language culture and society essay

Relationship Between Language and Culture Essay

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Introduction

What is culture, relationship between language and culture, role of language in cultural diversity, reference list.

How does culture influence language? An essay isn’t enough to answer this question in detail. The purpose of the paper is to clearly highlight the issue of intercultural communication with reference to language and identity.

Language and culture are intertwined. One cannot define or identify cultural orientations without citing variations in how we speak and write. Thus, to explore the relationship between language and culture, this essay will start by defining the terms separately.

Culture describes variations in values, beliefs, as well as differences in the way people behave (DeVito 2007). Culture encompasses everything that a social group develops or produces.

Element of culture are not genetically transmitted and as such, they have to be passed down from one generation the next through communication. This explains why it is easy to adopt a certain language depending on the shared beliefs, attitudes and values.

The existence of different cultures can be explained using the cultural relativism approach which stipulates that although cultures tend to vary, none is superior to the other (DeVito 2007).

Learning of cultural values can be done through enculturation whereby individuals learn the culture of their birth. Alternatively, one can be acculturated into a culture that is divergent from their basic culture (DeVito 2007).

Language is the verbal channel of communication by articulating words that an individual is conversant with. This is aimed at relaying information. In other words, it is the expression of one’s culture verbally (Jandt 2009).

Language is the first element that helps an individual to distinguish the cultural orientations of individuals. Through language, we are able to differentiate between for example, a Chinese national and a Briton. The main functions of language are generally for information purposes and for the establishment of relationships.

Different cultures perceive the use of language differently. Whereas an American regards it as a useful communication tool, a Chinese will use their language to relay their feelings and to establish relationships.

It is through such variances of language that different cultures have placed on the usage of their language show the link between the two study variables (Jandt 2009).

Intercultural communication refers to communication between people from different cultural backgrounds. Due to the differences in cultures, there is a high probability that a message will be misunderstood and distorted.

Difference in languages leads to challenges in the interpretation of for example, politeness, acts of speech and interaction management. Normally, differences in languages lead to impediments in understanding. This is due to the difference in perception in as far as values are concerned.

Language shapes our lines of thought and as such, it is the core element that shapes how people perceive the world. The way people communicate is largely due to their cultures of origin. Language increases the rate of ethnocentrism in individuals thus furthering their self-centeredness in culture.

As a result, they are less responsive to the different means of communication that are not similar to their own values and beliefs (McGregor eta al 2007).

Language further heightens the aspect of accelerating cultural differences as it openly showcases the variations in communication. In turn, this view tends to impede negatively on intercultural efforts, thereby having a negative impact on the communication between individuals of different cultural orientations.

There is need for individuals to evaluate the usage of language in order to effectively interpret the shared meanings that are meant to be communicated. It is important therefore that individuals from a multi cultural context look at each other beyond their differences in order to enable effective communication.

DeVito, J A. (2006) Human communication the basic course, 10 th edition. Boston, Mass: Pearson / Allyn and Bacon.

Jandt, F E. (2007) An introduction to intercultural communication: identities in global community . Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc.

Mohan, T, McGregor, M T, Saunders, H & Archee, S. (2008) Communicating as a professional . Sydney, Australia: Cengage Learning.

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Speaking, writing and reading are integral to everyday life, where language is the primary tool for expression and communication. Studying how people use language – what words and phrases they unconsciously choose and combine – can help us better understand ourselves and why we behave the way we do.

Linguistics scholars seek to determine what is unique and universal about the language we use, how it is acquired and the ways it changes over time. They consider language as a cultural, social and psychological phenomenon.

“Understanding why and how languages differ tells about the range of what is human,” said Dan Jurafsky , the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor in Humanities and chair of the Department of Linguistics in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford . “Discovering what’s universal about languages can help us understand the core of our humanity.”

The stories below represent some of the ways linguists have investigated many aspects of language, including its semantics and syntax, phonetics and phonology, and its social, psychological and computational aspects.

Understanding stereotypes

Stanford linguists and psychologists study how language is interpreted by people. Even the slightest differences in language use can correspond with biased beliefs of the speakers, according to research.

One study showed that a relatively harmless sentence, such as “girls are as good as boys at math,” can subtly perpetuate sexist stereotypes. Because of the statement’s grammatical structure, it implies that being good at math is more common or natural for boys than girls, the researchers said.

Language can play a big role in how we and others perceive the world, and linguists work to discover what words and phrases can influence us, unknowingly.

How well-meaning statements can spread stereotypes unintentionally

New Stanford research shows that sentences that frame one gender as the standard for the other can unintentionally perpetuate biases.

Algorithms reveal changes in stereotypes

New Stanford research shows that, over the past century, linguistic changes in gender and ethnic stereotypes correlated with major social movements and demographic changes in the U.S. Census data.

Exploring what an interruption is in conversation

Stanford doctoral candidate Katherine Hilton found that people perceive interruptions in conversation differently, and those perceptions differ depending on the listener’s own conversational style as well as gender.

Cops speak less respectfully to black community members

Professors Jennifer Eberhardt and Dan Jurafsky, along with other Stanford researchers, detected racial disparities in police officers’ speech after analyzing more than 100 hours of body camera footage from Oakland Police.

How other languages inform our own

People speak roughly 7,000 languages worldwide. Although there is a lot in common among languages, each one is unique, both in its structure and in the way it reflects the culture of the people who speak it.

Jurafsky said it’s important to study languages other than our own and how they develop over time because it can help scholars understand what lies at the foundation of humans’ unique way of communicating with one another.

“All this research can help us discover what it means to be human,” Jurafsky said.

Stanford PhD student documents indigenous language of Papua New Guinea

Fifth-year PhD student Kate Lindsey recently returned to the United States after a year of documenting an obscure language indigenous to the South Pacific nation.

Students explore Esperanto across Europe

In a research project spanning eight countries, two Stanford students search for Esperanto, a constructed language, against the backdrop of European populism.

Chris Manning: How computers are learning to understand language​

A computer scientist discusses the evolution of computational linguistics and where it’s headed next.

Stanford research explores novel perspectives on the evolution of Spanish

Using digital tools and literature to explore the evolution of the Spanish language, Stanford researcher Cuauhtémoc García-García reveals a new historical perspective on linguistic changes in Latin America and Spain.

Language as a lens into behavior

Linguists analyze how certain speech patterns correspond to particular behaviors, including how language can impact people’s buying decisions or influence their social media use.

For example, in one research paper, a group of Stanford researchers examined the differences in how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online to better understand how a polarization of beliefs can occur on social media.

“We live in a very polarized time,” Jurafsky said. “Understanding what different groups of people say and why is the first step in determining how we can help bring people together.”

Analyzing the tweets of Republicans and Democrats

New research by Dora Demszky and colleagues examined how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online in an attempt to understand how polarization of beliefs occurs on social media.

Examining bilingual behavior of children at Texas preschool

A Stanford senior studied a group of bilingual children at a Spanish immersion preschool in Texas to understand how they distinguished between their two languages.

Predicting sales of online products from advertising language

Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky and colleagues have found that products in Japan sell better if their advertising includes polite language and words that invoke cultural traditions or authority.

Language can help the elderly cope with the challenges of aging, says Stanford professor

By examining conversations of elderly Japanese women, linguist Yoshiko Matsumoto uncovers language techniques that help people move past traumatic events and regain a sense of normalcy.

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3.4 Language, Society, and Culture

Learning objectives.

• Discuss some of the social norms that guide conversational interaction.
• Identify some of the ways in which language varies based on cultural context.
• Explain the role that accommodation and code-switching play in communication.
• Discuss cultural bias in relation to specific cultural identities.

