Talking in EnglishChapter 1

The course Book deals with relationship b/w communication, technology & English language.

Language & communication have been transformed in digital age.

New communication technologies provide users with possibilities that they may or may not take up.

Hence, there is continuity & change. Here, the focus throughout is on people

communicating.

When we use language to communicate, it is never language in general we use, but always a specific language or language variety.

It has association with a particular community, high or low social status, work, education etc.

English has unique place in contemporary world.

It is official language of many countries. It is the widely used international language

for business, trade, diplomacy & mass media.

In linguistics, the term ‘text’ means: ‘any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that …form[s] a unified whole.’

Here, the focus is on distinctions b/w speech, writing & other forms of language use.

Communication is generally referred to as :Talk : if words involved are composed of sounds

produced by human mouth.Text : if words involved are composed of visual

or other symbols. In some circumstances, ‘talk’ refer to

communications produced in a situation of rapid interaction; ‘text’ refers to more extended & deliberately crafted communications that take a relatively stable & permanent form.

When we study talk (in sense of speech), we generally do so through medium of text (in sense of writing).

Linguists or scholars, who research speech, often capture it using audio recorder & then transcribe it using letters, punctuation marks & other symbols.

Technological ability to record speech & render it into textual form gained importance in lang study since mid-20th c.

Transcript: (even recording) is a representation of what somebody said. It is not talk itself, while some transcripts include more information than others.

Process of transcription helps us to focus on what is useful for our purposes. For eg: to analyze role of silence in speech, we transcribe every slight pause & hesitation.

But if analyzing other aspects of speech like pronunciation or vocabulary, we leave out such details.

Different authors take diff approaches to transcription, based on particular focus, purpose or disciplinary background.

People communicate in many ways, mostly through speech and writing.

people use talk in everyday interactions, in different contexts, in order to achieve specific purposes.

The meaning of spoken utterance depend on not only what is said, but on the way it is said; not only by words but also by non-verbal or paralanguage such as tone of voice, gestures, facial expressions, and pauses.

Communication is viewed in terms of language practices, how lang is part of our daily routines, establish and maintain relationships, express creativity and playfulness.

We need to look at what people have said or written, the way they use langauge. This complementary approach is called discourse analysis.

Context is imp in spoken communication. It includes factors like:

physical surroundings Relationship b/w speakers Past shared experience Social events of which interaction is part Institutional setting Broader cultural values and expectations

Talk- any spoken interaction b/w people Conversation- the specific kind of talk that

people engage in when their spoken interaction is not organized by institutional rules (schegloff, 1999).

Structure and Functions of Talk Informal talk is largely unplanned, real time,

spontaneous, overlapping utterances. (A1.1) Everyday talk is dialogic, each persons’

contributions are oriented towards other people. (Bakhtin 1986)

The purpose of this kind of talk is to bind people together and to establish an interactional framework for the encounter- Phatic communion(Malinowski, 1923)

Jakobson (1960) argued, any speech event fulfills both a referential function (dealing with information) and a phatic function (dealing with social relationships)

Halliday (1973) called these as ideational and interpersonal functions of language.

Austin (1962) realized that in saying something, a speaker is also doing something.

Actions that are carried out through speaking are Speech acts. eg, making promise

Pierre Bourdieu (1982) argues, more attention should be paid to social conditions that make speech acts possible.

Sociologists, Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson developed the discipline of conversational analysis which examines naturally occurring talk in a detailed and methodical manner. (A1.2)

Sacks argues that spoken exchanges are composed of single units, which tend to function together in pairs. They are called adjacency pairs, which are composed of particular kinds of speech act that tend to follow one another.

Turn taking happen when one person spoke at a time and that overlap (simultaneous speech) was generally kept to a minimum.

Forms of turn taking happened when speakers have been argued to use their grammatical knowledge of English, coupled with their knowledge of paralinguistic cues (intonation and eye contact) in order to respond to interlocutors at the end of the speech rather than in the middle.

Transition relevance place (TRP) happen when the speaker will pause very briefly for a response, but it is equally likely that other speakers will come in with their next turn, perhaps leading to a slight overlap. Overlap that occurs before a transition relevance place may be considered as an interruption (Sacks, 1995).

(A1.3)

Effort to maintain one’s own or others’ face is known as face work; an aspect of the interpersonal function of language use. Thus, we may speak of speech acts as face threatening (possibly causing someone to lose face) or face saving (enabling a speaker to escape from potential loss of face).

Politeness also involves using strategies such as appropriate terms of address and degrees of formality. These vary according to people’s relative status, the degree of social distance between them and the extent of their solidarity with one another.

People in a lower status pay more attention to the face needs of those in a higher status than the other way round.

Being polite involves sensitivity to the social and cultural context and to sociolinguistic rules about behaviour.

Terms of address are a part of politeness conventions, and will depend on difference in status between the speakers and how well they know each other.(A 1.4)

conversational style refers to a combination of features relating to the meaning and management of conversation.

It is the way we use stories, or how much personal information we tend to reveal, or how we express politeness. However, aspects of our conversational style can also be traced to social variables like place of origin, social class, ethnicity, age, and gender.

Conversational styles vary 1. Cultural differences There can be a remarkable diversity of

styles even among speakers of standard varieties of English. There are differences in communication strategies in different cultural groups and of gender and of talk.

Aboriginal ways of using English are closely related to their style and culture, and to their beliefs about how people should relate to one another. Indirectness is not unique to aboriginal speakers, but is a common feature of the speech of many groups who lack social power. (A 1.5)

2. Gender differences Another way of identifying significant

aspects of style is to compare the conversational behaviours of men and women. (A 1.6)

It is often argued that in conversation, women are less competitive and more cooperative than men, and work harder to make the interaction run smoothly, this is because women are brought up to occupy a less powerful position in society, and to display deference towards men, which they do through being more hesitant and indirect. (Robin Lakoff, 1975)

The two approaches towards men’s and women’s talk have been referred to as the dominance and the difference approach: the former suggests that men dominate women in spoken interaction, the latter suggests that men and women simply communicate differently.

The performance of gender involves what is said as well as how it is said.

Style, identity and performativityStyle, identity and performativity It is particular patterns of language features

that communicate social messages and serve to index a particular social identity on the speaker.

Style and performance are part both of the formation and of the expression of identity: each of us has a toolbox of communicative resources, and uses that toolbox to produce a communicative style.

In a multilingual context, speakers are able to draw on linguistic resources from more than one language, performing complex identities which is called codeswitching.

In some communities, a mixed code may be used routinely; this practice has been termed plurilanguaging (Garcia, 2007) [A 1.7]

Style shifting when speakers adopt different accents or dialects or use a more or less formal register, in order to serve particular purposes, or to achieve particular effects.

Informal spoken narratives (stories) are composed of up to six kinds of narrative clause:

1. Abstract: a brief preview of what the narrative is about.

2. Orientation: where and when the story took place.

3. Complicating action: events are told in the order.

4. Resolution: the way in which the complicating action came to an end.

5. Coda: the end of the telling.6. Evaluation: the point of the story. (A 1.8)

Stories are often told collaboratively Bakhtin suggests that taking on of other

people’s voices is a common feature of language use

Whenever we take on a voice, we also take on an evaluative stance towards that voice.

Conclusion Talk is a central part of most of our lives. People and groups may vary in their

conversational style, but these differences are cross- cut by contextual factors

Readings A & B

Dr. Shaju Nalkara Ouseph E-mail: snalkara@arabou.edu.sa