Languages & Linguistics
Social Interaction
Social interaction refers to the ways in which individuals engage with one another in a social setting. It encompasses verbal and non-verbal communication, as well as the exchange of information, emotions, and behaviors. In the context of languages and linguistics, social interaction plays a crucial role in shaping language use, acquisition, and development.
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11 Key excerpts on "Social Interaction"
eBook - PDFAn Introduction to Sociolinguistics
Society and Identity
- Sharon K. Deckert, Caroline H. Vickers(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
Language and Social Interaction 5 In this chapter we will explore micro-interactional approaches to sociolinguistics and identity. The “micro” element of micro-interactional means that we will be looking at interactions that happen between individuals within their local social frameworks. In looking at language at this level, we will consider how participants orient themselves to one another and to the topics they are dis-cussing. We will look at ways in which they maintain or do not maintain social notions such as politeness. Many such notions, of course, vary by culture, so we will also be examining intercultural communication. We will also look at a theory that argues that language is action, Speech Act Theory. Finally, we will talk about conversational interaction as a locally managed system. 5.1 Local constructions of identity Sociolinguists tend to understand the social world, not as something huge and homogeneous, but as something very complex that is constituted through face-to-face interaction. At the same time, it is important to recognize that all face-to-face interactions are embedded within larger sociocultural and sociohistorical contexts. Therefore, analysis of both the interactional context and the broader sociocultural and sociohistorical contexts in which they are embedded becomes important to an understanding of identity construction in face-to-face interactions. Key Terms: face-to-face interaction; ethnography of communication; participation frameworks; production format; ratified hearer; unratified hearer; overhearer; face; politeness; footing; participant structures; communication breakdown; speech event; interpretive frame; contextualization cue; speech act theory; performativity; identity act; conversation analysis; adjacency pair Language and Social Interaction 87 It is also important to consider that there are many facets of identity that might be indexed within a single interaction because identity is multifaceted.
eBook - PDFIntroducing Linguistics
Theoretical and Applied Approaches
- Joyce Bruhn de Garavito, John W. Schwieter(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
PART 5 LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OVERVIEW The goal of the present chapter is to familiarize you with key concepts and findings in sociolinguistics. More specifically, you will: • learn about language and society; • acquire concepts needed to study variation in the use of language; • discover factors relevant for how different people speak; • discover factors relevant for how individuals vary their speech; and • explore variation in bilingual societies. 9.1 What Is Sociolinguistics? The branch of linguistics which seeks to examine and explain the everyday variation that characterizes human languages is sociolinguistics. Linguistic variation not only refers to the fact that many different languages in the world are spoken by humans, but also refers to the variation within a given language and even within speech communities of that language. In other words, linguistic variation happens at many levels: between languages, within a language, and within individuals who speak those languages. We don’t always express the same information in the same way. You probably already have noticed just by being human that how people speak is based on factors like: • where they are from (regional variation); • who they are (age, gender, socioeconomic status, etc.); • the situation they are in (formal, informal); • their linguistic profile (bilingual, monolingual). Sociolinguistics studies the (often quantitative) relationships that exist between dif- ferent linguistic forms, and social and situational categories. Another way to understand what sociolinguistics investigates is to contrast it with other approaches to language, like structural and prescriptive perspectives. 9 Sociolinguistics Language in Society Terry Nadasdi 328 Sociolinguistics: Language in Society Structural approaches are interested in the invariable properties of language (i.e., what is and isn’t possible in a given language).
Available until 18 Feb |Learn moreSecond Language Acquisition
An Introductory Course
- Susan M. Gass, Jennifer Behney, Luke Plonsky(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Language is not an isolated phenomenon that can be understood out of its social THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT OF LEARNING 366 context. Consequently, learning is not situated in an individual’s cognition; that is, it is not an intrapsychological process. Rather, it is linked to social and local ecology; it is adaptive to an emergent set of resources that are embodied in Social Interaction, and learning is anchored in the social practices that a learner engages in. In this view, lin-guistic utterances are sensitive to, and reliant upon, their interactional context. Unlike other approaches discussed in previous chapters, with a social-interactive perspective on language, the linguistic code cannot be understood as an isolated phenomenon, outside of its social context. Nor can one understand how learning takes place without the support of the social context. Isolated grammaticality judgments or experiments of psycholinguistic processing make little sense within this paradigm. Conversation analysis (CA) is one manifestation of a social-interactionist per-spective. Evidence for learning is embedded in the changes in accomplishment of social activities, not necessarily in the linguistic code used to express those activ-ities. In other words, because language learning is a social activity, it is important that the focus be on a speaker’s orientation toward language. One can view language in this framework as linked to social and local ecology, and the linguistic encoding of utterances is sensitive to their interactional contexts. A term coined by Markee and Kasper (2004) (see also Kasper & Wagner, 2011; Markee & Kunitz, 2015) is CA-for-SLA. This concept uses conversation analysis methods to study learning. What evidence is there that learning has taken place within this framework? One piece of evidence is the kinds of activities in which learners engage (e.g., Social Interactions) and are successful.
