H 714 Language Variation: Conversational Interaction and Speech Events October 3, 2006 Kendra Winner

Agenda  Course Administration Next week’s readings Discussion Facilitation New Postings on Course Web Site  Dialects and Speech Acts Continued Theories of Language Variation Politeness Strategies & Discourse Completion Test  Conversational Interaction and Speech Events Hymes & the “New” Ethnography of communication Speech Events  Discussion

Theories of Language Variation  Contact Theory  Attraction Theory  Theory of Convergence

Brown and Levinson  Assumptions Rationality: “a precisely definable mode of reasoning from ends to the means that will achieve those ends” Face: “The want to be unimpeded (negative face) and the want to be approved of in certain respects (positive face)  Politeness Strategies Bald On-Record Positive Politeness Negative Politeness Off-Record

Discourse Completion Test 1) Silently rank your finished requests in order of politeness (1 = least polite, 5=most polite) and note why 2) Rank the degree of imposition (1=least, 5=most) and note why 3) A la Brown & Levinson, identify which politeness strategy you use for each request and identify what you think are the politeness elements 4) Find a partner and discuss: a. Whether you had similar or different readings of the requests, the context, the situation b. What influenced how you answered these questions c. Whether and why your rankings are different

Del Hymes, 1964 Ethnography of Communication 1. In a particular community, what are communicative events and their components? 2. What are the relationships among the components? 3. What capabilities and states do both the language code and participants have, in general, and in particular events? 4. How do they work together as a system?

Del Hymes, Components of Communicative Events Senders, speakers, addressors Receivers, hearers, addressees Purposes and functions Channels Linguistic Codes Settings (immediate, social, community, cultural) Forms/Genres Topics Speech events proper

Central Concepts 1. You can not define in advance what a speech event is or what its component parts will be. 2. Accurately specifying communicative events and their component parts must consider participants in the culture and the meaning these have for participants.

Del Hymes, 1965  Ethnography of Communication Etic (uninterpreted), Emic (meaning for participants)

SS  Clots (s)  Clods (z)

Small Group Activity  Groups of three  Discuss the two readings assigned to your group, considering the following: How thoroughly/accurately are “emic” meanings of participants considered in interpretation of the data (consider methodology such as cultural insiders, triangulation of data)? How do particular components of the communicative events interact to impact meaning and structure?

Discourse Completion Test … revisited  Cop Scenario Move the damn car. (upgrader) Move the car, lady. (softener) Do you know you’re parked in a loading zone?

Speech Events  Communicative, rule governed sequences. Knock knock jokes “Knock Knock” “Who’s There?” “Abby” “Abby who?” “Abby Birthday to you.”

Speech Events Knock knock jokes “Knock Knock” “Who’s There?” “Marsh” “Marsh who?” “Marshmellow.”

Speech Events  Communicative, rule governed sequences. Playing the dozens  Rules  Meaning

Emic … meaning for participants  Deborah Schiffrin (1984)  Jewish Argument as Sociability Working-class, Jewish community in Philadelphia

 Debby: Is there a coffee clique around here?  Jack: No  Freda: There may be, but I don’t know it.  Jack: I don’t think there is  Freda: I think there is, but don’t know of it.  Jack: No? All right.

 Debby: Okay. Have you traveled very much outside of Philadelphia?  Jan: No. I think as far as we got was Canada. Ou were overseas in the war, but I didn’t go any further.  Ira: uh … Yeh, we went t’New York, we went to Atlantic City, we went t’Pittsburgh.  Jan: Well that’s this country, she said out of Philadelphia.  Ira: um … we just went to’Kuch’s what the hell do you mean we don’t travel?

Clifford Geertz  To see ourselves as others see us can be eye- opening. To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self-congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes. If interpretive anthropology has any general office in the world it is to keep reteaching this fugitive truth.