Aspects of Communication

In chapter 4 of Language, Culture, and Communication: The Meaning of Messages, author Nancy Bonvillain explains that an ethnography of communication is derived primarily from analyzing the conduct of speech of a community.  By understanding the rules by which individuals communicate, a linguist or cultural anthropologist can engage the “totality of factors” that make up the contextual elements requisite in an ethnography of communication.  Several of these elements include terms of address, pronouns, and kinship terms.  Within the context of the setting, those present, the topic of conversation, and the goals of the participant, these elements give rise to discourse that is defined by terms such as narrative, apology, greeting, and the like.  These aspects of communication are shared across cultural boundaries and thus prove useful in constructing an ethnography of communication.

These ideas were noted by linguist Dell Hymes who wrote that “description of a language may show that it expresses a certain cognitive style…but what chance the language has to make an impress upon individuals and behavior will depend upon the degree and pattern of its admission into communicative events.” In the United States, a diversity of language is present, living across cultures and surviving against all odds in Indian communities across the country.  Among the Navajo, for example, observers noted that the use of a title + last name was common whenever the “addressee was older than the speaker,” contrasting with American English speakers in a similar context.  “[For] Anglos, title + last marks social difference [for example, when addressing a superior on the job], but in another [context], to elder Native Americans, it marks social solidarity.”

Another aspect that has been closely studied is the use of pronouns.  Prior to the 1949 revolution in China, a formal referent among familiars was commonly used – nin – and a less formal title – ni – between intimates, like the way pronouns are used in Europe today, as in tou/vous.  But as a new social reality unfolded across the country, these formalities were dropped, and the more familiar and intimate reciprocal ni is used and “recognized as a signal of egalitarian social relations” that exist today.

Lastly, kinship terms are also variously used by co-participants across language groups that also “can signal social meanings of intimacy, solidarity, or deference.” In Japan, gender-based forms of address reflect the status of men and women, even in the household, exposing more marked gender inequality than in the United States.  Husbands employ first names, and two pronouns, omae and kimi, both used by superiors talking to inferiors, whereas women address their husbands by first name as well as adding an “honorific suffix san.” Sometimes the wife will use a second pronoun – anata – which is commonly used by all people to address higher-status members of society.

By analyzing aspects of speech such as terms of address, pronouns, and kinship terms, linguists, “[in situations of] ongoing, context-dependent meanings” are holistically and systematically approaching an ethnography of communication that is both informative and revealing.  In this way, an ethnography of communication “shows with particular depth the implications of cultural values and world view for occurrences of communicative behavior,” turning language from a ‘tool of communication’ into a method by which people categorize cultural experience.

 Black English

More generally, an ethnography of communication can be informative for advancing social science, and insightful for its reflection of historical events that impact cultural groups.  One example is found in the decades-long study of Black English, or Black Vernaculer, once called Negro Nonstandard English.  Per Professor of Language and linguist Nancy McKee, in her lecture series titled “Speech, Though, and Culture,” Black English developed out of the creole languages that arose when black slaves were imported to the ‘New World’ – Caribbean North America and the Southern United States – and began to intermix with Europeans, particularly the Portuguese, where everyone needed a common language system by which to communicate.  Having first constructed a form of pidgin-Portuguese called Sabir, Africans culled from disparate tribes and forced into slavery in the ‘New World’ creolized this common pidgin before importing it to the Atlantic Coast, where it was “decolorize[d]” into Black English.  Although it sounds very similar to American English, “there are some significant differences.”

By the 1960’s, President Lyndon Johnson had instituted many social reforms aimed at increasing access to education and other services for minority groups, especially black Americans.  Linguists such as William Labov began looking at Black English and trying to relate the properties of the language, inclusive of these diferences, to its function in black American society.  In one remarkable experiment, Labov was able to demonstrate that while the dialect may be foreign in some cases to American English speakers, black children were capable of constructing logical arguments, of the form identified in “Greek theory of speaking and argumentation.” Asked to describe what happens after a person dies, a rambunctious, 15-year old speaker of Black English name Larry, responded to Labov’s interviewer (JL) with logical clarity:

Larry:  You know, like some people say if you’re good an’ shit, your spirit goin’ t’heaven…’n’ if you bad, your spirit goin’ to hell.  Well, bullshit!  Your spirit goin’ to hell anyway good or bad.

JL: Why?

