BAB V

Micro sociolinguistics

By micro sociolinguistics is meant the study of the relations between linguistic and social structures at the level of face to face interaction. At this level we are observing the linguistic and nonlinguistic behavior of individuals, rather than of categories, groups, or aggregates of people, as in macro sociolinguistics. The two levels of analysis are, of course, intimately related, and a prime task of the sociolinguist is to establish connections between the two.
According to Ervin-Tripp (1971b:16), micro sociolinguistics includes “studies of the components of face-to-face interaction as they bear on, or are affected by, the formal structure of speech. These components may include the personnel, the situation, the function of the interaction, the topic, and the message and the channel.” Unlike studies in “communication,” micro sociolinguistics in concerned with relating characteristics of the language of language variety to characteristics of the communicators or the communication situation. As sociolinguistic rules have been characterized in the literature, they are micro sociolinguistic. It seems anomalous to speak of macro sociolinguistic rules. These are not part of the native speaker’s competence, but rather are perhaps only large-scale empirical generalizations or “laws”.
There are a number of viewpoints in the field converging on the notion that social and linguistic phenomena are of the same order. If this is the case, and much research appears to be based upon this assumption, then the same linguistic data can be used to analyze both linguistic form and social categories. Thus, rather than trying to correlate linguistic form with social information collected elsewhere, we can consider the linguistic forms actually chosen as simply a realization of the social meanings and categories.
There is a particularly intimate relationship between the study of social interaction and the study of language in use. The study of social interaction in sociology has been dominated by a school of thought known as symbolic interactionism. This particular theoretical perspective emphasizes the notion that, when people interact with each other, they are reacting to the meaning (to them) of others’ behavior, rather than to what they are actually doing-that is, all behavior is interpreted symbolically. People react more to symbols than to acts or thins. Man lives in a world of symbols, he interprets his physical and social world in terms of symbols. Many, perhaps most of the symbols with which people have surrounded themselves are linguistic symbols or at least have direct linguistic representation. The study of people’s reaction to such symbols is particularly instructive. Witness the phenomenon of violence as a reaction to the hurling of a racial epithet, the avoidance of words referring to death; or the fact that the more uttering of one of the most frequently used words in the English language, fuck, has gotten people arrested or shot. Formerly books were confiscated by postal and custom officials if they contained the word; it does not even appear in most contemporary English dictionaries.
One obvious area where the study of language and the study of social interaction overlap is the analysis of conversation, perhaps the most pervasive and ubiquitous of all human activities. In conversational analysis, we are interested not only in what people are saying and how they are saying it but also what they are doing at the same time they are talking to each other. Looking at conversation from a sociological point of view, we are interested in the group memberships of the participants, their role relationships, the social categories to which they belong, etc, for all of these potentially affect the nature of the interaction which takes place, as well as the content and form of what is said (see section 5.5). Mead (1934) asserted that the self is acquired through the process of social interaction, as individuals’ subjective experiences are objectified by mutual acceptance of symbols. Mind is basically a social phenomenon, and language provides increased control over the organization of the social environment. Language and mind are interdependent, and both arise out of the process of social interaction.
Although language has its origins in the face-to-face situation, it can be readily detached from it and communicate meanings other than those connected with the here and now. We can speak about all sorts of things that are not present at all in the face-to-face situation, including things we have never experienced and never will. People speak as they think, and speaker and hearer hear what each says at virtually the same instant. The two are constantly reinforcing each other’s subjectivity, thereby creating a world perceived as objective by both. In the course of a conversation, one’s meanings become more “real” to the speaker (Berger and Luckmann 1967:32-40).
Essential to any sociolinguistic study is consideration of the social organization of speakers, whether in a speech community or as part of an interaction network. Whether and how social interaction takes place is determined to a considerable degree by the communality of linguistic codes possessed by any potential actor. Each person interacts with other persons, who, in turn. Interact with other persons. The way in which interaction is structured and the social networks thus formed are highly dependent on the availability to and adequate use of speech varieties by the actors and vice versa. We can begin by looking at who speaks to whom, when, for what purpose, and with what results. Small networks feed into large networks, which can usually be identified with social categories, and thus the micro- and the macro levels are linked.
In complex societies almost every person is not only a member of several networks but also commands a repertoire of different language, dialects, varieties, or styles which he is able to use at will depending on the situation (see Chapter 6). He can also switch from one to another in the course of a given situation. Fishman (1972c:47-48) has stressed the necessity of obtaining reliable descriptions of existing patterns of social organization in language use and behavior toward language before we can attempt to explain why or how this pattern either changes or remains stable. The researcher attempts to establish the systematic nature of code choice and code change in a given community.

