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The Ethnography of Speaking Speaking, the use of language in the conduct of social life, is organized in culture-specific ways. The

ethnography of speaking is concerned with describing such ways of speaking and with interpreting

the meanings they have for those who participate in them. It is concerned further with developing

cross-culturally valid concepts and theories for interpreting and explaining the interaction of

language and social life.

The term 'ethnography of speaking' was proposed by Dell Hymes, whose writings have provided

programmatic impetus to the enterprise. 'Ethnography' refers to fieldwork which culminates in a

written description of the culture or way of life of a particular people, produced in such a way as to

permit comparison across diverse cases. Applied to speaking, its concern is with how, in a given

community, speaking is conceptualizedwhat symbols and meanings, premises and rules there are, pertaining to communicative conduct. Attention to native categories goes hand in hand with

delineating observed patterns of speaking, with study of a community's indigenous codes and its

indigenous speech acts, events, and situations.

'Ethnography of speaking' and 'ethnography of communication' have been used interchangeably by

many scholars. 'Speaking' was used initially to draw attention to the diverse, creative, and strategic

ways languages are used, in contrast to language as an abstract, idealized system. Where 'speaking' is

used it can be taken as a surrogate for all communicative modalities (verbal, kinesic, proxemic, etc.);

'communication' makes explicit this breadth of concern. Both speaking and communication refer to

the use of codes in the production and interpretation of messages, with language being the code of

primary importance in some situations but not in others. Although the emphasis is on a culture-

specific approach to what speaking (or communication) is to be taken as, leaving this to be

circumscribed in each case, nonetheless the ethnography of speaking emphasizes the deliberate use

of signs and their interpretations, in the conduct of social life. What to call communicative resources

and activities, how they are structured, what enters into them, and what their significance is to those

who use themthese are left open to discovery in particular cases.

The Structure of Speaking A fundamental assumption of the ethnography of speaking is that speaking, like language(s), can be

described in terms of rule and system. Wherever people speak, they organize their speech in ways

over and above those governed by rules of grammar or by physical laws. In any communicative

situation, even though it might be grammatically acceptable and physically possible to make any of

two or more linguistic choices, such choices are not randomly produced. Choices as to which

language to use in a particular situation (for bi- or multilingual speakers), how to address an

interlocutor, whether to delete or add sounds to words, whether to speak or remain silent, are not in

free variation but are patterned, according to rules which are part of the social knowledge of a

particular community. It follows that much of the meaning to interlocutors, of their speech activity,

is derived from knowledge of local patterns and expectations.

Speaking, from this perspective, is a complex social as well as a linguistic act. To explain speaking

activitieswhy they occur as they do and what they mean to those who participate in themrequires reference to their social contexts. Thus to characterize what people are doing and saying

when they speak, involves reference to the settings, participants, ends, act sequences, topics, and so

forth, which comprise the social situation. This goes beyond the rules of language structure to a

consideration of rules specifying who may say what to whom, in what language or style, to what

ends, and on what occasions.

Ethnographers of speaking have shown that a wide range of speaking phenomena is systematically

organized in ways which are meaningful to speakers and hearers. This includes community-specific

practices with regard to verbal forms, prosodic features, and extralinguistic signs. Attention to the

social organization of speaking has also been extended to the structure of speech acts, activities,

events, situations, and roles, as well as to the organization of greetings, leave-takings, narratives, genres, and conversations, all of which potentially can be found to have a high degree of patterning

in particular contexts.

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Speaking as Culturally Distinctive

Studies reveal that speaking, like other systems of behavior, is not only organized within a society

but also organized in each society in culture-specific ways which must be discovered in each case.

