ISSUES OF CO-TEXT AND CONTEXT
Context as means by which we reach understanding has been widely referred to in the literature, and we have already seen some elements of contexts, such as shared knowledge held by participants, or the physical context (the actual setting where the interaction takes place).
According to Mey (1993:181), a truly pragmatic view on language cannot, and should not, restrict itself to such micropragmatic issues of context as deixis, speech acts and implicit meaning. There is more to language use, from the perspective of its contribution to generating meaning, than the issues discussed so far. In particular, the idea that speech acts would be the basic units in terms of which all linguistic action could be understood is no longer accepted. Pragmaticians have tur 313e48d ned, instead, to the study of chunks of linguistic interactions, usually conversations of various types and to a 'macropragmatic' view of context.
I. CONTEXT
The term 'context', as we have seen, apparently has a limitless range of potentially relevant objects, and 'context' seems to be a vague notion. However, we can understand the concept looking at it in an extensional way, i.e. enlarging the scope of the units we are looking at: rather than examining isolated sentences or utterances, we consider those same utterances placed in the contexts in which they belong. According to Mey (1993:182), this can be understood in two ways:
either as extending the individual utterances making up the text = co-text
or, alternatively considering those utterances in their natural 'habitat'. In this case we are dealing with the larger context in which people use language.
The approaches to context below follow Mey's view (1993:184-188)
From speech acts to conversation (co-text)
Speech acts normally and naturally occur in interchanges between two or several conversationalists. Such a context should not be restricted to what, technically speaking, is a co-text. It will not only have to go beyond the individual speech act, but beyond the two-utterance interchange (A says something to which B replies), which is the framework of speech act theorists.
In the framework of Conversation analysis (CA), the various mechanisms determining people's use of language in an extended, open conversational setting, are explored:
Who holds the right to speak (the 'floor')
What kinds of rules are there for either yielding or holding on to the floor
What makes a particular point in the conversation particularly appropriate for a 'turn' (one speaker leaving the floor, another taking it)
Though CA has got a wealth of insights into these matters and has elaborated an impressive arsenal of techniques for the description and explanation of the mechanisms of conversation, it leaves out the larger context in the sense given above. In particular, the social aspects of the extended context have no place in such a framework (e.g. they are not interested in issues of social status, gender, age, etc. of the participants).
Society and context (social context)
Linguistic behaviour is social behaviour. People talk because they want to socialise, in the widest possible sense of the word: either for fun, or for some serious purposes, such as closing a deal, solving a problem. This basic fact implies two other basic facts:
one, that we have to look at what people really say when they are together
that any understanding that linguists can hope to obtain of what goes on between people using language is based on a correct understanding of the whole context in which the linguistic interaction takes place.
The following example and analysis have been taken from Mey, 1993:186: on the face of it the following conversation is quite strange:
A: I have a fourteen year old son
B: Well that's all right
A: I also have a dog
B: oh I'm sorry
It makes no sense at all unless we know what the context is: A is trying to lease a flat, and mentions the fact that he has a child. The landlord doesn't mind children, but when he hears about the dog, he indicates that A's prospects as a future lease-holder are rather dim. Now, the question can be asked, what exactly the landlord is sorry about. It is clearly not the fact that A has a dog. Rather it has something to do with the fact that regulations for the block of flats do not allow tenants to have pets. So, the landlord is either sorry for A if A has to give up the dog, or for himself (if A looks like a good future tenant) in case A renouncing getting a lease.
Society and discourse
The social context naturally presupposes the existence of a particular society, with implicit and explicit values, norms, rules and laws, and with its particular conditions of life.
The term 'discourse' is used in this section to indicate not only the social occasion in which the linguistic interaction takes place (e.g. job interview, medical consultation, conversation, etc.), but also how people use the language in their respective social contexts.
Discourse is different from 'text', in that it embodies more than just the text understood as a collection of sentences. It is also different from conversation. Conversation is one particular type of text, governed by special rules (SEE CA). Thus, while it is natural to use the term 'discourse' specifically in connection with conversation, discourse and conversation are not the same.
