,_,_.-- Directions in Sociolinguistics DIRECTIONS IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS The Ethnography of Communication Edited by, John J. Gumperz University of California, Berkeley Dell Hymes University of Pennsylvania HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON, INC. New York Chicago San Francisco Atlanta Dallas Montreal Toronto London Sydney Copyright © 1972 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card.. Number: 77-168981 ISBN: 0-03-077745-3 Printed in the United States of America 6 038 98765 3 Preface The present work integrates in a single volume some major direc tions of research on the social basis of verbal communication, a subject which has become of considerable interest to social scientists working at both theoretical and applied levels. In recent years, most linguists, in their concern with formal methods of description, have concentrated on the internal relations of linguistic signs, ruling out consideration of extra linguistic factors. Today, semantics is once more a legitimate subject, and syntax is seen to raise questions of the status of sentences as acts of speech and parts of discourse. Basic theoretical problems of the nature of grammar and its relation to speakers' verbal competence are therefore once more becoming relevant. Similarly, questions of the functions of language are again receiving serious attention. The importance of language in social problems, especially education and national development, also is drawing linguistics into wider concerns. The last decade has seen an increasing number of conferences, inter disciplinary symposia, and monographs attempting to stimulate serious behaviorally oriented research on stylistics and expressive speech, intra societal diversity of language, attitudes to language, language politics and policy, and other similar peripheral subjects (Sebeok I 960; Bright 1966; Lieberson I 966b; Capell 1966; Haugen 1966; MacNamara 1967; Fishman et al. 1968). Although sustained empirical work is only beginning, the response so far seems highly promising. Social scientists are showing interest in linguistic data as a means of studying behavior independently of overtly expressed attitudes, while linguists are beginning to see that many impor tant questions of language change, education, and policy cannot be solved without information on the social factors affecting speech. Almost over- V vi Preface night sociolinguistics has emerged as a distinct field, one of a series of border disciplines which promises to provide novel insights into the bases of human conduct. The ready currency of the term sociolinguistics, however, does not reflect fundamental agreement on common problems, sources of data, or methods of analysis. On the contrary, the recent publications reveal almost as many methods of operation as there are workers in the field. Many scholars-probably a majority of those who identify themselves as sociolinguists-are interested in language data as they contribute to the solution of problems already posed by the academic dialogue in their own disciplines. Some simply measure attitudes to language or speakers' self reports on their usage. Others analyze usage through counts of individual words, or syntactic constructions and the like, using such counts as in dexes in somewhat the same way in which income, education, and attitudes are used by other social scientists. Others again, seeking to make better use of the full potential of linguistic description, tend to draw direct parallels between features of the linguistic structure of a particular dialect or speech style and independently measured social characteristics of its users. A fourth group, oriented toward policy issues, has begun to utilize descriptive and historical linguistics in the creation of new orthographies and scientific terminologies, and in other aspects of language development and planning. The gradual accumulation over the years of ethnographic information and insight into verbal practices of human groups, however, has also raised some entirely new questions about the very place of speaking in human interaction. No one claims, that grammar, as the term is normally understood, covers everything that is rule governed in speech. Linguists and social scientists of many persuasions have long called at tention to the importance of prestige, politeness, expressive, ritual, and religious values, and similar aspects of language. It has been argued that such nonreferential functions may be determinant in language behavior and language change. Language usage-i.e., what is said on a particular occasion, how it is phrased, and how it is coordinated with nonverbal signs-cannot simply be a matter of free individual choice. It must itself be affected by subconsciously internalized constraints similar to gram matical constraints. But although issues of language function have stimu lated considerable discussion, they have, so far, not been integrated into any general theory of language and society and, as a result, are rarely taken account of in the research designs which underlie field procedures. The special issue of the American Anthropologist published in 1964 under the title "The Ethnography of Communication" (Gumperz and Hymes 1964) was an attempt to stimulate empirically oriented work on such problems. In the years since the publication of that collection, con- Preface vii siderable progress has been made both in theory and in field techniques. The articles in the present volume, many of which are contributed by the same authors, attempt to capture these advances, while at the same time bringing in relevant lines of work not previously included . . The theoretical goal of the type of sociolinguistic