SOCIOLINGUISTICS : ACTING AND CONVERSING

A.    Introduction

In speaking to one another, we make use of sentences, or, to be more precise, utterances. Through conversation we establish relationships with others, achieve a measure of cooperation (or fail to do so), keep channels open for further relationships, and so on. The utterances we use in conversation enable us to

do these kinds of things because conversation itself has certain properties which are well worth examining.

In this paper, acting and conversing involve the discussion of speech acts, cooperation, and conversation.

1.)    Speech Acts

The contemporary use of the term goes back to J. L. Austin's development of performative utterances and his theory of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Speech acts are commonly taken to include such acts as promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating. Speech acts can be analysed on three levels:

1.     A locutionary act, the performance of an utterance: the actual utterance and its ostensible meaning, comprising phonetic, phatic and rhetic acts corresponding to the verbal, syntactic and semantic aspects of any meaningful utterance;

2.     an illocutionary act: the pragmatic 'illocutionary force' of the utterance, thus its intended significance as a socially valid verbal action (see below);

3.     and in certain cases a further perlocutionary act: its actual effect, such as persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting someone to do or realize something, whether intended or not (Austin 19)

Searle (1999, pp. 145–6) says that illocutionary acts must be performed ‘intentionally.’ In order to communicate something in a language that will be understood by another speaker of that language as an utterance it must :

 (1) be correctly uttered with its conventional meaning, and

(2) satisfy a truth condition, i.e., if it is ‘It is raining’ it must indeed be raining, and the hearer should recognize the truth of (1) and (2): ‘if the hearer knows the language, recognizes my intention to produce a sentence of the language, and recognizes that I am not merely uttering that sentence but that I also mean what I say, then I will have succeeded in communicating to the hearer that it is raining.’

Searle also recasts Austin’s five categories of performative (here repeated in parentheses) by what he calls their point or purpose: assertives (expositives), which commit the hearer to the truth of a proposition; directives (verdictives), which get the hearer to believe in such a way as to make his or her behavior match the propositional content of the directive; commissives (commissives), which commit the speaker to undertake a course of action represented in the propositional content; expressive (behabitives), which express the sincerity conditions of the speech act; and declaratives (exercitives), which bring about a change in the world by representing it as having been changed.

If we look at how we perform certain kinds of acts rather than at how particular types of utterances perform acts, we can, as Searle (1975) has indicated, categorize at least six ways in which we can make requests or give orders even indirectly. There are utterance types that focus on the hearer’s ability to do something (‘Can you pass the salt?’; ‘Have you got change for a dollar?’); those that focus on the speaker’s wish or desire that the hearer will do something (‘I would like you to go now’; ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that’); those that focus on the hearer’s actually doing something (‘Officers will henceforth wear ties at dinner’; ‘Aren’t you going to eat your cereal?’); those that focus on the hearer’s willingness or desire to do something (‘Would you be willing to write a letter of recommendation for me?’; ‘Would you mind not making so much noise?’); those that focus on the reasons for doing something (‘You’re standing on my foot’; ‘It might help if you shut up’); and, finally, those that embed one of the above types inside another (‘I would appreciate it if you could make less noise’; ‘Might I ask you to take off your hat?’).

As Searle says (1999, p. 151), ‘one can perform one speech act indirectly by performing another directly.’ Searle has concentrated his work on speech acts on how a hearer perceives a particular utterance to have the force it has, what he calls the ‘uptake’ of an utterance. In particular, what makes a promise a promise? For Searle there are four rules that govern promise-making.

·         The first, the propositional content rule, is that the words must predicate a future action of the speaker.

·         The second and third, the preparatory rules, require that both the person promising and the person to whom the promise is made must want the act done and that it would not otherwise be done. Moreover, the person promising believes he or she can do what is promised.

·         The fourth, the sincerity rule, requires the promiser to intend to perform the act, that is, to be placed under some kind of obligation; and

·         The fifth, the essential rule, says that the uttering of the words counts as undertaking an obligation to perform the action. If this view is correct, it should be possible to state the necessary and sufficient conditions for every illocutionary act.

