Week 8: Collusion and Socialization

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Week 8 Collusion and Socialization
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Reminders

• Exam 2 is Tuesday, 10/23
• Review session Monday, 10/22 at 7 pm in Williams
  402
• Office hours Monday 10/22 2-3 pm
• Email me if you would like to be signed up for
  the Quiet Room

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Language Socialization
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Acquisition and Socialization

• Language acquisition refers to the process of a
  child/baby acquiring/learning language for the
  first time
• Language socialization refers to the process by
  which a child gains communicative competence and
  is socialized into a group through language

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• Children are socialized INTO a linguistic and
  cultural system, but children are also socialized
  THROUGH language into social roles and models of
  behavior
• Examples that show both of these
• Say thank you to the nice lady.
• Dont talk with your mouth full!

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• Many rules for interaction are not explicitly
  taught. Children learn them through experience.
• Eye contact
• Interruption patterns
• How to get a turn speaking
• When to stop speaking
• What topics are discussed and what arent
  discussed, and with whom

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• Language acquisition is sometimes treated by
  child development researchers as a mechanical
  process of activating an innate capacity that is
  minimally accessible to cultural influence.
• BUT culture surrounds child language learning,
  including the significance of learning language,
  rules for appropriate use, and so forth.

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Becoming Human

• What is the first question we ask about a
  newborn? Are babies human?
• Ochs and Schieffelin compare 3 cultures with
  regard to ideas about babies and language
  development (US middle class, Samoa, Kaluli).
• They show how ideas about language development
  are related to ideas about human development in
  each culture.

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U.S. White Middle Class

• Infants are treated as social beings.
• Child is directly addressed. Caregivers may
  answer for the child.
• Adults accommodate to children. (e.g. baby talk,
  baby-proofing)

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Kaluli (Papua New Guinea)

• Babies are soft and have no understanding
• Caregivers speak for babies dont modify
  speech much to accommodate
• Child does not begin to harden until it says
  mother (naw) and breast (bo)

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Samoan

• As small infants, babies are talked about, but
  not to until they begin to crawl.
• Toddlers are called willful and need to be
  disciplined/ordered what to do. Given commands,
  but not expected to talk back
• First word is widely reported as tae (shit)
  considered assertive
• Social stratification incorporated into language
  learning a young child asks mother for
  something, mother will say something to older
  sibling. Older sibling will address baby
  teaching social order

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Developmental Stories

• Ochs and Schieffelin conclude that each culture
  has its own story about how children develop
• These stories affect socialization practices.

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Peer Socialization

• When children reach the age where they spend a
  lot more time with other children than with
  caregivers, peer socialization becomes more
  important
• peer socialization refers to how people learn to
  act appropriately for their social group from
  others in a similar social category (often the
  same age group)

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Peer socialization

• When children go to school, peers become the main
  vehicle for their socialization into particular
  roles (e.g. developing ideas of being a good
  friend)
• Child peer groups often span several years at a
  time (through siblings, neighborhood friends,
  etc.) allowing for games and verbal art to be
  passed down from generation to generation.

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Film Esther Shea

• Esther Shea The Bear Stands Up
• About a Tlingit woman who is working to
  revitalize her language and culture. Language
  revitalization refers to attempts to increase or
  maintain the number of speakers of an endangered
  or moribund language.
• As you watch the film ask What historical
  processes have contributed to this language
  situation? How does Esther Shea link
  socialization and language learning/use?

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Discussion

• Where did you see examples of collusion?
• Can groups get around colluding with the dominant
  society?
• Is collusion bad or good? Does it conflict with
  American values of individuality and the right
  to self-determination?

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Politeness
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Politeness across cultures

• Polite behavior varies across cultures
• Can be embedded in language use (e.g. use of
  proper pronouns or names)
• Politeness is usually about showing respect in
  different ways

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Positive vs. Negative Politeness

• Positive politeness oriented towards a persons
  desire to be well regarded
• Negative politeness oriented towards a persons
  desire not be imposed upon.

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Positive Politeness examples

• You look nice today!
• Its always such a pleasure to see you.
• What an honor to finally meet you.
• More examples?

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Negative Politeness examples

• I know youre really busy, but could you take a
  look at this?
• Could you do me a big favor?
• Someone needs to organize this project and
  produce the pamphlet. (indirectness)
• More examples?

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Politeness and collusion

• In order to make many situations go forward, you
  must be polite.
• BUT being polite often involves placing yourself
  in a certain role in the hierarchy.
• In order to be polite and grease the wheels of
  social interaction, you may have to take on the
  role of someone in a lower position

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Positive Politeness and collusion

• By accepting positive politeness, you are
  colluding in the idea of what constitutes a
  compliment (in other words, what it means in your
  culture to be well regarded.
• Example A Korean woman told an American
  acquaintance I havent seen you in so long! You
  look fat! and was slapped in the face.
  collusion broke down

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Negative Politeness and Collusion

• Many examples of negative politeness include
  being indirect, but also accepting that there is
  some exaggeration going on, and also recognizing
  whether you are in a position to turn down a
  request.
• Can I ask you for a big favor?
• Yes, of course. Anything to help out.
• I know youre really busy, but can I ask you for
  a favor?
• Sorry, I really am too busy.
• Oh, uh. Well, I really need you to do it, since
  Bob is swamped with the Anderson account.
• Oh, okay.

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Conversational Structure
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Does conversation have structure?

• For many years, linguists dismissed
  conversational speech as messy and
  unstructured
• Then came the portable tape recorder
• Findings Each SPEECH COMMUNITY has its own
  rules for how a conversation should be run, e.g.
  how you signal that you are done speaking or
  that you want a turn at speaking.

