*The Ethnography of

Speaking and the

Structure of
Conversation
* 2.1. The Ethnography of Speaking
2.2. Speech Events as the Focus of
Ethnography of Communication
2.3. Speech Acts
2.4. The Speech Act Set
2.5. Speech Acts in the Classroom
2.6. The Structure of Conversation
2.7. Politeness and Politeness
Formulas. Terms of Address
Questions for Discussion
*2.1. The Ethnography
of Speaking
* There are many areas of public life where language
has an impact, such as the medical and legal
professions, but particularly in the school.
Sociolinguists have been actively engaged in
studying the problems which arise from language
use in these contexts, and especially what happens
when there is a mismatch or difference in language
involved between the participants, such as doctor
and patient, lawyer and client, judge and jury, etc.
In sociolinguists’ view, the study of language goes
beyond the sentences, which are the subject of
linguistics. The sociolinguistic study brings in social
context, that is real texts that make up human
communication and social situations in which they
are used. The act of communication (the speech
event) is the focus of attention.
* The ethnography of speaking studies language
use as displayed in the daily life of particular
speech communities. As a blend of scientific
and humanistic approaches, the ethnography of
communication has two foci: particularistic and
generalising. On the one hand, it is directed at
the description and understanding of
communicative behaviour in specific cultural
settings, but it is also directed towards the
formulation of concepts and theories upon
which to build a general theory of language
development and use.
* The subject matter of ethnography of communication
can be illustrated by the following question: what does
a speaker need to know in order to communicate
appropriately and to make sense of communicative
situations within a particular speech community, and
how does he/ she learn this? The ethnography of
communication thus accounts not merely for what can
be said but for when, where, by whom, in what manner,
and in what particular circumstances - it accounts for
the processes of acquiring such knowledge. The task of
the ethnography of communication is seen as the
discovery and explication of the shared knowledge base
for contextually appropriate behaviour in a community
or group, that is what the individuals need to know
about language use to be functional members of the
community.
* Much of linguistic behaviour is rule-governed; it
follows regular patterns and constraints. One of
the most important contributions of
sociolinguistics is the demonstration that what
earlier linguists considered irregularity or ‘free
variation’ in linguistic performance follows
regular and predictable patterns. Thus, sounds
must be arranged in regular sequences if they
are to be interpreted as a speaker intends; the
possible order and form of words in a sentence
is governed by the rules of grammar; and a
well-formed discourse is determined by culture-
specific rules of rhetoric.
* The social unit proper to sociolinguistics is the ‘speech
community’. By speech community, Dell Hymes does
not mean a community defined by common language,
but rather by common linguistic norms – it is a
community which shares rules for the conduct and
interpretation of speech, and rules for the
interpretation of at least one linguistic variety. Dell
Hymes is not only concerned about whether speakers
have a common understanding of syntax and semantics,
but also whether or not they share ideas about the use
of silence, ideas about the meaning of irony or
emphasis, speech taboos, ways of formulating requests
or statements, and so on.
* Within speech communities, ethnographers must look
for ‘speech situations’, ‘speech events’, and ‘speech
acts’. Speech situations are represented by socially-
contextual situations like weddings, anniversaries,
homecoming parties, fights, hunts, meals etc., speech
events occur within speech situations, so for example
the exchange of vows is a speech event occurring within
a wedding (a speech situation). Speech acts are the
individual utterances that form the minimal unit of
analysis for ethnographies of communication. As an
example, Dell Hymes describes a party, which is a
speech situation, a conversation taking place during the
party as a speech event, and a joke within the
conversation represents a speech act.
* Dell Hymes’s concern for pattern was to show that
there was patterned regularity where it had been
considered absent, in the activity of speaking itself.
Dell Hymes proposed the term ‘ethnography of
speaking’, later changed into ‘ethnography of
communication’, to describe a new approach to
understanding language in use. In doing this, Dell
Hymes aimed to move away from considering speech as
an abstract model towards investigating the diversity of
speech as displayed in society. Essentially, Dell Hymes
claims that the study of language must concern itself
with describing and analysing the ability of the native
speakers to use language for communication in real
situations (communicative competence) rather than
limiting itself to describing the potential ability of the
ideal speaker/listener to produce grammatically
correct sentences (linguistic competence).