5.1 Micro functions of Language

There is not an infinite or indefinite number of ways people use language for their own ends. There is really a rather limited number of basic things we do with language. As Searle (1976:22-23) has indicated, “We tell people how things are, we try to get them to do things, we commit ourselves to doing things, we express our feelings and attitudes, and we bring a bout changes through our utterances. Often we do more than one of these at once in the same utterance.”
Robinson and Rackstraw (1972:11-12) cite some others: “To ask for or give knowledge or beliefs about the physical and social world external to oneself and report on private’ states (referential function) often by making statements or posing questions, to control other people’s behavior, often by issuing commands; to relieve tensions by exclaiming; to order one’s own nonverbal behavior, to attract or retain attention; to joke or recite or create poetry, to conform to social norms; to identify one’s status; to derive the role relationships between speaker and listener; to teach someone else the language.”
Whereas in sociology, functionalist theory is not consumed with individual motivation for certain actions, sociolinguistic theory takes into account both the intent of the speaker and the consequences for speaker, hearer, or others, as well as for the socio cultural structure. Furthermore, linguist are especially consumed with the means employed-in other words, what do people hope or expect to accomplish with language, what actually is accomplished, and how is it done? Consider the following.
1. Would you mind handing me the ledger, Abigail?
Abigail’s boss hopes to get the ledger, and let us assume for the sake of argument that she (that is Abigail’s boss) does in fact get it, so that is what is accomplished. The means employed is that of a questions but of a particular form a polite type of question, and one whose intention is clean the speaker is uttering a request. Abigail’s boss could just as well have said:
2. Gimme the goddamned ledger, Abby!
Here the intent is no less clear, although this utterance is better characterized as a command rather than as a request and its function may not be quite the same. That is, the boss may get the ledger, but in (2), Abigail might get quite upset if this is not the boss’s usual way of addressing her. This personal function might be wither manifest or latent, depending on the speaker’s intentions.
This particular example has been chosen, at least in part, to emphasize the point that most instances of language use are for the purpose of inducing changes in the hearers, either motor or intellectual/emotional, rather than merely to “communicate” ideas from one person to another.
The utterances of very young children are functionally simple, as each utterance normally serves just one function. Halliday (1973:353) notes that language develops in response to the child’s personal and social needs and suggests what some of these needs might be:
1. Instrumental-language is used to satisfy some material need.
2. Regulatory-language is used to regulate the behavior of others.
3. Interactional-language is used to maintain and transform social relationships.
4. Personal-language is used to express individual identity and personality.
5. Heuristic-language is used to investigate speaker’s environment.
6. Imaginative-language is used in fantasy and play.
7. Representational-language is used to express propositions.

Although Halliday explains child language in terms of seven specific functions, he explains adult language in terms of three more general functions: (1) the ideational, or the expression of content, that is, the speaker’s experience of the “real” world; (2) the interpersonal, aimed at the establishment and maintenance of social relations, such as social roles, and (3) the textual function : whereby language provides links with itself and with the situation in which it is used (Halliday 1970:143). Any adult utterance normally fulfills more than one function, e.g. Like I said, I’m kicking you out you bum! Where all three functions can be identified. Another scholar, Leech (1974) has come up with a somewhat different list of functions.
1. Informational-conveying information
2. Expressive-expressing the speaker’s or writer’s feelings or attitudes
3. Directive-directing or influencing the behavior or attitudes or others
4. Aesthetic-creating an artistic effect
5. Phatic-maintaining social bonds.
Consider, for example, the following sentences, illustrative of each of these functions.
1. The dog chewed up the book (informational)
2. Well, for goodness sake, look at that! (expressive)
3. Bring me a beer, will ya? (directive)
4. Quoth the raven, never more! (aesthetic)
5. good morning, Mr. Wong (phatic).
Again, more than one of these functions can be carried out by a single utterance, in fact the multifunctional utterance is undoubtedly the rule rather than the exception. It must also be noted that these classifications are all impressionistic and intuitive, certainly neither scientific nor exhaustive. Undoubtedly the phatic and directive functions are those of greatest interest to the sociologist, whereas the social psychologist ought to be particularly interested in the expressive function. It should be further noted that any of these functions can be carried out by paralinguistic or kinesic means, as well as by the verbal act.
Some ethnographers of communication (see section 5.3) have been active observers in classrooms, studying interaction between teachers and pupils. Many different types of analysis have been carried out, some of them recently developed. One scheme sometimes used is an older one of Bales (1950), which can be used to analyze any type of interaction within small groups in terms of the functions of language, that is, what the speakers are doing with language. These functions are classified as follows.
1. Shows solidarity, raises other’s status, gives help, reward
2. Shows tension release, jokes, laughs, shows satisfaction
3. Agrees, shows passive acceptance, understands, concurs, complies
4. Gives suggestion, direction, implying autonomy for other
5. Gives opinion, evaluation, analysis, expresses feeling, wish
6. Gives orientation, information, repeats, clarifies, confirms
7. Asks for orientation, information, repetition, confirmation
8. Asks for opinion, evaluation, analysis, expression of feeling
9. Asks for suggestion, direction, possible ways of action
10. disagrees, shows passive rejection, formality, withholds help
11. Shows, tension, asks for help, withdraws out of field
12. Shows antagonism, deflates other’s status, defends or asserts self

Categories 1 through 3 represent the positive social-emotional area, while 10 through 12 represent the negative social-emotional area. The remaining categories represent the neutral task area. Bales bases his classification on the notion that interaction in a group accomplishes two main objectives: (1) it gets a job done (task area) and (2) it maintains social relationships among the members of the group (social-emotional area).
Not all the micro functions of speech are manifest, that is, intended and/or obvious; they may be unintended and/or hidden. For example, speech gives information about the speaker whether or not he realizes or desires it. We can often easily determine various social categories to which a person might belong, by his speech alone: regional, ethnic, or national origin; social class, educational level; and in some instances, occupation or religion.
People also like to play with language. They may enjoy the sound of their own voices, with or without an audience, and may talk at great length with cats, dogs, or other pets, as well as to supernatural entities or forces from whom no immediate response is forthcoming. People may further engage in various kinds of language play, such as verbal dueling, nonsense rhymes, children’s verses, and disguised languages, as well as glossolalia (“speaking in tongues”), which is sound-making rather than language.
Verbal dueling, such as that of Turkish teenagers, Eskimo songs, West Indian Calypso, or United States black ghetto youth, serve a number of functions, such as providing a verbal substitute for physical assault, thus avoiding physical violence. The duelers, usually youths, are able to test norms and limits and, hence, their own position of dominance in the group. In this word play, youths are being prepared for the adult world, where competition will be carried on a different basis (Farb 1974:125) (see section 9.2).
The rationalistic view of man fostered by contemporary linguistics has tended perhaps to overemphasize man’s logical nature. That man’s use of language can be also non logical has been pointed out by Firth, who claims that scholars have deceived people by “persistently defining language as the expression of thought, “a medium for transmitting ideas to another individual,” a code of signs of symbols standing for concepts, ideas, and feelings,’ a means of’ manifesting outwardly the inward workings of the mind.’ Metternich was much nearer the mark when he pointed out to the professors that one of the commonest used of language was for the concealment of thought and that, generally speaking, the very last thing a man of affairs wanted to do, assuming such a thing to be possible, was to manifest the inward workings of his mind” (Firth 1970:99).
To quote Firth further (1970:100-101), “Common speech is not the instrument of pure reason. It is as full of feelings, of the ‘animal’ sense as the common social life in the routine service of which we learn it. As Pareto said, ‘Ordinary language, at best, reflects the facts of the outer world very much as a bad photograph that is a complete botch. It is serviceable in everyday life just because it is a manifestation of feelings.”
5.2 Micro sociolinguistic analysis