Societies differ as to what communicative resources are available to their members, in terms of

languages, dialects, registers, routines, genre, artistic formulas, etc. They also differ in how these

resources are patterned in use, in the functions served in (and serviceable by) speech and other

communicative means, and in the evaluation of speaking as an instrument of social action. Speaking

is not everywhere valued equally. It is an object of a high degree of interest, elaboration, and positive

evaluation in some societies. Along with the San Bias Kuna of Panama, whom one Kuna described

as 'a talking people,' there are speakers on Roti, a small island in Eastern Indonesia, of whom Fox

says, the pleasure of life is talknot simply an idle chatter that passes time, but the more formal talking of sides in endless dispute, argument, and repartee or the rivaling of one another in

eloquent and balanced phrases on ceremonial occasions... Lack of talk is an indication of

distress. Rotinese repeatedly explain that if their 'hearts' are confused or dejected, they keep

silent. Contrarily, to be involved with someone requires active verbal encounter. (Fox 1974: 65)

In other societies, the ideal standard for adult behavior is relative taciturnity. Among the Paliyans, a

tribal people in South India, by the time a man reaches 40 years of age he practically stops speaking

altogether (Hymes 1962). In a working-class neighborhood in Chicago, local rules proscribe

speaking in many contexts of male role enactment, including disciplining children, defending the

honor of female relatives, and asserting oneself politically and economically (Philipsen 1975).

Differences in valuation are reflected in the distinctiveness of cultural terminologies for the act of

speaking.

A Descriptive Framework for Speaking

The initial formulation of the ethnography of speaking (Hymes 1962) included a framework for

describing the particularities of ways of speaking in diversespeech communities. It was designed to

provide an acontextual format for discovering, describing, and comparatively analyzing unique

cases. It included four major headings: Speech Community, Speech Events, Factors in Speech

Events, and Functions in Speech Events.

The speech community is the largest descriptive unit. Within a speech community, from one view

constitutive of it, are speech events, locally defined contexts for speaking, each of which has an

internal structure which differentiates it from other events in a community. Hymes (1962) extended

Jakobson's (1960) model of a speech event by increasing the number of constitutive factors and

functions from six to seven. Thus, any speech event is comprised of seven factors, including

minimally, a 'sender,' who sends a 'message' to a 'receiver.' The message is sent via a physical

'channel,' implying as well some psychological connection between or among the interlocutors, and

is expressed in a 'code' which is at least partially shared by the sender and receiver. The message is

about something, i.e., its 'topic.' And the event occurs in a particular time and place, its 'setting.' As

the factors which make up any act of verbal communication, these are factors to attend to in

describing indigenous speech events and the speech acts which comprise them.

Corresponding to these factors are seven types of functions. The 'expressive' function focuses on the

attitude which the 'sender' expresses toward what he is speaking about or toward the situation itself.

The 'directive' function, sometimes called the 'conative' or 'persuasive' function, focuses on what the

sender is asking the 'receiver' to do, in responding to the verbal message. The 'poetic' function

focuses on the form of the 'message,' with particular emphasis on its artistic or aesthetic value to the

interlocutors.

Whether contact is established, and whether the 'channel' is opened and maintained between or

among interlocutors, is the 'phatic' function, with emphasis on verbal contact being established or

maintained. Whenever the interlocutors turn their attention to the 'code' itself (or the codes) being

used, a 'metalinguistic' function is performed. A focus on 'topic,' the subject of the verbal

communication, signals attention to the 'referential' function. The 'setting' may be the focus of

emphasis in an act of verbal communication, as when attention turns to the social context or social

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relationship which forms a backdrop to the speech event, or which becomes the object of the speech

event, as when interlocutors use speaking to define or redefine their social relationship; in these

cases, a 'contextual' (or situational) function is emphasized. Although all features of a speech event

may participate in all the functions, there may be specifiable linkages of factor and function, to be

investigated in given cases.

In any act of verbal communication, one or more of these factors and their corresponding functions

may be emphasized or foregrounded. For example, the seventeenth-century Quaker use of thou and thee rather than the conventional you and ye foreground a focus on the addressee and the directive

function in the effort to induce the addressee to abandon his pretension to worldly rank rather than,

say, an emphasis on the topic and the referential function. So, too, speech communities can differ in

the relative emphasis placed on factors and functions. Among the Kuna, for example, there is

considerable community interest in the aesthetic quality of verbal behavior, with an emphasis on

message form; among the seventeenth century Quakers, 'plain speech' is preferred, with relatively

less attention and valuation given to the artistic dimension of speaking.