* Speakers of a language in particular communities
communicate with each other not only correctly but
also appropriately to the sociocultural context. This
ability is the result of a shared knowledge of the
linguistic code as well as of the socio-cultural rules,
norms and values which guide the conduct and
interpretation of speech and other channels of
communication in a community. The ethnography of
communication is concerned with the questions of what
a person knows about appropriate patterns of language
use in his or her community and how he or she learns
about it.
* Different languages and language varieties often serve
a social identification function within a society by
providing linguistic indicators which can be used to
reinforce social stratification. Negative decisions on
hiring based on applicants’ use of non-standard
pronunciation would be an example. Among non-native
varieties of a language, there are often social
distinctions depending on which foreign accent is
involved. In the United States, for example, English
spoken with a French or German accent may be viewed
as prestigious, whereas a Spanish accent may be
considered a handicap to economic and educational
success. The functions which language differences in a
society are assigned are various means of effecting
social control. The use of language to create and
maintain power is part of the concern of the
ethnography of communication with linguistic and
social inequalities.
* Dell Hymes claims that patterning occurs at all levels of
communication: societal, group, and individual. At the
societal level, communication usually patterns in terms
of its functions, categories of talk, and attitudes and
conceptions about language and speakers.
Communication also patterns according to particular
roles and groups within a society, such as sex, age,
social status, and occupation: e.g., a teacher has
different ways of speaking from a lawyer, a doctor, or
an insurance sales representative. Ways of speaking
also pattern according to educational level, rural or
urban residence, geographic region, and other features
of social organization.
* The relationship of form and function is an
example of communicative patterning along a
different dimension. Asking someone in English
if he or she has a pen is readily recognized as a
request rather than a truth-value question, for
instance, because it is part of the regular
structural pattern for requesting things in
English; the person who answers “Yes, I do,”
without offering one is joking, rude, or a
member of a different speech community.
* Thus, a main goal of ethnography of speaking is
discovering and formulating rules for
appropriate language use in specific contexts.
These rules are directly related to the shared
values of the speech community and typically
reflect an ideal cultural perception. They can
frequently be discovered in reactions to the
violation of the ideal by others. The description
of means of speaking and their availability
to speakers is important to the ethnography of
speaking as a way of beginning to specify
how speaking is patterned in particular
communities.
* 2.2. Speech Events as the Focus of
Ethnography of Communication
* Dell Hymes considered that in order to speak a
language correctly, one needs not only to learn its
vocabulary and grammar, but also the context in which
words are used. He paid considerable attention to the
notion of the speech event, and suggested that any
speech event can be seen as comprising several
components, and the analysis of these is a major aspect
of ethnography of speaking. Every speech event
involves 1. a Sender (Addresser) ; 2. a Receiver
(Addressee) ; 3. a Message Form; 4. a Channel; 5. a
Code; 6. a Topic; and 7. a Setting (Scene, Situation). In
particular cases, one or more of these factors can be
emphasised.
* As an example of interaction of all the factors
mentioned by Dell Hymes according to rules we
might consider a religious service. The typical
speaker is a priest, the listeners are a group of
people attending the church, the setting - a
church, the channel - a direct voice or a voice
amplified by loudspeakers, the message form -
a register of language understood by the church
goers, and the topic - some appropriate
religious content.
* Later, Dell Hymes developed another model
based in part on a mnemonic (something
intended to assist the memory, as a verse or
formula) making the components easier to
remember. This model is based on the notion of
discourse seen as a series of speech acts
(themselves components of speech events)
within a situational and cultural context. This
model can be used to examine and analyse all
kinds of discourse.
* Setting and Scene. Setting includes the time
and place, physical aspects of the situation
such as arrangement of furniture in the
classroom, the living room in the grandparents'
home etc. Scene is the "psychological setting"
or "cultural definition" of a scene, including
characteristics such as range of formality and
sense of play or seriousness. The family story
may be told at a reunion celebrating the
grandparents' anniversary. At times, the family
would be festive and playful, at other times,
serious and commemorative.
