Han 8 Flashcards
S
Setting
Time, place, and other physical conditions surrounding the speech act.
S
Scene The psychological counterpart to setting. What is meant here is that a setting can be changed, for example, the formal to informal, by the participants
The discourse situation
The form ‘announcement’ can function as order, request, etc. Obviously, this does not adequately describe the term function. Function here means the objective and effect in a given situation.
Example:
(1) A: Do you smoke?
B: Well, if you’ve got a cigarette.
The interpretation of possible objectives and effects can be strongly influenced by the situation in which the utterance takes place. For example, if the question “Do you smoke?” is asked by a physician, it does not function as a means of starting a conversation, but as a medical question.
The situation in which discourse is produced and processed can be analysed and defined using a large number of factors that can have an influence on possible objectives and effects of discourse.
Dell Hymes (1972) summed up the components of ‘speech events’ on the basis of ethnographic (a systematic study of people and cultures) research. Hymes distinguished 16 components, which he grouped using the word SPEAKING as an acronym (an abbreviation used as a word and is formed from the initial components in a phrase or word).
Important
Do you know Hamus?
It is a delicious Palasteinien dish
Do you know Hymes?
Yes he created Hymes’s SPEAKING model:
P Participants
The Speaker or Sender, the Addresser, the Hearer, Receiver or Audience, and the Addressee
E ends
The purpose- outcomes and purpose- goals.
A act sequences
The form and the content of the message.
K Keys
The tone of the conversation (e.g. serious or mocking)
I Instrumentalities
The channels; written, telegraph, etc., and the forms of speech; dialect, standard language, etc.
N Norms
The norms of interaction, e.g., interruption and norms of interpretation (e.g. how a listener’s suddenly looking away must be interpreted).
G genres
Fairy tale, advertisement, etc.
This model became popular because of the handy grouping using the letters SPEAKING. However, it is unclear what the influence of the different components is. The outline is not complete. Background knowledge shared by speaker and the listener, and possible differences in background knowledge, can influence discourse. The same holds true for posture or attitude.
Though the model is fairly general, by using it, the factors comprising the discourse situation can be clarified.
The differences between two comparable situations can be highlighted. For example:
The discourse situation in a classroom where a student and a teacher have a conversation and on the other hand the situation in which the same student talks with his roommate in the dormitory. By using a few letters from the model, possible differences can be explained.
2
The discourse situation can be defined using elements from the components S, P and N: from setting the place of occurrence, and the scene, the psychological occurrence, from the participants their societal role, and from norms those that are bound by place.
It is obvious that this student finds himself in two different settings: in a classroom and in a student dorm.
The scene is different as well under the influence of the different roles that the participants take: the student-teacher conversation will be more formal than the student-student conversation in the dorm. This student has to act according to varying norms as well, when talking with a teacher or with a fellow student.
The remaining factors comprising the SPEAKING model clarify the discourse situation as well. These factors deal with the relationship between function and form. For example, the student- teacher conversation will be of a different genre than the conversation between the student and his roommate: at school he asks a question, at home he tells a joke.
Perhaps the student uses dialect when is at home, whereas he will probably use standard language in a conversation with his teacher.
The student’s conversations will serve different ends too: in a class the purpose is to have a question answered; in the dorm the goal is to amuse his roommate.
Discourse is not only a part of the situation, but it can change the situation or even create a context as well. The way in which discourse can change the situation can be observed in the classroom example. Suppose that one of the students knows the teacher as a neighbor and wants to let him know that last night’s party, which the teacher organised, was too noisy. This changes the situation in a classroom from a student-to-teacher conversation into a neighbor-to-neighbor conversation.
An example of discourse creating a context is the opening sentence of a conversation. This activates a mental mapping for both speaker and listener. If two strangers are sitting on a park bench, a context is created when one asks the other “Could you perhaps tell me the time?” or “I think it’ll be raining soon”. Both persons have an idea of the situation that enrolls and about the way it may evolve.