ETHNOGRAPHY OF COMMUNICATION – UNIT I e-Content Submission to INFLIBNET 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.