* Participants (speaker and audience). A
distinction within these categories should be
made; for example, the audience can be
distinguished as addressees and other hearers.
Participants’ identity will include such
characteristics as age and sex, social status,
relationship with each other. At the family
reunion, an aunt might tell a story to the young
female relatives, but males, although not
addressed, might also hear the narrative.
* Ends include the purpose of the event itself as
well as the individual goals of the participants
and outcomes. The aunt may tell a story about
the grandmother to entertain the audience,
teach the young women, and honour the
grandmother
* Act Sequence (or how speech acts are organized
within a speech event and what topics are
addressed). This will describe the form and
order of the event. The aunt's story might begin
as a response to a toast to the grandmother.
The story's plot and development would have a
sequence structured by the aunt. Possibly,
there would be a collaborative interruption
during the telling. Finally, the group might
applaud the tale and move onto another
subject or activity.
* Key establishes the tone and manner in which
something is said or written. The aunt might
imitate the grandmother's voice and gestures in
a playful way, or she might address the group in
a serious voice emphasizing the sincerity and
respect of the praise the story expresses
* Instrumentalities (or the linguistic code)
establish the language, dialect, variety and
channel. These will describe the forms and
styles of speech. The aunt might speak in a
casual register with many dialect features or
might use a more formal register and careful
grammatical "standard" forms.
* Norms (or the standard socio-cultural rules of
interaction and interpretation). These will
describe the social rules governing the event
and the participants' actions and reaction. In a
playful story by the aunt, the norms might
allow many audience interruptions and
collaboration, or possibly those interruptions
might be limited to participation by older
females. A serious, formal story by the aunt
might call for attention to her and no
interruptions as norms.
* Genre (or type of event such as lecture, poem,
letter) refers to the kind of speech act or
event, the kind of narrative, comment,
exclamation, etc. The aunt might tell an
anecdote about the grandmother for
entertainment, but have the purpose to point a
moral or sustain an argument as moral
instruction. Different disciplines develop terms
for kinds of speech acts, and speech
communities have their own terms for types.
* An expectation is a standard shared by
members of a speech community. In
communicative interactions, some expectations
are so strong (some patterns so regular, so
predictable) that a very low information load is
carried even by a relatively long utterance or
interchange, even though the social meaning
involved can be significant.
* Let us consider the greeting ‘How are you?’
followed by the expected response ‘Fine, and
you?’ It has little if any reference to factual
conditions. However, a response of silence, or a
long tale of unhappy events would be strongly
marked communicative behaviour and would
carry a very high potential load of social
meaning. Many non-native English speakers
conclude from the fact that when we ask ‘How
are you?’ we do not really want to know, that
native English speakers are cold, uncaring and
hypocritical.
* For ethnographers it is essential to differentiate
the referential and social components of
language use, the social component being most
important. Both those who learn a language and
those who teach it have to be aware of the
role of predictability and expectation (i.e.,
social and linguistic convention) in
communication, as well as to be able to
distinguish conventional meaning from
referential meaning (i.e., meaning that refers
to things or actions) in specific contexts.
* 2.3. Speech Acts
* John Searle claims that speaking a language is
performing speech acts, acts such as making
statements, giving commands, asking questions,
making promises, and so on. To communicate is
to express a certain attitude, and the type of
speech act being performed corresponds to the
type of attitude being expressed. For example,
a statement expresses a belief, a request
expresses a desire, and an apology expresses
regret.
* A speech act is an utterance that serves a
function in communication. A speech act might
contain just one word, as in "Sorry!" to perform
an apology, or several words or sentences: "I’m
sorry I forgot your birthday. I just let it slip my
mind." Speech acts include real-life interactions
and require not only knowledge of the language
but also appropriate use of that language within
a given culture.
* Here are some examples of speech acts we use
or hear every day:
Greeting: "Hello, how are you?"
Request: "Could I use you dictionary, please?"
Complaint: "You have overcharged us – we had
two glasses of wine, not a bottle."