It has been only in recent years that serious attention has been paid to techniques of studying linguistic behavior in face-to-face interaction with a view to controlling for the social variables involved. Anthropologists have developed techniques of participant observation and worked on the classification and analysis of various types of speech events in different cultural contexts. Sociologists have been active in two areas particularly: ethno methodology and the analysis of conversation. Sociolinguists use the concept of domain to categorize the regularities that obtain between varieties of language and socially recognized functions and situations. Such domains are not established a priori but are constructs emanating from detailed sociolinguistic analysis. Never the less, most are readily identifiable by the native speaker who is familiar with the fact that, because of the role relationships in which he finds himself, he is expected to use one variety, say, at home and another one in dealing with governmental officials, at church, at school, in the marketplace, etc. Domains are normally used to describe patterned linguistic variations at the level of the community, rather than at the level of the small group or nation state. The construct of domain provides a link between the micro- and macro sociolinguistic levels of analysis. Attitudes toward varieties may reflect attitudes toward the domains in which they are used.
A role relationship defines the mutual rights and obligations which people expect of each other, as, for example, between parent and child, teacher and student, friend and friend, or merchant and customer. An important recognition of the nature of the role relationship is revealed in the way people talk to each other, including such matters as proper use of respectful or deferential forms, informal slang, humor, etc. Not only is a certain way of speaking expected, but speaking in that fashion helps to validate the claimed statuses the content and form of language reflects the extent to which the claimed rights are being honored. Speech, for example, will mark whether the interaction is a personal (informal and fluid) or a transactional one (where mutual rights and obligations of participants are stressed).
Culturally defined roles have characteristic linguistic repertoires, whereas class and other statuses are ordinarily marked by distinct styles of speaking. In the course of his social biography, the speaker is socialized to one or more repertoires and styles, although in the specific situation their use is influenced by the reciprocal definitions of the situation by the participants and any institutional constraints.
Linguistic interaction can also be viewed as a process of decision making, in which speakers select from a range of possible expressions. Choice is not a matter of complete individual freedom on the part of the speaker but is subject to grammatical and social constraints in the interest of intelligibility and acceptability of sentences, respectively. Both are matters of social convention. Speech styles often up off the listener to what he is about to hear. When we are away from our usual surroundings, we may mislabel our speech by using an inappropriate style, thus, style is a label one puts on one’s speech. Analysts, such as Gumperz (1967), emphasize the notion that the nature of social relationships and the social categorization of the environment are the major social determinants of speech. Other factors, such as institutional setting and educational and other statuses, are significant only to the extent that they influence speakers’ perception of their social relationships.
An important alternative approach to micro sociolinguistic analysis is that of the ethnomethodologists, who question the basic assumption of a stable system of symbols and meanings which are shared by the embers of a society. They emphasize, rather, that the social construction of reality is an ongoing process of interpretation. They have adopted as their fundamental postulate the dictum of William Thomas: “If men define a situation as real, it is real in its consequences.” Unfortunately, they manifest no concern for or attempt to linkup with macro sociological concerns.
The ethnomethodologists are phenomenological sociologists who are concerned primarily with what linguistic categories men to the members of society in everyday life and their implications for members’ actions. They reject the notion of innate language ability and postulate language as a developed skill which is internalized. They view meaning not as determined by abstract structures but rather as an accomplishment of members as they engage in social interaction (Coulter 1973). The meaning of words according to this perspective is determined by the context in which they are used. It is not possible to delineate the meaning of words in some more general way. For the ethnomethodologists, words are essentially indexical expressions. They study how conversationalists make sense out of the utterances they hear.
Ethnomethodologists are interested in the socially situated use of language through a’ concern with the common sense understandings that enable participants to enter into and sustain social interaction. They make meticulous analyses of recorded conversations to understand deep situational meanings. Some, such as Sacks, emphasize the objectivity of their findings, while others, like Cicourel, are more concerned with getting at the deeper meanings. For them, language is not something used in interaction; language is interaction. The language of researchers and subjects both generates the interaction between them and is product of that interaction (Deutscher 1975:176).
Ethnomethodological studies are concerned above all with practical reasoning. Their analyses of the internal organization of conversation clearly emphasize the speaker-hearer as practical analyst and practical reasoner. They look particularly at how the speaker-hearer produces and recognized features of the talk which have consequences for the interaction. At the standard pace of conversation, speakers and hearers experience the most mundane features of talk and interaction in order to orient themselves to the delicate and rather complex features of the unfolding interaction (Tumer 1974:11).
Whether social phenomena determine individual psychic states or vice versa, or, at least, which is prior in analysis has been a cogent issue in sociology ever since Durkheim opted for the primacy of social facts. In doing micro sociolinguistic analysis, we observe that, in a conversation, speakers make certain choices, exercise certain options, while, at the macro level, we observe the social patterning of linguistic behavior. While some scholars are of the opinion that relatively stable patterns are generated from the individual choices, other treat individual choices as derived from stable sociolinguistic patterns.
A formulation of a sociolinguistic rule is basically a generalization of observed regularities. The most current formulation deals with such rules in terms of what have come to be called after nation, which concerns choice among alternative ways of speaking, and co-occurrence, which concerns interdependence within alternatives (Ervin-Tripp 1972:213). Thus, the speaker chooses a language or style; then within the code he chooses certain linguistic variables (phonological, lexical, or syntactical) which will necessarily co-occur with each other (cf. section 6.3). The speaker sized up the situation in which he finds himself, decides on the norms which apply to the situation at hand, and chooses from available alternatives, depending on his knowledge and intentions.
In referring to intent, we must consider both the referential and the social information which the speaker wishes to convey. Gumperz (1972c:220) has pointed out that “The communication of social information presupposes the existence of regular relationships between language usage and social structure.” We cannot ascertain a speaker’s social intent unless we are familiar with the norms for the use of various linguistic alternatives which that particular speaker observes, depending on the social settings in which he finds himself and the subgroups to which he belongs. when we can formalize these relationships, we are able to classify the various linguistic forms into dialects, styles, and registers.
There are a number of different linguistic devices available for the conveying of social information, such as choice of lexical, phonological, and syntactic variants; sequencing and alternation of utterances among speakers; choice of message form-that is, whether to convey a message by conversation, sermon, lecture or some other form; and code switching. Like grammatical rules, code selection rules operate below the level of consciousness and may be independent of the speaker’s own intentions. In any case, interpretation of both referential and social information must take into consideration the total context of what has been said before and what is said after wards. Social relationships appear to act as intervening variables between linguistic structures and their realization in speech.

