Sociolinguistics

1. Sociolinguistics
Sara Pacheco
Source:
Saville-Troike,M. (1996) in S.L. McKay and N. Hornberger (Eds.) (1996) Chapter 11: The
ethnography of communication.

2. The ethnography of communication
 Basic terms, concepts and issues
 Patterns and functions of communication
 Speech community
 Language and culture
 Communicative competence
 Linguistic knowledge
 Interaction skills
 Cultural knowledge
 Doing the ethnography of communication
 Units of analysis
 The act of analysis
 Findings and applications to language learning and
teaching

3. Basic terms, concepts and issues
 Patterns and functions of communication
o The relationship of language form and use to and functions
Anthropology Linguistics
Rules for appropriate language use in specific contexts
Descriptive Prescriptive Expectations
An ethnography of communication approach typically, tough not
exclusively, looks for strategies and conventions governing larger units of
communication and involves more holistic interpretation. |Ethnometodology
Societal level Societal level Language
Categories of talk function
Regular
patterns Attitudes about languages Creating and reinforcing
and and their speakers boundaries which unify member s
constraints The use of rules to affect of one speech community while
social and cultural outcomes excluding outsiders from
intragroup communication

4. Basic terms, concepts and issues
 Speech community
Being a member of a speech community has been defined as sharing the same
language (Lyons, 1970), sharing rules of speaking and interpretation of speech
performance (Hymes, 1972), and sharing sociocultural understandings and
presuppositions with regard to speech (Sherzer, 1975).
Not homogeneous  communicative repertoire
Codes (different languages or significantly languages varieties)
Speaker’s choice Styles (varieties associated with sociocultural dimensions: age, sex…)
Registers (varieties associated with settings or scenes)
Some bilinguals L2 learners differs
Native speakers learn
change not only code from FL learners
at some point a
but rules of speaking, when acquiring rules
schooled variety of
non-verbal behaviors of communication as
their language and
and other strategies they are in a process
learn when to use it.
for interaction of acculturation.
Speaking the same language is sufficient for some degree of
participation but perhaps not for full membership.

5. Basic terms, concepts and issues
 Language and culture
Development of general theories of communication
Description and analysis of communication within specific
speech communities.
The grammar of a language
Vocabulary index of Many words do not mean may reveal the way time and
the way the speakers the same thing as their space are organized, convey
categorize experience translation equivalents in beliefs about animacy and the
other languages. relative power of beings, and
imply a great deal of other
information by conventional
Part of the potential application of the ethnography of presupposition.
communication to language teaching comes in
understanding the nature and content of the language-
culture relationship in both the specific contexts of
communication in which students are likely to want or
need to participate and their contexts of learning — and in
determining what aspects of culture need to be, can be,
and should be taught.

6. Basic terms, concepts and issues
 Communicative competence
How to say it appropriately in
Language code + What to say + any given situation
Linguistic knowledge
The ability to discriminate between variants which carry social meaning by serving as
markers of social categories and those which are socially insignificant and the knowledge
of what the social meaning of a variant is in a particular situation. (Foreign talk)
Interaction skills
Social conventions which regulate the use of language and other communicative devices
in particular settings. Language as it occurs in its social context  an emergent and
dynamic process.
Cultural knowledge
Total set of knowledge and skills which speakers bring into a situation. No topic
is universally forbidden; linguistic taboos relate integrally to culture. Shared knowledge
explains shared presuppositions and judgments of truth value undergirdings of
language structures and contextually appropriate usage and Interpretation

7. Doing the ethnography of communication
Observing No anticipation  Naturalistics settings
Asking questions
Participating in group activities
Testing validity against intuition Cross-cultural knowledge and comparison
 Unit of analysis
 The communicative situation
The context within which communication occurs. (a church service, a trial, a class in
school…). A single situation maintains a consistent general configuration of activities and
the same overall ecology, although there may be great diversity in the kinds of interaction.
 The communicative event
An unified set of components: beginning with the same general purpose, the same general
topic, and the same participants, generally using the same language variety, maintaining
the same tone or key, and using the same rules for interaction, in the same setting.
 The communicative act
It is generally coterminous with a single interactional function, such as a referential
statement, a request, or a command, and may be either verbal or nonverbal.

8. Doing the ethnography of communication
 The act of analysis
Description  static   dynamic  process
Analyzing communication does ultimately require inferences to be
made about the intentions and effects of interactions, although such
inferences should be grounded wherever possible in an understanding
of the perceptions of those who are participants in an event.
A final characterization that can be made of most ethnographic
research in classrooms is that it is open to new questions that may arise
in the course of data collection and analysis and that it attempts to
account for the full range of communicative phenomena which occur in
the social context of interaction.

9. Findings and applications to language learning
and teaching
For Hymes, research and The methods of the ethnography of
application involve a two-way sharing communication can be profitably applied
of knowledge - the investigator by teachers in observing and analyzing
contributing scientific modes of the situation in their own classroom and
inquiry and participants providing in heightening their awareness of their
the requisite knowledge and own interaction patterns with students
perspective of the particular
community contexts.
Knowledge of the ways in which
communicative structures and
Heath goes beyond description to strategies differ across cultures will
suggest ways in which educators can help teachers better understand the
make use of knowledge from the reasons for students' deviations from
ethnographies of communication to standard and native language norms.
build bridges between communities Understanding why students might
and schools and develop ways to make certain choices in language use
accommodate group differences in can lead to more tolerant and
language and culture. appreciative attitudes toward students'
full range of communicative resources.