Invitation: "We’re having a homecoming party
for our children and want you to join us."
Compliment: "You look gorgeous with your
new haircut!"
Refusal: "Oh, I’d really like to have a game of
tennis with you, but I’m having dinner with my
parents."
Congratulation: “Many happy returns of the
day!”
* Speech act behaviour is an area of continual concern
for language learners since they are repeatedly faced
with the need to utilise speech acts such as complaints,
apologies, requests and refusals, each of which can be
realised by means of several potential strategies. Sorry
about that! may serve as an adequate apology in some
situations; in others it may be perceived as a rude,
even arrogant, non-apology. In yet other situations, it
may not even be intended as an apology. Hence, it has
become increasingly clear that the teaching of second
language words and phrases isolated from their
sociocultural context may lead to the production of
linguistic curiosities which do not achieve their
communicative purpose.
* The theory of speech acts aims to do justice to
the fact that even though words (phrases,
sentences) encode information, people do more
things with words than convey information, and
that when people do convey information, they
often convey more than their words encode.
* According to J.L.Austin’s theory of speech acts
(1962) in How to Do Things with Words, three
distinct levels of action beyond the act of
utterance itself are identified. John Austin
distinguishes the act of saying something, what
one does in saying it, and what one does by
saying it, and calls these the 'locutionary', the
'illocutionary' and the 'perlocutionary' act,
respectively.
* The propositional or locutionary meaning, is the
literal meaning of the utterance or "the act of
'saying' something". If a child says to his mother
I am hungry, the locutionary meaning would
concern the fact that the child needs to be
given some food.
* The illocutionary one renders the social
function that the utterance or written text has.
The illocutionary meaning of I am hungry may
be a request from the child to be offered some
food. If the utterance is expressed emphatically
or if it is repeated, perhaps it would function as
a complaint.
* John Austin adds the notion of prelocutionary
force, which is the result or effect produced by
the utterance in that given context "saying
something will often, or even normally, produce
certain consequential effects upon the feelings,
thoughts, or actions of the audience, of the
speaker, or of other persons." Thus, if the
utterance leads to the action of setting the
table for the child, its prelocutionary force
would be greater than if the request were
ignored.
* The illocutionary speech acts can be classified as follows:
- representatives – the speaker asserts a proposition to
be true using such verbs as affirm, believe, conclude, deny,
report. E.g. It is warm.
- directives - the speaker tries to make the hearer do
something using verbs as suggest, ask, beg, require, invite,
insist. E.g. Don’t touch that!
- commissives – the speaker commits himself to a
future course of actions using verbs as guarantee, promise,
swear, vow. E.g. I’ll be back!
- expressives – the speaker expresses an attitude with
the verbs apologise, complain, thank, appreciate,
congratulate, detest, regret. E.g. I’m really sorry.
- declaratives – the speaker alters the status or
condition of something with the verbs declare, decree,
name, pronounce. E.g. We find the defendant guilty.
* 2.4. The Speech Act Set
* Speech acts are difficult to perform in a
second language because learners may
not know the idiomatic expressions or
cultural norms in the second language or
they may transfer their first language
rules and conventions into the second
language, assuming that such rules are
universal. Something that works in
English might not transfer in meaning
when translated into the second
language.
* Given a speech act such as apologising, requesting,
complimenting or complaining, the first concern of
second language acquisition (SLA) researchers has been
to arrive at the set of realisation patterns typically used
by native speakers of the target language, any one of
which would be recognised as the speech act in
question, when uttered in the appropriate context.
According to Andrew Cohen, this set of strategies is
referred to as the speech act set of the specific speech
act. It has become increasingly clear to researchers
that learners of a language may lack even partial
mastery of such speech act sets and that this lack of
mastery may hinder or even cause embarrassment in
communication.
* Let us consider the act of apologising. An
apology is produced when there is some
behaviour that violates social norms. The
person who apologises would do that only if he
regretted having done something wrong. Thus,
the apology act takes place only if the speaker
believes that some act has been performed
prior to the time of speaking and that this
precondition has resulted in an infraction which
affected another person who now deserves an
apology. Furthermore, the apologiser believes
that he or she was responsible for the offence
and has, as an interactional goal, to make
amends.
