Transcript Lecture 3 - Framework and Concepts

LING / ASIA 122 - 5
FRAMEWORK AND RELEVANT
CONCEPTS
Based on Kachru and Smith, Chapter 1
and
G. Tucker Childs, in The 5-Minute Linguist
ROAD MAP
 Now that we’ve:
 defined and identified
global languages,
 briefly outlined the
history of English,
 described the factors
that led to the
prominence of English
as a global language,
and
 seen several varieties
of English from around
the world , . . .
ROAD MAP (cont’d)
 And after having taken a
side trip to explore our
linguistic heritages, . . .
In this week’s readings and
lectures, we will . . .
 Review some facts about languages and
dialects, and
 Explore some concepts that will help us
better analyze what contributes to successful
and less successful communication across
cultures,
 Even when everyone is speaking the same
language, i.e., ENGLISH
Languages and Dialects:
Some things to remember
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Everyone who speaks a language speaks a dialect;
A language can be seen as a group of dialects;
Dialects can be geographic – Texan, Boston, SoCal
Dialects can be social – “My Fair Lady”
Dialects can be political – “… an army and a navy”
Dialect differences are usually minor
 Pronunciation
 Grammar
 Vocabulary
 “Language” and “dialect” are loaded terms
Critical Concepts Forming the
Basis for This Course
 Types of Information: conceptual, indexical,
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interactional-management
Speech Acts, Implicature, the Cooperative
Principle
Conversation Analysis: Turns, Exchanges,
Turn Relevance Places, Adjacency Pairs
Politeness and Positive and Negative Face
Context: Setting, Participants, Ends, Acts,
Key, Instrumentalities, Norms, Genres
Types of Information
 Conceptual information: purely factual
content of linguistic signals.
 Indexical information: information about the
speaker / writer.
 Interactional-management information:
information that allows participants to
initiate, participate in and terminate
interactions.
Interactional-Management
Information:
 What we know about day-to-day
interactions:
◦ How to open conversations
◦ How to hold the floor
◦ When and how to take & yield the floor
◦ How to stay on topic and to change
topics
◦ How to close a conversation
Conversation Analysis – Tools to
analyze interactional-management
information
 Conversational floor – the ‘shared space’ in which a
conversation takes place; participants in a
conversation share the conversational floor.
 Turn: the distribution of talk across participants; the
stretch of speech of a single speaker bounded by the
speech of another speaker.
 Turn1: - A : How did you like Avatar?
 Turn 2: - B: I thought it was great!
Conversation Analysis
(cont’d)
Exchange: Two or more sequential turns. For example,
Exchange 1:
A: Could you put this letter in the mailbox for my on your way out?
B: Sure.
Exchange 2:
A: Could I ask you a favor?
B: Sure, what is it?
A: Could you put this letter in the
mailbox for me on your way out?
B: Sure.
Conversation Analysis (cont’d)
 Adjacency pair: Two successive utterances or turns
by different speakers, where the second is of a
type required or expected by the first.
 In the previous example, the exchange between A and
B constitutes an adjacency pair (question and answer)

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Greeting -> Greeting
Apology -> Minimalization
Thanks -> Acknowledgement
Etc.
Conversation Analysis (cont’d)
 Turn relevance point (TRP) – the potential
boundary that marks where a turn could end,
marked by one or more of the following:
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Phrase final intonation
Grammar
Eye contact
Body movement
Etc.
Conversation Analysis (cont’d)
 Repair – the conversational work required when a
conversationalist fails to respond with the expected
turn type