5.3 Ethnography of communication

Ethnographers are anthropologists who write detailed accounts of how a given people, generally non-Western, goes about its culturally standardized daily and seasonal activities. One of the most pervasive activities of man is, of course, communication. Ethnographers have been quick to grasp this point, although it has been only in recent years that specific attention has been paid to the ethnography of communication. Basically, they treat such concepts as role, status, social identities, and social relationships as communicative symbols which are signaled in the act of speaking in order to interpret a message in a particular context, one must have knowledge of the social values associated with the activities, social categories, an social relationships implied in the message. For example, while some societies place a great deal of value on verbal abilities, others admire silence. Thus, the Paliyans of southern India speak very little and generally not at all after age forty. Talkative people are regarded as abnormal and offensive (Farb 1974:143).
The ethnographer of communication focuses on how people actually talk, that is, what happens in a conversation, a speech, a telling of a joke, or any other speech event. This approach has overlapped with that of social psychologists studying social interaction in small groups and with the work of the ethnomethodologists. The ethnographers of communication have stressed the notion of communicative competence, the speaker’s knowledge of sociolinguistic rules: when to use a particular variety or style, when to be silent, and the use of linguistic forms appropriate to the situation. They are not interested in an abstract idealized speaker-hearer in actual speakers in socially an linguistically heterogeneous communities. They are concerned not only with what they know, but with what they actually say.
This approach involves the systematic description of communicative behavior as culturally standardized, viewed in the socio cultural context within which it occurs. All such patterns of behavior and their interpretation are taken to be problematic and to be established by empirical means. We investigate the communicative activities within the context of a given community or social network. Languages and their varieties are simply part of the resources upon which the members draw. Not only may the same linguistic means be made to serve various ends, but the same communicative ends may be served by different linguistic means. To untangle the interrelations, we have to examine the community’s cultural values and beliefs, social institutions, roles, history, and ecology.
What elsewhere in this book is called “speech event” is referred to by Hymes as a “communication event,” even though the latter is really a broader act, including the use of gesture as well as the transmission of language through writing or mechanical means. The starting point, as least, of the ethnography of communication is the description of specific communicative acts in specific cultures in terms of a predetermined frame of reference with which to guide the analysis. The frame of reference which Hymes (1974b:10) has devised for the ethnographic analysis of a communicative event is a follows;
(1) the various kinds of participants in communicative events-senders and receivers, addressers and addressees, interpreters and spokesmen, and the like; (2) the various available channels, and their modes of use, speaking, writing, printing, drumming, blowing witless, singing, face and body motion as visually perceived, smelling, tasting, and tactile sensation; (3) the various codes shared by various participants, linguistic, paralinguistic, kinetic, musical, interpretive, interaction; and other; (4) the settings (including other communication) in which communication is permitted, enjoined, encouraged, abridged; (5) the forms of message, and their genres ranging verbally from single morpheme sentences to the patterns and diacritics of sonnets, sermons, salesmen’s pitches, and any other organized routines and styles; (6) the attitudes and contents that a message may convey and be about; (7) the events them selves, their characters as wholes-all these must be identified in an adequate way.”
This and similar frames of reference have been used to analyze ceremonies, sermons, verbal dueling, conversations, code switching, etc. In various societies. Bauman and Sherzer (1974) point out that the available scholarly literature considers, for the most part, the ways that languages and their uses are the same, rather than recognizing that there are differences in the purposes to which speech is put and the way it is organized for these purposes. Speech communities are inherently heterogeneous. There are different speech varieties available to its members, norms for speaking which vary from one segment of the community to another. Definition of speech community is fairly easy when one is dealing with the kinds of units which anthropologists study, such as villages, tribes, small preindustrial towns, etc, but the ethnographers of communication have been somewhat evasive concerning the identification of speech community in the large, modern, complex, industrialized societies.
As pointed out elsewhere, a speech community is an aggregate of people sharing at least one linguistic vanity, as well as a body of sociolinguistic rules concerning the use of the varieties in their repertoire. People can share sociolinguistic, that is, speaking, rules without necessarily sharing a particular linguistic variety. When speaking rules are being shared among contiguous language, we may speak of this as a speech area. For example, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, and southem Germany form such a speech area since they share norms as to greetings, acceptable topics, and what is said next in conversation, even though most speakers do not know the other languages (Hymes 1972d:54-55).

