~ Chae Sociolinguistics as Noam Chomsky’s program began to build uy momentum (see Chapter 3), some linguists took note ofall thatthe linguistics of the day overlooked. Rather than competence, they said, we need to take account of performance. Joshua Fishman wanted to know “who speaks what language to whom to what end?" Charles Frake said that just knowing the grammar of a language was not enough. Those who want to know a language need “a specification of what kinds of things to say in what message forms to what kinds of people in what kinds of situations” These are the sorts of questions Dell Hymes wanted to answer as part of a definition of communicative competence. This chapter will deal then with three questions: What do we say? How do we say things? Whom do we speak to? oe 4.1 WHAT DO WE SAY? How do people arrive at common understandings? We have tended to see communication according to the “conduit metaphor” This widespread metaphor sees communication as the passage of thoughts, which are seen as concrete, through a conduit (say, speech), from a sender toa receiver (speaker and hearer, respectively). So we speak of having an idea, giving someone an idea, ot of stealing one. We speak of putting ideas in someone's mind, of getting or giving the general idea of a speech or book. This is fine as far as it goes, but this metaphor has a basic flaw: it sees communication as the transfer of a formed thought from one mind to another, which is obviously impossible. 4 Chapter Sociolinguistics a ‘Communication is not only transmission, its anact of construction. We need to know the context of the conversation and who the participants are to fully describe what is going on. Paradoxically, the interaction creates and also changes the message. There have been a number of ways to describe the interaction that happens when people speak to each other. indeed, two of the pioneers of sociolinguistics, John Gumperz and Dell Hymes, spent much time describing some of the communicative “rules” swe know as native speakers of language. These rules are not grammatical rules, but rules of interaction in continuous speech or “discourse” Before wwe begin, take a look at this exchange. (4.1) Mary: Hi John, how are you? John: Fine, Mary. Going to Stan's patty? Mary: Gotta work John: Know what you mean. Describe what you see going on as far as interaction is concerned. You might have mentioned that in North American culture, we expect a person to reply Fine when asked How are you? A response detailing our hay fever—or at least a long, detailed response—is probably not what our friend wants to hear. In fact, some people under some conditions would not even answer the question, but would instead greet the other person. You might have seen the conversation as two pairs of exchanges, and B, or you might have seen it as one unit. You might have said that John’s question about Mary’s going to the party was a real question, or you could have seen it as “something to talk about” These sorts of issues, are central to analyzing talk, Interactional sociolinguistics is a rather broad field that centers on the interplay among speakers (interlocutors), Interactional sociolinguistics uses a number of the tools and ideas we learned in Chapters 2 and 3. Prominent among these ideas are adjacency pairs and turn taking. As you will recall, an adjacency pair consists of two utterances that cannot be interpreted without each other (see 2.6.2) “Turn taking is the process by which speakers negotiate who is to speak next (see 2.6.2). Sometimes, people talk all at once and nobody seems to have the floor” “Having the floor” (see 2.6.2) isa concept used to describe \who is controlling the conversation, This tends to be the person who is doing the talking at any given time, but there can be several floors going onat once anda person can have the floor without speaking, For example,a DERSTANDING LANGUAGE if you can influence the choice of topic of conversation, although you may not be speaking, you still "have the floor” Another example cf conversational rules is contextualization cues that we give each other in speech; these are signals using intonation, word choice, or speed of speech. We know, for example, that a certain intonation signals we are joking because of our background knowledge or contextual presuppositions. When groups do not share contextual presuppositions, there may be misunderstandings. This can, and does, happen frequently in schools when children from other cultures come with one set of contextualization cues and presuppositions and the teacher has another. For example, Native American children may seem shy and even uninterested to Anglo teachers because silence is valued in ‘most Native American cultures, Hawaiian children may work better in groups than alone; their culture values cooperation (Tharp and Gallimore 1988). Contextualization cues and presuppositions are aspects of our communicative competence. Weuse our communicative competence within our speech community. ‘A speech community, in Hymes’s words, “is defined as a community sharing rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech, and rules for the interpretation of at least one linguistic variety”{1986, 54). A speech community may then have more than one language, and people may be part of more thar one speech community, The linguist Neustupny has differentiated between a language area (Sprachbund) and a speech area (Sprechbund). A language area isa place where a common language is spoken, while across a speech area, people may well not shate a language but may stare rules for speaking. They may agree on what sorts of questions ar appropriate and how to address strangers. One ‘example of a speech area is central Europe. Germany, Hungary, and the Czech Republic share a number of speech rules, such as greetings and, acceptable topics of conversation, though different languages are spoken in each country. 4.2 HOW DO WE SAY THINGS? 4.2.1 Face An important part of interaction isthe idea of face. Face can be defined as the image of oneself that a speaker presents to others. Think of the expression to lose face; that is the meaning of face in this context. If you Chapter4 Sodalinguisties 33 lose face, then the image you had been projecting to others is damaged (ie, you don't look as good, smart, or sophisticated as you'd hoped.) We distinguish between positive and negative face. Negative face is the desire to be left alone, not to be imposed upon, and to be able to act as we please. Positive face is building someone's ego, the desire to be liked. Some aspects of negative face are apologies and deference. We know people want not to be imposed upon, so if we bother them, we apologize. Some aspects of positive face are compliments and showing interest. People want to be liked and feel important, so we tend to these needs, People are more polite when the threat to ‘ace is great. Of course, theyare also polite to people of higher status and to those who are socially distant (those they do not know very well) Brown and Levinson talk about face as part of a universal theory of politeness: to a large extent politeness can be seen as a tool to save face both for the speaker and for the hearer. Consider this situation: if you ask someone for a favor and he or she turns yeu down, you have lost face (since your hearer was not willing to do as you wanted); moreover your hearer has also lost face by appearing selfish or ungenerous. ‘Thus, to avoid this potentially embarrassing, if not disastrous, situation, when you ask for a favor, you do so politely. Politeness, in this case, consists of building into your request ways out for the hearer, In other words, you allow the hearer a chance to refuse the favor without having to lose face This is accomplished, for example, by providing the hearer with a ready- ‘made excuse to refuse. Consider the following example: (4.2) know you are a very busy woman, but could you find a minute to look at this proposal? Here, not only is the speaker providing the hearer with an excuse to refuse the favor (you are busy), but the speaker is also minimizing the imposition (find a minute). 4.2.2 Forms of Address Forms of address are an important and very frequent form of social deixis (see 3.2.1). Choice of form of address is also influenced by such aspects of interaction as familiarity, solidarity, and respect. In the United States, people are usually either on a first name basis, or they use a person's title and last name (for example, Dr. Smith). The