eBook - PDF- Gerd Antos, Eija Ventola, Gerd Antos, Eija Ventola(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
It touches upon issues such as routine and expectations and is relevant in any context which argues for (or against) the emergence Interactional Linguistics 89 and sedimentation of forms (cf. Bybee 2006; Barth-Weingarten 2003; also Section 4., below). In addition, Interactional Linguistics employs concepts, methods and tools from specific linguistic theories and models with which it is readily compatible such as, for instance, Rhetorical Structure Theory, Empirical Construction Grammar and Genre Theory (for examples, cf. Mann and Thompson 1992; Deppermann 2006; Günthner and Imo 2006; Günthner and Knoblauch 1995). Moreover, due to its focus on actual language use in natural environments Interactional Lin-guistics has a great potential for a wide range of applied-linguistic objectives (cf. Section 5., below). Interactional Sociolinguistics and Anthropological Linguistics offer a com-parison of diverging cultural practices and, in addition, with the theory of con-textualization a tool for the in-depth analysis of interactional processes (cf. Günthner this volume). Finally, a method should be mentioned which appears to be unique to Inter-actional Linguistics: the reflexive investigation of linguistic patterns and their interactional co(n)text, i.e., the constant “back and forth between looking at the detailed linguistic properties of items […] and inspecting the evolvement of the interaction” (Hakulinen and Selting 2005: 10). This method is based on the close connection between the actions and activities carried out by the partici-pants and the linguistic resources they use in order to do so. 4. Research questions and future challenges Ultimately, interactional linguists aim at a general theory as to how language is organized and used, structurally and functionally, in Social Interaction.
eBook - PDFBasic Aspects of Language in Human Relations
Toward a General Theoretical Framework
- Harald Haarmann(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Chapter 5 Interaction and the production of speech -The sociocultural dimension of language The functioning of communicative competence is well organized, as is the work-ing of interaction. While communicative competence provides a clue to the under-standing of why and how the human being is able to organize knowledge of cul-ture and language, the ability to communicate finds its concrete manifestation in processes of interaction. It is interaction through which human beings achieve their knowledge of the world, orientate themselves in their environment and identify themselves with the cultural patterns of the speech community of which they are members. Communicative competence and interaction are interdependent in as far as there can be no interaction without communicative competence as the central processing unit of behavior, and communicative competence would be an empty mechanism without interaction taking place. Without interaction, communicative competence could not even function because the necessary knowledge of culture and language could not be accumulated by the individual. In this respect, interac-tion provides a forum for the need to accumulate knowledge and, at the same time, for the need to use this knowledge. Any knowledge of culture and language is re-ceived through subjective experience from a cultural context, and any item of knowledge which is conveyed from one individual to another is placed into a cul-tural context. There is no alternative to placing one's verbal and non-verbal behavior into a cultural context, and communicative competence is designed explicitly for this purpose. The analyst who is interested in investigating the ordinary functioning of communicative competence always has to consider the cultural embedding of in-teraction processes. Omitting cultural context from one's analysis is equal to ma-nipulating one's object of study.
eBook - PDF- Oscar Uribe-Villegas(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Society interference into linguistic areas lends itself to opposite inter-pretations, for while some think that the community limits itself to giving some meaning to disorder by interpreting it as a system, others think it has a more active role and that whenever a destructive process happens it is followed by a reconstructive one. To back up any of these statements numerous empirical studies should be made, and the con-ditions where these situations arise should also be shown. But one could go even farther in that if it is true that some linguistic changes simply correct certain inadequacies of language and are ruled by necessity, others are products of affectivity, humour and fantasy. Moreover (with Mclver's Social Causation), there are accidental changes On the social in language and the linguistic in society 73 caused by external circumstances and organically imposed by the lan-guage structure. Linguistics comes out of mathematic schematism when it is vivified by the history of civilization and when individual and social reality is introduced into linguistic studies. This clearly shows a displacement from language toward speech, toward energy or activity from ergon or product. Living language in speech is also a performing reality - although it seems to be in vitro -as far as language or code which rules as maximum, or conditions, as minimum, speech manifestations. There is, indeed, a dialectical relation - ruled by the social - between the activity and the linguistic product. The product regulates, coerces and restricts the activity, and in its turn - although it uses the product of the previous activity - breaks the circle, liberates itself, modifies the basis. The relationship between language and culture, which is solved when considering language as a complete social activity depends greatly on the notion of 'internal form', which learns the linguistic from the syn-thetic side.
