Exam 1 Flashcards
Lakoff’s Triangle
- sematics:
- meaning/form:
- syntax/pragmatics:
- function:
Face
- positive: consistent self image or personality, crucially including the desire that that self image is appreciated and approved
- negative: basic claim to territories, personal preservation, rights to non-distraction, freedom from action and imposition
non-referential vs. referential usage
- non-referential: “Shit I’m late for class”, doesn’t actually refer to literal shit
- referential: “stop leaving your dogs shit in my yard” refers to actual shit
idiomatic function
- creating a casual space
- profanity can make the space more relaxed and casual
function of slurs
- tools of oppression
- used to maintain power with one particular group
- group that is oppressed is silent
- slurs express values, identity and power
- slur words can be used to put people in different classes
gendered usage
- men and women uses cuss words equally
- women use it less openly, more when their around friends and use different cuss words
- women and men see different words worse than others
- men cuss more openly
SPEAKING model
Setting, Participants, End: social business, Act sequence: order that stuff happens, Key: tone of interaction, Instrumentality: type of language used, Norms, Genre
circle around language
-values, class, culture, ethnicity, beliefs, body language, religion all get excluded
rich points
- points in communication where you can’t understand the language unless you understand the culture
- not understanding the language can lead to miscommunication/violence
1 mentality
your culture and religion is the best
fallacy of normalcy
- no such thing as normalcy
- the assumption that your behaviors are normal
- precludes any sort of analysis
- everyone else is varying degrees of wrong
comparative approach
- no right or “correct” way to communicate
- compares communication practices across different sociocultural groups
- concerned with determining what is at stake? and how is communication embedded in wider structures of power and authority
V.I.P.
- what social business hopes to achieve
- values: affirming a value or challenging a cultural value
- identity: creating identity or going against identity
- power: negotiating power, challenging power
social business
- is: what an interaction achieves socially; what the doing is doing
- is not: what someone is trying to do
play
- as soon as lines and rules are drawn a trickster pops up to test the limits
- she/he will metacommunicatively signal “this is play” but the game still has the possibility of changing social structure
reflexive awareness
ability to observe one’s own culture and actions critically
power
performances both resist and reinforce power and hegemony
emergent quality of performance
- culture is always changing, uphold or challenged between performers or audience members
- through performance, its able to change power structures and people place themselves at the center of attention and reshape social structure to gain power
icon (Wilce signs)
- sounds like or in some way resembles its object
- imagistic
function of silence
- silence is just as important as the words we use in communication
- silence can have many meanings/emotions
- people understand silence based on their culture
orthographic representation
- taking the writing and/or language of a group of people and making it more accessible to the audience while still properly representing that particular group
- power/role of ethnographer:
entextualization
what you are going to put into text
decontextualization
removing a word or parts from context in which they are presented
recontextualization
texts being reframed
deitics
- things in conversation that need context to understand them
- result of decontextualization
single authorship
we assume one person is writing, but its co-constructured with others sometimes
master narrative vs narrative
- master narrative: leaves out some people, often a narrow story
- narrative: more general, can include master narrative, most accepted master narrative
- reflect values, identity, and power:
conversational signals
-pacing, pausing, loudness, pitch, intonation
conversational devices
-expressive reaction, asking questions, complaining, apologizing
rapport/report talk
- report: generally public speech used by more men than women, but can be private
- rapport: generally private speech used by women, can be considered inappropriate or unprofessional in public setting
Mary Douglas’s “Dirt”
- matters out of place (soil in someone’s bed example)
- language or communication that is out of place
- using profanity in bars is not “dirty” because you expect it, but using it in church is
ethnographic approach
- “the cultural study of how and why people do what they do”
- a set of methods, including participant observation, transcripts, interviews, etc.
- a written analysis of your findings and how they relate to theories on the field
performance-based approach
- recognizes that culture is always changing and being made
- recognizes that language creates social reality
- argues that we can observe values, identity, and power (or social business) through the performance of language
poetics
- cultures and selves are “made up” in everyday life.
- we all play roles
- ethnographers are attracted to non-everyday performances because they show us the possibilities and limits of everyday creativity
play
- as soon as lines and rules are drawn a trickster pops up to test the limits
- she/he will metacommunicatively signal “this is play” but the game still has the possibility of changing social structure
process
- think of culture as a verb, not a noun
- culture is transacted through performance
power
performances both resist and reinforce power and hegemony
index (Wilce signs)
correlates with, and therefore refers to, its object (dark clouds are indices of an impending storm)
icon (Wilce signs)
- sounds like or in some way resembles its object
- imagistic vs. diagrammatic icons
- a map resembles the world
symbol (Wilce signs)
- the relationship to the object is arbitrary but usually understood as natural
- Example: a peace sign with your hand. Your two fingers up do not look like peace, but we understand it to mean peace.