Likewise, Hymes (1972, p. 279) has argued that, in learning a language, children must learn not only

how to construct sentences in that language but also must acquire knowledge of a set of ways in which sentences are used. From a finite experience of speech acts and their interdependence with

sociocultural features, they develop a general theory of the speaking appropriate in their community,

which they employ, like other forms of tacit cultural knowledge (competence), in conducting and

interpreting social life. Hymes provides some examples of the kinds of learning that are involved:

They come to be able to recognize, for example, appropriate and inappropriate interrogative

behavior (e.g., among the Araucanians of Chile, that to repeat a question is to insult; among the

Tzeltal of Chiapas, Mexico, that a direct question is not properly asked (and to be answered

nothing); among the Cahinahua of Brazil, that a direct answer to a first question implies that the answerer has not time to talk, a vague answer, that the question will be answered directly the

second time, and that talk can continue).

Another often-cited example is the different ways in which American and Japanese children are

indoctrinated into appropriate language use (see Tobin et al., 1989). In contrast to the American

encouragement of individual assertiveness the Japanese favor developing social awareness and

harmony. A misbehaving Japanese child will be told hito ni warawareru youll be laughed at by others and instructed in polite ways of declining and, especially, of avoiding categorical refusals. Such behavior is appropriate within Japanese culture and it is learned very early in life.

In learning to speak we are also learning to talk, in the sense of communicating in those ways appropriate to the group in which we are doing that learning. These ways differ from group to group;

consequently, as we move from one group to another or from one language to another, we must learn

the new ways if we are to fit into that new group or to use that new language properly.

Communicative competence is therefore a key component of social competence.

Hymes's (1962) framework was proposed tentatively in the hope that it would provide a basis for

empirical studies. In the 30 years following its publication there were some 250 studies which used

its categories (Philipsen and Carbaugh 1986) and the framework was revised extensively as it was

applied and tested through fieldwork. Important extensions include development of the social units

of description, with attention given to speech network and speech field; a typology for characterizing

societies as to the quantitative and qualitative importance of speaking; formalized procedures for

rule-discovery and rule-statement; and expansion of the number of factors in speech events. The

factors in speech events were reformulated in the mnemonically coded 'speaking,' thus: Setting or

Scene; Participants; Ends; Act Characteristics, including both the form and content of the message;

Key or Tone of the event; Instrumentalities, including Channels and Codes; Norms of Interaction

and of Interpretation; and Genres.

The framework is intended to provide, not so much a checklist of things to describe, as an initial set

of questions and descriptive possibilities in the study of ways of speaking in particular communities.

It is intended to provide as well a format for comparison across communities, i.e., a set of categories

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for the articulation of similarities and differences, where these are found. In both of these regards,

the framework is heuristic, set up so that the results of particular studies can be used to expand and

develop it.

Discussion

1. Explain how considerations of when and how are deeply involved in doing each of the following: giving bad news; asking for a date (or a loan); leaving a party rather early;

changing your mind about something important; and breaking off a relationship.

2. Part of the deliberate instruction we give to children about language is instruction in when and how it is appropriate to speak and when you should not speak at all: e.g., Dont talk to strangers; Say Thank you ; and Keep your voice down. Find some other examples.

3. Question-and-answer behavior is not as simple as it might appear to be. When are indirect questions preferred to direct ones, and vice versa? Must you always answer a question? Can

you insist on the answer? When is it appropriate to ask for an answer to be repeated or for

you to repeat anothers answer? Are some questions not meant to be answered at all and to be entirely rhetorical? If so, what are these like? How do you recognize them as such? How

does the situation control the possibilities that exist for questioning?

4. Your opportunity to respond positively, critically, or even at all to the speech of others is governed by circumstances. Are responses appropriate, and, if so, in what way, in the

following circumstances: a judges pre-sentencing remarks to someone who has just been convicted; a parents dressing down of a child; a preachers sermon to a congregation; a politicians speech while electioneering; a pupils reading aloud to a class; cheerleaders calls to spectators; and a prime ministers or presidents address to the nation to someone watching that address on television?

5. Attempt to specify the essential defining characteristics of each of the following bits of behavior, focusing specifically on the linguistic characteristics: gossiping; heckling; making

a speech; giving a poetry reading; passing the time of day; refereeing; debating; and

preaching.