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Structural Properties of Conversation

• One thing children must learn as they learn
  language is how conversation is socially
  structured
• who speaks when, whether interruption is allowed,
  how to answer or ask a question, how long to
  speak, etc.

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Conversational Turns

• Conversation is structured through turn-taking.
• Turn-taking who takes a turn to speak, when?
  
• Features of turns that are contextually
  sensitive
• length of turn
• content of turn
• Holding the floor keep the right to speak
• Take the floor take on the role of speaker
• Yield the floor let someone else speak

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The Floor

• The floor refers to having the floor, in
  other words, having the right to speak (comes
  from parliamentary speaking)
• You can gain, take, turn over, or hold
  the floor by successfully signaling to
  participants that you want to speak you can
  lose the floor if you arent successful.

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American Turn-taking (Sacks)

• Speaker change occurs
• one party talks at a time
• overlaps are brief
• ideal transition involves no gap and no overlap
• Note that this is typical of male
  speech
• turn allocation techniques are used
• speaker select What do you think, Joe?
• self-select I know all about that.
  

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But

• Sacks focused on WHITE MALE MIDDLE CLASS speakers
  to construct his model.
• Other research has shown that different groups
  encourage gaps and/or overlaps in everyday
  conversation.

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Conversational Structure

• Conversational structure was first studied by
  sociologists interested in interpersonal dynamics
  (1960s)
• This developed into a subfield of
  sociolinguistics called Conversation Analysis
• Scholars soon found a number of identifiable
  structures that are common in conversation

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Adjacency Pairs

• Adjacency pairs are pairs of turns that go
  together using one prompts the other.
• - Guess what?
• What!
• Christ is risen.
• Indeed he is risen. Easter greeting
• Would you like something to drink?
• Yes please. (No thanks.)

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Presequences

• Presequences are sequences that signal or set up
  the expectation of another type of exchange
• Do you have a minute? pre-request
• - Sure, whats up?
• - I wanted to run something by you.
• Guess what? (signals information coming)
• Youre going to have twins
• No, doofus, I got an A on the test
• pre-invitation (signals an invitation coming)
• Are you busy tonight?

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Entering and exiting

• Turn entry devices are recognized ways of taking
  a turn at speaking
• Well. You know what? But No, really
• Turn exit devices are recognized ways of ending
  your turn and getting the other person to speak
• Its hot in here, isnt it? (tag question)
• What do you think about all this?
• - I guess it just goes to show that theres no
  pleasing some people.

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Backchannel cues

• Little cues that show the listener is engaged,
  but that dont have literal meaning
• Examples
• Uh-huh, mmm, no way!, right, exactly
• Or my favorite Shut up!
• Miscommunication can occur when the backchannel
  cues you use are interpreted as definite
  agreement in another speech community

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Closings

• A set of turns that result in closing down or
  ending a topic of conversation or the
  conversation itself.
• Usually closings cross several conversational
  turns

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Example telephone closing

• D Uh-you know, its just like bringin the
  blood up.
• T Yeah, well, things uh always work out for the
  best. pre-closing convo summary
• D Oh certainly. Alright Tess.
• T Uh huh. (pause) Okay.
• D Gbye
• T Goodnight.

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Collusion and repair

• Repair refers to fixing an error while you or
  someone else is speaking collusion allows you
  to keep going and ignore the error most of the
  time
• Self-repair
• I saw her on Tues- on Wednesday.
• Other-repair
• I think hes from Buchapest
• You mean Bucharest.

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Why have structure in conversation?

• Conversation is a series of adjustments to how
  the other person is interpreting what you say.
• Unless you think they are understanding what you
  mean, it is difficult to move the conversation
  forward

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Pragmatic cues allow us to take short cuts

• One theory says that conversation is all about
  making things relevant. We interpret utterances
  so that they are relevant. Conversational
  structure helps.
• - Im flying Air China to Bali
• - Whats the connection?
• - Its a Buddhist studies group.

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Make it relevant

• Relevance can help us interpret indirect speech
• Are you going on vacation this year?
• I dont have any money.
• Without relevance, we have trouble making even an
  indirect connection
• Are you going on vacation this year?
• My favorite color is yellow.

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Socializing Coherence

• Children need to learn how to be relevant and
  also how to signal relevance and coherence in
  storytelling and conversation.
• Examples include
• Constructing a culturally coherent timeline
• Signaling causality (thats why then because
  of that)
• Including necessary information at appropriate
  times
• Linking information together (e.g. The cover
  charge was 20 SO he went home.)

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Coherence and Social Change

• Agar talks about cultural frames and how they can
  limit how we talk about or understand certain
  things.
• Often social changes go hand in hand with the
  emergence of new vocabulary and even new
  grammatical and conversational structures that
  allow us to speak about new things or address
  them in new ways.

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Knowing the rules

• Why would it be important to know which of these
  is going on in an American context? How might
  you be able to tell?
• Is it a costume party or a formal?
• Is it a conversation or a lecture?
• Is the speaker serious or joking?

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Cross-linguistic variation

• Pragmatic cues and rules vary a great deal across
  cultures and speech communities.
• What do you say when you pick up the phone?
• Do you greet people when you see them in the
  hallway?
• Is it appropriate to have a conversation with a
  salesperson?
• Are you supposed to talk about your
  accomplishments or not?

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Variation

• In U.S.
• We answer the phone Hello?
• Preference is for speaker recognition, Hi, its
  me.
• In Netherlands
• Answer the phone with Hello first name
• Preference is for speaker self-identification

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Think about it

• When people DO share conversational structures,
  then they can often get locked in to them.
• Example A student walks into lecture half an
  hour late and I say. Hello, nice of you to join
  us.
• How have I trapped the student?
• Why do (some of) you feel uncomfortable?