- •Lecture 1 the essence of language communication
- •1.1 Communication Theory
- •1.2 Methods & Main Lines of Research in Communicative Studies
- •1.3 Defining Communication
- •Main Functions of Interpersonal Language Communication:
- •1.4 Typology of Communication
- •1.5 Models of Communication
- •1.6 Ethnography of Communication
- •References
- •Lectures 2 Language as the Medium of Human Communication.
- •Language from the Standpoint of Culture and Cognition
- •2. Spoken versus Written Language
- •3. Lexical Density
- •4. Indicating Status
- •5. Footing
- •6. Protecting Face
- •Lecture 3 Conversational Communication and Types of Communicative Messages:
- •Verbal, Non-Verbal.
- •The Process of Conversation.
- •2. Managing Conversation
- •3. Maintaining Conversation
- •4. The Nature of Verbal / Non-Verbal Messages
- •5. The Relative Importance of Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication
- •Lecture 4 Pragmatic Aspect of Language Communication
- •4.1 Defining Pragmatics
- •4.2 Cooperation and Implicature
- •4.3 Hedges
- •4.4 Speech Acts and Events
- •4.5 Conditions for the Performance of Speech Acts
- •4.6 Direct and Indirect Speech Acts
- •Lecture 5 Language Contact as an Outcome of Language Communication
- •5.1 The Subject Matter of Contact Linguistics
- •5.2 History of Research on Language Contact
- •5.3 The Field of Contact Linguistics
- •5.4 Types of Contact Situation
- •5.5 Language Creation: New Contact Languages
- •Lecture 6 Language Contact and Linguistic Variation: Style, Social Class, Sex, Gender, Ethnicity
- •6.1 Language and Social Class
- •6.2 Style
- •6.3 Style as the Second Main Dimension of Linguistic Variation
- •6.4 Function versus Structure
- •6.5 Overview of Approaches to Style
- •6.6 Language and Gender / Sex
- •Lecture 7 Language Contact and Linguistic Convergence
- •7.1 Sprachbund: Contact Across Contiguous
- •7.2 Substratum, Superstratum, Adstratum
- •7.3 Balkanisms as an Example of Language Convergence
- •7.4 Language Contact and Phonological Change
5. Footing
The use of social deictics like pronouns, forms of address, or names, is one way speakers align themselves to the cultural context as they understand it. Changes in intonation and pronunciation can also indicate changes in our perception of our role as a participant in an
interaction, and in our alignment to others. Goffman called such a positioning footing, i.e. the stance we take up to ourselves and to the others present as expressed in the way we manage the production or reception of utterances.
Achange in footing is usually marked by a change in register, tone of voice or bodily orientation. For example, it is frequently the case in the United States that a Northerner talking to a Southerner instinctively aligns his / herway of talking on that of the Southerner, as a sign of conversational co-operation; similarly, a native speaker who starts adopting a style of speaking called “foreigner talk” when talking to a foreigner, shows a convergence that can be interpreted either as cultural solidarity or as the display of cultural power.
We can see this same phenomenon occurring in classrooms.Ateacher talks differently to her pupilswhen she addresses themas a class or as individual children:
1. Now listen everybody!
2.At ten o’clockwe’ll have assembly. We’ll all go out together and go to the auditoriumand sit in the first two rows.Mr.Dock, the principal, is going to speak to us.When he comes in, sit quietly and listen carefully.
3. Don’t wiggle your legs. Pay attention to what I’m saying.
The switch in tone and in the use of pronouns from ‘everybody’ to ‘we’ to ‘you’ and ‘I’ sets the utterances 1, 2, and 3 apart from one another. Three different footings are involved here: the first statement is a claim on the children’s immediate behavior, the second is a review of experiences to come, and the third a side remark to a particular child. The teacher, as a speaker, switches roles from being a principal (in the legalistic sense), i.e. representing the institutional voice of the school, to being an animator or class teacher who animates her students’ voices through the (euphemistic) use of ‘we’, to becoming an author or private adult demanding to be listened to.
The switch in register indexes a switch in cultural alignment, from marking the teacher’smembership in the institutional culture of the school to her identity as an individual speaker, albeit endowed with the authority of an adult. Both switches, in tone and in register, index a distinct change in footing.
Defining one’s footing can also be achieved through code-switching – verbal strategy bywhich bilingual or bidialectial speakers change linguistic code within the sam e speech event as a sign of cultural solidarity or distance.
Changes in footing correspond to a change in the way we perceive events. Achange in footing is connected with a change in our frame for events. Framing, or the ability to apply a frame of interpretation to an utterance or speech event through a contextualization cue (in this case the switch in social deictic and in code), is our way of linking the speech event to other similar speech events we have experienced, and to anticipate future events. It is by sharing frames of interpretation that people know that they share the same culture.