I . Inter-relationships between linguistic form and social function
II. Why should linguistics study?
III. The difficulty of defining what language is
IV. Social functions of speech
V. Telephone conversation
VI. Compliments
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Lang. cannot be studied separately from its social/speech context.
9 Sentences:
Should I make some tea?
Would you like some tea?
Can I make you a cup of tea?
Let’s have a cup of tea.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
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How about a nice cup of tea?
I could make you a cup of tea.
Do you drink tea?
Have some tea.
There’s tea in the pot.
What are these sentences doing?
When, and with whom, would each one be appropriate?
From these examples, would you say that linguistic form and social function are unrelated? Should we study them separately?
Interaction between Pycholinguistics and Sociolinguistics
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 Mandarin examples:
 您， 你，敝人
 府上，舍下
 令郎，小犬
 Geographical origin
 Phonological variant
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Northern Taiwanese vs. southern Taiwanese
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Examples of Taiwanese spoken in I-lan
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Grammar only: (the structure/form of language) to discover the rules of language x and thus universal rules
Problems:
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Speech is social behavior and has many social functions
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What is language X?
what’s the language x?
 people who language spoken
Speak language x by people x who are people x?
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What is a native speaker?
Social functions/factors:
 Speech is a form of social behavior; language must be related to and interact with society.
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Mutual intelligibility ≠ the same language.
Scandinavia
76%
Norwegian Swedish
87% Number= %of informants who
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18% claimed to understand their
72% 42% neighbors’ language fairly
23% easily on 1st encounter
Danish
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Dutch and German
Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, etc.)
Potato joke
Spanish vs. Italian
4. Hindi and Urdu
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 Same language ≠ mutual intelligibility
(ex1)one language (ex2) one original language dialect dialect dialect different languages
 ex1: one language (mutual intelligibility? same nation? same language?)
Chinese (Taiwanese, Cantonese, Shanghai, Shandung,
Mandarin, etc.)
 ex2:
 the Romance situation (sharing a common writing system, culture, history; next to each other geographically)
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Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.
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 How to define native speakers?
Northwest Amazon:
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20 different tribes, each with a different languages
All are exogamous, so a man’s wife must speak a different language
 Marriage is patrilocal, and a wife must speak the husband’s language to their children
 Most people here are multilingual
* Conclusion; to define a language, we have many factors (social, cultural, political, linguistic, etc.)
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 Communication: Communicative pressures can influence the forms/rules of language.
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Quick & easy  contractions
Rhetorically expressive
 more complex forms
 Identification:
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of other people
of ourselves
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geographic/natural/ethnic social class people education professional group: occupation role (at any time)
Role -teacher Role (students)
(myself) –professor -student
-wife -big sister
-daughter -younger person
-little sister: to older sister -responsible adult
-elder sister -girlfriend
-sister-in-law -tutor
-friend
* Each of these roles may have “sub roles,” too.
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groups you belong to education
Self occupation geographic role at any one time
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 Telephone openings
 basic structure of conversation: ab, ab, ab
 Problem 1: how can we get the conversation going? How do we get into the structure?
(Schegloff’s study)
 Basic structure of telephone openings: summons- answer sequences
Summons Answer
Question Answer
(raise topic) A structure of
Yun-Pi Yuan obligations and rights
11 between two people

 Adjacency Pair (coordinated pair):
 Definition: Many acts require replies of specific kinds and put the hearer under a conversational obligation to provide them.
 Examples: summons-answer; Q-A; greetinggreeting; offer-acceptance/refusal; thanksacknowledgement; apology-acceptance (refusal)
 Why does the answerer always speak first instead of the caller (since he doesn’t know to whom he’s speaking and he’s not the one who wants to initiate a conversation)?
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 Viewing the ring as a nonlinguistic realization of a caller’s summoning act solves the problem.
 Phone ring = summons of caller  answer of answerer
 A case of an utterance realizing more than one act.
 Another general rule: “those who initiate conversations have the right to raise the topic, and answerer has the obligation to listen.”
 A conversational social relationship
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 Identification on telephone
 Problem 2: how to achieve mutual recognition?