Society and culture influence the words that we speak, and the words that we speak influence society and culture. Such a cyclical relationship can be difficult to understand, but many of the examples throughout this chapter and examples from our own lives help illustrate this point. One of the best ways to learn about society, culture, and language is to seek out opportunities to go beyond our typical comfort zones. Studying abroad, for example, brings many challenges that can turn into valuable lessons. The following example of such a lesson comes from my friend who studied abroad in Vienna, Austria.

Although English used to employ formal ( thou , thee ) and informal pronouns ( you ), today you can be used when speaking to a professor, a parent, or a casual acquaintance. Other languages still have social norms and rules about who is to be referred to informally and formally. My friend, as was typical in the German language, referred to his professor with the formal pronoun Sie but used the informal pronoun Du with his fellow students since they were peers. When the professor invited some of the American exchange students to dinner, they didn’t know they were about to participate in a cultural ritual that would change the way they spoke to their professor from that night on. Their professor informed them that they were going to duzen , which meant they were going to now be able to refer to her with the informal pronoun—an honor and sign of closeness for the American students. As they went around the table, each student introduced himself or herself to the professor using the formal pronoun, locked arms with her and drank (similar to the champagne toast ritual at some wedding ceremonies), and reintroduced himself or herself using the informal pronoun. For the rest of the semester, the American students still respectfully referred to the professor with her title, which translated to “Mrs. Doctor,” but used informal pronouns, even in class, while the other students not included in the ceremony had to continue using the formal. Given that we do not use formal and informal pronouns in English anymore, there is no equivalent ritual to the German duzen , but as we will learn next, there are many rituals in English that may be just as foreign to someone else.

Language and Social Context

We arrive at meaning through conversational interaction, which follows many social norms and rules. As we’ve already learned, rules are explicitly stated conventions (“Look at me when I’m talking to you.”) and norms are implicit (saying you’ve got to leave before you actually do to politely initiate the end to a conversation). To help conversations function meaningfully, we have learned social norms and internalized them to such an extent that we do not often consciously enact them. Instead, we rely on routines and roles (as determined by social forces) to help us proceed with verbal interaction, which also helps determine how a conversation will unfold. Our various social roles influence meaning and how we speak. For example, a person may say, “As a longtime member of this community…” or “As a first-generation college student…” Such statements cue others into the personal and social context from which we are speaking, which helps them better interpret our meaning.

One social norm that structures our communication is turn taking. People need to feel like they are contributing something to an interaction, so turn taking is a central part of how conversations play out (Crystal, 2005). Although we sometimes talk at the same time as others or interrupt them, there are numerous verbal and nonverbal cues, almost like a dance, that are exchanged between speakers that let people know when their turn will begin or end. Conversations do not always neatly progress from beginning to end with shared understanding along the way. There is a back and forth that is often verbally managed through rephrasing (“Let me try that again,”) and clarification (“Does that make sense?”) (Crystal, 2005)

We also have certain units of speech that facilitate turn taking. Adjacency pairs are related communication structures that come one after the other (adjacent to each other) in an interaction (Crystal, 2005). For example, questions are followed by answers, greetings are followed by responses, compliments are followed by a thank you, and informative comments are followed by an acknowledgment. These are the skeletal components that make up our verbal interactions, and they are largely social in that they facilitate our interactions. When these sequences don’t work out, confusion, miscommunication, or frustration may result, as you can see in the following sequences:

Travis: “How are you?”

Wanda: “Did someone tell you I’m sick?”

Darrell: “I just wanted to let you know the meeting has been moved to three o’clock.”

Leigh: “I had cake for breakfast this morning.”

Some conversational elements are highly scripted or ritualized, especially the beginning and end of an exchange and topic changes (Crystal, 2005). Conversations often begin with a standard greeting and then proceed to “safe” exchanges about things in the immediate field of experience of the communicators (a comment on the weather or noting something going on in the scene). At this point, once the ice is broken, people can move on to other more content-specific exchanges. Once conversing, before we can initiate a topic change, it is a social norm that we let the current topic being discussed play itself out or continue until the person who introduced the topic seems satisfied. We then usually try to find a relevant tie-in or segue that acknowledges the previous topic, in turn acknowledging the speaker, before actually moving on. Changing the topic without following such social conventions might indicate to the other person that you were not listening or are simply rude.

Social norms influence how conversations start and end and how speakers take turns to keep the conversation going.

Felipe Cabrera – conversation – CC BY 2.0.

Ending a conversation is similarly complex. I’m sure we’ve all been in a situation where we are “trapped” in a conversation that we need or want to get out of. Just walking away or ending a conversation without engaging in socially acceptable “leave-taking behaviors” would be considered a breach of social norms. Topic changes are often places where people can leave a conversation, but it is still routine for us to give a special reason for leaving, often in an apologetic tone (whether we mean it or not). Generally though, conversations come to an end through the cooperation of both people, as they offer and recognize typical signals that a topic area has been satisfactorily covered or that one or both people need to leave. It is customary in the United States for people to say they have to leave before they actually do and for that statement to be dismissed or ignored by the other person until additional leave-taking behaviors are enacted. When such cooperation is lacking, an awkward silence or abrupt ending can result, and as we’ve already learned, US Americans are not big fans of silence. Silence is not viewed the same way in other cultures, which leads us to our discussion of cultural context.

Language and Cultural Context

Culture isn’t solely determined by a person’s native language or nationality. It’s true that languages vary by country and region and that the language we speak influences our realities, but even people who speak the same language experience cultural differences because of their various intersecting cultural identities and personal experiences. We have a tendency to view our language as a whole more favorably than other languages. Although people may make persuasive arguments regarding which languages are more pleasing to the ear or difficult or easy to learn than others, no one language enables speakers to communicate more effectively than another (McCornack, 2007).

From birth we are socialized into our various cultural identities. As with the social context, this acculturation process is a combination of explicit and implicit lessons. A child in Colombia, which is considered a more collectivist country in which people value group membership and cohesion over individualism, may not be explicitly told, “You are a member of a collectivistic culture, so you should care more about the family and community than yourself.” This cultural value would be transmitted through daily actions and through language use. Just as babies acquire knowledge of language practices at an astonishing rate in their first two years of life, so do they acquire cultural knowledge and values that are embedded in those language practices. At nine months old, it is possible to distinguish babies based on their language. Even at this early stage of development, when most babies are babbling and just learning to recognize but not wholly reproduce verbal interaction patterns, a Colombian baby would sound different from a Brazilian baby, even though neither would actually be using words from their native languages of Spanish and Portuguese (Crystal, 2005).

The actual language we speak plays an important role in shaping our reality. Comparing languages, we can see differences in how we are able to talk about the world. In English, we have the words grandfather and grandmother , but no single word that distinguishes between a maternal grandfather and a paternal grandfather. But in Swedish, there’s a specific word for each grandparent: morfar is mother’s father, farfar is father’s father, farmor is father’s mother, and mormor is mother’s mother (Crystal, 2005). In this example, we can see that the words available to us, based on the language we speak, influence how we talk about the world due to differences in and limitations of vocabulary. The notion that language shapes our view of reality and our cultural patterns is best represented by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Although some scholars argue that our reality is determined by our language, we will take a more qualified view and presume that language plays a central role in influencing our realities but doesn’t determine them (Martin & Nakayama, 2010).

