ccount for the concern of ethnography of communication giving all relevance interest of the field.

STELLA MARIS MTWARA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

STEMMUCO

(A Constitute College of Saint Augustine University of Tanzania)

                

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT:            LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE

COURSE TITTLE:        INTRODUCTION TO PRAGMATICS

COURSE CODE:             LL 317

INSTRUCTOR. :           MR. ZACHARIA

NAME   :                       SHAIBU ANTONY

REG NO:                        STE/BAED/163623

NATURE OF WORK:      INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT

Task: Account for the concern of ethnography of communication giving all relevance interest of the field.

INTRODUCTION.

Ethnography is defined as an illuminative account of social life and culture in a particular social system based on multiple detailed observation of what people actually do in that social setting that observed.

Ethnography is a branch of sociology used by sociologist when studying specific groups, communities found at a Large complex society; as they used to observe entities.

Ethnography used by sociologist to make a specific look and observation to the society involving participant’s observation. They tend to use digital or virtual ethnographies. Also ethnography used as a method of data collection as it deals on examine the behavior of the participants in a certain specific social situations and also understanding its interpretation on of such behavior. (Dewan 2008).

Ethnography of communication.

The field deals with the study of communication within the background of social and culture practices and beliefs. It was firstly introduced by Dell Hymes 1962 in his article of Introduction towards ethnography of communication, to mean it has different features of an approach that is taken towards understanding language from anthropological perspectives. Original termed as ethnography of speaking as it includes both verbal and non verbal aspects of communication.

The ethnography of communication is an approach to discourse that is not purely linguistic. This approach is based on anthropology and linguistics. This approach focused on wide range of behavior it seek to

I) discover the variety of forms and functions which are available for communication.

II) Establish the way such as forms and functions are parts of different ways of life.

III) Analyze patterns of communication as part of cultural knowledge and behavior.

There is essential relationship between these two fields which are linguistics approach and anthropology approach when it comes to the issue of ethnography .By starting looking on how these two fields’ shares the interest of communication.

Linguistic is the scientific study of language, language is a core part of communication as its took place by the means of using language.

Furthermore, Anthropology uses language as a means of understanding cultural history of the people. As a scholar said “understanding communication is important for anthropologist.; the way we communicate is a part of our cultural repertoire for making sense of interacting with the world "( schiffrin 1994 : 138) .

The concept of ethnography of communication of communication is very wide scope as it explained by a scholar known as Hume's. In his work explains the basic two concepts associated with the concept of ethnography, these concepts are

I) speech community

II) Communication competencies.

Speech community

The concept has been defined by many linguistic scholars and sociolinguistics scholars as follows.

Speech community refers to a group of people who are interacting by means of speech. (Bloomfield 1935). As he agrees the means of communication between speakers, but it doesn't involves use of the same language.

Speech community refers to a regionally or social definable human group of speakers who shares the same norms in regard to language. ( Labov 1972).

Speech events and speeches acts.

According to Hymes a linguistic scholar argued that, there is a difference between speech events and speech acts. He further argued that speech events occur in a non verbal context. It refers to non context of speech situations.

Speech Events refers to unified components throughout same purpose of communication.

I) same topics

II) Same participants.

III) Same language variety.

 Speech events is a basic unit of conversation which can be found by change of scene,or by the exist or entrance of characters ,or by the shifting topic, change of concern or focus. ( khader 2000).

Speech events associated with speech episodes on it as a unit consists of several speech events informed by a common thematic.

Dell Hymes a scholar under this field explains and suggests various components must be included in a comprehensive ethnographic description of the act of speaking.

The speaking model.

The speaking model is valuable model of ethnography of communication as well as descriptive frame work.

Speaking is an abbreviation of the following

S - Situations. As a setting or locale, scene or situation, concrete scene or situation is abstract.

P- Participants. As a speaker, addresser,Hearer or audience and addressee. The person who is utters by and the person whom the act is addressed to. In various situations participants are allocated communication roles by culture .for instance chairman, therapist, and patients.

E- Ends. The purpose, outcomes, goal. As some of ends have convectional outcome. For instance diagnosis.

A- Act sequence. The message form or message content. Topics of conversation and particular ways. In culture linguistic forms are convectional for certain types of talk.

K - Key to mean the tone or manner of performance .for instance joking, serious, sincere or ironic.

I- instrumentalist. What channel or medium of communication is used. For example speaking, signing, dreaming and other variety chosen by a speaker.

N- Norms. Norms of interactions. What the rules are for producing and interpreting speech acts.

G- Genres. What "type" or does a speech events belongs to. For example interview , gossip ,and what other pre existing convectional forms of speech are drawn on or cited in producing appropriate contributions to talk.