Larry: Why?  I’ll tell you why.  ‘Cause, you see, doesn’ nobody really know that it’s a God, y’know, ‘cause I mean I have seen black gods, pink gods, white gods, all color gods, and don’t nobody know it’s really a God.  An’ when they be sayin’ if you good, you goin’ t’heaven, tha’s bullshit, ‘cause you ain’t goin’ to no heaven, ‘cause it ain’t no heaven for you to go to.

Labov notes of Larry, “he can sum up a complex argument in a few words, and the full force of his opinions comes through without qualification or reservation…It is the logical form of this passage which is of particular interest here.” Larry “presents a complex set of interdependent propositions,” which can then be explicated in Standard English as a linear argument.  Because of this research on narrative communication, Labov was able to establish that Black English is a formal language as determined by evidence of logical reasoning and function – using data instead of theory.   For this reason, and contrary to a common view of 1960’s-era education experts that “verbal deprivation” resulting from “an impoverished environment in their early years” resulted in black children’s lower IQ’s and poor performance on standardized tests, Labov was able to demonstrate that low expectations and racial animus was, instead, the root cause of black children’s performance data. ‘Gifted’ or otherwise, black study participants were perfectly capable of processing both dialect differences, like the one’s documented in Larry’s conception of the afterlife, and concept formation, indicating clearly that differences exhibited in patterns of speech did not impair learning as previously thought.

The Female Register

Nevertheless, as a “symbolic system,” language is intricately intertwined with social structure, in that “social class…is reflected in language [which] also serves to maintain.” Just as Black English carries with it the nuanced expressions born of European and American slavery, sometimes indicating deference or emphasizing superior/inferior relationships with other speakers, noted earlier, language, according to famed linguistic Basil Bernstein, “is governed by power relationships as these are embodied in the class structure.” He looked to “[sever] the relationship between the formal properties of the grammar and the meanings which are realized in [language] use.” In effect, as Dr. McKee notes, Bernstein’s insight with regard to constructing a holistic, data-driven ethnography of communication was that “the way [that people] talk reflects the values and conventions of [their] own group.”

Along these lines, Bonvillain notes, “pronunciations act, in part, as sociolinguistic markers of gender.” Looking at several studies conducted by linguistic researchers in various parts of the world and across social classes, she underscores the fact that middle- and upper-income women tend to have more formalized pronunciation, and that they are faster to switch to formal language use when confronting formal social situations..  Studies among Black American women and their white counterparts in society, male and female speakers in Detroit and England, and among Indian groups in the United States show the same patterns of difference between men and women across social groups.  Dr. Mckee explains that one of these pronunciation types – an “oral style” – is “known as the female register” and is characterized by speech that is noticeably expressive and non-assertive in style. As an example, she describes in her lecture series an encounter with a mason, who, not wanting to be contradictory, politely questions her decision to have a freshly built stone wall immediately whitewashed.  With a gentle questioning statement of surprise, the mason attempted to warn off the request but also comply, exhibiting a rare instance of male use of the female register.

Anecdote withstanding, the linguistic studies of similar communicative interactions between couples and across cultures and societies are notable for their internal comparisons as additions to a comprehensive ethnography of communication.  By utilizing multiple groups of women, from middle- to high-income women, women from lower socioeconomic classes, and those in positions subordinate to other men and women, percentage-based comparisons of pronunciations evaluated on a sliding scale of economic status produce data that confirm the higher likelihood of female register-style pronunciation by women participants.  For example, in investigations of the postvocalic /-r/ - formally completing the pronunciation of certain -r words – the Black American women speakers in Detroit, noted earlier, exhibit anywhere from a 30% to a 6% greater use of the formalized pronunciation than their male counterparts. Indeed, these data support Bernstein’s contention that socioeconomics and power relationships are borne out in how people of various economic means, across gender, societies, and cultures, generally engage their respective languages.

By constructing an ethnography of communication that both records comprehensive, holistic datasets and properly analyzes language in the context of the subjects’ socioeconomic situation, linguists are better able to provide the scientific community with valuable and accurate guidance on using the study of language to effect lasting social changes.  In addition, these approaches have helped to free social scientists from old-fashioned theories regarding race and genetics, offering a wider-ranging, more compassionate and culturally sensitive approach to studying communication styles.

References

Bonvillain, Nancy. Language, Culture, and Communication: The Meaning of Messages. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Pearson. 2014.

McKee, Nancy, ed. Language and Social Context. 2nd ed. N.p.: Pearson Custom, 2008.