Culturally influenced differences in language and meaning can lead to some interesting encounters, ranging from awkward to informative to disastrous. In terms of awkwardness, you have likely heard stories of companies that failed to exhibit communication competence in their naming and/or advertising of products in another language. For example, in Taiwan, Pepsi used the slogan “Come Alive with Pepsi” only to later find out that when translated it meant, “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead” (Kwintessential Limited, 2012). Similarly, American Motors introduced a new car called the Matador to the Puerto Rico market only to learn that Matador means “killer,” which wasn’t very comforting to potential buyers (Kwintessential, 2012). At a more informative level, the words we use to give positive reinforcement are culturally relative. In the United States and England, parents commonly positively and negatively reinforce their child’s behavior by saying, “Good girl” or “Good boy.” There isn’t an equivalent for such a phrase in other European languages, so the usage in only these two countries has been traced back to the puritan influence on beliefs about good and bad behavior (Wierzbicka, 2004). In terms of disastrous consequences, one of the most publicized and deadliest cross-cultural business mistakes occurred in India in 1984. Union Carbide, an American company, controlled a plant used to make pesticides. The company underestimated the amount of cross-cultural training that would be needed to allow the local workers, many of whom were not familiar with the technology or language/jargon used in the instructions for plant operations to do their jobs. This lack of competent communication led to a gas leak that immediately killed more than two thousand people and over time led to more than five hundred thousand injuries (Varma, 2012).

Accents and Dialects

The documentary American Tongues , although dated at this point, is still a fascinating look at the rich tapestry of accents and dialects that makes up American English. Dialects are versions of languages that have distinct words, grammar, and pronunciation. Accents are distinct styles of pronunciation (Lustig & Koester, 2006). There can be multiple accents within one dialect. For example, people in the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States speak a dialect of American English that is characterized by remnants of the linguistic styles of Europeans who settled the area a couple hundred years earlier. Even though they speak this similar dialect, a person in Kentucky could still have an accent that is distinguishable from a person in western North Carolina.

American English has several dialects that vary based on region, class, and ancestry.

Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 4.0.

Dialects and accents can vary by region, class, or ancestry, and they influence the impressions that we make of others. When I moved to Colorado from North Carolina, I was met with a very strange look when I used the word buggy to refer to a shopping cart. Research shows that people tend to think more positively about others who speak with a dialect similar to their own and think more negatively about people who speak differently. Of course, many people think they speak normally and perceive others to have an accent or dialect. Although dialects include the use of different words and phrases, it’s the tone of voice that often creates the strongest impression. For example, a person who speaks with a Southern accent may perceive a New Englander’s accent to be grating, harsh, or rude because the pitch is more nasal and the rate faster. Conversely, a New Englander may perceive a Southerner’s accent to be syrupy and slow, leading to an impression that the person speaking is uneducated.

Customs and Norms

Social norms are culturally relative. The words used in politeness rituals in one culture can mean something completely different in another. For example, thank you in American English acknowledges receiving something (a gift, a favor, a compliment), in British English it can mean “yes” similar to American English’s yes, please , and in French merci can mean “no” as in “no, thank you” (Crystal, 2005). Additionally, what is considered a powerful language style varies from culture to culture. Confrontational language, such as swearing, can be seen as powerful in Western cultures, even though it violates some language taboos, but would be seen as immature and weak in Japan (Wetzel, 1988).

Gender also affects how we use language, but not to the extent that most people think. Although there is a widespread belief that men are more likely to communicate in a clear and straightforward way and women are more likely to communicate in an emotional and indirect way, a meta-analysis of research findings from more than two hundred studies found only small differences in the personal disclosures of men and women (Dindia & Allen, 1992). Men and women’s levels of disclosure are even more similar when engaging in cross-gender communication, meaning men and woman are more similar when speaking to each other than when men speak to men or women speak to women. This could be due to the internalized pressure to speak about the other gender in socially sanctioned ways, in essence reinforcing the stereotypes when speaking to the same gender but challenging them in cross-gender encounters. Researchers also dispelled the belief that men interrupt more than women do, finding that men and women interrupt each other with similar frequency in cross-gender encounters (Dindia, 1987). These findings, which state that men and women communicate more similarly during cross-gender encounters and then communicate in more stereotypical ways in same-gender encounters, can be explained with communication accommodation theory.

Communication Accommodation and Code-Switching

Communication accommodation theory is a theory that explores why and how people modify their communication to fit situational, social, cultural, and relational contexts (Giles, Taylor, & Bourhis, 1973). Within communication accommodation, conversational partners may use convergence , meaning a person makes his or her communication more like another person’s. People who are accommodating in their communication style are seen as more competent, which illustrates the benefits of communicative flexibility. In order to be flexible, of course, people have to be aware of and monitor their own and others’ communication patterns. Conversely, conversational partners may use divergence , meaning a person uses communication to emphasize the differences between his or her conversational partner and his or herself.

Convergence and divergence can take place within the same conversation and may be used by one or both conversational partners. Convergence functions to make others feel at ease, to increase understanding, and to enhance social bonds. Divergence may be used to intentionally make another person feel unwelcome or perhaps to highlight a personal, group, or cultural identity. For example, African American women use certain verbal communication patterns when communicating with other African American women as a way to highlight their racial identity and create group solidarity. In situations where multiple races interact, the women usually don’t use those same patterns, instead accommodating the language patterns of the larger group. While communication accommodation might involve anything from adjusting how fast or slow you talk to how long you speak during each turn, code-switching refers to changes in accent, dialect, or language (Martin & Nakayama, 2010). There are many reasons that people might code-switch. Regarding accents, some people hire vocal coaches or speech-language pathologists to help them alter their accent. If a Southern person thinks their accent is leading others to form unfavorable impressions, they can consciously change their accent with much practice and effort. Once their ability to speak without their Southern accent is honed, they may be able to switch very quickly between their native accent when speaking with friends and family and their modified accent when speaking in professional settings.

People who work or live in multilingual settings may engage in code-switching several times a day.

Eltpics – Welsh – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Additionally, people who work or live in multilingual settings may code-switch many times throughout the day, or even within a single conversation. Increasing outsourcing and globalization have produced heightened pressures for code-switching. Call center workers in India have faced strong negative reactions from British and American customers who insist on “speaking to someone who speaks English.” Although many Indians learn English in schools as a result of British colonization, their accents prove to be off-putting to people who want to get their cable package changed or book an airline ticket. Now some Indian call center workers are going through intense training to be able to code-switch and accommodate the speaking style of their customers. What is being called the “Anglo-Americanization of India” entails “accent-neutralization,” lessons on American culture (using things like Sex and the City DVDs), and the use of Anglo-American-sounding names like Sean and Peggy (Pal, 2004). As our interactions continue to occur in more multinational contexts, the expectations for code-switching and accommodation are sure to increase. It is important for us to consider the intersection of culture and power and think critically about the ways in which expectations for code-switching may be based on cultural biases.

Language and Cultural Bias

In the previous example about code-switching and communication accommodation in Indian call centers, the move toward accent neutralization is a response to the “racist abuse” these workers receive from customers (Nadeem, 2012). Anger in Western countries about job losses and economic uncertainty has increased the amount of racially targeted verbal attacks on international call center employees. It was recently reported that more call center workers are now quitting their jobs as a result of the verbal abuse and that 25 percent of workers who have recently quit say such abuse was a major source of stress (Gentleman, 2005). Such verbal attacks are not new; they represent a common but negative way that cultural bias explicitly manifests in our language use.