5.4 Discourse analysis

Inasmuch as grammar deals with the system by which sound is related to meaning, grammarians have, for the most part, confined their analysis to single sentences. Yet, it is obvious that the meaning of many sentences is not clear without considering the sentences which precede or follow in the same conversation. For example, linguists studying reported speech (Zwicky 1971) generally confine their discussion to individual sentences and reports of sentences. But to do so is to ignore the nature of discourse. For example, as Sherzer (1973:273) has indicated, “If John asks Harry Are you going to the movies?, and Harry replies, Yes, then John can later report to Mary that Harry said that he was going to the movies in spite of the fact that all Harry said was yes. Any adequate account of reported speech must describe this and other aspects of the discourse properties of reporting.”
It follows that if analysis of language is to be realistic, one must observe actual speech and not merely concoct sentences out of one’s own intuitional resources. The social context, as well as the linguistic context, of each sentence must be considered. In discourse analysis, the first step is to distinguish what is said from what is done. We attempt to relate sentence types, such as statements, questions, and imperatives, by means of discourse rules to the set of actions done with words. There is no simple one-to-one relationship because, for example, refusals, challenges, retreats, insults, promises, or threats. The discourse analyst tries to show that one sentence follows another in a coherent manner.
Discourse rules include rules of interpretation (with their inverse rules of production) and sequencing rules, which connect actions. Other elements of discourse are based on shared and unshared knowledge and notions of role, rights, duties, and obligations associated with social rules (for example, cf. discussion on directives in section 5.6, also the collections edited by Freedle 1977 and 1979).
Lakoff (1972:907) notes that in order to be able to predict how rules are going to apply, one has to be able to identify the assumptions about the social context of an utterance, as well as any other implicit assumptions made by speakers. She observes that the following sentences are in descending order of politeness, although under other more ordinary circumstances, must imposes an obligation, should merely gives advice that may be disregarded, and may allows someone to do something he already wanted to do. The fact that the sentences are spoken by a hostess at a party is reflected in the inverse order to politeness expressed by choice of modals :

(1) You must have some of this cake.
(2) You should have some of this cake.
(3) You may have some of this cake.

Such distinctions are sometimes made in other languages by different honorifics, as in Japanese.
Although silence is the absence of speech, it often can communicate something. For example, as Key (1975b:116-117) notes. “It can convey respect, as in the presence of a great person or an elder or at a funeral or coronation; comfort, to a distressed loved one who wants to be quiet; companionship, when watching a sunset; support when a toddler is learning to tie a shoe; rejection, when a black employee wants to join the office chatter, reprimand, as to a child, or a pear, when words would be too embarrassing, consent as an answer to a challenging statement; and no consent, as an unspoken answer.”
In some American Indian groups, an acceptable social visit may consist of go8ng to a friend’s house, sitting silently for half an hour, and then leaving without saying anything. in such a cultural setting, speech is not necessary if a person has nothing to say. A teacher may discover that a particular boy cannot and will not speak to a girl in the class because they bear a certain kinship relation to each other in the Navaho community (Hymes 1961:60-61).
Work impinging upon discourse analysis has been carried out primarily by the generative semanticists on the one hand, and on the other by sociologists doing fine grained analysis of the sentence, recognize aspects of discourse but force them into the structure of sentences, as if discourse had no structure of its own. On the other hand, those studying language from the perspective of the ethnography of communication and social interactionism have been developing rigorous ways of analyzing discourse in terms of the dimensions of speech usage and the nature of discourse rues. They have studied how, in coherent discourse, utterance follow each other in a rational, rule-governed manner, as well as the selection of speakers and the identification of persons.
One particularly active field of research the past few years has been the analysis of children’s discourse (see, for example, Ervin-Tripp and Mitchell Keman, eds. 1977). A number of scholars have been analyzing children’s turn taking sequencing etc. they are beginning to realize the wide range of interactional strategies which children use, which reveal their assumptions about the nature of the participants and the most appropriate and effective way to use language in interactions with them (Boggs and Lein 1978). Studies have focused on both child-child and child-adult conversations. It appears that the child learns conversational strategies at the same time that he is learning grammar. In any case, it appears on close examination that children are very skilled interact ants indeed.

