Sociolinguistics: Speech Community

Speech Community

What is Speech Community?

Language is social and individual possession, so the idea of speech community exists within a group of people sharing the same linguistic norms and expectation.

The term speech community is derived from the German Sprachgemeinschaft.

“A speech community is a group of people who share a set of linguistic norms and expectations with regard to how their language should be used”. 

Certain ambiguities in defining the term Speech Community

There are certain ambiguities related to the term and its exact used. So the speech community involves varying degrees of emphasis on;

1.     Shared community membership

  2.     Shared linguistics communication

Speech Community & Groups in Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics studies language in the society and among groups of speakers, so a group has few characteristics.

1.       Group has at least two or more than two members.
2.       People can be grouped together for social, religious, cultural,      political, professional and vocational purposes.
3.       Belong to other groups and may or may not even meet face-to-face.
4.      Organization of the group may be tight or loose.

Definitions of Speech Community

1.   “All the people who use given language /dialect is called speech community (Lyons, 1970).”

1.     “A speech community as a group of people who interact by means of speech’ (Bloomfield, 1933).”

2.     “A speech community is any human aggregate characterized by
regular and frequent interaction by means of a shared body of verbal signs and set off from similar aggregates by significant differences in language usage (Gumperz, 1971).”

3.     “Speech community is not defined by any marked agreement in the use of language elements, so much as by participation in a set of shared norms. These norms may be observed in overt types of evaluative behaviour and by the uniformity of abstract patterns of variation which are invariant with respect to particular levels of usage (Labov, 1972).”

Characteristics of Speech Community

•    Group of people using the same language, dialect, words and grammatical rules as standard.
•      Share a specific set of norms for language use through living and interacting together.
•      Face to face contact is not necessary.
•      Speakers can be monolingual or multilingual but a group held together by frequency of social interaction and set off from surroundings due to their linguistics norms.

Examples of Speech Communities

ü All English speakers in the world belong to the same speech community.

ü Speaking same language by the group does not mean belonging to the same community. For instance, speakers of South Asian English in India and Pakistan shared a language with the British or American English speakers without sharing their communities.

 Conclusion

A speech community is a group of people sharing linguistics norms and values during the frequency of interaction which can be direct or face to face or indirect without sharing the same community.

Pragmatics: Speech Acts, Locutionary, Illocutionary, Perlocutionary Acts, Grammatical & Communicative Competence

                                                    Pragmatics

                                   Speech Acts

• Using language as a tool to do things: ask for a favour, make a promise, report a piece of news, giving directions, offering a greeting, seeking information, extending an invitation, requesting for help mean speech acts.

• Such speech acts are part of speech events those are conversations, lectures, student-teacher conferences, news broadcasts, marriage ceremonies, and courtroom trials. In addition to births, deaths, fires, robberies, hurricanes, plane crashes, train derailments are also speech events. In contrast, arrests, predictions, denials, promises, accusations, announcements, warnings, threats are examples of speech acts, because actions are performed via language.
• Actions that are carried out through language are called speech acts, and a significant portion of reports in newspapers are reports of speech acts rather than physical acts.

Grammatical and Communicative Competence

• Knowing a language is not simply a matter of knowing how to encode a message and transmit it to someone, who then decodes it in order to understand what it is we intended to say. If using a language is  simply a matter of encoding and decoding messages in other words, of grammatical competence—every sentence would have a fixed interpretation irrespective of its context of use.

• To understand utterances, you must be skilled at “reading between the lines”—understanding utterances in their contexts—and the skills employed in uttering and interpreting sentences shaped by grammatical competence constitute part of your communicative competence.

Sentence & Utterance

Sentence is a structured string of words carrying a certain meaning.

Utterance is a sentence that is said, written, or signed in a particular context by someone with a particular intention, by means of which the utterer intends to create an effect on the addressee.

Speech Act Theory

Speech act theory is a subfield of pragmatics that studies how words are used not only to present information, but also to carry out actions. The speech act theory was introduced by Oxford philosopher J.L. Austin in “How to Do Things with Words” and further developed by American philosopher J.R. Searle.

Act vs. Event

An act is doing something to accomplish a purpose, while event is an occurrence something that happens. For example, death, marriage are examples of events. But using language to talk about death and marriage is called speech event. 