EXAMPLE: Let's look at the following case to show the difference between a discourse-oriented approach and one that is exclusively based on speech acts (example and analysis taken from Mey, 1993:187)
A: I bet you $500 that Swale will win the race.
B: Oh?
In this conversation some speech act linguists will claim that A has performed a speech act of betting, just by uttering the words 'I bet'. Yet, in another, equally valid, pragmatic and discourse-oriented sense, he has not: B has not 'risen to the bet', by uttering for example 'you're on'. Instead, B utters a non-committal 'Oh'. Consequently, there has been no 'uptake', because one of the felicity conditions has not been fulfilled, and so there has been no bet.
We will further look at two approaches that offer specific criteria or features of context that may help the analyst in describing the context and what is going on in interactions.
II. TWO APPROACHES TO THE DESCRIPTION OF CONTEXT
1. The ethnographic approach
The sociolinguist Dell Hymes (1964) puts forward a useful acronym, i.e SPEAKING, to cover the factors that must be taken into account when trying to describe what happens when people use language:
S= the Setting and Scene of the exchange; the setting refers to the concrete physical circumstance in which speech takes place, e.g. courtrooms, classrooms, telephone conversations, passing acquaintances in the street, etc. The scene refers to the psychological and cultural circumstances of the speech situation, e.g. consulting, pleading, conferring. The settings and scenes do not necessarily remain constant throughout a particular language exchange, although it appears to be easier to shift scenes than to shift settings, e.g. a speaker's attempt to tell a joke to dispel a tense atmosphere.
P= the Participants may be of various kinds and may be referred to as Speaker, Hearer and audience, or Addressor, Addressee.
E= Ends, i.e. the conventionally recognised and expected outcomes of an exchange as well as the personal goals that each of the P seeks to accomplish. Some speech events have conventional outcomes, e.g. 'diagnosis', 'verdict'.
A= Act sequence, i.e the actual language forms that are used, how these are used. It refers to message for, i.e. topics of conversation and particular 'ways of speaking'. In a given culture, certain linguistic forms are conventional for certain types of talk.
K= Keys refers to the tone, manner in which a particular message is conveyed, e.g. light-hearted, serious, precise, etc.
I= Instrumentalities, i.e, the choice of channel: oral/written, general/specialised language, formal/informal
N= Norms of interpretation, i.e.interpretation which would normally be expected for the speech event in question; norms of interaction, interpretation in relation to the conventions of the conversation (e.g. who usually talks, for how long)
G= the Genre that has to be recognised, e.g. novels, poems, lecture, advertisement, etc.
Strengths and limitations of the Ethnographic Approach
Dealing with rituals, ethnography seems very good in that it makes conscious the unconscious rules of our society. But even here it does leave some problems, especially the question: from whose angle are we describing things? It cannot, however, explain the many variations in performance in less ritualistic situations. Moreover, it does not enable us to explain why it is that one person performs very differently from another in the 'same' linguistic situation (for example, why one person emerges form a job interview having succeeded in gaining the job, while another does not).
2. A pragmatic approach: activity types
A possible way forward is suggested by Levinson's notion of activity type. He defines an activity type as:
.a fuzzy category whose focal members are goal-defined, socially constituted, bounded, events with constraints on participants, setting, and soon, but above all on the kinds of allowable contributions. Paradigm examples would be teaching, a job interview, a jural interrogation, a football game, a task in a workshop, a dinner party and so on. (1992:69)
Because of the strict constraints on contributions to any particular activity, there are corresponding strong expectations about the functions that any utterance at a certain point in the proceedings can be fulfilling'[.] Activity types help to determine how one says will be 'taken' - that is, what kinds of inferences will be made from what is said.'
The difference between a speech event approach and an activity type approach is that the former has an outside view on context, whereas the latter looks at how language shapes the event.
Thomas (1995:187-194, slightly adapted) provides a very useful checklist, which will help us describe an activity type:
'The goals of the participants: notice that we are talking about the goals of the individuals rather than the goals of the whole speech event. The goals of one participant may be different from those of another. For example, the goal of a trial is to come up with a fair verdict, but the goals of the prosecution lawyer (to get a verdict 'guilty') are diametrically opposed to those of the defense lawyer and the defendant. An individual's goals may also change during the course of an interaction.
