The Summary of Discourse analysis

The Summary of Discourse analysis

Chapter 5-6

5.  The Ethnography of Communication

            1. Communication

            The ethnography of communication is an approach to discourse that is based anthropology and linguistic. As we see in this chapter, this approach is the most encompassing of all those considered. Not only does it focus upon a wider range of communicative behaviors than the other approaches, but built into its theory and methodology is an intentional openness to discovery of the variety of forms and functions available for communication, and to the way such forms and functions are part of different ways of life. In addition, the ethnography of communication is not an approach that can “simply” take separate results from linguistics, psychology, sociology, ethnology, as given, and seek to correlate them” (Hymes 1974a: 20, fn.6). The key figure responsible for the development of the ethnography of communication is dell hymes, I apply it to discourse by focusing on one particular speech act – questions – in two different varieties of speech event – interviews (section 3). Section 4 sum-marizes the ethnographic approach.  

            2. Defining the ethnography of communication

            A more contemporary impetus for the ethnography of communication as particular mode of inquiry stemmed from hymes’s observation of theoretical and methodological difficulties in two different fields: anthropology and linguistics. After explaining how some of the central assumptions and constructs of the ethnography of communication stem from both these fields (2.1), I outline the methodology of this approach (2.2) and note its relation to other approaches to discourse(2.3).

2.1 “communication” in anthropology and linguistics

            The ethnography of communication builds a single integrated framework in which communication has a central role in both anthropological and linguistic studies. Although I explain this role by discussing each field separately, we will see that the key concepts and methods intentionally bring together the two separate starting points, building an interdependence between them.

            Linguistics and anthropology are disciplines whose data, problems, methods, and theories are often seen as clearly distinct from one other.

The understanding of communication is also important for anthropologist: the way we communicate is part of our cultural repertoire for making sense of – and interacting with – the world. Thus, the status of linguistic communication as grammatical system that used for communication and that is part of culture – and a framework for analyzing it as such – was surprisingly neglected prior to Hymes’s work.

However, not every aspect of culture – not every part of our cognitive “blueprint” – needs to be shared(i.e, unknown) by all members. “to restrict the concept of the cultural to something share to the limits of a community is an arbitrary limitation on understanding, of both human beings and  the cultural” (Hymes’s 1974a: 20, fn. 6). Thus, possibility of differentiate the ability to engage in a particular meaningful behavior from the fact of that behavior itself: “what is distinctively cultural, as an aspect of behavior or things, is a question of capabilities acquired or elicited in social life, rather than a question of the extent to which, the behavior or things themselves are shared” (hymes’s 1974a: 20, fn. 6). Freeing both knowledge and behavior from a “shardness” requirement allows almost any piece of knowledge (or any behavior ) to be part of culture:

The frequency and spread of trait is important, but secondary, so far as concerns the criterion for its being a product of cultural behavior, as having a cultural aspect. A sonnet, for example, is such a product, whether or not it goes beyond a desk drawer, or even survives the moment of completion. (Hymes’s 1974a: 21, fn. 6).

            We have suggested thus far that language is a system of use whose rules and norms are integral part of culture. Hymes argues that ethnographers can analyze communicative patterns using the traditional method of anthropological research: participant observation. Linguist ignored the study of communicative patterns and systems of language use for reasons quite different from those of anthropologist. Furthermore, the study of language in use – the study of how we are communicatively competent – contributes “in an empirical and comparative way [to] many notions that underlie linguistic theory proper” (Hymes 1974a: 20; ALSO Hymes 1981).

            The particularities that ethnographers discover are particularities of language use. However, in keeping with the partial linguistic heritage of the ethnography of communication, these particularities also reside in linguistic from and structure itself: the form of message (and the rules governing that form) is as critical to interpretation of particular functions as its content (Hymes 1972b: 59).

            The essential method simply persistence in seeking systematic co - variation of form and meaning. The spirit of the method is “structural” in the sense of Sapir’s linguistic, “emic” and ethnographic” in the sense of concern for valid description of the individual case. ( Hymes 1981;10 ).

2.2 Methodology: an etic grid for ethnography

            The classificatory grid that hymes (1972b) proposed is known as the SPEAKING grid: each letter is an abbreviation for a different possible component of communication.

