22Pragmatics. Talking in turns. Adjacency pairs. Repairs.

Talking in turns. In conversation, speakers talk in turns. This is a social ritual partially prescribed by conventions. Talking in turns includes such regular phenomena as adjacency pairs, repairs, and interruptions. Adjacency pairs (See Aitchison, p. 99-100). Repairs (See Aitchison, p. 100). Interruptions are initiated by the listener who interrupts the speaker. Interruptions may be caused by the content of the utterance, the form of the utterance, and the communicative context. E.g. (content) You are to blame! You…– No, I am not guilty; (form) Shut up! I am… – Mind your language;

(context) We are going to see a detective and… --

Well, I guess it’s not a telephone talk.

SITUATION OF SPEECH: Cross-cultural pragmatics.

The study of differences in expectations based on cultural patterns of communication is part of a broad area of investigation generally known as cross-cultural pragmatics. Since conversational strategies are culturally variable, i.e. they differ from country to country, such differences have to be considered in teaching foreign languages. The examples of variations are:

direct negative answers to questions vs. elusive negative answers to questions;

compliments are accepted vs. compliments are rejected;

the speaker should inflate the listener (Eastern countries) vs. the speaker is not expected to inflate the listener (Western countries);

social rituals which require various adjacency pairs;

turn taking: talking simultaneously (Southern countries) vs. waiting for a pause to join in the conversation (Northern countries);

the use of silence and laughter as communicative signals;

etc.

23Sociolinguistics: definition. Speech community: monolingual and bilingual. National language vs. ethnic language. National language and standard language (Lecture 4).

Sociolinguistics, as a branch of linguistics, studies the ways in which languages are integrated with human society (specifically, with reference to such notions as race, ethnicity, class, gender, and social institutions). (See Aitchison, p. 103). Sociolinguistics borders on sociohistirical linguistics which studies the forms and uses of language in society, and how particular linguistic functions and types of variation develop over time within specific languages, speech communities, social groups and individuals.

In sociolonguistics, the notion of ‘a language’ cannot be defined on the basis of geography, or ethnicity, or mutual intelligibility of its speakers. E.g. a geographical definition of a language would separate British, American, and Australian English, which is obviously unsatisfactory; numerous people who live in Ukraine regard themselves as ethnic Ukrainians, yet speak Russian; Ukrainian and Russian or Dutch and German are not only mutually intelligible, they are also structurally more alike than some dialects of Chinese. Faced with this dilemma, sociolinguists prefer the term ‘a speech community’ to the term ‘a language’. Speech community is any group of people who consider that they speak the same language or language variety. Such a group can vary in size from a tiny cluster of speakers to whole nations or supranational groups (such as the Russian-using speech community in Asia). Speech communities using a single language are called monolingual. However, the majority of world’s speakers are bilingual, i.e. they are in command of two and more languages. The use of a particular language in a monolingual and bilingual speech communities is primarily associated with a national language.

National language is a language which is considered to be the chief language of a nation state. A national language is grounded on the respective ethnic language; however, they are not identical. A nation is a large community of people united geographically, politically, economically, culturally, and linguistically (they speak one common language). An ethnos is a community of people united only culturally and linguistically. The major differences between a national language and an ethnic language:

a national language exists in its spoken and written forms, while an ethnic language may exist only in its spoken form and use another language in writing;

the lexical and grammatical systems of a national language are more elaborated;

a national language has its standard, or norm;

a national language is polifunctional: it is used in various spheres of life, where it has stylistic variations.

A national language (as well as a language that has no national status) may have its varieties governed by regional, occupational, social, personal, and situational factors. Such varieties are also called lects. The latter include dialects (regional, or geographical, varieties of language), sociolects (social varieties demonstrated by a social class or occupational group), and idiolects (varieties demonstrated by an individual speaker). A prestige variety of language used within a speech community is called a standard language. A standard language provides an institutional norm for such purposes as the media and language teaching. Linguistic forms that do not conform to this norm are often called nonstandard.

28Bilingualism is a speech situation where an individual community controls two (or more) languages, e.g. English and French spoken in Canada, English and Hindi spoken in India, Dutch and French spoken in Belgium, Ukrainian and Russian spoken in Ukraine. In simultaneous bilingualism, the languages are learned at the same time; in sequential bilingualism, the second language is acquired after the first one. The term ‘multilingualism’ may substitute the term ‘bilingualism’, but is often contrasted with it, by emphasizing the use of more than two languages by a speech community (or an individual). E.g. German, French, Italian, and Rhaetian / ri: n/ (Rhaeto-Romance) spoken in Switzerland. Bilingualism should be distinguished from diglossia.

Diglossia /dai glosi / is a sociolinguistic situation where two

very different varieties of a language co-occur throughout a speech community, each performing an individual range of functions, and each having acquired some degree of status as a standard. The varieties are usually described as high (H) and low (L), corresponding broadly to difference in formality. High is used in such contexts as sermons, lectures, speeches, news broadcasts, and newspaper editorials, and is learned at school. Low is used in everyday conversation, radio soaps, folk literature,

and other informal contexts. Diglossic languages are

\ widespread; among them are Arabic, Modern Greek, Swiss German, and the languages of the Dravidian family.

Language planning and language policy.

Language planning is a deliberate, systematic, and theory-based attempt to solve the communication problems of a multi-lingual community by studying its various languages or dialects, and developing an official language policy concerning their selection and use. Corpus planning deals with the selection and codification of norms, as in the writing grammars and the standardization of spelling. Status planning deals with the initial choice of language, including attitudes towards alternative languages and the political implications of various choices. Status planning determines the choice of the country’s national and official languages. (See Aitchison, p. 117).

A national language is the chief language of a nation state used for both domestic and international purposes. An official language is the language which is used only domestically in such public domains as the law courts, government, and broadcasting. In many countries (especially those where a particular ethnos considerably prevails over the other ethnic groups, e.g. France), there is no difference between the national and the official language. However, in a multilingual speech community, such as Belgium, Singapore, or Ghana, there may be no uncontroversial candidate for a national language, and one or more of the languages used in the area may be designated official. Several countries have two or more official languages representing the interests of their chief population groupings. E.g. Switzerland, where Swiss German (spoken by 65% of the population), French (19%), Italian (12%), and Rhaetian (1%) are official languages; Canada, where English and French are considered to be official languages; English is used for international purposes, and French is the official regional language of Quebec. The choice of national and official languages is often grounded on the language dominance.

Language dominance is a situation in a multilingual community where one language is held to be more important than the others. This situation may arise because the language has more speakers, has a more prestigious history, or has been given an influential role by the government. The attempts of the government or educational authorities to manipulate a linguistic situation in a particular direction should be careful, since the sudden imposition of a particular language by decree may well result in failure. Similarly, within a bilingual individual, we may speak of one language being the dominant language – the person knows it better or uses it more often. This is usually the person’s mother tongue. However, it need not always be so: many of the people who left continental Europe for the USA in the 1930s ended up with English as their dominant language.