Allowable contributions: some interactions are characterised by social or legal constraints on what the participants may say. For example, in courts of law the prosecution is not allowed to refer to a defendant's previous convictions; in the British House of Commons members may not use certain abusive terms. What is pragmatically interesting is the way in which people will work round these restrictions. Coulthard (1989), for example, relates how one prosecution lawyer was able to indicate that the defendant had previous convictions by referring to the circumstances in which the defendant had injured his foot (it had been broken during a burglary); Churchill (prohibited from calling an opponent a 'liar'), famously came up with the phrase 'guilty of a terminological inexactitude'.
The degree to which Gricean maxims are adhered to or suspended: the expectation of the way in which the maxims will be observed varies considerably from culture to culture and from activity type to activity type (e.g. in Parliament, in media interviews with politicians, or in the law courts), there is a very low expectation that what is said (or implied) will be the whole truth; in other activity types (such as going to a Confession) the expectation that the speaker will tell the whole truth is extremely high. Some inferences can only be drawn in relation to the activity type. For example, the actor Nigel Hawthorne, talking about unsuccessful plays he had been in before he became famous, said:
'Friends would come backstage and talk about the weather'.
The
irrelevance of the friends' comments can only be judged in relation to an
activity type in which there was a powerful expectation that they would
congratulate
Turn-taking and topic control: to what degree can an indvidual exploit turn-taking norms in order to control an interaction, establish his or her own agenda (topic of conversation), etc.
Language is not simply a reflection of the physical or social context, but language is used in order to establish and then change the nature of the relationship between A and B and the nature of the activity type in which they are participating.. In other words, context cannot be seen only as 'given', as something imposed from outside. The participants, by their use of language, also contribute to making and changing their context.
III. SUMMARY
The term 'context' apparently has a limitless range of potentially relevant objects. However, we can understand the concept looking at it in an extensional way. According to Mey (1993:182), this can be understood in two ways:
either as extending the individual utterances making up the text = co-text
or, alternatively considering those utterances in their natural 'habitat'. In this case we are dealing with the larger context in which people use language.
Two approaches to the description of context
An ethnographic approach (Dell Hymes)
Factors that must be taken into account when trying to describe what happens when people use language:
S= the Setting and Scene of the exchange; the setting refers to the concrete physical circumstance in which speech takes place, e.g. courtrooms, classrooms, telephone conversations, passing acquaintances in the street, etc. The scene refers to the psychological and cultural circumstances of the speech situation, e.g. consulting, pleading, conferring.
P= the Participants may be of various kinds and may be referred to as Speaker, Hearer and audience, or Addressor, Addressee.
E= Ends, i.e. the conventionally recognised and expected outcomes of an exchange as well as the personal goals that each of the P seeks to accomplish.
A= Act sequence, i.e the actual language forms that are used, how these are used.
K= Keys refers to the tone, manner in which a particular message is conveyed, e.g. light-hearted, serious, precise, etc.
I= Instrumentalities, i.e, the choice of channel: oral/written, general/specialised language, formal/informal
N= Norms of interpretation, i.e., interpretation which would normally be expected for the speech event in question; norms of interaction, interpretation in relation to the conventions of the conversation (e.g. who usually talks, for how long)
G= the Genre that has to be recognised, e.g. novels, poems, lecture, advertisement, etc.
The activity-type approach (Levinson)
Factors that contribute to characterizing a certain activity type
The goals of the participants: notice that we are talking about the goals of the individuals rather than the goals of the whole speech event. The goals of one participant may be different from those of another.
Allowable contributions: some interactions are characterised by social or legal constraints on what the participants may say. What is pragmatically interesting is the way in which people will work round these restrictions
The degree to which Gricean maxims are adhered to or suspended: the expectation of the way in which the maxims will be observed varies considerably from culture to culture and from activity type to activity type. Some inferences can only be drawn in relation to the activity type.
Turn-taking and topic control: to what degree can an indvidual exploit turn-taking norms in order to control an interaction, establish his or her own agenda (topic of conversation), etc.