Cultural bias is a skewed way of viewing or talking about a group that is typically negative. Bias has a way of creeping into our daily language use, often under our awareness. Culturally biased language can make reference to one or more cultural identities, including race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and ability. There are other sociocultural identities that can be the subject of biased language, but we will focus our discussion on these five. Much biased language is based on stereotypes and myths that influence the words we use. Bias is both intentional and unintentional, but as we’ve already discussed, we have to be accountable for what we say even if we didn’t “intend” a particular meaning—remember, meaning is generated; it doesn’t exist inside our thoughts or words. We will discuss specific ways in which cultural bias manifests in our language and ways to become more aware of bias. Becoming aware of and addressing cultural bias is not the same thing as engaging in “political correctness.” Political correctness takes awareness to the extreme but doesn’t do much to address cultural bias aside from make people feel like they are walking on eggshells. That kind of pressure can lead people to avoid discussions about cultural identities or avoid people with different cultural identities. Our goal is not to eliminate all cultural bias from verbal communication or to never offend anyone, intentionally or otherwise. Instead, we will continue to use guidelines for ethical communication that we have already discussed and strive to increase our competence. The following discussion also focuses on bias rather than preferred terminology or outright discriminatory language, which will be addressed more in Chapter 8 “Culture and Communication” , which discusses culture and communication.

People sometimes use euphemisms for race that illustrate bias because the terms are usually implicitly compared to the dominant group (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 2010). For example, referring to a person as “urban” or a neighborhood as “inner city” can be an accurate descriptor, but when such words are used as a substitute for racial identity, they illustrate cultural biases that equate certain races with cities and poverty. Using adjectives like articulate or well-dressed in statements like “My black coworker is articulate” reinforces negative stereotypes even though these words are typically viewed as positive. Terms like nonwhite set up whiteness as the norm, which implies that white people are the norm against which all other races should be compared. Biased language also reduces the diversity within certain racial groups—for example, referring to anyone who looks like they are of Asian descent as Chinese or everyone who “looks” Latino/a as Mexicans. Some people with racial identities other than white, including people who are multiracial, use the label person/people of color to indicate solidarity among groups, but it is likely that they still prefer a more specific label when referring to an individual or referencing a specific racial group.

Language has a tendency to exaggerate perceived and stereotypical differences between men and women. The use of the term opposite sex presumes that men and women are opposites, like positive and negative poles of a magnet, which is obviously not true or men and women wouldn’t be able to have successful interactions or relationships. A term like other gender doesn’t presume opposites and acknowledges that male and female identities and communication are more influenced by gender, which is the social and cultural meanings and norms associated with males and females, than sex, which is the physiology and genetic makeup of a male and female. One key to avoiding gendered bias in language is to avoid the generic use of he when referring to something relevant to males and females. Instead, you can informally use a gender-neutral pronoun like they or their or you can use his or her (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 2010). When giving a series of examples, you can alternate usage of masculine and feminine pronouns, switching with each example. We have lasting gendered associations with certain occupations that have tended to be male or female dominated, which erase the presence of both genders. Other words reflect the general masculine bias present in English. The following word pairs show the gender-biased term followed by an unbiased term: waitress/server, chairman / chair or chairperson, mankind/people, cameraman / camera operator, mailman / postal worker, sportsmanship / fair play. Common language practices also tend to infantilize women but not men, when, for example, women are referred to as chicks , girls , or babes . Since there is no linguistic equivalent that indicates the marital status of men before their name, using Ms. instead of Miss or Mrs. helps reduce bias.

Language that includes age bias can be directed toward older or younger people. Descriptions of younger people often presume recklessness or inexperience, while those of older people presume frailty or disconnection. The term elderly generally refers to people over sixty-five, but it has connotations of weakness, which isn’t accurate because there are plenty of people over sixty-five who are stronger and more athletic than people in their twenties and thirties. Even though it’s generic, older people doesn’t really have negative implications. More specific words that describe groups of older people include grandmothers/grandfathers (even though they can be fairly young too), retirees , or people over sixty-five (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 2010). Referring to people over the age of eighteen as boys or girls isn’t typically viewed as appropriate.

Age bias can appear in language directed toward younger or older people.

Davide Mauro – Old and young – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Sexual Orientation

Discussions of sexual and affectional orientation range from everyday conversations to contentious political and personal debates. The negative stereotypes that have been associated with homosexuality, including deviance, mental illness, and criminal behavior, continue to influence our language use (American Psychological Association, 2012). Terminology related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and asexual (LGBTQA+) people can be confusing, so let’s spend some time raise our awareness about preferred labels. First, sexual orientation is the term preferred to sexual preference . Preference suggests a voluntary choice, as in someone has a preference for cheddar or American cheese, which doesn’t reflect the experience of most LGBTQA+ people or research findings that show sexuality is more complex. You may also see affectional orientation included with sexual orientation because it acknowledges that LGBTQA+ relationships, like heterosexual relationships, are about intimacy and closeness (affection) that is not just sexually based. Most people also prefer the labels gay , lesbian , or bisexual to homosexual , which is clinical and doesn’t so much refer to an identity as a sex act. Language regarding romantic relationships contains bias when heterosexuality is assumed. Keep in mind that individuals are not allowed to marry someone of the same gender in most states in the United States. For example, if you ask a gay man who has been in a committed partnership for ten years if he is “married or single,” how should he answer that question? Comments comparing LGBTQA+ people to “normal” people, although possibly intended to be positive, reinforces the stereotype that LGBTQA+ people are abnormal. Don’t presume you can identify a person’s sexual orientation by looking at them or talking to them. Don’t assume that LGBTQA+ people will “come out” to you. Given that many LGBTQA+ people have faced and continue to face regular discrimination, they may be cautious about disclosing their identities. However, using gender neutral terminology like partner and avoiding other biased language mentioned previously may create a climate in which a LGBTQA+ person feels comfortable disclosing his or her sexual orientation identity. Conversely, the casual use of phrases like that’s gay to mean “that’s stupid” may create an environment in which LGBTQA+ people do not feel comfortable. Even though people don’t often use the phrase to actually refer to sexual orientation, campaigns like “ThinkB4YouSpeak.com” try to educate people about the power that language has and how we should all be more conscious of the words we use.

People with disabilities make up a diverse group that has increasingly come to be viewed as a cultural/social identity group. People without disabilities are often referred to as able-bodied . As with sexual orientation, comparing people with disabilities to “normal” people implies that there is an agreed-on definition of what “normal” is and that people with disabilities are “abnormal.” Disability is also preferred to the word handicap . Just because someone is disabled doesn’t mean he or she is also handicapped. The environment around them rather than their disability often handicaps people with disabilities (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 2010). Ignoring the environment as the source of a handicap and placing it on the person fits into a pattern of reducing people with disabilities to their disability—for example, calling someone a paraplegic instead of a person with paraplegia. In many cases, as with sexual orientation, race, age, and gender, verbally marking a person as disabled isn’t relevant and doesn’t need spotlighting. Language used in conjunction with disabilities also tends to portray people as victims of their disability and paint pictures of their lives as gloomy, dreadful, or painful. Such descriptors are often generalizations or completely inaccurate.

“Getting Critical”

Hate Speech

Hate is a term that has many different meanings and can be used to communicate teasing, mild annoyance, or anger. The term hate , as it relates to hate speech, has a much more complex and serious meaning. Hate refers to extreme negative beliefs and feelings toward a group or member of a group because of their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or ability (Waltman & Haas, 2011). We can get a better understanding of the intensity of hate by distinguishing it from anger, which is an emotion that we experience much more regularly. First, anger is directed toward an individual, while hate is directed toward a social or cultural group. Second, anger doesn’t prevent a person from having sympathy for the target of his or her anger, but hate erases sympathy for the target. Third, anger is usually the result of personal insult or injury, but hate can exist and grow even with no direct interaction with the target. Fourth, anger isn’t an emotion that people typically find pleasure in, while hatred can create feelings of self-righteousness and superiority that lead to pleasure. Last, anger is an emotion that usually dissipates as time passes, eventually going away, while hate can endure for much longer (Waltman & Haas, 2011). Hate speech is a verbal manifestation of this intense emotional and mental state.

