Download Communicating in English Talk, Text, Technolgy

Talking in English
Chapter 1
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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)
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The purpose of this kind of talk is to bind
people together and to establish an
interactional framework for the encounterPhatic 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
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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
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1. Cultural differences
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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.
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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
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Another way of identifying significant aspects
of style is to compare the conversational
behaviours of men and women. (A 1.6)
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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 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.
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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.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Abstract: a brief preview of what the
narrative is about.
Orientation: where and when the story took
place.
Complicating action: events are told in the
order.
Resolution: the way in which the
complicating action came to an end.
Coda: the end of the telling.
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
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Readings A & B
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Dr. Shaju Nalkara Ouseph
E-mail: [email protected]