IV. TASKS
1. Take a Romanian wedding ceremony as a speech event and describe it
in terms of the SPEAKING grid.
2. Referring to
the Thomas's checklist, describe your expectations for the activity type of a
job interview in
3. Analyse the following two excerpts, both taken from the same speech event - a PhD supervision to observe the choices made by participants, at a linguistic level, in order to systematically reduce the social distance between A and B, emphasising common ground and shared values. Look specifically at phonetics, syntax, vocabulary, turn-taking (how it is distributed between the two participants):
In the two examples (taken from Thomas, 1995:192-193) speaker A is a male academic, speaker B a female research student. They have known each other for several years and are good friends. The interaction took place in A's office and the two examples occurred within a few minutes of one another. The symbol / is used to indicate overlapping speech.
Example 1
A: That's right. But then, there's a difference between that and what your um ultimate sort of social if you like purpose or objective is in the encounter. Okay? Now, would there be.would there be a further subdivision.I mean that's a question, would there be a further subdivision between, as it were tactical goal-sharing and long-term goal-sharing and would the tactical goal-sharing be equivalent to what we're calling 'observance of the conventions of the language game' or not? Because it did seem to me when I was reading this that I could see the difference you were drawing between linguistic cooperation and goal-sharing but I wondered whether there wasn't a further sub-division within goal-sharing between the tactical and the strategic?
B: Okay well/
A: /and that the 'tactical' might be.might be in harmony with 'observance of the conventions of the language game' but might not, actually.
B: Well um er um what I was trying to get at here was why so many otherwise intelligent people have completely and utterly rejected Grice and they have and it seems to me that why they've done it is because they do not see man as a fundamentally cooperative animal. Now.
Example 2
A: Oh, e's back is'e? From
B: Mm and I snapped off his fl.you know how I fidget when I'm nervous and there was this 'orrible looking thing and I thought it was a spider on the end of a cobweb and I snapped it off and apparently he'd been nurturing it in his breast for about two years.
A: What was it?
B: I don't know. Some silly plant but he was obviously/
A: /our plants got nicked.
B: Really?
A: In the last week yeah we've had all our plants knocked off.
B: What where from?
A: Here.
B: Really?
A: Must've been stolen from here and the Institute and the Literature Department.
B: How strange. Oh and a bird shat on my head and then/
A: /I thought that was good luck!
B: Yes. You wouldn't've if it had happened to you. And and I thought all that remains is for me drawers to fall down and my happiness is complete. Well the lecture went very well indeed and er there was him there was a man called somebody or other Charles or Charles somebody.
A: Chalr.No. I don't know him.
B: And he said he's got a good friend in
A: Is she?
B: Yeah. On pragmatic failure. Anyway.
A: Anyway, it went all right?
KEY *cf. Thomas:
Phonetics:
Although both speakers clearly can pronounce /h/ and both do so all the time in Example 1 (harmony, here, have), both drop their h's and used the forms: 'e's back is 'he and 'orrible looking thing in Example 2
Syntax
the grammatical structure of Example 1 is more formal, e.g use of do not, compared with the informal wouldn't've in Example 2
more complex syntax in Example 1 - in A's first contribution there is a large number of subordinate clauses, as compared with A's contribution in Example 2, where there is simple coordination.
Vocabulary: - in Example 1 is formal and technical, while Example 2 has a lot of
examples of informal, slang and taboo terms (drawers, nicked, knocked off, shat, bloody)
The turn-taking and topic control are different. In Example 1, A controls both, while in Example 2 the turns are very evenly distributed and both participants have their own topic (B wants to talk about the lecture she had just given, A wants to talk about the theft) which each develops successfully, although in the end B's topic is jointly developed by both speakers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Levinson,
P.Drew and J. Heritage (eds), 66-100.
Pomerantz, 1998, Multiple interpretations of context: how
are they useful?, in Research on Language and Social interaction,31(1): 123-132
Wieder, D., L., 1999, Ethnomethodology, Conversation
Analysis, and the Ethnography of Speaking: resonances and basic issues, in Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32:163-171\
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