ETHNOGRAPHY OF
COMMUNICATION
As a domain of inquiry, linguistic
anthropology starts from the theoretical
assumption that words matter and from
the empirical finding that linguistic signs
as representations of the world and
connections to the world are never
neutral… (Duranti, (2002: 5).
Sociolinguistics and Linguistic
Anthropology
• Connected to
sociology
• Quantitative methods
• Urban environments
• Developed in the
1950’s and 60’s
• Subfield of
Anthropology
• Qualitative methods
• Small scale societies
• Developed by Frank
Boas (early 1900’s)
Influenced by Ethnography of
Communication
• Dell Hymes (1960’s and 1970’s)
• Linguistics in the widest possible way:
folklore, international linguistics, cognitive
anthropology, sociology, etc
Ethnography of communication:
The study of communication in its
widest cultural and social context,
including rules of language, norms
of appropriate language use in
particular settings, and evaluations
given by members of a culture to
various speech styles
Concern with:
• Segmentation of a speech communities:
class, gender, race, age, and ethnicity
• Alternative means utilised by speakers to
obtain goals
• The roles of speakers as social actors;
• The function of speaking as a social
activity
Speech event and Context
• “Would you be so kind as to pass me the
salt?
• “Gimme the salt!
• Many ways to achieve several purposes
Communicative rules:
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Exist in all cultures
Define acceptable behavior
Give directives
shape behaviour and help in evaluating
others
• May change from context to context
• Cultural specific
The most important aspects of a
communicative interaction are:
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Settings
Participants
topics
Goals
They are interconnected
• Two types of communicative interactions: formal
and informal
Formal: University Class
• Setting: a fixed arranged local, A university
classroom
• Participants: are defined: students and
teachers
• Topics; fixed: math, history, anthropology,
etc
• Goals: to teach and learn, etc.
Setting:
• Arena for action
• Define events
• Culturally defined formalities
Universal Aspects of Formality
(Irvine, 1979)
• Increased structuring: rules of etiquette
• Consistency of co-occurrence choices: stylistic
choices
• Emphasis on positional identities of
participants: play of multiple roles or identities
• Emergence of a central situational focus:
constrains on choice of topic
Participants
• Speakers, addressees, and audiences
• Choice of speakers:
--pronunciation
--prosodic features
--syntax
--choice of words
--nonverbal cues
Terms of address
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FN,
Title + Last name (TLN)
Reciprocal FN and TLN
Non-reciprocal: FN-TLN and TLN-FN
Pronouns: T and V from the French Tu and
Vous
• Honorifics: markers that signal respect
Nahuatl degrees of respect
• I. intimacy and subordination: prefixes between
intimates of similar age and status to signify
closeness
• II. Neutrality and distance; prefixes employ
among strangers
• III Honour: to address older woman and men
• IV Restricted to people who are in a
compadrazgo relationship
TOPICS and GOALS
TOPICS
• Preference of co-participants
• Disapproval of violations of rules
GOALS
• Individual and collective
• Expressed in a variety of forms
• Formal or informal language
Anthropological Approaches to
Language as Action
• Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942)
• the native’s point of view
• the native’s relations to life
• the native’s vision of his world
Malinowski’s Ethnographic
Theory
• 1. context of the situation
• 2. language as a mode of action
• Inadequacies of translation
• limitations of traditional grammatical analysis
Ethnographic Theory of
Language
• Living among the natives
• Coral Gardens and their Magic (1935) in
Trobriand Islands
• Function of language: Pragmatic, active
• Pragmatism typical of all languages
• Pragmatics: Verbal acts, Speech acts
Speech Acts as Units of Action
• J.L Austin (1940’s) Speech Acts
• Limitations of declarative sentences or
assertions
• All men are mortal.
• The snow is white.
• The king of France is Bald.
Types of Speech Acts
• Locutionary acts
• Illocutionary acts
• Perlocutionary acts
A locutionary act
• the act of saying something:
You are fired, I will pay you back next
week, What time is it?
An illocutionary Act
• the act the speaker can accomplish in saying
something by means of the conventional
force of the locutionary act.
• You are fired: may be used to change
someone’s status from employee to
unemployed
A perlocutionary act
• the actual act produced by the uttering of
the particular locution
• May or may not coincide with illocutionary
acts