Hate speech is usually used by people who have a polarized view of their own group (the in-group) and another group (the out-group). Hate speech is then used to intimidate people in the out-group and to motivate and influence members of the in-group. Hate speech often promotes hate-based violence and is also used to solidify in-group identification and attract new members (Waltman & Haas, 2011). Perpetrators of hate speech often engage in totalizing, which means they define a person or a group based on one quality or characteristic, ignoring all others. A Lebanese American may be the target of hate speech because the perpetrators reduce him to a Muslim—whether he actually is Muslim or not would be irrelevant. Grouping all Middle Eastern- or Arab-looking people together is a dehumanizing activity that is typical to hate speech.

Incidents of hate speech and hate crimes have increased over the past fifteen years. Hate crimes, in particular, have gotten more attention due to the passage of more laws against hate crimes and the increased amount of tracking by various levels of law enforcement. The Internet has also made it easier for hate groups to organize and spread their hateful messages. As these changes have taken place over the past fifteen years, there has been much discussion about hate speech and its legal and constitutional implications. While hate crimes resulting in damage to a person or property are regularly prosecuted, it is sometimes argued that hate speech that doesn’t result in such damage is protected under the US Constitution’s First Amendment, which guarantees free speech. Just recently, in 2011, the Supreme Court found in the Snyder v. Phelps case that speech and actions of the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, who regularly protest the funerals of American soldiers with signs reading things like “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “Fag Sin = 9/11,” were protected and not criminal. Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the decision, “We cannot react to [the Snyder family’s] pain by punishing the speaker. As a nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate” (Exploring Constitutional Conflicts, 2012).

• Do you think the First Amendment of the Constitution, guaranteeing free speech to US citizens, should protect hate speech? Why or why not?
• Visit the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Map” (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2012) (http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map) to see what hate groups they have identified in your state. Are you surprised by the number/nature of the groups listed in your state? Briefly describe a group that you didn’t know about and identify the target of its hate and the reasons it gives for its hate speech.

Key Takeaways

• Getting integrated: Social context influences the ways in which we use language, and we have been socialized to follow implicit social rules like those that guide the flow of conversations, including how we start and end our interactions and how we change topics. The way we use language changes as we shift among academic, professional, personal, and civic contexts.
• The language that we speak influences our cultural identities and our social realities. We internalize norms and rules that help us function in our own culture but that can lead to misunderstanding when used in other cultural contexts.
• We can adapt to different cultural contexts by purposely changing our communication. Communication accommodation theory explains that people may adapt their communication to be more similar to or different from others based on various contexts.
• We should become aware of how our verbal communication reveals biases toward various cultural identities based on race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and ability.
• Recall a conversation that became awkward when you or the other person deviated from the social norms that manage conversation flow. Was the awkwardness at the beginning, end, or during a topic change? After reviewing some of the common norms discussed in the chapter, what do you think was the source of the awkwardness?
• Describe an accent or a dialect that you find pleasing/interesting. Describe an accent/dialect that you do not find pleasing/interesting. Why do you think you evaluate one positively and the other negatively?
• Review how cultural bias relates to the five cultural identities discussed earlier. Identify something you learned about bias related to one of these identities that you didn’t know before. What can you do now to be more aware of how verbal communication can reinforce cultural biases?

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Communication in the Real World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Language, Culture, and Society: Key Topics in Linguistic Anthropology

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Language and its importance to society | essay.

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Essay on Language and its Importance to Society!

Language and Society

From what has been written so far it is clear that man is possessed of natural sociality. His disposition to band together with his fellows for lower or for higher purposes is one of his fundamental characteristics. To understand his fellows and to be understood by them, men were impelled to the production of language without which they could not communicate with each other.

The desire of communication was the main cause of language making. Nowhere has the old proverb “Necessity is the mother of invention” received a better illustration than in the history of language; it was to satisfy the wants of daily life that the faculty of speech was first exercised. Charles Winick has defined language as “a system of arbitrary vocal symbols, used to express communicable thoughts and feelings and enabling the members of a social group or speech community to interact and to co-operate.” It is the medium of oral expression.

The Origin of Language:

Language is an institution:

Language is a product not of one cause but of several factors. It is, in fact a social creation, a human invention an unconscious invention of a whole community. As Professor Whitney has observed, it is as much an institution as a body of unwritten laws, and like these it has been called forth by the needs of developing society.”

The linguists are not in a position to form any conjectures as to the precise point in the history of man at which the germs of speech should have appeared, and the time which they should have occupied in the successive steps of their development. That the process was a slow one, all agree.

To quote Whitney, “Language making is a mere incident of social life and of cultural growth. It is as great an error to hold that at some period men are engaged in making and laying up expressions for their own future use and that of their descendants, as that, at another period, succession shall find expression. Each period provides just what it has occasion for, nothing more. The production of language is a continuous process; it varies in rate and kind with the circumstances and habits of the speaking community, but it never ceases; there was never a time when it was more truly going than at present.”

Thus language is not the creation of one person or of one period but it is an institution, on which hundreds of generations and countless individual workers have worked.

Three Instrumentalities of Expression :

The traditional instrumentalities of expression are gestures, grimace and tone. Gesture means the changes of the position of the various parts of the body, especially of the most mobile parts, the arms and hands; grimace means the change of expression of features of the countenance, and tone is the utterance of or the production of audible sound.”

These are also termed natural means of expression. In the first stages of communicative expression, all these three were used together, and in fact, there can never have been a period or stage in which all the three instrumentalities were not put to use together. They are used even today. It is very interesting to know what signs or what facial expressions were used for words.”

James gave a list of 104 signs employed by the North American Indians in the place of words. Darkness, for instance, was indicated by extending the hands horizontally forwards and backwards and passing one over the other so as to touch it once or twice; a man by a finger held up vertically; running by first doubling the arm upon itself and then throwing the elbow backwards and forwards. Out of these three instrumentalities of expression voice or tone has won to itself the chief and almost exclusive part in communication.

How long man, after he came into such being as he now is physically and intellectually, continued to communicate with signs is a question which is idle to try to answer even conjecturally. How the first scanty and formless signs have been changed into the immense variety and fullness of existing speech, it is impossible to point out because nearly the whole process is hidden in the darkness of an impenetrable past.

Probably the man had to undergo the same labour in learning the speech which a child has now to undergo in learning its mother-tongue with this difference that primitive man was a grown child who painfully elaborated a language for himself whereas the individual child has but to acquire a language already formed.

The Importance of Language :

Language is a constituent element of civilization. It raised man from a savage state to the plane which he was capable of reaching. Man could not become man except by language. An essential point in which man differs from animals is that man alone is the sole possessor of language. No doubt animals also exhibit certain degree of power of communication but that is not only inferior in degree to human language, but also radically diverse in kind from it.

Language is one of the most marked, conspicuous, as well as fundamentally characteristic of the faculties of man. The importance of language for man and society cannot be minimised. As a personal thing, language is not only a mode of communication between individuals but is also a way for the expression of their personality.

Sociologically, language moulds the individual from infancy. The child comes to know most of the things of the world through language.

It is an important attribute of his personality. Its importance to the society lies in the following:

(i) Easy Social Contact:

Firstly, it makes social contact easy. Society, as we have seen, is a web of social relationships which imply development of social contacts among the individuals with language contacts become easy to be established because men can easily exchange their ideas. According to E. H. Sturtevant, “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by which members of a social group cooperate and interact.