investigation repre sented here is best illustrated by the notion of communicative competence: What a speaker needs to know to communicate effectively in culturally significant settings. Like Chomsky's term on which it is patterned, com municative competence refers to the ability to perform. An attempt is made to distinguish between what the speaker knows-what his inherent capacities are-and how he behaves in particular instances. However, whereas students of linguistic competence seek to explain those aspects of grammar believed to be common to all humans independent of social determinants, students of communicative competence deal with speakers . as members of communities, as incumbents of social roles, and seek to explain their use of language to achieve self-identification and to conduct their activities. While for linguistic theory in the former sense the ability to formalize sentences as grammatically acceptable is the central notion, for sociolinguistics as represented in the book, the central notion is the appropriateness of verbal messages in context or their acceptability in the broader sense. The contributors and their contributions represent an unusually broad range of fields. Different readers will recognize concepts and techniques drawn from linguistics, ethnography, sociology, dialectology, psychology, componential analysis, ethnoscience, paralinguistics and kinesics, folk lore, ethnomethodology, stylistics, and possibly other sources as well. While most chapters are empirically oriented, none are merely descrip tive. Many new and general concepts, suitable for the analysis of verbal interaction processes everywhere, are proposed. Yet there is by no means complete agreement on theory. Sociolinguistics is still many steps re moved from the formal rigor of an integrated grammatical theory. It seems clear, however, that progress is not a matter merely of refining analytical apparatus. Since many of the relevant questions have only recently begun to be asked, we lack the empirical information on which generalizations must be built. Our aim here is to present evidence docu menting the existence of a level of rule-governed verbal behavior which goes beyond the linguists' grammar to relate social and linguistic con straints on speech, to illustrate the type of data that must be collected for its analysis and the elicitation methods by which it can be gathered. We hope that this book will stimulate students and professionals in the linguistic and social sciences as well as educators concerned with lan guage arts. Because of the newness of the subject, it was impossible to modify the content of the articles without seriously impairing their utility. viii Preface Additional explanatory material has, however, been provided in the Introduction, the Plan of the Book, and in notes preceding each chapter. The Introduction relates the interactional approach to language to past and present theory and fieldwork practice. The Plan of the Book outlines the scope of the volume and the rationale for its organization. Each chap ter is introduced by an explanatory note pointing out its significance for our concerns and giving additional background readings. A general bibli ography lists all references cited. A list of background readings brings together some basic background material relevant to modern sociolin guistics. Also included in the appendix is the "Outline Guide for the Ethnographic Study of Speech Use," by Joel Sherzer and Regna Darnell. We hope that the reader will enjoy direct contact with work that seeks to build something and will gain new perspectives from which to approach existing research on language and social interaction and its application to education and policy making. J.J.G. D.H . ,, . Contents Preface v Introduction John J. Gu111perz Plan of the Book 26 Part One ETHNOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION AND EXPLANATION 33 1. Models of the Interaction of Language and Social Life 35 Dell Hymes 2. Culture Patterning of Speech Behavior in Burundi 72 Ethel M. Albert 3. "Struck by Speech": The Yakan Concept of Litigation 106 Charles 0. Frake 4. The Strategy of Turkish Boys' Verbal Dueling Rhymes 130 Alan Dundes, Jerry W. Leach, and Bora Ozkiik 5. Signifying and Marking: Two Afro-American Speech Acts 161 Claudia Mitchell-Kernan 6. Riddles: Expressive Models of Interrogation 180 John M. Roberts and Michael L. Forman ix x Contents Part Two DISCOVERING STRUCTURE IN SPEECH 211 7. On Sociolinguistic Rules: Alternation and Co-occurrence 213 Susan Ervin-Tripp 8. Context and Alternation in Koya Kinship Terminology 25 I Stephen A. Tyler 9. Social Context and Semantic Feature: The Russian Pronominal Usage 270 Paul Friedrich I 0. Remarks on Ethnomethodology 30 I Harold Garfinkel 11. On the Analyzability of Stories by Children 325 Harvey Sacks 12. Sequencing in Conversational Openings 346 Emanuel A. S clzeglojj' 13. A Kinesic-Linguistic Exercise: The Cigarette Scene 381 Ray L. Birdwhistell Part Three GENESIS, MAINTENANCE, AND CHANGE OF LINGUISTIC CODES 405 14. Social Meaning in Linguistic Structures: Code-Switching in Norway 407 Jan-Petter Blom and John J. Gumperz 15. Domains and the Relationship between Micro- and Macrosociolinguistics 435 Joshua A. Fislunan 16. Ethnic Processes on the Pathan-Baluch Boundary 454 Fredrik Barth 17. A Sociolinguistic Approach to Socialization; with Some Reference to Educability 465 Basil Bemstein 18. The Stylistic Significance of Consonantal Sandhi in Trukese and Ponapean 498 John L. Fischer 19. On the Mechanism of Linguistic Change 512 William Labov Appendix 1: Background Reading 539 Appendix 2: Outline Guide for the Ethnographic Study of Speech Use 548 .Joel Sherzer and Regna Darnell Bibliography 555 Index 583