Lecture 11 - Language and Social Context Flashcards
communicative competence
using language in social situations appropriately
knowing what is and isn’t appropriate to say in a particular cultural context
knowing when someone needs to be provided additional info to understand what you’re saying
pragmatics/discourse/sociolinguistics (how language functions in social settings
topics, issues in pragmatics
understanding what others do/don’t know
knowing what language a situation calls for
dialect variation
difference language to difference people (hey bro, how’s it going? to a prof)
theoretical approaches to communicative competence
speech act theory
cognitive developmental theory
speech act theory
John Austin (1975)
some utterances convey information
other utterances do more: they are speech acts or performances
- implicit meaning: telling a late student: it's 10:20AM
3 components
- locutionary act (saying a sentence
- illocutionary act (speaker means X - sarcasm or irony maybe: multiple layers)
- perlocutionary act (listener understands as Y)
- “That’s a great outfit”
egocentrism
Jean Piaget (1926): studied development of cognition in children: how children understand what's going on in other's minds - believed that the beginning of social thought starts at about 7-8 years
related to theory of mind
if you’re a little kid you have trouble understanding that people think other stuff that you do, so it might not occur to you to explain who an absent person is
cognitive developmental theory
egocentrism
things little kids do that show that they don’t understand other’s (are egocentric)
- don’t allow turns in conversations: steamroll
- don’t explain pronouns they use
- leave stuff out
- assume too much common ground: assume listeners have knowledge that they don’t actually have
are kids really egocentric?
not totally
get better over time
do better in familiar situations
evidence for non-egocentrism
- 2 year old’s asking for toy: they take the parent’s perspective into account
- 4 year old’s address 2 year olds and adults differently
in UNFAMILIAR SITUATIONS, kids behave egocentrically (lab environment)
Requests (kids understanding of other’s thoughts)
some direct (go to your room now), some indirect (do you know what time it is?)
different locutionary acts
but same illocutions and perlocutions (same intent on the part of the speaker and understanding on the part of the listener)
also, semantic aggravators and mitigators
different locutionary acts
shut the window!
could you shut the window?
are you trying to freeze me to death?
- -» different locutionary acts
but same illocutions and perlocutions (same intent on the part of the speaker and understanding on the part of the listener)
- -» different locutionary acts
semantic aggravator
“shut the window NOW”
semantic mitigator
“shut the window please”
how kids do at comprehending indirect requests
are they literally interpreted?
they comprehend indirect requests pretty well (even at age 2, they respond to indirect just as well as direct)
preschool: kids refuse indirect requests with explanations like “i can’t” or “i don’t want to”
- thus they were aware it was a request
what kinds of requests do kids produce?
they differentiate between statuses (adults vs. younger kids)
to parents: semantic mitigators (can i have a cookie please?)
to peers: use semantic aggravators
aware of status implied by different forms
- kids who use semantic aggravators are judged as “bossier” than those using semantic mitigators
kids are aware of status implied by different forms
kids who use semantic aggravators are judged as “bossier” than those using semantic mitigators
conversational skills
taking turns
maintaining topic
giving and receiving feedback
taking turns
can manage not to interrupt by preschool age
but, worse at predicting when it’s their turn
- rely on obvious cues like pauses
- thus, long pauses in kid conversation
maintaining topic
- preschool: less soundplay, repetition
- can elaborate on topics
- talk about their day, favorite TV
- long pretend-play
- still difficult: phone conversations
- cohesive devices:
- link conversations to previous conversation
- ellipsis: use of anaphors
- connectives: because so, then
connectives
this happened BECAUSE
this happened SO we did something else
AND THEN we did this AND THEN we did that
anaphors
things that refer back to other things
ex: pronouns: yesterday i was talking to one of my colleagues. HE said that…
Feedback
- if you don’t understand, you need to let your conversational partner know
- kids can provide feeback if asked
- worse if signals are unclear (quizzical look)
- bad at requesting clarification (kinda don’t notice that they don’t understand(
- bad at monitoring their own clarity (failure of common ground)
- much later: back-channeling
- full communicative competence develops for lots of lifespan!! (plenty of adults struggle with communicative competence - part of the challenge is that there are so many situations that you encounter that have a diff pragmatic setup than other situations that you’ve been in)
back channeling
- “Yes. Uh-huh. I see. Indeed…”
- running feedback as to whether you understand what someone is saying
- continuous indicator of attention and good comprehension
social register
might use difference language/dialect for:
- school
- home
- formal conference
- superiors vs. subordinates
variability
- variation along social and ethnic lines
- gender variation (many claimed gender differences in speech habits)
- real variability, or just overstatement of stereotypes?
- regardless, overall mostly the same
- preschool: some studies suggest girls play more collaboratively than boys (although studies in China suggest the opposite )