(ii) Culture-Carrier:

Secondly, language helps or hinders the spread of culture. Ideas require language. Sometimes an idea or concept is hard to translate because the language has no words with which to express it. We are facing this difficulty in our country because Hindi, our national language does not possess terms for a number of English words used in sciences.

The Hindi linguists have coined some words to replace English as a medium of instruction. These coined words are, however, more difficult to understand and remember than the English words. Language conserves our culture which it passes to posterity. Language may be called culture-carrier.

The culture that exists at a given time and place has come from the past and is the result of accumulation of things, attitudes, ideas, knowledge, error and prejudice. The animals as we have seen are incapable of speech except for a few sounds and so incapable of having any culture and civilization. It is man alone who through language has acquired a high degree of culture and civilization. As pointed out above it raised man from savage state to a noble state.

(iii) Easy Conveyance of Ideas:

Thirdly, language gives a capacity for conveying ideas about a great variety of things. In times when there was no language the ideas were transmitted by signs or cries which were not easy to interpret. Man felt great difficulty in the clear expression of states of emotion.

There was no uniformity of these signs or cries. Some of these signs were quite complicated, for instance, ‘man’ was denoted- by extending the forefinger, the rest of the hand being shut, and drawing a line with it from the pit of the stomach down as far as can be conveniently reached.

But with the invention of language now a number of ideas and states of emotion can be conveyed in an easy and simple way. A language that could transmit an idea such as “the flood came and destroyed the houses” through delicate variations in sound was an achievement far superior Lo the transmission of ideas by a variety of cries.

Thus importance of language to society is clear. It has led man from mere clumsy animal to a human being in the real sense of the word. It has simplified the conveyance of ideas, smoothed social contacts, conserved our culture and transmitted it Lo posterity. In fact, language is very valuable possession which has elevated man from the level of a savage to the plane of the ‘Lord of Creation’.

Need for a Universal Language:

The people of different parts of the world speak different languages. Not only that, people living in the same territory use different languages or speak different dialects. These differences in the language of the people of the world have served to limit inter-group communication and perpetuate social isolation.

Since language is a great medium of communication the assumption has been made that if the people of the world have the same language it may help a great deal in removing the culture barriers and bring the people of the world nearer to each other thereby serving the cause of international understanding and cooperation.

No doubt, a universal language may help in the cultural unification of the people of the world and remove misunderstanding that grow out of inability to communicate effectively, but the practical difficulty is to find out such a language.

The proponents of different languages claim that ‘their language is better than any other language and that it alone provides a more efficient means of communication that it is more explicit, more logical, more flexible and far more easier to master.

Efforts have also been made to improve the existing languages, to make them more simplified and logical. But as yet no universal single language has been agreed upon and consequently the linguistic differences continue. It is also difficult for any people to learn more readily any other language than the mother-tongue.

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Language, Culture, and Society

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Why should we study language? How do the ways in which we communicate define our identities? And how is this all changing in the digital world? Since 1993, many have turned to Language, Culture, and Society for answers to questions like those above because of its comprehensive coverage of all critical aspects of linguistic anthropology. This seventh edition carries on the legacy while addressing some of the newer pressing and exciting challenges of the 21st century, such as issues of language and power, language ideology, and linguistic diasporas. Chapters on gender, race, and class also examine how language helps create - and is created by - identity. New to this edition are enhanced and updated pedagogical features, such as learning objectives, updated resources for continued learning, and the inclusion of a glossary. There is also an expanded discussion of communication online and of social media outlets and how that universe is changing how we interact. The discussion on race and ethnicity has also been expanded to include Latin- and Asian-American English vernacular.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 | 16  pages, introducing linguistic anthropology, chapter 2 | 18  pages, methods of linguistic anthropology, chapter 3 | 31  pages, the “nuts and bolts” of linguistic anthropology i: language is sound, chapter | 21  pages, the“nuts and bolts”; of linguistic anthropology ii: structure of words and sentences learning objectives, chapter | 28  pages, communicating nonverbally, the development and evolution of language: language birth, language growth, and language death learning objectives, chapter | 15  pages, acquiring and using language(s): life with first languages, second languages, and more, chapter | 20  pages, language through time, chapter 9 | 20  pages, languages in variation and languages in contact, chapter 10 | 13  pages, the ethnography of communication, chapter 11 | 18  pages, culture as cognition, culture as categorization: meaning and language in the conceptual world, chapter 12 | 26  pages, language, culture, and thought, chapter 13 | 39  pages, language, identity, and ideology i: variations in gender, chapter 14 | 35  pages, language, identity, and ideology ii: variations in class, ″race, ″ ethnicity, and nationality, chapter 15 | 35  pages, the linguistic anthropology of a globalized and digitalized world.

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Language, Culture and Society provides an international platform for cutting-edge research that advances thinking and understanding of the complex intersections of language, culture and society, with the aim of pushing traditional disciplinary boundaries through theoretical and methodological innovation. Contributors are encouraged to pay close attention to the contextualized forms of semiotic human activity upon which social conventions, categories and indexical meanings are constructed, actualized, negotiated and disputed vis-à-vis wider social, cultural, racial, economic and historical conditions. The journal is open to analysis focusing on different spatio-temporal scales; it also welcomes contributions addressing such issues through the lens of any of the analytical paradigms stemming from the sociolinguistic and anthropological study of language, discourse and communication. Exploration of new communicative contexts and practices is considered particularly valuable, and research that breaks new ground by making connections with other disciplines is highly encouraged. Thinking-aloud pieces, reactions and debates, and other alternative formats of contributions are also welcome.

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Language and culture.

• Ee Lin Lee Ee Lin Lee Department of Communication Studies, Western Washington University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.26
• Published online: 07 July 2016

Language is an arbitrary and conventional symbolic resource situated within a cultural system. While it marks speakers’ different assumptions and worldviews, it also creates much tension in communication. Therefore, scholars have long sought to understand the role of language in human communication. Communication researchers, as well as those from other disciplines (e.g., linguistics, anthropology, psychology, and sociology), draw on each other’s works to study language and culture. The interdisciplinary nature of the works results in the use of various research methods and theoretical frameworks. Therefore, the main goal of this essay is to sketch the history and evolution of the study of language and culture in the communication discipline in the United States.

Due to space constraints only select works, particularly those that are considered landmarks in the field, are highlighted here. The fundamentals of language and the development of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis in leading to the formation of the language and social interaction (LSI) discipline are briefly described. The main areas of LSI study—namely language pragmatics, conversation analysis, discourse analysis, and the ethnography of communication—are summarized. Particular attention is paid to several influential theories and analytical frameworks: the speech act theory, Grice’s maxims of implicatures, politeness theory, discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis, the ethnography of speaking, speech codes theory, and cultural discourse analysis. Criticisms and debates about the trends and directions of the scholarship are also examined.

• conversation analysis
• discourse analysis
• ethnography of speaking

The Fundamentals of Language

A major task of language researchers is to understand the complexities entailed in the structures of talk in order to unfold and understand sociality, including human nature, cultural values, power structure, social inequality, and so on. Researchers in language, culture, and communication study language situated in cultural nuances in order to understand language use in enhancing intergroup and intercultural dialogue. Although language enables learning and bonding, it also confuses interlocutors with contradictory yet deep and rich multi-layered meanings, such as (mis)interpretation of intentions, violation of normative conduct, and repair of conversations that have gone awry.

