1. Contextual Components: Outline of an Ethnography of Communication
Chapter 4

2. Language in Context Context = cultural and social situation
How does context affect language?
Malinowski ( )
Translation requires knowledge of context
Context can shift meanings
Indirection
Saving Face.

3. Communicative Competence
Ability to speak a language “well”
Ability to use your language “correctly”
In a variety of social situations
Compare with Linguistic Competence
Ability to produce (and recognize) grammatically correct expressions
Chomsky’s “ideal speaker”
Not distracted by environment.

4. Some Environmental “Distractions”
When ‘bad’ means ‘good’
When is not appropriate to respond honestly
Different words/expressions among cultures/subcultures
Greetings and address terms
‘Hello’ / ‘Hi’ / ‘Sup!’
Usted vs. tu, vosotros/vois
How do you learn these “rules?”
Ethnography of Speaking….

5. Ethnography of Speaking
Developed in 1960s by Dell Hymes
Focus on language in total cultural context
How people use language in real situations
Communicative competence
The importance of fieldwork
What are the rules for speaking?
For not speaking?
How do children learn the rules?.

6. Ethnography of SPEAKING
Setting/Situation/Scene
Where?
Participants
Who are the speakers?
Who can speak?
Who should speak?
Ends:
What are the goals?
Bargaining
Asking for (and giving) directions
Report-talk vs rapport-talk.

7. Ethnography of SPEAKING
Act Sequence
Exactly what gets said?
Speech Acts
Promises, commands, apologies
Speech Events
Exchanging greetings, telling jokes, giving speeches
Status and type or order of greetings
Speech Situations
Classrooms, conferences, parties, ceremonies
Key
Tone of voice, manner of delivery
Mourning, joking, irony, teasing.

8. Ethnography of SPEAKING
Instrumentalities
Languages & dialects
Mutual intelligibility
Politics and attitudes: languages and their speakers
Ideas about “Standard” and “Non-standard”
Cousin Joe and the performance of identity thru dialect
‘warsh’ ‘fouath flouah’ ‘pahking the cah’
“A language is a dialect with an army and navy.”

9. Ethnography of SPEAKING
Norms
Expectations
Speaking vs silence
Directness vs indirectness
Lying vs politeness
Taking turns and interrupting
Taboos and avoidances
Genres
Kinds of speech acts or events
Lectures, Poetry Readings, Joking, Gossip.

10. Speech Communities Linguistic Communities
A speech community is
A group of people who share
One or more varieties of language
And the rules for using them in interaction
A linguistic community is
A single language variety
And who identify with that language variety
A community of practice is ???.

11. Language Across Cultures
Different communities = different rules
Easy for misunderstandings to occur
Rich Points
Moments of misunderstanding
Corn pudding
Interviewing for a job
Asking for a ride
Signal differences in rules
Ways to say ‘no’
Ways to take turns
Indirectness.

12. Communicative Interactions
Chapter 5

13. Structural Properties of Conversation
Speakers have options of ways to express themselves.
Conversational interaction
Turn-taking
Influence of context
Sensitive to status of participants
Turn-constructional units
Adjacency pairs
Tag questions
Turn-entry devices

14. Active Listening Eye-contact Paraphrasing Acknowledgement Politeness
Using I vs. You messages
Function?
Politeness

15. Cross Cultural Repairs
Michael Agar’s ‘MAR’
Recognize/acknowledge ‘Mistake’ in using rules
Develop Awareness of different rules
Ethnography of Communication as a method
Repair understanding of rules
Finding appropriate ways to say ‘no’
Learning to take turns without ‘interrupting’
‘Hearing’ and responding to a request for a ride.