Ch. 9

So... speech acts have a variety of purposes.  It's interesting to consider the difference between the locution and illocution of each speech act.  It really is often very different.  Sometimes when I think about the kinds of things I say all day long to little kids, it makes me feel like a crazy person.  For example, when I say, "Hm, I wonder where my nice straight line went?" the illocution is "Walk down the hall in a straight line."  Or I'll start scratching my arms and say, "Oooh, I'm allergic to tattling", when I really mean, "Quit tattling on your classmates!  I don't want to hear about it!"  Those are the best examples I can think of at the moment, but I'm willing to bet I produce many more ridiculous locutions daily.

And conversations are really so complicated!  There are a ton of social hoops we need to jump through daily, and we hardly think about it.  But sometimes I feel trapped or obligated by conversational norms.  It's just hard finding the right balance between respecting independence and showing involvement, softening dispreferred responses, gracefully ending conversations, etc.  Add cultural differences to the mix, and it has to be really difficult for ELLs.  Even if ELL students have a good sense of appropriate conversation behavior, they may not always have the social language vocabulary to pull it off and feel comfortable with their interactions.

I was really interested in the section on cross-cultural interactions.  A friend of mine (she's an MA-TESL student at Columbia U.) told me about a conversation with her uncle from the Native American Blackfeet tribe:

"Basically, it boils down to the fact that Standard North American English speakers don't really like silence - it's an absence of communication, whereas Native Americans see silence as a positive thing. So, SNAE speakers keep on talking because they are waiting for the NAs to take their turn - and they feel inconvenienced, or perceive the NA as unintelligent or incoherent, and the NA speakers feel like SNAE speakers are belligerent, that they can't get a word in edgewise, and that every time they pause, they are interrupted - but really, the SNAE thinks the pause is a cue to speak.

So, I recorded a conversation with my NA uncle (a very small study), and it seemed that, contrary to standard definitions of interruption, I was constantly interrupting my uncle when no one was speaking - because I didn't allow for enough "pause time". "

She wrote a paper about silence in communication and cultural conversational styles, etc.  Anyway, I think it's all fascinating.  I can see why Esther likes social linguistics best.  :)