eBook - PDFLanguage Change
Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics
- Ernst Håkon Jahr(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
This approach has a broader frame, but does not use as exact meth-ods as the other one. The necessity of combining the ethnography of com-munication and correlational sociolinguistics (Lindenfeldt 1973) is evident when we discuss linguistic variation. By developing these two models further into an intercorrelational model, the center of which is the communicative act, it becomes possible to explain the multilinguals variable interactional competence. Why, then, is the com-municative act so central? Because here the respective adaptation of linguistic and cultural patterns of behavior takes place. In case of spoken language we have not only to do with verbal elements but also with paralinguistic, nonver-bal, and extraverbal means of communication. The result of the respective adaptation just mentioned could be deviations from one's own individual use or new variants in the verbal, paralinguistic, and nonverbal repertoire of indi-viduals. The communicative act comprises the following elements: 1. Partner/audience 2. topic(s) 3. verbal elements 4. paralinguistic elements 5. nonverbal elements 6. extraverbal elements 7. the totality of emotional and affective elements of behavior (Oksaar 1979, 1992: 5f.). However, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics are at a point of intersection when we ask for the factors that determine the emergence and choice of lin- 8 Els Oksaar guistic varieties. The reason is that language cannot be separated from the social context of the language users. One important social context is the so-cial network, a concept of social anthropology from the forties and fifties, see White (1943) and the overview in Saville-Troike (1982). It is not my aim to discuss the various concepts of social networks; there is no theory and uniform definition for them, cf. the critical discussion of the network concepts by Rindler Schjerve (1990) and Kischkat (1987). Networks are usually described by means of two factors: density and multiplexity.
eBook - PDF- Prof. Nancy H. Hornberger, Dr. Sandra Lee McKay, Nancy H. Hornberger, Sandra Lee McKay(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Multilingual Matters(Publisher)
Third, the pre-occupation with cultural difference tends to obscure that the structures of social actions and interaction are fundamentally shared across human communities, drawing on the same interactional organiza-tions and categories of semiotic resources. A more balanced emphasis on the universal and the local in cross-cultural pragmatics (Kasper & Rose, 2002; Ochs, 1996) has important implications for language pedagogy, as it encourages teachers to acknowledge and build on shared cultural resources in diverse student groups. Cultural sensitivity needs to extend to same-ness as well as otherness. Finally, inferences from cross-cultural com-parison to intercultural interaction require particular circumspection because the method of comparing and contrasting speech act performance across linguistic and cultural groups cannot address such fundamental 470 Part 6: Language and Interaction interactional processes as accommodation (see the section on CAT) and recipient design (see section on CA). Interactional Sociolinguistics We noted that in standard speech act pragmatics, context is treated as a configuration of static, discourse-external social variables. The relation-ship of discourse-external context to discourse-internal choices of prag-matic strategies is based on a causal or correlational model, where context figures as the independent variable and language use as the dependent variable. On this view, cross-cultural difference can be explained in terms of diverging values of context variables and their impact on the selection of speech act strategies and forms. In interactional sociolinguistics, context is conceptualized in a radically different way. Proposed by John Gumperz in the 1970s, and inspired by Alfred Schütz’s phenomenology, Goffman’s microsociology, ethnomethodology and CA, interactional sociolinguistics is an empirically grounded theory of situated interpretation.