Speech Act vs. Speech Event

Speech Act that speaker performs when making an utterance is called speech act.

• Speaking a language is performing speech acts such as making statements, giving commands, asking questions and making promise according to John Searle.
• The acts speakers perform when they make an utterance are called speech acts. John L. Austin (1962) was the first to formulate this idea into a theory known as the “speech act theory”.

Speech Event: An activity in which participants interact via language. 

• Speaking about activities directly governed by rules and norms is termed as speech event.
• For examples, stories, conversations, lectures and formal introductions are the speech events according to Hymes.

Types of Speech Acts

1.  Representatives represent a situation/circumstances like assertions, statements, claims, hypotheses, descriptions, suggestions. Representatives can generally be characterized as true or false.

2. Commissives commit a speaker to a course of action: promises, pledges, threats, vows.

3. Directives are intended to get the addressee to carry out an action: commands, requests, challenges, invitations.

4. Declarations give name to the state of affairs like blessings, hiring and firings, baptisms, arrests, marrying, declaring mistrials.

5. Expressives indicate the speaker’s psychological state or attitude like greetings, apologies, congratulations, condolences, thanksgivings.
6. Verdictives make assessments or judgments: ranking, assessing, such as calling a baseball player “out” combine the characteristics of declarations and representatives, these are sometimes called representational declarations.

Three Acts according to Speech Act Theory

Each utterance consists of three related acts according to speech act theory.

         Locutionary Act: (Utterance/ Linguistic expression)

• The utterance itself.
• Act of producing utterance for meaningful linguistic expression.
• The content of the utterance itself is locution.
• Difficulty in producing sound with the meaningful utterance, because the tongue is tied means failure in producing locutionary act.
• Every utterance is represented by a sentence with a grammatical structure and a linguistic
• meaning; this is called the locution.

Illocutionary Act: (Function/Intended meanings of speaker)

• The intention of the speaker in making the utterance.
• Producing utterance by having some function in mind illocutionary act or communicative force.
• Producing well-formed utterance with some kind of function in mind is illocutionary act e.g. I have just made some coffee.
• The illocutionary act is performed via the communicative force of an utterance.
• Intended meaning of the speaker is illocution/communicative act.
• Speakers have some intention in uttering the locution, and what they intend to accomplish is called the illocution.
•  Illocution is generally analyzed and used interchangeably with the speech acts by some linguists.

                           Perlocutionary (Effects on listener/ Outcome)

• Effect of the act on the hearer; this is called the perlocution, or uptake.
• Creating utterances with functions and intention to have an effect.
• The interpretation of the message by the hearer is Perlocutionary act.
• Mismatches between illocution and perlocution are what we generally describe as misunderstandings.

Examples of three Speech Acts

“Weather is cold outside” is simple locution or statement. But when you say this to your roommate and the door of the room is open, it means to shut the door because of the coldness. This is some kind of request to shut the door, which is indirectly made by the speaker with intention in mind, so it is called illocutionary act/force by the speaker’s intention. However, when the listener shuts the door after hearing such statement, he is doing Perlocutionary act because he simply shuts the door under the effect of the locution.

                                      Conclusion

• A speech act is performing or doing things with words or linguistic expressions like promising, announcing etc.
• Speech events are occurring of events, while using language like the teacher's lecture.
• Using language or words to carry out actions is know as speech act theory, which was given by J.L.Austin.
• According to speech act theory, three important speech acts performing through utterances are locutionary act( Utterance), illocutionary acts(Speaker's intention) and perlocutionary acts(effects of utterance on the listener).

Reference: Language & its use by Edward Finegan               

English Syntax: Basic Concepts in Syntax

  Basic Concepts in Syntax

                                             Syntax

Word syntax is derived from the Greek word “syntaxis”, which means together and sequence.

“Syntax is the system of rules and principles that describe how to organize words into phrases and phrases into larger units called clauses.”

“Syntax constitutes a part of grammar shows how words are combined into phrases, how phrases form clauses, and how clauses are joined to make sentences.”

                                                      Phrase

Phrase is an expression which is a constituent in a sentence and is the expansion of a head (key word).

Phrase is a syntactic unit (NP, VP,) headed by a syntactic category (N, V,) as the head.