In a way, language not only construes our perception, but also constructs our social reality by manifesting actual social consequences. For example, the word race represents something that does not exist in physical reality, but it has real implications and consequences (e.g., discrimination, social disparity, unequal access to healthcare, etc.). Here, language allows the creation of actual and persistent perceptions (e.g., bad, inferior, non-deserving, and so on) that determine aspects of people’s lives. In fact, the role of language in influencing interlocutors’ perception and communication remains one of the most popular opening lines in empirical studies focusing on language and culture.

How Language Shapes Perception

Known as linguistic relativity, the notion that language influences our thinking about social issues derives from Edward Sapir’s works in anthropology and linguistics in the 1920s (Mandelbaum, 1963 ). Sapir studied the lexical dissections and categorization and grammatical features from the corpora obtained during his fieldwork over several decades. While studying the languages of different North American Indian tribes, including those living in Washington and Oregon in the U.S. and Vancouver in Canada, Sapir found, for example, that the Hopi language did not have lexical equivalents for the English words time, past , or the future . Therefore, he suggested that the Hopi worldview about temporal communication was different from the English worldview. In his lectures Sapir promoted the understanding of language as a system embedded in culture. Thereafter, based on Sapir’s findings, researchers studying language inferred that if there was no word for, say, you in a certain language, then speakers of that language treat you as nonexistent.

Benjamin Lee Whorf, a student of Sapir’s, later suggested that language could, to some extent, determine the nature of our thinking. Known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or linguistic determinism, the notion that language is a shaper of ideas or thought inspired further empirical testing (Whorf, 1952 ). This led some researchers to conclude that speakers of different languages (e.g., Polish, Chinese, Japanese, English, etc.) see their realities differently. The investigation of the effects of languages on human behaviors, as influenced by Sapir’s and Whorf’s works, continues to be a popular topic in various academic disciplines.

During its postwar rebuilding efforts overseas in the 1930s, the U.S. government recruited linguists and anthropologists to train its personnel at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI). While linguists researching the micro-level elements of languages successfully taught FSI officers how to speak different languages, anthropologists studying the macro-level components of culture (e.g., economy, government, religious, family practices, etc.) taught the officers how to communicate effectively with people from different cultures (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1990 ). The research and training collaboration between linguists, anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists at FSI showed that the learning of a foreign culture was not merely about acquiring language skills or translating from one language to another, but a holistic understanding of language in a wider context.

While the teaching of foreign languages to FSI officers was efficient, teaching anthropological understanding of foreign cultures was more challenging. Moreover, during the 1940s the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis and the notion that language frames people’s worldview were contested in empirical findings. About the same time, Edward Twitchell Hall, who is credited with founding the field of intercultural communication, strongly promoted his belief that effective communication between two people from different cultural backgrounds (i.e., intercultural communication) should combine verbal (i.e., speech) and nonverbal (i.e., non-linguistic) communication embedded in a cultural context (Hall, 1966 ).

Citing efficiency, researchers at the time developed language translation programs that enabled the quick learning of intercultural communication. In this approach of linguistic universalism, researchers assumed structural equivalence across languages—that word-by-word translation can foster cultural understanding (Chomsky, 1972 ). This shift of direction in academic research challenged Sapir’s proposition of the understanding of culture and communication based on common conceptual systems—the notion that meanings and values of concepts cannot be truly understood without understanding the cultural system.

Regardless of the competing viewpoints, research on how speakers of different languages operate under different language and communication systems continues to date. Researchers have also widened the scope of the language and culture program to include the study of language use and functions (i.e., communicative purposes) in and across different cultural systems. Although the translation of the linguistic corpora into the English language is commonly featured in proprietary research publications, analyzing discourse data in the native languages is preferred. Language is therefore treated as intact with the cultural system. This line of study, despite differences in methodological and theoretical frameworks, forms the basis for a specific discipline within the communication field called language and social interaction (LSI).

The LSI discipline focuses on the study of human discourse and human interaction in situatedness. Scholars pursuing this line of research seek to understand the development of speech and language processes in various settings, from small group to interpersonal, including face-to-face and those mediated by technology (see International Communication Association [ICA] and National Communication Association websites, respectively). The scholarship employs qualitative and quantitative methods and includes verbal (i.e., speech) and nonverbal communication (i.e., nonlinguistic cues) (see the ICA website ). The various methodological and theoretical frameworks used include social psychology, ethnography of speaking, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and narrative analysis. Although well-established and housed in the communication field, works in LSI are interdisciplinary.

While LSI studies also include nonverbal communication as a language system, scholarship on speech—whether naturally occurring, elicited, mediated, or written—outnumber those focusing on nonverbal communication. The paucity of nonverbal scholarship in the LSI discipline underscores the challenges of recording nonverbal communication for data analysis (Fitch & Sanders, 2005 ). Although studies pertaining to how social life is lived in situated conversation and language is used in various interactional settings dominate LSI research discourse, the study of nonverbal communication as language deserves its own coverage as a (sub)discipline. Consequently, this essay focuses on the scholarship on speech in LSI. The following sections review a selection of the LSI subdisciplines organized by research methods, or more commonly conceptualized as analytical frameworks and procedures: language pragmatics, conversation analysis, discourse analysis, and the ethnography of communication. The review highlights a few major theories or theoretical frameworks in each subdiscipline, namely the speech act theory, Grice’s maxims of implicatures, politeness theory, discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis, the ethnography of speaking, speech codes theory, and cultural discourse analysis.

Language Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the study of language usage or talk in interaction. Researchers who study language pragmatics investigate the meanings of utterances in relation to speech situations in the specific contexts of use. Two theoretical frameworks that are commonly cited in language pragmatics are the speech act theory and Grice’s maxims of conversational implicatures, from which the influential politeness theory derives. These theoretical frameworks emerged from the examination of language independently from context, including situational factors that influence the cultural assumptions of the speaker and hearer.

Speech Act Theory

In an attempt to understand utterances in interaction, Austin ( 1962 ) explained speech acts as communicative acts in which speakers perform actions via utterances in specific contexts. Called performatives , these are illocutionary acts in which the speaker asserts a demand through utterances. Illocutionary acts contain force— that is, they allow the speaker to perform an act without necessary naming the act (e.g., apology, question, offer, refuse, thank, etc.). Austin illustrated three types of force: (a) locution , the words in the utterances; (b) illocution , the intention of the speaker; and (c) perlocution , the consequential effects of the utterance upon the thoughts, feelings, or actions on the hearer.

The speaker’s illocutionary act is said to be happy when the hearer understands the locution and illocutionary forces. In order for the speaker’s illocutionary act to be happy, the utterance has to fulfill felicity conditions. Felicitous illocutionary acts are those that meet social and cultural criteria and bring about effects on the hearer that the speaker intended (Searle, 1969 ). Thus, illocutionary acts are conventionalized messages, because their performance is an engagement in rule-governed behavior (also see Goffman, 1967 ).

Searle extended Austin’s concept of speech acts and elaborated on the speech act theory by identifying the conditions necessary for the realization of speech acts. For example, to promise, the speaker needs sincerity and intentionality; to declare the marital union of two partners, a priest or a judge has to be present. Hence the successful performance of a speech act depends on whether the constituent conditions of a particular speech act are fulfilled, or a particular speech act is realized in a contextually appropriate manner (i.e., in relation to sociocultural factors).

Searle developed a typology to categorize speech acts: (a) representatives , where the speaker says how something is, like asserting; (b) directives , the speaker tries to get the hearer to perform some future action, such as requesting and warning; (c) commissives , the speaker commits to some future course of action, such as pledging and promising; (d) expressives , the speaker articulates his or her psychological state of mind about some prior action, such as apologizing and thanking; and (e) declaratives , performatives that require non-linguist institutions, such as christening or sentencing. These conditions must be fulfilled for the speaker to effect the specific act.