* In the case of apology, Andrew Cohen
established the following main strategies:
1. An expression of an apology - the speaker
uses a word, expression, or sentence which
contains a relevant performative verb (a verb
which names the speech act) such as apologise,
forgive, excuse, be sorry.
2. An explanation or account of the
situation which indirectly caused the apologiser
to commit the offence and which is used by the
speaker as an indirect speech act of
apologising.
* 3. Acknowledgement of responsibility - the
offender recognises his or her fault in causing
the infraction.
4. An offer of repair - the apologiser carries
out an action or provides payment for some
kind of damage which resulted from the
infraction.
5. A promise of non-recurrence - the
apologiser commits himself or herself not to
have the offence happen again.
* Successful production of speech acts depends on certain
sociocultural and sociolinguistic abilities. Sociocultural
ability refers to the respondents’ skill at selecting speech
act strategies which are appropriate given the culture
involved, the age and sex of the speakers, their social class
and occupations, their roles and status in the interaction.
For example, in some cultures (the USA) it may be
appropriate for speakers who have missed a meeting with
their boss through their own negligence to use a repair
strategy by suggesting to the boss when to reschedule the
meeting. In other cultures (Israel) such a repair strategy
might be considered inappropriate as it would most likely be
the boss who determines what happens next. Thus,
sociocultural knowledge determines whether a speech act
set is appropriate to use and, if so, which members of the
set are selected.
* Sociolinguistic ability refers to the respondents’ skill at
selecting appropriate linguistic forms in order to
express the particular strategy used to realize the
speech act. Sociolinguistic ability constitutes the
speakers’ control over the actual language forms used
to realise the speech act (e.g., sorry vs. excuse me) as
well as their control over register or formality of the
utterance, from most intimate to most formal
language. For example, if a student is asked to dinner
by his or her professor and cannot accept the
invitation, although it may be socioculturally
appropriate to decline the invitation, the reply No way!
would be an inappropriate choice of form for realising
the speech act of refusal.
* 2.5. Speech Acts in the Classroom
* In order to achieve a communicative purpose or the
intended illocutionary meaning in the majority of
cases it is necessary that the speaker should
employ more utterances than just one statement
containing vocabulary typical of the speech act.
For example, an apology might consist of three
utterances that can be regarded as separate
speech acts:
1. I feel terribly sorry, which expresses regret,
2. I missed your graduation, which is the
explanation,
3. I was stuck in the airport because of the
stormy weather, which is the excuse.
* In a second language it is difficult for students to
produce a speech act in the same way as native
speakers do because those learners may not know
the idiomatic expressions or cultural norms in the
second language or they may transfer their first
language rules and conventions into the second
language, assuming that such rules can be applied
in all the languages. The first impulse for language
learners is to translate the speech act from their
native language into the foreign language.
Something that may be appropriate in English
might be inappropriate when translated into the
second language.
* Speech acts reflect the cultural norms and values that
are possessed by the speakers of different social and
linguistic backgrounds. Different cultures and languages
have different techniques to realize speech acts. Such
differences can lead to a breakdown in communication
when people from different cultures interact. If the
sociocultural and sociolinguistic abilities are not paid
sufficient attention in second language teaching the
learners may encounter misunderstanding and conflicts
in real-life communication. In order to avoid these
problems, it is essential for the foreign language
teachers to increase the learners’ competence and
awareness of appropriate use of speech acts in the
target language.
* The role of the teachers in the process of their students’
acquisition of speech acts is to collect information on the
way native speakers perform certain speech acts. This
information is available in some textbooks. If such
information lacks, a valid means for obtaining it is through
observing speech acts as they occur naturally. This can be
accomplished by collecting samples of speech acts from
fiction, films, or by asking a native speaker to record what
he/ she would say in some situations. Once the samples have
been collected, the teacher’s next task is to determine the
degree of control that learners have over the speech acts
through role play, gap completion tasks, interviews etc.