- Joshua A. Fishman(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
How shall we describe or measure the phenomenon of interest to us: societal patterning of variation in verbal interaction? Usefully accurate description or measurement is certainly the basic problem of every scientific field of endeavor. Most of mankind has con-stantly been immersed in a veritable ocean of cross-currents of talk. Nevertheless, as with most other aspects of everyday social behavior, it is only in very recent days that man has begun to recognize the latent order and regularity in the manifest chaos of verbal interaction that surrounds him. 240 Joshua A. Fishman 4.1 How should Talk be Described Contextually? How should 'talk' be described contextually in order to best reveal or discover its social systematization (assuming that its 'basic' lin-guistic description is already available)? Let us begin with some passages of actual 'talk', making sure to preserve its verbatim form (preferably by utilizing sensitive audio and visual recording equip-ment) rather than merely summarizing the content of such talk. The smallest sociolinguistic unit that will be of interest to us is a speech act: a joke, an interjection, an opening remark (Schegloff, 1968), a question, in general - a segment of talk that is also societally recog-nizable and reoccurring. Speech acts are normally parts of somewhat larger speech events, such as conversations, introductions, lectures, prayers, arguments, etc. (Hymes 1967b), which, of course, must also be societally recognizable and reoccurring. If we note that a switch has occurred from variery a to variety b - perhaps from a kind of Spanish to a kind of English, or from more formal English to less formal English, or from regionally neutral, informal Spanish to Jibarro (rural) informal Spanish - the first question that presents itself is whether one variety tends to be used (or used more often) in certain kinds of speech acts or events, whereas the other tends to be used (or used more often) in others.
eBook - PDF- Ben Rampton, Dr. Ben Rampton(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Multilingual Matters(Publisher)
As noted above, word denotation, the formal structures of grammar and the propositional meaning of sentences still count, but they lose their traditional supremacy in linguistic study, and instead become just one among a large array of semiotic resources available for the local production and interpretation of meaning (cf. Hanks, 1996; Verschueren, 1999). Language is regarded as pervasively indexical, continuously point- ing to persons, practices, settings, objects and ideas that never get explic- itly expressed and, in what Erickson (2011: 399) calls a ‘Copernican shift in perspective within sociolinguistics’, context stops being the relatively 14 Part 1: Sociolinguistic Frameworks Tuned to Social Change static, external and determining reference point traditionally added to language analysis as something of an afterthought – what Drew and Heritage (1992: 19) call the ‘bucket’ theory of context. Instead, it is seen as dynamic, interactively accomplished and intrinsic to communication. So context is an understanding of the social world activated in the midst of things, an understanding of the social world that is interaction- ally ratified or undermined from one moment to the next as the partici- pants in an encounter respond to one another. At the same time, however, when people engage with one another, there is considerable scope for social difference in the norms and expectations that individuals orient to, as well as in the kinds of thing they notice as discrepant, and there can also be a great range in the inferences that they bring to bear (‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, ‘art’ or ‘error’, ‘call it out’ or ‘let it pass’, ‘typical of this or that’). The normative expectations and explanatory accounts activated like this in the interactional present seldom come from nowhere.
eBook - PDFToward a Theory of Context in Linguistics and Literature
Proceedings of a Conference of the Kelemen Mikes Hungarian Cultural Society, Maastricht, September 21–25, 1971
- Addam Makkai(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
For a further discussion of these points, compare Gleason (1961:372-390), and the works of Hall and Le Mee. (See references.) 4. Let us now consider the question from the point of view of psychology. It would lead too far afield if an attempt were to be made to review and evaluate the recent psycholo-gical literature in detail. My present aim is only to show how Social Interaction psychology has helped the concept of language approach the concept of real language functioning in actual speech. Why do I select SIP from among the many current psycho-logical trends? There are several reasons, (a) In linguistics - mostly under the influence of Wundt and de Saussure - there has been a clearly felt, but not always LINGUISTICS, COMMUNICATION THEORY, AND S.I.P. 59 consciously avowed need for investigating languages and linguistic phenomena from a socio-psychological point of view. In Hungarian linguistics it was Zoltan Gombocz who most strongly emphasized for the first time the necessity of using a socio-psychological set of criteria in the investi-gation of linguistic facts. (Compare in this regard Gombocz 1921/1938, and also 1922.) Gombocz's initiative had hardly any continuation in Hungarian linguistics, or if there was any, it certainly did not surpass Gombocz's own findings. The situation was no better in the West with regard to the socio-psychological investigation of linguistic phenomena. Linguistics is, nevertheless, not to be blamed for this - after all SIP has lived a strange subterranean existence. That it is needed has been known since the turn of the century, but it has not become a well-established, separate discipline with a definite set of tasks and a clearly outlined method-ology. (b) Social Interaction psychology examines the social aspect of mental phenomena. The most important social-mental phenomenon, however, is language.
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