5.5 Speech events

One cannot study speech in totality or in abstraction only, one must focus on some clearly definable and delimited segments for analysis if such analysis is ever to be validated, and replicated, if necessary. One such unit of analysis which has been proposed is the speech event. This unit has a beginning and an end, follows a socially recognized patterned sequence, and is generally an entity recognized as such by the people, with a socially accepted designation, for example, a conversation, joke, sermon, interview, prayer, or political speech. Some societies or communities have their own rather unique speech events, and many of these have been studied by the ethnographers of communication. For example, in the United States the activities known as jiving, shucking, playing the frequently studied (see section 9.2).
The investigator studying speech events in a particular community cannot just simply make a detailed list of them and describe each. He must determine the categories which are meaningful to the members of the speech community and the functions they fulfill for them.
Special rules of speaking mark off certain speech events from everyday verbal behavior. These rules involve not only choice of word and topic but also such factor as selection of syntactic and phonological alternates, intonation, speech rhythm, and discourse structure, as well as role and setting constraints. They are often bounded by certain opening and closing routines. For example, if we hear “dearly beloved, we are gathered here today …”we know a wedding is about to be performed, or if we hear “Did you hear the one about the…,”we anticipate that a joke is about to be told. Every child knows that “Once upon a time” announces a fairy tale and that “They lived happily ever after” closes it.
In some types of speech events, co-occurrence restrictions apply much more rigidly than they do in others. For example, public ceremonies or religious rituals prescribe modes of speaking in very narrow terms, whereas in intimate conversation a wide range of alternate sequences is ordinarily permissible. All types of discourse, however, show some form of co-occurrence restrictions. One would be surprised to hear a sentence like I ain’t never gonna analyze no empirical data no more unless someone were trying to be funny. In this case, the humor derives from the fact that we expect “ain’t” to co-occur with informal speech forms and “empirical data” in more formal discourse. Co-occurrence rules in multilingual repertoires tend to be more rigid than in monolingual ones (Gumperz 1971:157).
A major topic concerns the way in which people interpret, that is, make sense out of what is going on in a conversation. There is a particular relationship between what is being said and what is being done, as well as, of course, the social and linguistic context of the conversation. Speakers make assumptions concerning what is going on in the conversation, who says what, what has been said before, and by whom, and whether people are lying, joking, telling the truth, etc. if someone says to us Drop dead!, the first interpretative task is to figure out whether the statement is to be taken literally or not, seriously or not, by evaluating the circumstances. For example, if one were a seriously ill, cardiac patient, it wouldn’t be very funny.
The analyst needs to look at such things as how conversations are begun and ended, as well as the factors determining a person’s right to speak at a specific point in the conversation. He looks at the linguistic means used by speakers to make excuses, convince, cajole, mock, flatter, and so on. There are understandings of how topics may be introduced, avoided, or changed. Lulls and silences have their particular significances.
A conversation begins with an initial utterance by one of the speakers. The letter has a wide choice of expressions to use for this opening utterance which will serve not only to initiate the conversation but also to convey some of his assumptions about this speech and social community and his place in it, as well as the way in which he has conceptualized the social nature of the relationship with the other speaker and the situation in which the conversation takes place. Farb (1974:108-109) claims that all conversations are opened in one of six ways:
1. A request for information, services, or goods
2. A request for a social response
3. An offer of information
4. An emotional expression of anger, pain, joy, which is often a strategy to solicit a comment by a listener.
5. Stereotyped statements, such as greetings, apologies, and thanks
6. A substitute statement to avoid a conversation about a subject the speaker anticipates the listener will broach.
Two utterances are required for either opening or closing a conversation. The second utterance signifies agreement with what the speaker of the first utterance is trying to do, that is, open or close, for example, in American English, “OK,” “I gotta go,” and “well” frequently signal the desire to end a conversation and may be considered “pre-closings.”
It seems patent that all conversation has two basic features, namely, in a given conversation, no more than one person speaks at a time, and in the course of the conversation, the speakers take turns speaking. We may postulate a turn-taking machinery to explain the co-occurrence of these features. this machinery orders speaker turns sequentially in conversation. For example, there are procedures for organizing selection of the next speaker and for determining when and under what conditions transition to a next speaker may or should occur. These procedures operate utterance by utterance rather than being predetermined completely in advance by extra conversational factors. Schegloff (1972b:35) claims that the validity of the rule that one party speaks at a time Is proven by the fact that, where there are four or more persons and more than one person is talking, we can say not that the rule has been violated, but rather that there is more than one conversation going on. But before a conversation is started, there must be a way of determining who is going to speak first. In telephone conversations, for example, the person who answers the telephone speaks first, saying something like “Hello” or “Grubb Construction Co.,” whereupon the caller says something like “This is Joe Gomez. May I speak to M. Ma. Please.” The answerer then says, “This is he,” or “I’ll get him.” Only if someone violates the rules of telephone conversation by discourtesy or by saying something “strange” do we realize that such conversation are patterned, following quite definite rules.
In the midst of rewriting this section of the book, my home telephone rang, I picked up the receiver, and the following exchange ensued (“A”=answerer, “C”=caller):
A: Hello?
C : Hi!
A : Hello!! (somewhat more emphatically)
C : (hangs up)
The caller had obviously reached a wrong number. Once she had ascertained this fact, she terminated the call without enquiry, explanation, or apology. This appears to be not at all unusual in telephone conversations in the United States. There are cultural differences in this regard. Thus, in France, for example, the sequence for the caller at the beginning of a telephone conversation is as follows (Godard 1977).
(1) Check number
(2) Name oneself at the first opportunity
(3) Excuse oneself (optional in case of intimacy)
The French conceive of the telephone as an intrusion, for which apologies are required. In the first place, the caller verifies the number, so that misdialings are caught immediately. It is up to the caller to identify himself first. This is contrary to common practice in the United States. Godard, who is from France, once answered the phone, to the caller’s surprise encountering a nonnative speaker:
A: Hello?
B : Oh! Who are you?
A : Who are you?

It is true that, in the United States, children are often instructed to say something like the following when they call: “This is Johny Jones. May I speak to Jerry, please?” or in answering the phone, to say something like “Cohen residence,” but these norms, if indeed they are norms, appear to be rarely observed. It would appear that more generally speaking, the American caller considers the answerer more a conduit of communication than a person, whereas the reverse is the case in France. Of another call received by Godard in her home in Philadelphia.
A: Hello?
C : Is Jane at your house? Can I speak to her, please?

In France the sequence would be in such a case:
A : Hallo?
C : Checks number
A : Oui
C : Identities himself
A : Greetings. Identifies himself
C : After greetings and a few words, asks for intended audience.