Many of these require that the parties to acts be aware of social obligations involved in certain relationships. They may also make reference to certain other kinds of knowledge we must assume the parties have if the act is to be successful. For example, a command such as ‘Stand up!’ from A to B can be felicitous only if B is not standing up, can stand up, and has an obligation to stand up if A so requests, and if A has a valid reason to make B stand up. Both A and B must recognize the validity of all these conditions if ‘Stand up!’ is to be used and interpreted as a proper command. We should note that breaking any one of the conditions makes ‘Stand up!’ invalid: B is already standing up, is crippled (and A is not a faith healer!), outranks A, or is at least A’s equal, or A has no reason that appears valid to B so that standing up appears unjustified, unnecessary, and uncalled for. These kinds of conditions for illocutionary acts resemble what have been called constitutive rules rather than regulative rules (Rawls, 1955). Regulative rules are things like laws and regulations passed by governments and legislative bodies: they regulate what is right and wrong and sometimes prescribe sanctions if and when the rules are broken, e.g., ‘Trespassing is forbidden’ or ‘No parking.’ Constitutive rules, on the other hand, are like the rules of baseball, chess, or soccer: they actually define a particular activity in the form of ‘doing X counts as Y’ so that if, in certain prescribed circumstances, you strike a ball in a particular way or succeed in moving it into a certain place, that counts as a ‘hit’ or a ‘goal.’ The rules constitute the game: without them the game does not exist. In the same way, speech acts are what they are because saying something counts as something if certain conditions prevail. As Schiffrin (1994, p. 60) says, ‘Language can do things – can perform acts – because people share constitutive rules that create the acts and that allow them to label utterances as particular kinds of acts.’

In contrast to Austin, who focused his attention on how speakers realize their intentions in speaking, Searle focuses on how listeners respond to utterances, that is, how one person tries to figure out how another is using a particular utterance. Is what is heard a promise, a warning, an assertion, a request, or something else? What is the illocutionary force of a particular utterance? What we see in both Austin and Searle is a recognition that people use language to achieve a variety of objectives. If we want to understand what they hope to accomplish, we must be prepared to take into account factors that range far beyond the actual linguistic form of any particular utterance. A speaker’s intent, or perceived intent, is also important, as are the social circumstances that apparently determine that, if factors X, Y, and Z are present, then utterance A counts as an example of P, but if X, Y, and W are present, then the same utterance counts as an example of Q. We can see that this is the case if we consider promises and threats: these share many of the same characteristics, but they must differ in at least one essential characteristic or there would be no distinction.

2.      Cooperation

Grice (1975, p. 45) maintains that the overriding principle in conversation is one he calls the cooperative principle: ‘Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.’ You must therefore act in conversation in accord with a general principle that you are mutually engaged with your listener or listeners in an activity that is of benefit to all, that benefit being mutual understanding.

Grice lists four maxims that follow from the cooperative principle: quantity, quality, relation, and manner. The maxim of quantity requires you to make your contribution as informative as is required. The maxim of quality requires you not to say what you believe to be false or that for which you lack adequate evidence. Relation is the simple injunction: be relevant.Manner requires you to avoid obscurity of expression and ambiguity, and to be brief and orderly. This principle and these maxims characterize ideal exchanges. Such exchanges would also observe certain other principles too, such as ‘Be polite.’

Conversation is cooperative also in the sense that speakers and listeners tend to accept each other for what they claim to be: that is, they accept the face that the other offers (see p. 276). That face may vary according to circumstances, for at one time the face you offer me may be that of a ‘close friend,’ on another occasion a ‘teacher,’ and on a third occasion a ‘young woman,’ but it is a face which I will generally accept. I will judge your words against the face you are presenting, and it is very likely that we will both agree that you are at a particular moment presenting a certain face to me and I am presenting a certain face to you. We will be involved in face-work, the work of presenting faces to each other, protecting our own face, and protecting the other’s face. We will be playing out a little drama together and cooperating to see that nothing mars the performance. That is the norm. Of course, one party may violate that norm. I can refuse to accept you for what you claim to be, deny your right to the face you are attempting to present, and even challenge you about it. I may also regard your face as inappropriate or insincere, but say nothing, reserving my judgments about your demeanor and words to myself. The second course of action is the more usual; challenging someone about the face he or she is presenting is generally avoided, and those who make a regular practice of it quickly find themselves unwelcome almost everywhere – even to each other!

Conversation therefore involves a considerable amount of role-playing: we choose a role for ourselves in each conversation, discover the role or roles the other or the others are playing, and then proceed to construct a little dramatic encounter, much of which involves respecting others’ faces. All the world is a stage, and we are players! We do get some help in trying to decide what face another is presenting to us and what role is being attempted, but it requires us to have certain skills.