                               Example: King laughed (NP), Mary, John (N)

                         

                                 Clause & Sentence

Clause is a syntactic phrase made up of at least a subject (NP) and a predicate

(VP)

Terms sentence and clause can be used synonymously.

A sentence or clause is an expression which minimally contains a subject and

a predicate, complements and adjuncts.

For instance, NP the king is the subject, and the Verb Phrase (VP), composed of a single verb (V) laughed, is the predicate.

              Subject is syntactically the NP in the clause [NP VP].

             Predicate is syntactically the VP in the clause [NP, VP].

                

   Sentence & Clause Examples

1. John smokes cigars.                                         John Smokes.

2. My Brother brought an expensive car.          The King laughed.

    NP             Pred     Complement                            NP   Predicate

                                      Complement

Complement is a constituent whose presence is structurally “dictated” required or licensed by a particular word.

The presence of the complement “follows” from the presence of the word, which it is a complement of.

For instance, the NP my brother is the subject, the V brought is the predicate, and the NP an expensive car is a complement, more particularly a direct object, of the verb brought.

                  Subject & Complement = Argument

The subject and the complement together are said to be the arguments of the predicate.

Arguments are the participants (entities) that are necessarily involved in the situation identified by the predicate. 

For example, in “My brother brought an expensive car.” the predicate brought has two arguments: the subject (somebody did the buying), and the object (something was brought).

The subject John and the complement cigars are the two arguments of the predicate smokes ( the two entities involved in the act of smoking).

                 Subject & Complement = Argument

                 Subject vs. Complement ( 1st Difference)

In English, subjects typically occur in the nominative case (I, he, etc.), whereas objects occur in the accusative case (me, him, etc.).

Subjects typically carry nominative case, whereas complements typically carry accusative case (sometimes termed objective case).

                              Examples

                1. He/*Him smokes cigars      

                2. John smokes them/*they

                        Subject & Complement = Argument

                     (2nd Difference) Subject vs. Complement

Another difference between subjects and complements is that, in English, verbs agree with their subjects in person and number, but do not agree with their complements.

 So, if we have a third person singular subject like he or John, we require the corresponding third-person singular verb form smokes,

but if we have a first-person singular subject like I, or a first-person plural subject like we, or

a second person singular or plural subject like you, or a third person plural subject like they, we require the alternative form of smoke.

                  1. He smokes/*smoke cigars

                  2. I/We/You/They smoke/*smokes cigars

If we change the complement by replacing the plural form cigars with the singular a cigar, the form of the verb in English is unaffected:

            John smokes cigars/a cigar

            (3rd Difference) Subject vs. complement

Subjects in English typically precede verbs, while complements follow them.

Or Subject comes before the predicate and complement comes after the predicate.

                    Example: John smokes cigars.

                                      Sub  Pred  Complement

The difference between subjects and complements are in terms of whether they normally precede or follow the verb, whether they have nominative or accusative case and whether or not they agree with the verb.

English Phonetics & Phonology: Definitions of Phonetics & Phonology, Branches of Phonetics, Difference between Phonetics & Phonology

   Phonetics & Its Branches

The term “Phonetics” derived from the Greek word “Phone”(sound).

It studies the mechanism of production, transmission and reception of sounds.

Main Branches of Phonetics

1. Articulatory Phonetics

2. Acoustic Phonetics

3. Auditory Phonetics

Articulatory Phonetics 

It deals with the production of different sounds with the help of speech organs and the vocal cords.

It includes the production, description and classification of speech sound.

Acoustic Phonetics

Transmission of sound is known as acoustic phonetics

It studies the sound waves and the physical ways in which the sounds are transmitted from one person to another.

Auditory Phonetics

It studies the mechanism of perception of sounds and how they are received by the listeners.

It is the study of the mechanism of the ear.

                                             Phonology

The term Phonology is derived from the Greek language, which means sound/voice.

Phonology is the organization of sounds into patters (Bloomfield, 1995).

It studies the sounds of language.

It deals with phonemes (basic sounds), supra-segmental elements (stress patterns, tones, intonation) of language.

The phonological components also cover rules that regulate how to combine morphemes for making words. 