Next, the learners will notice similarities and differences
between the way native speakers perform such speech acts
and the way they do, which is often influenced by the way
they would perform such communicative functions in their
native language.
* The teacher’s first step in teaching speech acts is
identifying the students’ level of awareness of a
particular speech act. This can be done orally or in
writing through gap completing tasks or role-plays.
Concomitantly, the teacher reveals the students’
perception of speech acts. When evaluating the
student, the teacher can suggest a task describing a
situation followed by multiple choices. Suppose that
you accidentally run into a person and step on his foot.
The multiple choices of forms of apology suggested by
the teacher in this situation will include (1) “Excuse
me, please.” (2) “I’m really sorry, are you all right?”,
(3) “Forgive me, please.”, (4) “Why don’t you watch
where you are going?”.
* The evaluation of the situation is a useful
procedure to further increase the learners’
awareness of the factors that influence the
choice of linguistic formulas. The students are
introduced several situations of apology and for
each they have to decide whether the violation
requiring apology is mild or severe, whether the
person who apologises needs to intensify the
apology, whether the person who has been
offended will accept the apology and whether a
typical strategy is required.
* Discussions are efficient for teaching speech
acts. During the discussions, the teacher will
reveal the students’ perceptions, expectations
and awareness of similarities and differences
between speech act behaviour in their native
language and in English. The teacher’s task will
also be to provide the necessary explanation
and help students recognise areas of negative
transfer where communication failure may
occur.
* 2.6. The Structure of Conversation
* Conversations are the product of people engaged in
joint activities in which they have to coordinate with
each other in order to succeed. When two people
gossip, plan a holiday, negotiate a contract, they
coordinate through dialogue. Conversations, therefore,
reflect the joint activities they coordinate. Each
participant has a role, such as clerk or customer,
teacher or student, friend calling or friend called.
These roles determine what the participants do or say.
Most conversations have mutually recognised goals
(exchanging gossip, planning a holiday, negotiating a
contract). The participants also have private goals, such
as being polite, short etc. These private goals also
constrain what they do and say. Often, people are
involved in two or more joint activities (gossiping and
eating) and the structure of their conversation reflects
this.
* People carry out joint activities against their common
ground – their mutual knowledge, mutual beliefs and
mutual assumptions. They infer their common ground
from past conversations, joint perceptual experiences
and joint membership in cultural communities. When
Ann asks Bob ‘Where is your office?’ she presupposes
certain common ground – that Bob has a job and works
in an office, but that she does not know where. And
with this question, she adds to their common ground
that she wants to know. Conversations proceed by
orderly increments to common ground – especially to
the common ground relevant to the current joint
activities.
* If conversations are to succeed, the
participants must ground what they say. To
ground what is said is to establish the mutual
belief that the addressees have understood the
speakers well enough for current purposes.
Conversations follow rules and patterns.
However, many English learners are unfamiliar
with them and thus encounter difficulty having
or maintaining conversations. Even learners
who have a good knowledge of vocabulary and
grammar may still struggle to communicate
effectively without having specific conversation
skills.
* Conversation strategies, structure, and micro-skills need to be
explicitly taught. We expect an utterance to be followed by a
particular type of utterance. These ‘pairs' are the main building
blocks of conversations and are called adjacency pairs or two-part
exchanges. They can be interrupted through insertion sequences.
Adjacency pairs involve two utterances - one utterance leads on to
another in quick succession. Straight-forward examples of
adjacency pairs are two utterances which contain a rational link
such as a question followed by an answer or a statement followed
by an agreement. The ‘chains' of adjacency pairs can be broken up
or interrupted. This might happen if, for example, someone comes
into a room and joins in the conversation. These temporary
interruptions are known as insertion sequences when someone
from ‘outside' joins, and side sequences when, for example, there
is a need to clarify something before the original thread of the
conversation is resumed.
* Speech acts succeed or fail depending on
conversational context. Conversations
additionally involve turn taking, conversation
structure manifested in each party’s
contributions to the conversation, establishing
common ground, identifying conversational
implicatures
* The structure of conversations emerges step by
step as people coordinate on each new move in
their joint activities. People need to coordinate
on the content, participants and roles of each
joint action, and they do that in a sequence of
local, opportunistic agreements. It is these
techniques that give conversations their
structure.
