HYMES (1964)

He developed the concept that culture, language and social context are clearly interrelated and strongly rejected the idea of viewing language entirely as abstract grammatical knowledge.

Speakers build up their communicative competence by developing three different and interrelating aspects:

• Linguistic rules: ability to deal with language structures

• Sociolinguistic rules: ability to behave in a particular social context

• Cultural rules: ability to perform within the appropriate cultural rules of a specific speech community

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

The ability not only to apply the grammatical rules of a language to form correct sentences but also to know when and where to use these sentences and to whom.It includes:• knowledge of grammar and vocabulary (language competence)• knowledge of rules of speaking (how to begin and end a conversation, relation between topics and speech events or situations, address forms depending on age, sex, social class, personal relationship, etc.)• knowing how to use and respond to different types of speech acts, such as requests, apologies, thanks, and invitations• knowing how to use language appropriately

Style:

variation in a person’s speech or writing. Style usually varies from casual to formal according to the type of situation, the person or persons addressed, the setting, the topic discussed, etc.

Register:

a speech variety used by a particular group of people, usually sharing the same occupation or the same interests, or age. It has a number of distinctive words, sometimes some special grammar constructions (legal language...)

Denotation:

Part of the meaning of a word or phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real world.

Ex: child a young human being

Connotation:

The additional meaning that a word or phrase has beyond its central meaning. These meanings show people’s emotions and attitudes.

Ex: child = a young human being many other characteristics can be associated to this word by different people (positive and negative)

Conversational analysis

• Interest in the functions of language that speakers perform and the strategies they use in order to communicate in everyday settings.

• Language analysed in stretches of discourse, not in sentences.

• Focus: how people actually talk to each other, how conversation actually works, how speech is organized, how speakers introduce the topics, how they change these topics, how they interrupt, ask questions, give answers, what makes the talk coherent, cohesive and understandable.

• Difference between written and oral communication

Spoken language vs written language

Spoken language features:

• social conventions and socio-cultural background

• conventions of conversation• signs and signals • expectations• appropriateness• relevancy• context: speaker and hearer make deductions

from the context • shared knowledge• paralinguistic features

Paralinguistic features of the spoken language:

• hesitation• pauses• repetition (redundancy)• errors and self correction• less sequencing• non-vocal phenomena (facial expressions, gestures)• proxemics (study of the physical distance between the people when they are talking to each other, of their postures, physical contact)

Speech changes according to:

• personal tenor (role) social relationship between interlocutors

• functional tenor (setting) the place where you are having a conversation

• Field (topic) what you are talking about

Written language

• it does not take place in a particular setting with at least two people

• It is not synchronous communication

• other devices instead of stress and intonation (eg. Punctuation)

• extra clarity needed • More cohesive devices needed

Cohesion:

The grammatical and/or lexical relationships between the different element of a text.

Coherence:

The relationships which link the meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text.