Speech act

Speech act is an utterance, defined in terms of speaker’s intention and effects it has on listeners. The speech act is a philosophy of language and linguistic as something expressed by an individual that not only presented information but to perform actions as well. for example I would like the kimchi , could you please pass it to me ? Its considered as speech act as it expresses the speakers desire to acquire the kimchi as well as representing request that someone pass kimchi to them.

According to kenti Bach, almost any speech act is real the performance of several acts at ones, distinguished by different aspect of speakers intention. There is the act of saying, what one does in saying it, such as requesting ,or promising and how one wanted to affect ones audience. Speech act can be analyzed into three levels of utterance.

An illocutionary Act - saying something with purpose such as to inform. It might be promise, order, and apology.

A locutionary act. The performance of an utterance. The making of a meaningful statement, saying something that hearer understands.

Perlocutionary acts. Saying something that causes someone to act. It brings about consequence to audience for example effects on hearer’s feelings, thoughts, and actions.

Speech act theory is a subfield of pragmatics. This area of study is concerned with the ways in which words can be used not only to present information but to carry out actions. It is used in linguistic, philosophy, legal and literature theories and even the development of artificial intelligence.  Speech act was introduced in 1975 by Oxford philosopher J.L Austin in " How to do things with words " .

Families of speech acts.

As introduced by J.L Austin 1975, as he introduced how to do things with words to argue his case for the most common classes.

Vindictive which present findings.

Executives which exemplifying power / influence.

Comissives - consist of promising and committing to do something.

Behabitives which have to do with social behavior and attitudes.

Expositives which explains how our language interacts with itself.

II) Communicative competencies

Communicative competencies is a term in linguistic which refers to a language users grammatical knowledge of syntax , morphology ,phonology and knowledge on how and and when to use an utterance. Here Hymes wanted to show how communicative forms and functions in integral relation to each other.

Communicative competencies revealed by Hymes when reacting to against the perceive inadequacy of Noam Chomsky's 1965 distinction between linguistic competence and performance. Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. (Applied linguistic, 1980).

It identifies four components of communicative competence.

I) social linguistic competence includes knowledge, of social culture rules of use. It is concerned with learners ability to handle for example setting, topics, and social linguistic contextual.

II) Discourse competence deals with all learners mastery of understanding and producing text in the modes of listening, speaking, reading and writing.

III) Grammatical competence includes knowledge of phonology, orthographical, vocabulary, word formation, and sentence formation.

Iv) Strategic competence refers to compensatory strategies in case of grammatical and sociolinguistic or discourse difficulties such as the use of reference sources grammatical and lexical paraphrase, request, for repetition, clarification, slower speech.

Context is both micro and macro ethnographic approaches are meant to provide cues for the selection of relevant features of behavior is specific conceptual frames. Contextualization therefore follows a body of theory and set of theoretical principles.

In linguistic, anthropology and sociology context refers as those object or entities which surround as focal event, in these discipline typically a communicative events of some kinds. Context is a frame that surround events and provide resources of its representations, it is relative concepts, definable with respect tosone focal events within a frame and independently of that frame . (Godwin 1992).

Context has been explain by linguistic field and social linguistic and social context which are

I) linguistically, verbal context refers to a text or speech surrounding an expression. (Word, sentence, speech acts).

Ii) Sociolinguistic defined social context in terms of objectives, social variables ,like gender class ,age or race.

Conclusion.

Leading the relationship between culture, Society and language is very crucial ,to fully appreciation of language ,there is a need of understanding the people who speak it. Generally language is the method of human communication either written or spoken from whereas ,culture is the ideas ,beliefs we have in society. Language acts as a mechanism for channeling culture and culture bonds that reflects and produce culture. Culture has an impact on language where as language is formed by the culture of a society. As language is not only an expression of communicating people but also a component of culture that makes it unique and specific . Also our values and speech shapes our identity and personality. For example we pronounces ,choice words ,generate new words through the controlling of culture .For example In America ,there is endless supply of superlative even in ordinary situation such as awesome ,fantastic,. Also in Korea the term called "our "  is very popular due to the collectivism culture and not individualism .( Widdowson ,H. 1998

REFERENCES.

Godwin et al .( 1992).Rethinking context an production. Cambridge university press. Cambridge.

Canale ,Mand Merrill swain. [1980]. Theoretical bases of communicative Approaches to second language learning. Applied linguistics ,

Hymes ,D.[1996].ETHNOGRAPHY ,Linguistics ,Narrative Inequalties .oxford publishers .London .

Austin ,J.L.[1975]. How to do things with words .Cambridge .M.A .harvard university .

Craystal .D.[2008]. Dictionary of linguistics and phonetics .backwell publishers .Malden.