Rather than regarding the call as an intrusion, in the United States people will ordinary interrupt another conversation or any other (or almost any other) activity and answer the telephone. The ring of the telephone has a definite imperative quality. In the United States, a positive value appears to be attached to the act of telephoning it self, and the caller seems to have more rights than the answerer (Godard 1977).
Duncan (1972:283) has described three basic signals for the turn-taking mechanism in conversation, namely (1) turn-yielding signals by the speaker, such as intonation, drawl, body motion, pitch, loudness, completion of a sentence of the use of stereotyped expressions, such as “but uh,” “or something,” or “you know”; (2) attempt-suppressing signals by the speaker, such as movement of the speaker’s hands; (3) back-channel signals by the hearer, such as “mm-hmm” or nods of the head, indicating that he will not take his turn at speaking. Speakers use and respond to these signals in a relatively structured manner.
It often happens that the turn-taking mechanism does not works perfectly, and one speaker interrupts another, or his speech overlaps with another’s. such overlaps and interruptions apparently do not occur in a random fashion but are influenced by interlocutors roles. For example, in one study of eleven cross-sex and twenty same-sex segments of two-party conversations, West and Zimmerman (1974) showed that overlaps were distributed symmetrically in same-sex conversations, but, where the speakers were of opposite sex, males initiated all of the overlaps. There was no difference between the rate at which men interrupted men an women interrupted women, but in the cross-sex conversational segments, 96 percent of the interruptions were initiated by males. The same authors have demonstrated that parent-child interactions are very similar to male-female interchanges in the exercise of interpersonal power. Parents and males interrupt children and females far more than the converse. They conclude, “With respect to conversational interchanges, it is generally the case that the child’s right to speak is problematic and that many of the proprieties and courtesies routinely accorded by adults of equal status are usually ignored in the case of children.” This and similar studies certainly weaken the popular stereotype of women as talking more. Conversational analysis is obviously a source of sociological data on power relationships. For example, instances have been noted particularly in the non-Western world, where a tribal chief or other dignitary will speak through an interpreter to an addressee from another ethnic group, but who understands and speaks the language perfectly well. This practice helps to maintain social distance by preventing direct conversation between the two individuals in question. A similar phenomenon in some modern societies is the custom, still utilized by some women, of not addressing a waiter or waitress in a restaurant directly but, rather, speaking through her escort.
One important theme running through the work of some analysts is the use, by speakers and hearers, of knowledge of the social world in encoding and decoding speech. One interesting and significant problem is formulating place, that is, the means chosen to indicate the physical location by the speaker of some person or object he is mentioning. Some choice must be made, as there are a number of different ways to indicate the “same” place. In a given conversation, however, not all possible formulations would be considered equally correct. Account must be taken of the location of the object, as well as of those taking part in the conversation (Schegloff 1972a). Thus, for example, if someone should ask me where my Xerox copy of Schegloff a article is, in my study, in my files, at home, in California, or back in the States.
In analyzing questions and answers in the context of a conversation, Sacks has identified a rule to the effect that the speaker asking the question has the right to speak if he receives an answer and has aright to ask another question, thus providing for another answer and further question, and so on. Court transcripts are clear examples of such a cycle. Telephone calls are structured in such a way that the person who calls selects the first topic for discussion. In face-to-face social contacts, the speaker uttering the first greeting has the right to talks again when such a greeting is returned and has the right to select the topic (Turner 1970:209-210). In many cases, however, only a simple exchange of greetings may take place.
Shegloff and Sacks (1973:235) reject the notion that their findings relate to some general features of conversational rules in American English, for they do not believe that an ethnic or national language is a relevant putative boundary for their materials and findings. Their approach is to look for standardized invariant rules of discourse, for example, in the sequencing of conversations. To the extent that these rules are culture-specific, however, different rules imply different subcultures and vice versa. The consequences for social interaction in such a case can be significant. As Labov (1971a:64-65) points out, speakers of a given dialect may be able to interpret the grammatical rules of another dialect by may not be able satisfactorily to interpret rules of discourse relating to the interpretation of the social significance of actions, such as in the ways of indication politeness, anger, sincerity, or trust. We interpret sentences rapidly and unreflectingly in terms of social relationships that are not overtly expressed. We are able to do this because of our knowledge of the social system and our familiarity with our interlocutor’s social categories and the cultural associations they carry for him. When we are unaware of these social categories and cultural associations, we may very well misunderstand what is being said.
One of the most extensively studied micro sociolinguistic phenomena is that of code switching, in which a person in the middle of a conversation. Or evening the middle of a sentence, changes from one language, dialect, or style to another. Such switching may take place because the speaker may be able more easily to convey this meaning in the other language, dialect, or style, or the switch itself my convey social meaning.
In order analyze code switching, we must take into account not only what is said, but the social situation in which the conversation takes place, particularly the role relationships and group memberships of the interlocutors, as well as their attitudes toward the various languages, dialects, and styles, and the speakers who habitually use them. Speakers know when to shift from one variety to another. A shift in situation may necessitate a shift in language variety, and conversely, code shifting may indicate a change in the nature of the immediate social relationship of the interlocutors, as well as a change in the nature of the immediate social relationship of the interlocutors, as well as a change of topic or motivation for speech.
These are all cases of situational switching. On the other hand. There is metaphorical switching where there has been no change in situation or topic, but where a person may switch to another language or style to convey humor, warmth, irony, ethnic solidarity, etc.
Scotton and Ury (1977) suggest that a speaker code switches either to redefine the interaction as appropriate to a different social arena or to avoid, by means of repeated code switching, defining the interaction in terms of any specific social arena. Each social arena (e.g. identity arena, power arena, transactional arena) has its own norms concerning the type of behavior expected. It is a strategy by which the skillful speaker uses his knowledge of how language choices are interpreted in his community to structure the interaction so as to maximize outcomes favorable to himself. Thus, in Kenya. For example, a speaker might switch from the local language to Swahili to indicate his perception of the interaction as a transactional, e.g. commercial one, or switch to English as symbolic of power, especially if his interlocutor is weak in English.
Metaphorical switching is possible only because there are previously agreed upon norms governing the use of certain varieties or styles in particular situations. It is in violation of the norm that the switching has its impact. On the other hand, situational switching is called for by the norms-as the situation changes, so does the variety or style which is required. The norms allocate a particular variety or style to particular kinds of topics, places, persons, and purposes. For example, many speakers in the United States shift back and forth between pronunciations like doing and doing’, depending on the status relationship between speakers and hearer, and the topic and setting of the conversation. Such shifting is sometimes beyond the conscious awareness of both speakers and listeners.
In several studies of Chicano code switching, whenever Chicano identity was an underlying theme, Spanish was used by the speaker (for examples of Chicano code switching, see section 9.3). In another study, in a small Norwegian village, Blom and Gumperz (1972) showed that, of the two varieties of Norwegian spoken in the village, the local one was used in issues related to community identification, while the national standard was used in topics more national in scope. It was pointed out, that code switching did not occur in friendly gatherings of people who composed a network of local relationships, regardless of topic, in a situation with both local and non local relationships, however, code switching would be based on topical variation. Speakers conveyed social information by switching from the local dialect to the standard language.

