9780415606301.c:Layout 1 22/8/10 09:47 Page 1 ISBN 978-0-415-60630-1 90000 9 780415 606301 The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library FOUNDATIONS IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS TAVISTOCK The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library ANTHROPOLOGY In 6 Volumes I Darwinism and the Study of Society Edited by Michael Banton II The Translation of Culture Edited by T 0 Beidelman III Urban Ethnicity Edited by Abner Cohen IV Man in Africa Edited by Mary Douglas and Phyllis M Kaberry V The Consumer Society Edited by IRC Hirst and W Duncan Reekie VI Foundations in Sociolinguistics Dell Hymes FOUNDATIONS IN SOCIOLINGUISTICS An Ethnographic Approach DELL HYMES First published in 1977 by Tavistock Publications Limited Reprinted in 2001 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX 14 4RN or 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 First issued in paperback 2010 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 1974 Dell Hymes All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. The publishers have made every effort to contact authors/copyright holders of the works reprinted in the International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library. This has not been possible in every case, however, and we would welcome correspondence from those individuals/companies we have been unable to trace. These reprints are taken from original copies of each book. In many cases the condition of these originals is not perfect. The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of these reprints, but wishes to point out that certain characteristics of the original copies will, of necessity, be apparent in reprints thereof. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Foundations in Sociolinguistics ISBN 978-0-415-26396-2 (hbk) ISBN 978-0-415-60630-1 (pbk) Anthropology: 6 Volumes ISBN 978-0-415-26505-8 The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library 112 Volumes ISBN 978-0-415-25670-4 FOUNDATIONS in SOCIOLINGUISTICS An Ethnographic Approach Dell Hymes Tavistock Publications In memory of Edward Sapir First published in Great Britain in 1977 by Tavistock Publications Limited 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN ISBN 0 422 74810 2 © 1974 by Dell Hymes All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Contents /ii INTRODUCTION 1 Toward Ethnographies of Communication 3 1. Toward ethnographies of communication 29 2. Studying the interaction of language and social life 67 The Status of Linguistics as a Science 69 3. Why linguistics needs the sociologist 83 4. Social anthropology, sociojinguistics, and the ethnography of speaking 119 5. Bilingual education: linguistic vs. sociolinguistic bases 125 6. The contribution of folklore to sociolinguistic research 135 7. The contribution of poetics to sociolinguistic research 143 Linguistics as Sociolinguistics 145 8. Linguistic theory and functions in speech 179 9. Syntactic arguments and social roles: Quantifiers, Keys, and Reciprocal vs. Reflexive Relationships vi CONTENTS 193 10. The scope of sociolinguistics 211 BIBLIOGRAPHY 235 INDEX Introduction "Sociolinguistics" could be taken to refer to use of linguistic data and analyses in other disciplines, concerned with social life, and, conversely, to use of social data and analyses in linguistics. The word could also be taken to refer to correlations between languages and societies, and between particular linguistic and social phenomena. These worthwhile activities would not really require a special name. They leave linguistics and the other disci- plines as they are. They presuppose a science of mankind among whose departments human life has been accurately and completely apportioned. But sociolinguistics merits our attention just insofar as it signals an effort to change the practice of linguistics and other disciplines, because their present practice perpetuates a fragmented, incomplete understanding of humanity. Sociolinguis- tics, so conceived, is an attempt to rethink jeceived categories and assumptions as to the bases of linguistic work, and as to the place of language in human life. The chapters of this book come together in the expression of three themes that I take to be fundamental to sociolinguistics: first, that there is a mode of organization of language that is a part of the organization of communicative conduct in a community, whose understanding requires a corresponding, new mode of description of language; second, that recognition of this mode of organization leads one to recognize that the study of language is a multidisci- vii