Three
different requests for information
ž From a friend
Where were you
last night? I rang to see if you wanted to come to the pictures.
ž In the court from a lawyer
Could you tell
the court where you were on the night of Friday the seventeenth of March?
ž From a teacher to his pupils in school on
the day after Hallowen
I know some of
you went “trick-or-treating”...Did you go out last night?
Addressee as
an influence on style
(a) Excuse me. Could I have a look at your
photos too, Mrs. Hall?
(b) C’mon Tony, gizzalook, gizzalook.
Concept of
addressee
ž Relative age
ž Gender
ž Social roles
-people work
together
-part of the same
family
AGE OF
ADDRESSEE
Example 1
ž Mrs. N: Oooh,he’s walking already.
ž Mother: Oh, yes. He’s such a clever little
fellow, aren’t you?
ž Mrs. N: Hullo coogieboo. Eeee..lo, diddle
diddle dur. Ohh eechy weechy poo poo. There look at him laughing. Oh he’s a
chirpy little fellow. Yeess. Whoo’s a chirphy little fellow eh? Yes. Oooh, can
he talk? Can he talk?
ž Example 2
A conversation
between a nurse and an elderly woman in private hospital
It’s time for our
[i.e your] lunch now isn’t it Mary. We [i.e., you] better wash our [i.e your]
hands.
Social
background of addressee
Example :
(a) Last week the British Prime Minister Mrs
Margaret Thatcher met the Australian Premier Mr Bob Hawke in Canberra..Their
next meeting will not be for several months.
(b) Las’week British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher met Australian Premier Bob Hawke in Canberra..Their nex’meeting won’t
be for sev’ral months.
ACCOMODATION THEORY
1. SPEECH CONVERGENCE
à A
process in which each person speech converges towards the speech of the person
they are talking to.
à It happens when the speakers like one another,
or where one speaker has vested interest in pleasing the other or putting them
at ease.
à
For examples:
ž A
travel agent who wants to gain her customer’s orders
ž An
interviewer who wants to gain his interviewee’s cooperation
ž It
is a polite speech strategy.
ž It
implies that the addressee’s speech is acceptable and worth imitating.
ž HOW
DO SPEAKERS ACCOMMODATE?
ž à When people respond to
and develop a topic introduced by their addressee, they are converging in the
content of their speech.
- Converging Downwards
Ø When
people simplify their vocabulary and grammar in talking to foreigners or
children, they are converging downwards towards the lesser linguistic
proficiency of their addressee.
Ø When
a complicated technical message is ‘translated’ for the benefit of someone who
does not know the jargon, speech accommodation is involved.
Ø Convergence
towards the speech of someone with less status or power.
b. Converging Upwards
Ø Convergence towards the speech of someone with
more status or power.
Ø For
example:
In an
interview with the hospital matron, a nurse adopts some of the matron’s
pronunciation features.
2. SPEECH DIVERGENCE
à
Deliberately choosing a language not used by one’s addressee.
à It
is sometimes done to make a political point.
à For
example:
Ø Giving
a speech in a minority language to an audience made up largely of majority group of monolinguals.
Ø When
the Arab nations issued an oil communiqué to the world not in English, but in
Arabic.
à Accent
divergence also occurs.
à For
example:
Ø Working-class
men often respond to university-educated students who join them just for summer
on the docks (in factories) by increasing their swearing and using a higher
frequency of vernacular forms.
Ø Divergent
pronunciations signal the speakers’ wish to distinguish themselves from their
addressee.
Ø For
example:
In
Liverpool, teachers’ pronunciation of some words like bath and grass
distinguishes them from their pupils and pupils’ parents.
Teachers:
[ba:θ] and [gra:s]
Pupils and pupils’ parents: [baθ] and [gras]
à Speech
divergence does not always reflect a speaker’s negative attitudes towards the
addressees.
à Divergence
can be used to benefit the diverger.
à For
example:
Brigitte
Bardot and Maurice Chevalier exploited their French accents in speaking English to add their
appealing.
ACCOMMODATION PROBLEM
à Over-convergent
behavior may be perceived as patronizing and ingratiating, as sycophantic, or
even as evidence that the speaker is making fun of others.
à Listeners
also react differently to different types of convergence.
à Accent
accommodation was seen as going too far. People seemed to feel that by altering
his accent the speaker was misleading his listeners about his ‘true’ identity.
à Reactions to speech convergence and divergence
depend on the reasons people attribute for the convergence and divergence.
à An
accurate interpretation of a person’s speech behavior in such cases obviously
involves considering more than just the influence of the addressee.
à The
best way of solving an accommodation problem will depend on the context.
Context, Style and Class
Formal contexts and social roles
Although a powerful influence on choice of style,
characteristic of the addressee are not the only relevant factors.
Example : a law court is a formal setting where the social
roles of participants override their personal relationship in determining the
appropriate linguistic forms.
People’s role in these formal context determine the
appropriate speech forms.