5.6 Speech acts

Much smaller units of analysis than the speech event are the speech acts out of which the speech events are composed, that is, such entities as statements, commands, questions, promises, threats, etc. speech acts have been studied from different perspectives by both philosophers and linguists, and the sociological relevance of their work is becoming increasingly apparent. Most utterance investigated by students of speech acts can be classified as both “serious” and “literal,” as those terms are used by Searle (1969). He contrasts “serious” with play acting, teaching a language, reciting a poem, practicing pronunciation, etc, and he contrasts “literal” with metaphorical, sarcastic, etc.
It is clear that a large percentage of speech act in ordinary conversational are not serious in nature, for example, the widespread “kidding” which takes place in face-to-face groups or the culturally stylized “sounding” in the black vernacular culture. Obviously, knowledge of the social situation and of the rules of discourse is imperative for deciding (on the part of either speakers or analyst) whether a given utterance is to be taken seriously and/or literally. Thus, not only linguistic competence but also communicative and social competence is involved.
Whereas the ethnographers of communication (Ervin-Tripp, Gumperz, Hymes, etc) analyze speech acts as units of linguistic structure, generative semanticists, such as Ross, Lakoff, and McCawley, support and approach known as the performative analysis. The latter assumes that the structure of speech acts, such as declaring, questioning and commanding, are coded in the form of abstract underlying sentences which contain a verb like assert, say, etc, as well as the pronouns you and I. for example, all declarative sentences would have as part of their abstract underlying structure something like”I assert to you that …” Thus, in a sentence like “Frankly, this just won’t do,” frankly modifies the deleted underlying performative verb (Sherzer 1973:271).
In speaking a person is characteristically performing at least there different kinds of speech acts, which Searle (1969:23-24) calls utterance acts (uttering words, morphemes, sentences, etc), propositional acts (referring and predicating), and illocutionary acts (stating, questioning commanding, promising, etc). although one can perform an utterance act without performing a propositional or illocutionary act, one cannot normally perform an illocutionary act without performing propositional and utterance acts. The same propositional acts can be common to different illocutionary acts, and conversely the same illocutionary act may involve different propositional acts.
Searle (1972:137) argues that illocutionary acts, such as asking questions or making statements, are rule-governed and that therefore it is possible to state a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the performance of that particular type of illocutionary act. Then, it should be possible to derive the set of semantic rules which marks that particular type of illocutionary act. One often states directly what one is doing by saying, for example, I promise you that … or I hereby appoint you…. The sentence is said to be felicitous if the illocutionary act succeeds. A bet, for example, cannot succeed unless both parties agree. Like-succeeds. A bet, for example, cannot unless both parties agree. Likewise, if a command is to be heard as a valid command, then, where A is the speaker and B the hearer, B must believe that A believes that :
1. X needs to be done
2. B has the ability to do X
3. B has an obligation to do X
4. A has the right to tell B to do X (Wootton 1975)
The social distribution of rights and privileges becomes an explicit and formal part of the knowledge required to identify valid commands. Interlocuters knowledge about the rights and obligations of various participants in speech setting is of crucial importance, although such knowledge is for them only part of that involved in making and evaluating speech acts. Sociologists ought to be able to make some strong contributions to this point in the light of their long-standing interest in social norms and the distribution of social statuses. Norms and their applicability on particular occasions, however, are to some extent indeterminate and negotiable.
A performative sentence is specifically an utterance which itself describes the speech act which it performs. It is syntactically marked by having a first person subject (I or we), with the verb in the simple present tense (ask, bequeath, declare). The only possible indirect object is you. The sentence cannot be negative, and it is possible to insert the adverb hereby. The following sentence manifests all these characteristics.
I hereby promise you my loyalty.
The following sentences demonstrate the fact that not all verbs referring to speech events can function as performative verbs:
• I hereby remark that the room is dingy.
• I hereby persuade you to vote for Schlupp,.
• I hereby denigrate your profession.
For every nonperformative sentence, it is possible to find one or more performative equivalents. Thus, a sentence like I order you to go! Is explicitly performative, while Go! Is implicitly perfofrmative.
The illocutionary force of an utterance is not ordinarily marked by a performative formula. There are a number of more subtle means of indicating what the speaker is trying to accomplish by speaking, such as word order, intonation, special morphemes, or deletion, depending on the language. Normally, simple sentences have one and only one illocutionary force (Saddock 1975:10-11)
When there is a possibility of noncompliance. Imbedded imperatives and permission directives are used with unfamiliar interlocutors or possibly in speaking with superiors.
When we consider the consequences or effects which illocutionary acts have on the actions or thoughts of the hearers, we may speak of perlocutionary acts. As Searle notes, “For example, by arguing I may persuade or convince someone, by warning him I may scare or alarm him, by making a request I may get him to do something, by informing him I may convince him (enlighten, edify, inspire him, get him to realize). The italicized expressions above denote perlocutionary acts.” (Searle 1969:25) Perlocutionary effects may be intentional or unintentional, suggesting a connection with the concept of manifest and latent functions.

Discussion questions
1. What are the most important purposes people accomplish with language? In this connection, how does form relate to function?
2. What is a domain? What are the principal domains in which you as an individual use language? How do these relate to your various social roles?
3. What are some of the topics deal with in the analysis of discourse?
4. Observe some conversations during the next day or so and check how many started in each of the ways described by Farb.
5. Does the discussion of telephone conversations in this country agree with your experience? What do you say, and what do people at the other end say ordinarily at the beginning of such conversations?
6. Observer some conversations involving sex, age and status differences among speakers, and summarize what you observed with regard to the frequency of interruption of one speaker by another.
7. What is code switching? Discuss your observations of others’ code switching and your estimate of why they are doing it.
8. State the necessary and sufficient conditions for the performance of some illocutionary act like a threat, order, declaration, question, etc.