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“Preferred method of identification involves the minimum use of recognitional resources.”
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“oversuppose and undertell”
 Two identification problems (on telephone):
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Caller identifies Answerer
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Answerer identifies Caller
TA T1 T2 T3 ring Hello? Tom? Yeah, Bill
*summons *answer+ voice *ID of other+
(question) voice clue to self
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e.g.1 Ring summons answerer T1: Hello? answer/question
(ID resource + oblige caller to ID) caller T2: Hi greeting (claim of ID; an answer to the Q) answer T3: Hi greeting (claim of ID + complete greeting) e.g.2 Ring summons answerer: 1Hello? answer/question
(provide ID resource caller: 2 Hello, Jenny. greeting/ claim of ID/oblige--resource
(pause) failure by A to recognize C
This is Paul. provide more resource answerer: 3 Oh, hello, Paul. greeting/claim of ID
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e.g.3 Answerer: T1 Hello?
Caller: T2 Connie?
Answerer: T3 Yeah, John.
e.g.4 Variation
A: T1 Hello?
C: T2 Connie?
A: T3 Oh, hi. How are you?
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 There is a social structure to language.
 What is said and how it is said is determined socially.
 An utterance is a complex of actions.
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 Giving compliments:
 Status and age
 Sex (gender)
Women to women most frequent
Women to men
(descending frequency)
Men to women least frequent
Men to men
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 Syntactic patterns
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Three major patterns
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NP be/look (intensifier) ADJ “You look really nice.”
 ADJ includes: nice, good, beautiful, pretty, great, wonderful, lovely
I (intensifier) like/ love NP “I really like that skirt.”
 VERB includes: like, love. enjoy, admire, be impressed by
PRO be (intensifier) (a) ADJ NP “That’s really a nice coat.”
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Formulaic Language: a very limited subset of English sentence structure and vocabulary is used to give compliments.
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 Topics
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Appearance
 clothes, hair
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Ability (skill)/performance
 a well-done job, a skillfully played game, a good meal
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Personality/friendship
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“That was kind.”
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Possessions
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“I live your new bike.”
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 Responding to compliments
 What compliments do?
 Two types of action
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Supportive action: an offer, congratulations, a gift
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“That’s a good idea.” to be taken as TURE.
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Assessment: saying something which is supposed
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“That’s really a nice coat.”
 Three social norms (rules)
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Accept supportive action
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Accept truth of assessment
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Avoid self-praise
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 Some conventional, formulaic responses
 Thank you, 哪裡，哪裡
 Other types of solutions:
 accept by agreeing A: Your dress is very nice.
B: Yeah, this is my favorite dress .
 reject by disagreeing (indirect/implicit rejection)
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A: You did a great job cleaning the house.
B: Well, I guess you haven’t seen the kid’s room.
other “in-between” responses
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Scale down
(agree with reservations)
Transfer
Return to the speaker
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Scale Down:
A: She’s a real fox.
B: Yeah, she’s a pretty woman.
A: You brought
—like a ton of things.
B: Just a few little things.
A: This is a really good paper.
B: Yeah, there are still a few parts that need work, though.
Transfer:
A: That’s a nice sweater.
B: Do you like it? My mother brought it for me.
Return to the Speaker:
A: That’s a nice sweater.
B: Yours is new, too, isn’t it? That color really suits you.
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 If compliments are so hard to respond to why give them?
 Solidarity (another norm: Speaker should express solidarity with hearer, and raise the hearer’s status when possible.)
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Encouragement
Expression of gratitude
 Compliment preceding and thus softening a criticism
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Different norms for the conversational styles of women and men:
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Women: focus on “connection” (solidarity), so
“intimacy” is the key
Men: focus on “status” ( so “independence,” the key)
 Conclusion:
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Women: “Rapport talk” (“trouble talk”)—recount their trouble, and expect sympathy, understanding affirmation, but not a solution.
Men: “Report talk” (“solution talk”)—exhibiting knowledge and skill, holding center stage thus storytelling, joking, or imparting information.
Cause asymmetrical situation, result in some arguments.
(You Just Don’t Understand by D. Tannen, 1986.)
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