Different style within an interview
The basis for the distinctions between the styles was the
amount of attention people were paying to their speech.
When people were emotionally involved in the story they were
telling, they were not so aware of the other factors (such as the unfamiliar
interviewer and the tape recorder) which favoured a more formal style.
People consistently used more vernacular features in
describing situations where they had been in danger of death, or counting the
details of fights they had seen, than when reading aloud or talking on more
conventional topics.
Colloquial style or the vernacular
The speaker’s casual style has a number of linguistic
features, many of which also occur in informal styles of english in other
english-speaking communities.
The interation of socialclass and style
If a linguistic feature is found to occur frequently in the
speech of people from lower social groups, it will be in casual speech. in
other words, the same linguistic feature often distinguishes between speakers
socially (inter-speaker-variation), while within the speech of one person it
distinguish different styles (intra-speaker-variation)
Ex :
The more formal style a person is using, the viewer
bernacular [in] pronounciations or the more standard [iŋ] pronounciations they
will use.
Hypercorrection
Post vocalic[r] pronunciation is a very sensitive marker of
class and style in New York. Overall, the higher the social class you belong
to, the more post-vocalic [r] pronounc, and the more formal the context, the more
often you pronounce post-vocalic [r]
Hypercorrection usage goes beyond the norm; it involves
extending a form beyond standard.
The use of I rather than me in constructions such as
between you and I illustrates structural
hypercorrection. These example of hypercorrection behavior result from the
insecurity introduced by latin-based english grammar.
STYLE IN NON
WESTERN SOCIETIES
ž JAPANESE
JAPANESE speakers
assess their status in relation to their addresses on the basis of such factors
as family background, gender and age as well as formality in context.
ž JAVANESE
Selecting
appropriate ‘level’ of javanese as interaction is influenced by degree of
friendship, relative status like age, wealth, descent, education and occupation
JAVANESE LANGUAGE
(a) sakai-ga watashi ni chizu-o kai-te-
kure-ta.
subject me
marker pastform tense
Sakai drew a map
for me’.
(a) Sakai-senpai-ga watashi ni chizu-o kai-te
Respect sub me
marker
kure-mashi-ta. polite
past form tense
Mr. Sakai drew a
map for me.
JAVANESE
LANGUAGE
3a.Menapa
nandalem mundhut sekul semanten? (high) krama
inggil
3.Menapa
panjenengan mendhet sekul semanten? (high)
2.Napa sampeyan
mendhet sekul semonten? (high)
1a.Napa sampeyan
njupuk sega semonten? (high)
1b.Apa sliramu
mundhut sega semono?
(high)
1.Apa kowe njupuk
sega semono? (LOW)
DID YOU TAKE THAT
MUCH RICE?
Register
Register which is
a particular variety that is used for a particular purpose. Register is not
natural, but rather are based on usage
Register is a depiction of a variety of different languages
according to the formal and unformal
situation, profession and meaning
of language.
ž Register
is a language variation regarding
what area and the language usage for. (Chaer: 2004)
ž Example: the field of journalism, military,
agriculture, trade,
education, etc.
Variation in terms of language usage
is the most noticeable characteristic
is in terms of vocabulary.
ž Register is a semantic concept,
which can be defined as a set of meanings that are specifically associated with
a particular arrangement of the field situation, the people involved and
facilities. (Halliday: 1994)
Register reflects another aspect of
the social level, the social process which is a variety of social events that
usually involve a lot of people.
ž Holmes understands register with
the more general concept because it similar with the concept of diversity (style), which refers to
variations in language that reflects the changes under situation factors (such as O2, place / time, topic of conversation).(Holmes: 1992)
ž Register is the usage of certain vocabulary related to
the type of work or a particular social group. (for examples: the language usage for the pilots, bank managers, vendors, music fans, brokers, etc.) (Wardaugh:1968)
ž Registers
can be more limited narrowly by
reference to the principal speech, or at the discourse level of formality or
behavior such as formal, casual, intimate, and so on
ž Register
as a variation of a language based on their usage. Registers in this concept is not limited to any fixed
choice of words but also
included in the selection of the use of text structure. Because the register
covers all aspects of language or linguistic choices, so many linguists call
register as a style or a style of language.
ž The choice of register variations
depending on the context of the
situation, which includes three variables i.e: field , tenor , mode.
ž Field: Place of communication
ž Tenor: Person who involved in
communication
ž Mode: Means which work simultaneously
to form a configuration of meaning
Register concept based on the Sociolinguistics
Perspective
ž At the beginning, register is used
by certain professional people who involved
in quickly, accurately and efficiently communication in a group then they create a certain expressions.
ž As
a result of such interactions ultimately the form of their speech will show certain characteristics, such as
reduction of syntactic structure and the reversal of normal word order in
sentences (Holmes, 1992).
ž Therefore,
the characteristics of their speech
not only reflect the identity
of certain groups, but also describe the circumstances of the group.
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