S →     setting             physical circumstances

            Scene               subjective definition of an occasion

P →     participants      speaker/sender/addressor/hearer/receiver/audience/addressee

E →     ends                 purposes and goals

                                    Outcomes

A →    act sequence    message form and content

K →    key                  tone, manner

I  →     instrumentalities

                                    Channel (verbal, nonverbal, physical)

                                    Forms of speech drawn from community repertoire.

N →    norms of interaction and interpretation

                                    Specific properties attached to speaking

                                    Interpretation of norms within cultural belief system

G →    genre               textual categories

            The SPEAKING grid can be used to discover a local taxonomy of communicative “units” that are ‘in some recognizable way bounded or integral” (Hymes 1972b: 56). The next unit is the speech event: “activities, or aspects of activities, that are directly governed by rules or norms of the use of speech”(Hymes 1972b: 56). The smallest unit is the speech act: although Hymes (1972b) does not explicitly define this, his examples include acts that can be defined through their illocutionary force (chapter 3: e.g. commands, greetings), as well as those that cannot be so defined(e.g. jokes).

2.3 summary: the integration of diversity

In chapter 2, we used Hymes’s (1974b) comparison between structural and functional approaches in linguistics as a way of differentiating two definitions of discourse e analysis.

The ethnography of communication falls squarely within the functionalist paradigm: in fact, we might take Hymes’s presentation of this paradigm as the presentation of core premise of the ethnographic approach. I present these features again here:

1.      Structure of speech (act, event) as ways of speaking.

2.      Analysis of use prior to analysis of code; organization of use discloses additional features and relations; shows code and use in integral (dialectical) relation.

3.      Gamut of stylistic or social functions.

4.      Elements and structures as ethnographically appropriate.

5.      Functional (adaptive) differentiation of languages, varieties, styles, these being existentially (actually) not necessarily equivalent.

6.      Speech community as matrix of code-repertoires, or speech styles(“organization of diversity”).

7.      Fundamental concepts taken as problematic and to be investigated.

As indicated in this features, the ethnography of communication is reluctant to assume a closed set of language functions that apply equally to all languages and all speech communities(3, 5): rather, diversity is assumed, and the limits of diversity are explored. Summarizes functionalist assumptions in this way:

            Primacy of speech to code, function to structure, context to message, the appropriate to the arbitrary or simply possible; but the interrelations always essential, so that one can’t only generalize the particularities, but also particularize the generalities. Since our knowledge of what words and meanings are appropriate for a given time, place, purpose, and so on is cultural knowledge, the use of contextualization cues to convey the contextual presuppositions of an utterance displays our communicative competence as a member of a certain culture and situates us in particular web of beliefs and actions specific to that culture.

            3. Sample analysis: questions as speech acts in speech events

            We saw in section 2 that ethnography of communication is an approach to discourse that studies communicative competence. Although we will not begin with the same utterance (y’want a piece of a candy?)here, our sample analysis in this chapter will provide yet another framework within which this utterance (and others that are functionally similar) could be considered: a as speech act within a speech event; more specifically, as a question within an interview. A result of this method is that we will see how ethnographers might address some of the same issue considered earlier: the relationship between form and function in question and the contextual meanings of questions and responses. The systematic analysis of context as a framework within which form meets function is an important feature of the ethnographic approach, since as Hymes (1972a: xxviii) observes, form is not a reliable indicator of illocutionary force: “one and the same sentence, the same set words in the same syntactic relationship, may now be a request, now a command, now a compliment, now an insult, depending upon tacit understanding within a community.

3.1 Interviews as speech events

Interviews are speech event with which many people in America society have become familiar: “interviewing has become a powerful force in modern society. Starting almost from birth, we are confronted by questions posed by educators, psychologists, pollsters, medical practitioners, and employers, and we listen to flamboyant interviewers on radio and television” (briggs 1986: 1).

            The central roles of question for interviews make interviews as a convenient speech event in which to locate an analysis of questions. The centrality of question for interviews, however, does not meant that one can analyze question from interview by extracting them, as a group unto themselves, from the interviews in which they were asked.  The multifaceted relationship between utterances and their contexts in general means that a great deal of information about questions and answers would be lost if one considered them as a dialogic pair isolated from surrounding actions and beliefs.