3.      Conversation

One particularly important principle used in conversation is the adjacency pair. Utterance types of certain kinds are found to co-occur: a greeting leads to a return of greeting; a summons leads to a response; a question leads to an answer; a request or offer leads to an acceptance or refusal; a complaint leads to an apology or some kind of rejection; a statement leads to some kind of confirmation or recognition; a compliment leads to acceptance or rejection; a farewell leads to a farewell; and so on. This basic pairing relationship provides the possibilities of both continuity and exchange in that it enables both parties to say something and for these things to be related. It also allows for options in the second member of each pair and for a kind of chaining effect. A question can lead to an answer, which can lead to a comment, which can lead to an acknowledgment, and so on. The ring of a telephone (summons) can lead to a response (‘Hello’) with the rising intonation of a question, which thus requires an answer, and so on. These are purely linear chains. But there can be other types of chain, as when a question–answer or topic–comment routine is included as a sub-routine into some other pair.

Conversation is a cooperative activity also in the sense that it involves two or more parties, each of whom must be allowed the opportunity to participate. Consequently, there must be some principles which govern who gets to speak, i.e., principles of turn-taking. Turn-taking in conversation is much more complex than it might appear because we engage in it so easily and skillfully. Utterances usually do not overlap other utterances, and the gaps between utterances are sometimes measurable in micro-seconds and on average are only a few tenths of a second. Turn-taking also applies in a variety of circumstances: between as few as two participants and upward of a score; on the telephone as well as in face-to-face interaction; and regardless of the length of particular utterances or how many people want to take a turn. It seems that there must be some system of ‘traffic rules’ which we are aware of since we manage the taking of turns so well. It is very rare indeed to see turn-taking spelled out in advance, e.g., in ceremonials or formal debates in which turns are pre-allocated. Ordinary conversation employs no such pre-allocation: the participants just ‘naturally’ take turns.

Adjacency pair occurs when the utterance of one speaker makes a particular kind of response very likely. A greeting, for example, is likely to be answered by another greeting.

Example

A	:	How do you do?
B	:	How do you do.

or

A	:	How are you?
B	:	I am very well, thanks.

In an adjacency pair, there is often a choice of two likely responses. A request is most likely to be followed by either an acceptance or a refusal. In such cases, one of the responses is termed the preferred response, because it occurs most frequently, and the other is the dispreferred response, because it is less common.

Insertion sequence is in which one question and answer pair contains another, {Q (Q-A) A}. For example:

A	:	Did you enjoy the meal?	(Q)
B	:	Did you?	(Q)
A	:	Yes.	(A)
B	:	So did I.	(A)

A side sequence is when speaker simply switch from one type to another unrelated one, and then back again. For example:

A	:	I am dying to know – where’s my watch by the way?
B	:	What?
A	:	What Gillian’s aerobics sessions are like HA HA HA HA.
B	:	What aerobics sessions? It’s here.
A	:	Gillian does aerobics sessions every evening. LEADS them. Thanks. Can you imagine?

Repair is in which participants correct either their own words or those of another participant, edging towards situation in which maximum communication is achieved. For example:

A	:	What have you got to do this afternoon?
B	:	Oh, I’m going to repair the child bar.
A	:	What do you mean CHILD bar?
B	:	Uh, it is metal bar goes acr—has to be fixed from one side of the car. I mean from one side of the back seat to the other for the BABY seat to go on.
A	:	AH…

Pre-sequence is the utterances which are used by participants in conversation to draw attention to, or prepare the ground for, the kind of turn they are going to take next. For example:

A	:	Have you got any jazz?	Pre-request
B	:	Yes.
A	:	Can I put one on?

And

A	:	Are you free tonight?	Pre-invitation
B	:	Yes.
A	:	Like to go to that film?

Often these act as devices for obtaining the right to a longer turn, like a story. In English, the most obvious examples of this are clichéd openings of jokes like “Have you heard the one about the . . .?” or personal anecdotes “Listen! Do you know what happened to us last night?” These also defend the speaker against refusal and save time, by determining whether to continue.

If aright to a longer turn is obtained, its ending must also be signaled so that the other participants know it is finished and a contribution from them will not be construed as an interruption. Such signals may include pauses, particular kinds of laughter, and particular filler words like “Anyway” or “So…”.

C.     Conclusion

From the discussion above, it can be inferred that acting and conversing will be easier go wrong when the speakers have different cultural backgrounds. It is like in speech acts, while we are speaking, we use different kinds of act at that time. If the speaker does not what to act, the communication will be failure.

Additionally, through maxims, speech exchange will be more polite. It becomes more effective between two speakers to have their turns while these are several features of conversation that manage the conversation such as adjacency pair and turn-taking.