Linguistic Competence - Essay Example

Question Part Hymes (1997) relies on sociolinguistics, a discipline which goes beyond the grammar, is associated with socially constituted linguistics, and takes into account speech communities, in order to study the organization of linguistic features. Gumperz (1997) reconsiders the notion of communicative competence, coined by Hymes, departing from Chomsky’s definition of linguistic competence, and proposes a redefinition as “the knowledge of linguistic and related communicative conventions that speakers must have to initiate and sustain conversational involvement” (40-41). Setling and Couper-Kuhlen (2001) introduce interactional linguistics as an interdisciplinary and cross-linguistic perspective on language, which studies the interrelation between interactional practices and specific languages. Part 2: The above-mentioned authors depart from Chomskian concepts of competence and performance, challenged due to their lack of a total vision of linguistic features. I recognize the importance of sociolinguistic and interactional approaches, because they consider essential factors involving language, such as context, speech community, society and interaction. Hymes’s criticism of the usual linguistic description, which concentrates on grammar, and does not study the organization of the linguistic features as a whole, is very accurate, as well as Gumperz’s opinions about the need of finding a universal theory of communicative competence “capable of providing new insights into the communicative problems that affect our urban societies” (47). Although Gumperz based his proposal on conversation, the term “communicative competence” can have a broader application, also to written texts. This concept enables the comprehension of problems when learning a foreign language, cross-cultural issues and misunderstanding between native speakers. To achieve communicative competence should be the objective when native and nonnative speakers learn English. Orthography and grammar rules are of limited importance in comparison to the strategies that are required in order to communicate adequately in our society. We can produce a text with perfect orthography and grammar, but confusing and inadequate. Different situations and everyday activities are spontaneous and unpredictable, and communicative competence enables us to be successful in those interactions. For example, native speakers giving speeches can prepare their words previously, but they can be later confronted to questions from their audience. In this case, a clear presentation of the ideas is essential. Similarly, the formulae for formal speeches, as well as the emphasis on the style of academic papers, business letters or resumes, responds to the need of achieving a communicative goal. On the other hand, the complexity of everyday conversations makes them the ideal object of study of interactional linguistics, and the cross-linguistic integration of different language practices allows research on the shaping of interaction. Interactional linguistics investigates “the trade-off between language and interaction universals on the one hand and language –and language type– specific linguistic practices on the other” (Setling and Couper-Kuhlen 18). However, the interdisciplinary character of these approaches can cause an overlapping of concepts and objects of study, and lead to theoretical confusion, since the boundaries of interactional linguistics and sociolinguistics do not always appear so clear, and the concept of communicative competence belongs to different disciplines. Therefore, I consider that these disciplines have theoretical and empirical tasks to accomplish in the development of their studies. Question 2 Part 1: According to Saville-Troike (2003), the basic terms, concepts and issues on the ethnography of communication are the following: societal, group and individual patterns of communication, communicative functions, speech community, communicative competence, the incompetence that can be pretended according to the situation, units of analysis (i.e. situation, event, and act), categories of talk, relationship between language and culture, social structure and ideology, and universals and inequalities. Part 2: I consider that the terms, concepts and issues presented by Saville-Troike (2003) are relevant for the ethnography of communication, like the functions and patterns at all levels of communication, since every research on this field will necessarily take them into account. Additionally, the definitions of speech community and communicative competence acquire a great importance in this discipline, since communication is patterned and organized within a speech community, and the notion of communicative competence is embedded in the relationship between language and culture. These concepts are useful to study the role of cross-cultural differences in producing conflicts and inhibiting communication. “The competence of non-native speakers of a language usually differs significantly from the competence of native speakers; the specific content of what an individual needs to know and the skills he or she need to have depend on the social context in which he or she is or will be using the language and the purposes he or she will have for doing so” (Saville-Troike 21). Also, it is possible to consider a multilingual speakers’ communicative competence, a very actual subject because of the growth of multilingual population in the world due to globalization and immigration. Saville-Troike (2003) renovates the discussion regarding the universality and language-specificity of functions and patterns of communication. “While many of the functions of language are universal, the ways in which communication operates in any one society to serve these functions is language specific” (14). Besides, the author mentions that “there is a correlation between the form and content of a language and the beliefs, values and needs present in the culture of its speakers” (28). This correlation between language and culture is very important for the ethnography of communication. A problem that was not mentioned by Saville-Troike was translation. Communicative and cross-cultural problems can arise and interfere with this activity, since translation is not an issue of mere lexical equivalencies. Different world views are to be expressed in terms of other cultures, and translation takes the risk of being inaccurate. An example which shows the importance of culture, speech community and translation is the case of the Harry Potter books, which were adapted to American English and translated into three dialectal varieties of Spanish. Also, borrowings reflect the extent in which a culture permeates one another, and it cannot be forgotten as an object of study in the ethnography of communication. Question 3 Part 1: Blum-Kulka et al. introduce the researches on cross-cultural pragmatics by mentioning the concept of speech act, as a central concern of pragmatics. The empirical study of speech acts, based on those produced by native speakers in context, is necessary, due to the debate about universality versus culture-specificity of speech acts. Speech plays a role in the creation and affirmation of cultural identity, because directness and indirectness of speech acts operate differentially in cultures. Contrastive pragmatics has enriched the field of cross-cultural pragmatics, whereas interlanguage pragmatics includes the second language acquisition and the issue of learners’ speech acts. Part 2: In my opinion, actual linguistic research should focus on empirical studies. Much progress has been made from generative grammar studies, based on ideal speakers and sentences out of context. Of course, empirical linguistic research within cross-cultural pragmatics poses challenges, since the object of study shows a great diversity, which complicates the linguist’s labor. My statement on the importance of an empirical basis does not mean that the theoretical linguistics should remain forgotten, but the theory should arise or be revised from the results of empirical research. This issue is of great importance regarding a relative young discipline as cross-cultural pragmatics. Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) show the areas of major research and those in which further research is necessary. In this framework, the Cross-cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) investigates cross-cultural and intralingual variation in the speech acts of requests and apologies (Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper 11). “The general goal of the CCSARP investigation is to establish patterns of requests and apology realizations under different social constraints across a number of languages and cultures, including both native and nonnative varieties” (12). Hence, the project enables “an empirically based discussion of several of the issues debated within speech act studies” (12), and constitutes an example of cross-cultural pragmatics. I think that one of the most important applications of cross-cultural pragmatics is in the second language learning and acquisition, and its implications for teachers and learners. Foreign language teaching simulates situational variables in the target language. Exercises and dialogues about asking for directions, ordering at a restaurant, buying objects at a store are very common in English classes for nonnative speakers. There are different speech acts that will be realized in this simulated situation as training for the real life. Naturally, the foreign language class focuses on determined expressions that are typical or ideal for this situation, but a learner who lives in the country where the second language is taught would often find differences of realizations of those speech acts. For example, making reservations at a travel agency includes speech acts such as greeting, requesting, offering, refusing and thanking. A foreign speaker may have practiced this kind of interaction in the classroom, but the attendant could ask determined information for which the foreign speaker is not prepared. The relation between language and culture arises in this framework, since it is important for nonnative speakers to learn the culture and its influence on speech acts, in order to avoid misunderstanding and cultural shocks. Question 4 Part 1: Speech acts are a central phenomenon for pragmatics and many other disciplines. Levinson (1987) explores the philosophical origins of the theories of speech acts, the different positions held about them and some general problems, such as the truth or falsity of speech acts. Austin (1973) establishes a distinction between constative and performative utterances. The latter are utterances that are not true or false and they perform the action they utter (such as a marriage ceremony, bet or promise). Performative verbs are classified by Austin into verdictives, exercitives, commisives, behabitives and expositives. Part 2: The speech act theory concerns pragmatics, a discipline with a wide scope and a diversity of applications and research lines. I think it is important to consider and review the evolution of Austin’s theory, whose ideas contributed to the speech act theory, later systematized by Searle, and started the debate about the irreducibility thesis (i.e. speech acts are irreducible to matters of truth and falsity). Austin’s works provide a philosophical background for pragmatics, although his ideas have been questioned. In the lectures by J.L. Austin (1973), there is an evolution of the argument, as Levinson (1987) warns. It is already confirmed that the performative/constative dichotomy proposed by Austin has an insubstantial nature, because there is no real incompatibility between utterances which could be truth-bearers, and simultaneously perform actions (Levinson 234). Austin himself recognizes that some of his ideas can no longer be maintained and states that the performative/constative dichotomy “has to be abandoned in favour of more general families of related and overlapping speech acts” (44). Additionally, Levinson considers that there is little justification for Austin’s classification of performative verbs, presented in the lecture XII, because other schemes have been later developed (234). The lectures by Austin have to be understood in terms of theoretical insights in process of development, and not as a well-delimited theory. That explains why his argument changes between the first and the last lecture. The issue of speech acts requires further research and discussion. Hence, the theory can correspond to the realization of speech acts instead of trying to adapt utterances to the theory. A difficult issue in this framework is the insult. When someone says, for example, “You are an idiot”, can we speak of truth or falsity of the utterance? Does it matter for the speaker if that is true or not? Does the truth or falsity influences the hearer’s reaction? Maybe it is possible to speak about truth or falsity in this example, but not in the case of other vulgar insulting terms, which refer to something that the person is not strictly speaking, but they mean that the hearer is detested and not respected by the speaker, who usually express his or her annoyance. When the classification of speech acts and verbs is provided, always the clearest examples are presented, but a review of all the possibilities, also in spontaneous situations and everyday conversations, demonstrates that this issue is still problematic. Work Cited Austin, J. L. “Speech Acts”. In Volume One, Readings for Applied Linguistics. Ed. J.P.B. Allen and S. Pit Corder. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. 38-52. Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, House, Juliane and Kaspar, Gabriele. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1989. Gumperz, John J. “Communicative Competence”. In Sociolinguistics: A Reader and Coursebook. Ed. N. Coupland and A. Jaworski. London: Macmillan Press, 1997. 39-48. Hymes, Dell. “The Scope of Sociolinguistics”. In Sociolinguistics: A Reader and Coursebook. Ed. N. Coupland and A. Jaworski. London: Macmillan Press, 1997. 12-22. Levinson, Stephen. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Setling, Margret and Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth. Studies in Interactional Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Betjamins Publishing Company, 2001. Saville-Troike, Muriel. The Ethnography of Communication: An Introduction. London: Blackwell, 2003. Read More