A Basic Course in Anthropological Linguistics (Studies in Linguistic ...

16 A BASIC COURSE IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS
in (3) identifies which of the two alternatives to which the questioner refers is
the appropriate one.
The subsystem where such kinds of responses are determined is called
the pragmatic or discourse system. In the early 1970s, the linguist Dell Hymes
became fascinated by the fact that we used only bits and pieces of sentences
in real discourse. This seemed to impugn the very notion of linguistic
competence as based on sentence structure, which, at the time, was considered
to be impervious to influences from real-world communication and social
interaction. Hymes thus proposed that knowledge of language entailed, in
addition to other kinds of structural knowledge, the ability to use it appropriately
in specific social and interactive settings. He called this kind of knowledge
communicative competence, claiming that it had an effect in shaping and even
changing linguistic competence. Studies on communication and discourse
prohferated shortly thereafter, shedding light on the relation between linguistic
and communicative competence or, to use Saussurean terminology, between
langue and parole.
The basic notion in all discourse study is that of speech act. It can be
defined as knowledge of how to match words to a situation so that some
meaning-exchange can be literally “acted out” in a socially appropriate fashion.
A simple protocol such as saying hello, for instance, requires a detailed
knowledge of the appropriate words, phrases, structures, and nonverbal cues
that come together cohesively in a script-like fashion to enable a speaker to
make successful social contact with another speaker. It requires, in other
words, both procedural and linguistic knowledge. An infringement of any of
the procedural details of this script might lead to a breakdown in communication.
To conclude the analysis of our illustrative sentence, it should be noted
that the way in which actual speakers will pronounce it will vary. Speakers in
England would tend to pronounce the words in our sentence differently than
how people living in New York City would. Within a speech community, there
is actually considerable variation in a language. The way people speak will
change not only according to where they live, but also according to their age,
occupation, socioeconomic status, gender, etc. Variation in language is called
dialectal. If the variation is due to geography, then the dialects are called
regional or geographical. If, however, the variation is socially based, then the
dialects are called social dialects-for example, the way teenagers talk among
themselves is different than how university professors talk to each other.
An interesting aspect of variation is the fact that all languages have registers.
These are forms of speech that are used to match the formality of a situation,
the medium used (speech or writing), and the topic under discussion. Take,