Dr. AbdelrahimHamid Mugaddam Speakers, Hearers, Audiences

Fact about how conversation emerges, text written.. Interpreted … influenced by who is involved. Who the speaker/writer is? What is the relationship among speakers and hearers? Who else is listening?

Traditional way of thinking about the participants in discourse is to imagine the author/speaker: primary source of data, the one who decides what to say, how and what others should take it to mean. Other participants are passive decoders!

Other participants are always involved in shaping discourse in 3 ways: 1. Their reactions to it 2. The way it is designed with them in mind 3. The ways in which their roles make the author’s role possible.

Power, solidarity, and community Power and solidarity are both always at play in any relationship (Tanen, 1994) Power: has to do with the respects in which relationships are asymmetrical, with one person able to control the other. Solidarity: has to do with the relatively symmetrical aspects of human relationships. Solidarity: counter of power I human relations.. Only in context mutual orientation to shared knowledge,, membership in common predefined groupings, or joint activity do negotiations for control arise.

Humans need ways to claim membership in a group and to show that they are in symmetrical relation with the fellow group members. Social groups play different roles…hierarchically stratified into subgroups.

Power plays a substantial role in organizing relation The president has the power to declare war Chairman of a committee: power to adjourn the committee’s meeting Priest : power to make decisions in marriage.

Power is negotiable.. People compete for the ability to make things happen, even in situations in which institutionally allotted power might make such competition unequal. US politics, the legislature can and does try to limit the president’s power to declare war. Other committee member might suggest that the chairman adjourn the meeting or they can make a de facto adjournment by simply sand up and leave. If there is no power, there will be no interaction.

Two types of power: Institutional & situational Example: choosing a member for a position Darter: Um Ri:tchie may come off like he’s really a dumb ass everything but uh, he ‘s like one of the smartest people I know you know I went to high school with him And he was like ranked fifth in our class Kim: He is Asian man what do you expect?

Darter, a younger member who is relatively powerless in the group argues for his choice, Richie. Since Darter knew Richie previously in high school, he can make a claim to expertise that the others lack. This gives him potential power to influence the decision. Showing powerlessness: Use of hedges (unsure), intensifiers (really unbelievably), conditional (would be a good position for him)

Community! Enjoining in joint discourse activities such as the meeting and decision-making is one of the things that makes the collection of people a community. The activities show that those involved are members of a common community. Communities: speech communities, discourse communities, or communities of practice.

Social roles & discourse roles People always create and negotiates their relationships with each other in the process of interacting, via discourse moves that makes claims to equality, inequality, solidarity or detachment. There are fixed roles in which people use and interpret in relatively pre-set way (how students maybe using language, what is expected of hosts & guests, people working in fast food restaurants—what exactly to say, in what order and what style)

Discourse role and social role can be keyed : use forms of address (first name, surname, Dr. Ms, Reverend, your honor, officer). Discourse roles are signaled and negotiated via choices on every level, from which word to use to what sort of thing to do.

(in school) well, today I thought we’d do three quizzes. (in casual conversation) well, today I thought we’d talk about my vacation to France. The first is fairly usual, the second would probably strike people as odd and rude.

Audience, Politeness, and Accommodation Audience : a collection of actual people or as an abstract image in the mind of the rhetor. Passive listeners whose emotions and beliefs have to be analyzed so that to be identified with what the rhetor is talking about. Active participants in the making of the meaning. Audiences are considered “co-author”

Linguistic politeness is a way in which discourse is shaped by the audience. Politeness: refers to all the ways in which speakers adapt (or decide not to adapt) to the fact that their interlocutors, actual or imagined, have human needs like their own. Politeness is one of the main reasons for which people are often indirect, not saying precisely what they mean but implying it in conventional ways.

Linguistic politeness (Lakoff 1973): human operate under a set of very basic constraints in our behavior towards one another. 3 rules: 1. Formality (distance): Do not impose on others; be sufficiently aloof. 2. Hesitancy (Deference): Allow the addressee options about whether or not to respond and about how to respond. 3. Equality: (Camaraderie): Act as if you and the addressee are equal; make the addressee feel good.

Positive face & negative face Asking for a loan: find common ground (do you see how this hedge gotten out of control?) Observing positive face: to reciprocate, pay back! Positive politeness strategies: using markers of in-group identity; expressing approval or sympathy, noticing and attending to the hearers wants, interests, and needs, ; making offers and promises and giving reasons.

Accommodation theory In other way in which audience shapes discourse is with adapting their behavior to that of the people they are actually talking to….. Accommodation theory (Giles & Powsland, 1975, Street and Hopper 1982; Thakerar, Giles, and Cheshire, 1982) Styles of speaking : converge (becomes similar to the style of the interlocutors). Converge (becomes different from that of the interlocutor).

Attributed Identities and situated Identifications Human deal with other humans by categorizing them: Men, women, African, American, German Categorization has no logical place for people with mixed backgrounds and mixed identities. How do Hispanic Americans behave in situation Z?

Agency & Self expression Features of discourse can be related with social facts about speakers, audiences and other participants. It is tempting to talk as if such facts what discourse is like… people talk, sign, write, and interpret in the ways they do because they are authors or audiences; male or female; because of features of ethnicity, region, class, need for linguistic politeness, accommodation.

Participants in discourse are individuals who make decision and these decisions are fundamentally creative even if the decision were made before. 2 reasons a. No two people speak the same b. Humans are individual moral agents(different people see the world with different eyes).. Have different life stories and they tell their stories to express their individual identities.