3.2       References interviews

            America public libraries typically have departments that specialize in “reference material”: relatively technical information or information of interest to a specialized audience, that is stored in formats (e.g. encyclopedias, manuals, specialize journals, archives, computer disk) not always available outside of the library setting. Public access to such materials is often controlled by specially trained librarian ( a “reference librarian”) who is posted at a specific desk (“reference desk”).

            The reference interview is the shorter and more focused of the two types of the interviews to be considered here. Although more specific goals (based upon different amounts of information about either the informational need or the library resources) temporarily diverge from the main goal during the course of the interview, these specific goals are all subordinate to the main goal.

            In the next section, I turn from the description of reference interviews as speech events to the analysis of questions within these speech events. I draw upon fifteen audio-taped interviews from reference desk of a public library to show that there are three kinds of questions in reference interviews: questions that make offers, issue queries, and request clarification about queries.

3.2.1 Opening the interview 

            The opening portions of reference interviews are similar to the opening in services encounters (merritt 1976). After p (cf. customer) makes L aware of his presence (e.g. by establishing eye contract) at the reference desk (cf. service post), either party can verbally open the encounter: L can ask a questions that offers help or P can ask a question that initiates a query. (note that  I use the term “query” rather than request for information so that I can reserve the term “request” for more specially defined speech acts.).

            An ethnographic perspective also seeks evidence for a particular analysis within participant’ conducts: how do participants themselves display knowledge of communicative norms and understanding? Two aspects of the form and content of P’s responses suggest that P treats can/may I help you? as both question and offer.

3.2.2 The query: how it is issued, clarified, and satisfied

            The formulation and satisfaction of a query are the main ENDS of the reference interview: P’s query seeks information and it is up to L to help P find that information. The query thus has a central role in organizing the NORMS by which the ACT SEQUENCE is constructed. We saw in section 3.2.1, that although the query does not initiate the encounter, it is the query to which the initiation of an interview leads.  We see in this section that questions from L and P work towards local clarification of the query (on a turn-by-turn basis) and global resolution of the query (at the level of entire speech event).

3.2.3 Summary: questions in reference interviews

            Patrons and librarians use questions for three different specific ENDS in reference interviews: Question-answer sequences that are subordinate to others have indices indicating their subordinate (e.g. question-2a) and the fact that they are also next questions (e.g. question-3)

L:         question – 1                 [offer]

P:         answer – 1                   [accepts]

            Question-2                  [begin query: seeks information]

(L/P)    question-3/2a               [seeks clarification of q-2] or [checks information in-q2]

(P/L)    answer-3/2a                 [provides clarification of q-3/2a] or [confirms information in q-  3/2a]

L:         answer                         [resolves query: provides information

This chart shows that questions can be use to offer help and thus prompt the query, to issue the query, and to reformulate the query as a way of facilitating the resolution of the query. Request for clarification and information checks open a sequence subordinate to the main query.

3.3. Questions in sociolinguistic interviews

            This section focuses upon questions in another variety of interview: sociolinguistics research interviews. Sociolinguistic interviews have some features typical interview one important feature in their ENDS: since one person (a sociolinguist, s) seeks to gain specific information from another (respondent, R)

 As noted earlier, one of the goals of the ethnography of communication is to discover the communicative features or qualities that underlie our identification of particular events, encounters, or situation as certain “kinds” of occurrence. The information that researchers seek to gain through a research interview depends largely on the theories, hypotheses, issues, and problems current in their field, as well as a varied collection of methodological assumptions about the nature of data and its means of analysis.

3.3.1 Information seeking questions.

            The mode of questioning conventionally associated with an IVer’s role is information-seeking questions. These questions are straightforward realizations of searle’s felicity conditions for questions: the speaker lacks knowledge of a particular state of affairs (preparatory rule) and wants to gain that knowledge (sincerity rule) by eliciting information from the hearer (essential rule). The overwhelming majority of information – seeking questions are asked by S. S typically uses questions to seek either information about general topics.