with the following example: “He prayed, saying „…‟ “(quoting message form) vs. “He prayed that he would get well” (reporting content only) (Hymes 1986: 59). Content is closely related to the topic and a shift in the topic suggests a change in the content. Message form and message content are integral to speech act and are interrelated therefore they are called as act sequence (A).
3.5 Key (K) Key refers to the tone, manner, or spirit in which a particular message is conveyed (Hymes 1986). Sometimes you may be serious, light-hearted or sarcastic. Your message may be serious but you might say it jokingly, seriously or smilingly with a wink. Thus the key may be a part of the analysis, nonverbally, by your behavior, gesture, posture or even the kind of clothes you wear. When there is an inconsistency between the content and the key that the person is using, it is the key rather than the actual content that takes precedence (parodies are good examples of how participants exploit key over message content). It is this aspect that Hymes emphasizes when he says that, “when it is conflict with the overt content of an act, it often overrides the latter (as in sarcasm)” (1986: 62).
3.6 Instrumentalities (I) Instrumentalities refer to the choice of channel used in communication – oral, written, telegraphic, semaphore etc. It also refers to the actual forms of speech that are chosen, such as the language, dialect, code, or register. Formal, written, legal language is one kind of instrumentality. A further distinction that can be made is the mode of communication employed within a particular channel. For example, singing, humming, whistling or chanting all fall under oral channel.
3.7 Norms of interaction and interpretation (N) Norms of interaction refer to “the specific behaviours and properties that attach to speaking – that one must not interrupt, for example, or that one may freely do so; that normal voice should not be used except when scheduled in a church service (whisper otherwise); that turns in speaking are to be allocated in a certain way” (Hymes 1986: 64). You must have observed these norms of interaction while, say paying a visit to a place of worship, attending an academic event, an exhibition, theater or a political gathering.
Norms of interpretation refer to how the norms of interaction may be viewed by someone who does not share them. Any violation of norms of interpretation may lead to misunderstanding or a complete breakdown in communication. Consider for instance a famous example of different norms of interpreting the nodding of your head – up and down. For people in North India this non-verbal speech act shows affirmation, agreement or understanding of the message but for people from the South it is a marker of negation or disagreement. There are similarly different interpretations associated in different cultures with loudness, silence, gaze return, and so on. Danesi notes that “a tap on the side of the head can indicate completely opposite things-“stupidity” or “intelligence”-according to cultural context; the head gestures for “yes” and “no” used in the Balkans seem inverted to other Europeans, and so on” (2004:116).
3.8 Genre (G) Poetry is one kind of genre and prose is another. Genre refers to clearly demarcated types of utterances that depend on the kind of speech event one is engaged in. Your teacher may not deliver a lecture on any linguistic theory by employing the language of poetry, but might use prose. Proverbs, riddles, sermons, prayers, lectures, and editorials each represent distinct genres fit for particular occasions.
4.0. Summary To sum up, contrary to Chomskyan grammar, ethnographic approach to communication is not an asocial theory of linguistics. Rather it gives primacy to language use in social settings and it argues that any linguistic theory must explain how the native speaker actually achieves the objective of communication through the use of language.