Instituto Superior Josefina Contte

Language and Context - Worksheet 11

WEEK 13

Context, style and class

Task 22

(20/06
24/06)

Register.

Watch any commentary from a team sport

you like available at Youtube, and see if
any of the features identified as
characteristic of sports announcer talk are
present. Are there any other features in
your data which you consider distinguish
sports commentary from everyday chat?

Speech functions, politeness and crosscultural communication.

Task 23

The functions of speech

Politeness and address forms
Linguistic politeness in different cultures

Have a look at exercise 11 (Holmes,

2008:291), and exchange views on the
following situations:
For each of the contexts below there are
some cultures where silence is the
appropriate response, and others where
talk is the appropriate response. Is silence
or speech more appropriate in these
contexts in our culture? If speech is
appropriate then what message does
silence convey?
a- On first meeting someone.
b- When someone has put forward a
proposal at a meeting.
c- At the dinner table.
d- When youre
wrongdoing.

accused

of

e- While listening to someone talk.

Holmes, J. (2008). 3rd ed. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd.

Context, Style and Class

Formal contexts and social roles

Although a powerful influence on choice of style, characteristics of the addressee are not the only relevant
factors. In some cases, the choice of appropriate form is influenced not by the personal relationship
between the participants, but by the formality of the context and their relative roles and statuses within that
setting. A law court, a classroom, a mass service, for instance, strongly determine the choice of address
forms and vocabulary used by participants involved in an interaction.

Different styles within an interview

This is an important issue to bear in mind if youre planning to carry out interviews to elicit information for
you final papers.

Interviews themselves are not natural speech contexts. In fact, in a situation which involves two
strangers, an interview schedule of questions to be answered, and a tape recorder as another member of
the audience, it is relatively easy to elicit more formal styles. That is to say, interviewees tend to plan and
monitor their speech more than usual, therefore avoiding the use of vernacular forms.
Eliciting a more casual style is more of a challenge. Labov refers to a persons most relaxed style as the
vernacular. He describes the vernacular as the style in which the minimum of attention is given to the
monitoring of speech. In this sense the vernacular is a persons most basic style the style which, if it can
be captured, provides the sociolinguist with the most systematic and therefore most valuable data for
analysis.
Trying to capture this style on tape involves the observers paradox, i.e. trying to capture on tape the way a
person speaks when they are not being observed. This is always a methodological challenge and
researchers have used a range of strategies to distract people from concentrating on their own speech. In
order to elicit this style, Labov skilfully manipulated the topic of discussion within the interview. By asking
questions which grabbed peoples attention he managed to shift them to a less careful speech style. When
people were emotionally involved in the story they were telling, they were not so aware of other factors
(such as the unfamiliar interviewer and the tape recorder) which favoured a more formal style.

Colloquial style or the vernacular

There are other strategies besides topic manipulation which have been used in order to capture peoples
most relaxed or vernacular speech style. Taping groups of people rather than individuals, for instance, and
choosing a very comfortable or informal setting are strategies which have been found to shift peoples
speech towards the vernacular (Check examples on p. 249-250).

The interaction of social class and style

When we combine information about the way people from different social groups speak with information
about the way people speak in different contexts, it is clear that features of social class and contextual
style interact. This interaction between social group membership and style seems to be very widespread. If
a linguistic feature is found to occur frequently in the speech of people from lower social groups, it will
often be frequent in the casual speech of those from higher social groups too. In other words, the same
linguistic feature often distinguishes between speakers socially (inter-speaker variation), while within the
speech of one person it distinguishes different styles (intra-speaker variation).

Hypercorrection

Have a look at Figure 10.3 on p. 253 before reading about hypercorrection below.
Hypercorrect usage goes beyond the norm; it involves extending a form beyond the standard. A clear
example of this phenomenon is the use of I rather than me in English in constructions in which an object
pronoun is required.
Register
This is an example of the kind of jargon which a group of specialists often develop to talk about their
speciality. It could be described as an occupational style. Some linguists describe this type of linguistic
variation as register variation. Others use the term register more narrowly to describe the specific
vocabulary associated with different occupational groups.
Styles are often analysed along a scale of formality. Registers, on the other hand, when they are
distinguished from styles, tend to be associated with particular groups of people or sometimes specific
situations of use. The term register here describes the language of groups of people with common
interests or jobs, or the language used in situations associated with such groups.

Sports announcer talk

When people describe a sporting event, the language they use is quite clearly distinguishable from
language used in other contexts. The most obvious distinguishing feature is generally the vocabulary. But
the grammar is equally distinctive. This is especially true of the kind of sports announcer talk which is
known as play-by-play description.
Play-by-play description focuses on the action, as opposed to colour commentary which refers to the
more discursive and leisurely speech with which commentators fill in the often quite long spaces between
spurts of action.
Play-by-play description is characterised by telegraphic grammar. This involves features such as syntactic
reduction and the inversion of normal word order in sentences. Each feature contributes to the
announcers aim of communicating the drama of the moment. In colour commentary, by contrast, where
there is more time, nouns tend to be heavily modified. In both types of commentary, as well as in the state
of the play score or summary, sports announcers make extensive use of linguistic formulas and routines.
Check examples and main characteristics of:

Syntactic reduction
Syntactic inversion
Heavy noun modification
Routines and formulas