Difference between Phonetics & Phonology

Phonetics studies sounds of all languages of the world.

Phonology studies only particular sounds of a specific language.

Phonetics is general, because it concerns with the speech sounds without reference to their function in a particular language. 

In contrast, the phonology is specific and functional in nature, because it is concerned with working or functioning of speech sounds in a language.

Language & Linguistics: Prescriptive & Descriptive Linguistics

 Prescriptive & Descriptive Linguistics

 Prescriptive

Prescriptive view of language formulates rules for spoken and written forms of language

It concentrates on “how should be a language” rather on “what is language"

The major goal of prescriptive linguistic is the standardization of language and lexicography.

Important issue is resistance to language change

Descriptive Linguistics

Descriptive view seeks to record language actually used by native speakers.

It describes how a language works, rather how a language should be.

It also deals with the pragmatics of language that how to use it keeping in view the context/situation.

It deals with the description and analysis of ways in which language operates/used by speakers.

It is the technical branch of linguistics and deals with phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax.

Difference between Phonetics & Phonology

Phonetics studies sounds of all languages of the world.

Phonology studies only particular sounds of a specific language.

Phonetics is general, because it concerns with speech sounds without reference to their function in a particular language. 

In contrast, the phonology is specific and functional in nature, because it is concerned with working or functioning of speech sounds in a language.

Morphology

The term “morphology” is derived from the Greek word “morphe”

(form) and ‘logy’(the study of morphology), so it means the “study of forms”.

It studies the smallest grammatical units of language and their formation into word.

It deals with what morphemes are and how do they operate in the structure of the word.

Syntax

The term “Syntax” is derived from the Greek preposition "Sun”(together) and “tax”(to put in order).

Syntax refers to “putting things together in an orderly manner.

Syntax is the grammar of sentences, a study of the ways in which
words can be strung together to form acceptable sentences.

“Study of the combination of morphemes those are not bound on the levels of either inflection or derivation” (Hall, 1969).

Sociolinguistics: Speech Community by Language & Linguistics

 

Language & Linguistics

Speech Community

What is Speech Community?

Language is social and individual possession, so the idea of speech community exists within group of people sharing the same linguistic norms and expectation.

The term speech community is derived from the German Sprachgemeinschaft.

“A speech community is a group of people who share a set of linguistic norms and expectations with regard to how their language should be used”. 

Certain ambiguities in defining the term Speech Community

There are certain ambiguities related to the term and its exact used. So the speech community involves varying degrees of emphasis on;

1.     Shared community membership

  2.     Shared linguistics communication

Speech Community & Groups in Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics studies language in the society and among groups of speakers, so a group has few characteristics.

1.       Group has at least two or more than two members.
2.       People can be grouped together for social, religious, cultural,      political, professional and vocational purposes.
3.       Belong to other groups and may or may not even meet face-to-face.
4.      Organization of the group may be tight or loose.

Definitions of Speech Community

1.   “All the people who use given language /dialect is called speech community (Lyons, 1970).”

1.     “A speech community as a group of people who interact by means of speech’ (Bloomfield, 1933).”

2.     “A speech community is any human aggregate characterized by
regular and frequent interaction by means of a shared body of verbal signs and set off from similar aggregates by significant differences in language usage (Gumperz, 1971).”

3.     “Speech community is not defined by any marked agreement in the use of language elements, so much as by participation in a set of shared norms. These norms may be observed in overt types of evaluative behaviour and by the uniformity of abstract patterns of variation which are invariant with respect to particular levels of usage (Labov, 1972).”

Characteristics of Speech Community

•    Group of people using the same language, dialect, words and grammatical rules as standard.
•      Share a specific set of norms for language use through living and interacting together.
•      Face to face contact is not necessary.
•      Speakers can be monolingual or multilingual but a group held together by frequency of social interaction and set off from surroundings due to their linguistics norms.

Examples of Speech Communities

ü All English speakers in the world belong to the same speech community.

ü Speaking same language by the group does not mean belonging to the same community. For instance, speakers of South Asian English in India and Pakistan shared a language with the British or American English speakers without sharing their communities.

 Conclusion

A speech community is a group of people sharing linguistics norms and values during the frequency of interaction which can be direct or face to face or indirect without sharing the same community.