Example: when a speaker
fails to respond to a question
with an answer
 Overlaps – occasions when a second speaker begins
before the first speaker has finished
 Back-channeling – vocalizations by the listener
relinquishing the floor to the current speaker
 ‘uh-huh’
 ‘yeah’
 Etc.
Indexical Information:
Presenting One’s Self
 Politeness Principle (Lakoff 1973)
◦ Don’t impose.
 Pardon me.
 I hope I’m not bothering you, but ….
◦ Give options.
 Would you mind …?
 Could you possibly …?
 May I ask you to …?
◦ Make your receiver feel good.
 That color really looks good on you.
 I like your new tattoo.
 “Little white lies”
Indexical information (cont’d)
 “Face” (Brown & Levinson 1978): the public self image
that every adult tries to project.
 Positive face: the desire of every person to be desirable
to at least some others; the positive consistent selfimage or 'personality' claimed by interactants.
 Negative face: the desire of every person to have
his/her actions be unimpeded by others; the basic
claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to nondistraction—i.e., the freedom of action and freedom
from imposition.
Politeness
and Face
 The specific nature of face varies from society to
society, e.g.:
 Roles of parents and adult children
 Notions of privacy in the home, workspace
 The precise way of indicating
respect for face may be culture
specific, e.g.:
 Offer of a drink and initial
refusal
 Refusal of an invitation
 Etc.
Speech Acts
 The acts we perform when uttering
sentences
 1955 – John Austin’s William James Lectures
at Harvard (How to Do Things With Words,
1962)
◦ An utterance can constitute an act:
 I promise I’ll be there on time.
 I apologize for the way I acted.
Austin’s Criteria for Speech Acts
The sentence must contain a Performative Verb – a
verb that under specified conditions when
uttered, constitutes the performance of an act,
e.g.,
‘I promise you that I won’t be late.’
 Must be in the present tense
◦ *I promised that I wouldn’t be late.
 Must have a first person subject
◦ *He promises that he won’t be late.
 “I hereby” test
◦ I hereby promise that I won’t be late.
Felicity conditions – conditions that
must be met for the utterance to
constitute a valid act
 The person and circumstances must be
appropriate:
 “I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
 The act must be executed completely and correctly
be all participant:
 “I bet you SJSU will beat Hawai’i.”
 The participants must have the appropriate
intentions:
 “I congratulate you for your good fortune.”
Expanding the Notion of Speech Acts
 1969 – John Searle’s Speech Acts: all utterances,,
not just those containing performative verbs,
constitute speech acts, thus distinguishing
between:
 Explicit Speech Acts:
 “I hereby christen thee ‘The Good Ship Lollipop.’”
 “I sentence you to life in prison.”
 Implicit Speech Acts:
 (I declare that) “I ran into Bill and Tony at the movies
last night.”
 (I ask) “What time did you get in?”
 ( request that you) “Please pass the hot sauce.”
Direct and Indirect Speech Acts
 Direct: an utterance whose linguistic form matches its
communicative purpose, e.g.,
◦ Form = statement, Purpose = declaration
 ‘An amoeba is a one-celled animal.’
◦ Form= interrogative, Purpose = question
 ‘What’s your name?’
◦ Form = imperative, Purpose = order
 ‘Turn on the lights.
 Indirect: an utterance whose linguistic form does not
match it communicative purpose, e.g.,
◦ Form = question, intent = request
 ‘Is that the phone?’
◦ Form = statement, intent = question
 ‘I wonder why you would say such a thing.’
How we understand indirect speech acts:
Conversational Implicature
 To interpret indirect speech acts, we rely on
implicature, our ability to understand the
speaker’s intention in uttering something e.g.,
 A: Is that the phone?
 Implicature: A wants me to answer
the phone.
 B: I’m in the bathroom.
 Implicature: B wants me to know
that B can’t answer the phone.
How we make implicatures:
The Cooperative Principle
 Purpose: To describe in a systematic
and consistent way how implicature
works in conversation (H. P. Grice)
 “In conversations,
participants cooperate
with each other.”
(Wow!
What does this mean????)
Operationalizing the Cooperative Principle:
Conversational Maxims

Quantity – contribution should be as informative as
required
 Quality – contribution should not be false
 Relation – contribution should be relevant
 Manner – contribution should be direct
Assumptions
1) We don’t adhere to them strictly.
2) We interpret what we hear as if it conforms to them.
3) Where a maxim is violated, we draw implicatures.
Violations of Maxims:
 Quantity
◦ Letter of reference:
 “Bob speaks perfect English; he doesn’t smoke
in the office; and I have never heard him use
foul language.”
 Quality
◦ “Reno is the capital of Nevada, isn’t it?”
◦ “Yes, and London is the capital of New Jersey”
Violations of Maxims:
 Relation
 “What time is it?”
 “Well, the paper’s already come.”
 Manner
 “Let’s stop and get something to eat.”
 “OK, but not at M-c-D-o-n-a-l-d-s.”
Violations of the Maxims
 "Uncle Charlie is coming over for dinner."
"Better lock up the liquor.“
 "Do you know where Kendall moved?"
"Somewhere on the east coast.“
 "How was your blind date?"
"He had a nice pair of shoes.“
 “Spencer is sure he'll get that job."
“Yeah. And my pet turtle is sure it will win the
Kentucky Derby."
Context
 Observation: The forms that social interactions take and
the meanings they embody are dependent on the context
in which they are uttered:
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Setting: Where does the interaction take place?
Participants: Who’s involved?
Ends / goals: What’s the purpose of the interaction?
Acts: What speech acts are employed?
Key: What’s the mood / tenor of the interaction?
Instrumentalities: What modes of interaction are
employed (e.g., phone, text message, face-to face,
etc.)
◦ Norms: What is the norm in this culture for this type of
interaction?
◦ Genre: What kinds of genres are found in this type of
interaction
Activity
 Kachru and Smith, Pages 28-29