 Who Utterance Comment

The person who calls (dials; phone rings) This is the summons

The person who is Hello? Answer

called
The person who calls Hello, this is Pete. Is Identification
that Kate?

The person who is Yes. Identity stage

called
The person who calls Are you coming to the Message
game tonight?

The person who is Yes. See you there. Acknowledgement

called
The person who calls OK. Bye. Close

The person who calls Hangs up

* Telephone conversations are rule-governed behaviour. If
someone does not follow the above rules (you hear the
receiver being lifted but no one speaks or you start
speaking as soon as the receiver is lifted, not waiting
for the answer to say something) there might be a
chance that the conversation does not take place.
Hanging up without a formal close is considered abrupt
and insulting behaviour. There are national differences
in these rules. In some countries, it is considered
impolite to ask to speak to someone else before
initiating a series of polite social interchanges with the
person answering.
* Turn-taking, the question who speaks, is one of the
most intriguing aspects of conversational interchanges.
If two people are speaking at once, they and others find
it difficult to understand everything said. In various
formal situations, there are clear rules on the order of
speaking. In a classroom, teachers claim the right to
control turn-taking. In a parliament or other public
meeting, a chairperson is given the authority to
determine who can speak and for how long. In informal
conversations, the issue of turn-taking is often quite
complex, depending on power and status. Who has the
floor varies according to rules of social group.
* 2.7. Politeness and Politeness Formulas.
Terms of Address
* Politeness is essential in social interaction whether it is between
people of the same culture, the same social status, the same age
and level of education or not; and its significance comes more to
the fore when we consider the fact that English has become an
international language and therefore needs new concepts, new
types of pragmatic research and perhaps new teaching strategies.
Indeed, English has been acquiring more and more power and
status as a native language and more importantly as a second and
foreign language since it is the lingua franca used to communicate
between people who do not share the same language. Because of
this cross-cultural and international usage of English, it is
important indeed to understand the overall phenomena of
politeness to overcome the problems of its usage. Finally, to
understand politeness is also basic to bilingualism, for nowadays
bilingualism is promoted due to the usefulness of language in
business and politics.
* Many languages have specific means to show
politeness, deference, respect, or a recognition
of the social status of the speaker and the
hearer. There are two main ways in which a
given language shows politeness: in its lexicon
(for example, employing certain words in
formal occasions, and colloquial forms in
informal contexts), and in its morphology (for
example, using special verb forms for polite
discourse). Requests and greetings are the
speech acts involving politeness most
frequently.
* The most common kinds of politeness formulas
are involved with greetings. Failing to greet
someone who expects to be greeted signals
either some unusual distraction or a desire to
insult the person. Each social group has its own
set of rules about who should be greeted, who
should greet first, and what an appropriate
form of greeting is.
* Requests, which are an imposition on the
listener, are mitigated by being made indirectly
as questions (‘Could you possibly help me?’) or
as statements (‘I think you can help me in this
situation’), or by adding formulas such as
‘Please’ and ‘Would you be so kind and…’ Social
relations are eased by complimenting (‘You look
great today’, ‘Congratulations’).
* Another area showing patterned variation in speech and also
studied within the ethnography of communication has been the
use of terms of address. A number of languages offer the same sort
of choice as French of addressing a single person using either the
singular pronoun or the plural one. With the growing egalitarianism
of modern life, there has been a slow breakdown in the formality
of address system (a switch from vous to tu even when speaking to
parents or strangers). English once had the distinction thou/ you
and still offers a range of address terms, ranging from Title Alone
(Sir, Your Majesty, Madam) to Title + Surname (Mr Jones, Dr Smith,
Lord Clark, Miss Jones). Increasingly, in North America and British
academic circles, people who have just been introduced as
Professor X meet Dr Y move immediately to first names. The
conditions for choosing vary socially and it depends on the cultural
and sociolinguistic abilities of the speaker to select the
appropriate terms of address and on how well he or she has
learned about speech act strategies.