The speech act theory can be used to describe utterance sequences—for example, to predict antecedents and consequents in a conversation. Thus, when a violation of the typology occurred, speech act theory successfully predicted repairs and other signs of troubles in the conversational moves. However, Searle’s taxonomy was criticized for several reasons. First, while Searle treated illocutionary acts as consisting of complete sentences in grammatical form, such acts can be very short utterances that do not follow the complete object-verb-subject structure (e.g., “Forge on!”). On the other hand, the speaker may need to utter several sentences to bring about effects on the hearer (e.g., advising). Second, Searle assumed that the felicity conditions for successful performances are universal, but later studies found that the conditions are indeed specific to the culture.

Furthermore, Searle subscribed to a linear, speaker-to-hearer view of transaction that dismissed the interactional aspect of language. The hearer’s role was minimized; specifically, the hearer’s influence on the speaker’s construction of utterances was ignored. Searle also neglected perlocutionary acts, which focus on the intention of the speaker. Instead, he focused solely on the linguistic goal of deliberate expression of an intentional state while overlooking extralinguistic cues. In short, the speech act theory could not account for intentionality and variability in discourse.

Grice’s Maxims of Implicatures

By moving beyond the linear (i.e., speaker-to-hearer) view of transaction, Grice proposed the cooperative principle ( 1989 ). He observed that interlocutors engage in collaborative efforts in social interaction in order to attain a common goal. In Grice’s view, collaborative efforts do not mean agreement; they mean that the speaker and the hearer work together in the conversation. According to the principle, participants follow four conversational maxims: quantity (be informative), quality (be truthful), relation (be relevant), and manner (be clear, be brief). Since these four maxims vary by culture, the interlocutors need to have culturally nuanced knowledge to fulfill these maxims.

According to Grice, meaning is produced in a direct way when participants adhere to the maxims. When the speaker’s intentions are conveyed clearly, the hearer should not have to interpret the speaker’s intentions. This occurs with conventional implicatures where standard word meanings are used in the interaction. However, in actual social interaction, most meanings are implied through conversational implicatures in which one or more of the conversational maxims are violated. Due to normative constraints, a speaker who says p implicates q , and the hearer would then need to infer the implied meanings; for example, what is being said and what is beyond words in a recommendation letter.

In short, Grice’s maxims of conversational implicatures are used to explain why people engage in different interpretations rather than rely on the literal meanings of utterances. The maxims attend to implied meanings that constitute a huge part of conversation and also the role of the hearer. Nonetheless, the cooperative principle was criticized for privileging the conversational conventions of middle-class English speakers. Additionally, Grice did not scrutinize strategic non-cooperation, which remains a primary source of inference in conversation (Hadi, 2013 ).

Politeness Theory

Influenced by Grice’s maxims, Brown and Levinson ( 1987 ) proposed the politeness theory to explain the interlocutor’s observation of conversational implicatures in order to maintain the expressive order of interaction. Brown and Levinson observed politeness strategies that consistently occurred in their field data across several languages: Tzetzal and Tamil languages in Asia, and the British and American forms of English. Despite the distinctive cultures and languages, they observed outstanding parallelism in interlocutors’ use of polite language to accomplish conversational goals. Politeness is the activity performed to enhance, maintain, or protect face or the self-image of the interlocutors.

To illustrate language universality in politeness, Brown and Levinson proposed a socialized interlocutor—nicknamed a model person (MP)—as a face-bearing human with rationality and intentionality when communicating. To avoid breaching social equilibrium, the MP, whom Brown and Levinson identified as the speaker, conforms to social norms to be polite. In performing a speech act, the MP cultivates a desirable image (i.e., positive social worth), pays attention to the hearer’s responses, and ensures that nobody loses face in social interactions (e.g., feels embarrassed, humiliated, awkward, etc.).

Since face is emotionally invested (e.g., actors get upset) and sanctioned by social norms, actors are said to engage in rule-governed behavior to pay homage to their face. Due to the emotional investment, face threats are likely to occur when actors perform facework. Brown and Levinson described two basic face wants: positive face , the desire for one’s actions to be accepted by others, such as approval from others; and negative face , the desire for one’s actions to be unimpeded by others. A threat to positive face decreases approval from the hearer (e.g., acknowledging one’s vulnerability), whereas a threat to negative face restricts one’s freedom to act (e.g., requesting a favor).

According to the politeness theory, the speaker can choose whether or not to perform face-threatening acts (FTAs). When performing FTAs, the speaker will go on or off record. In going off record, the speaker uses hints or utterances that have more than one attributable intentions, so that he or she does not appear to have performed a speech act. For example, the speaker who utters “Oops, I don’t have any cash on me” to the hearer after they have dined together in a restaurant is using an off-record strategy to suggest that the hearer foot the bill. In contrast, going on record means that the speaker performs the FTA (i.e., baldly without saving face) with or without redress. With redress, the speaker indicates that he or she does not intend to violate social equilibrium by performing the FTA (see further discussion below). Without redress, the speaker directly expresses his or her desire; for instance, the speaker commands the hearer to pay for lunch by saying, “You should pay this time.”

The speaker can use either positive or negative politeness strategies when performing FTAs with redress. Positive politeness strategies are used to attend to the hearer’s positive face. For example, in the restaurant scenario, the speaker can choose to compliment the hearer in order to establish solidarity by saying, “You have always been so generous …” On the other hand, negative politeness strategies are used to avoid imposing on the hearer’s negative face. For example, by seeking permission, “Would you consider paying for lunch? I will return the favor in the future,” the speaker acknowledges that the hearer is not obligated to perform the action of footing the bill.

According to the politeness theory, the speaker wants to use the least amount of effort to maximize ends by considering the weight of performing the FTA. Brown and Levinson postulated a formula: Wx = P (S, H) + D (S, H) + R, where W stands for the weight of the FTA; P the relative power of hearer (H) over speaker (S), which is asymmetrical (e.g., if H is an authority); D the social distance between H and S, which is symmetrical (if H speaks another dialect); and R the ranking of imposition of the FTA in a particular culture. They suggested that P and D were universal with some emic correlates. Thus, in calculating Wx, S will consider the payoffs of each strategy. For example, in using positive politeness strategies, S may appear to be friendly, whereas in using an off-record strategy, S may appear manipulative by imposing on H, who gets S’s hints and then performs a future act. In using an on-record strategy, S may choose to be efficient, such as in an emergency (e.g., Ambush!).

After three decades, politeness theory remains one of the most tested theories. However, amongst its criticisms, the theory is said to account for intentional politeness, but not intentional impoliteness. The significant attention paid to the speaker’s utterances, albeit with a consideration for the hearer’s face, reveals the assumption of conversations as monologic. In some respects the theory followed the trajectory of Searle’s and Grice’s works in that the performance of utterances is conceptualized as a rational cognitive activity of the speakers. In particular, speakers are assumed to generate meanings and action, whereas hearers are treated as receivers who interpret the speech performance. Therefore, the politeness theory is unable to fully explain interactional organization in talk exchanges.

Conversation Analysis

During the 1960s, empirical science centered on the prediction of the effects of abstract ideas on communication and social life. Common predictors tested include personality types, cognition, biological sex, income level, and political stance. Social scientists who studied language commonly adhered to the quantitative paradigm; they conducted experiments, used elicited conversations, and analyzed responses containing rehearsals of recollected conversations. The study of mundane rituals, however, was not of academic concern.

Erving Goffman, a sociologist, later made a radical theoretical move that differed significantly from the mainstream empirical studies. Goffman stated that orderliness was empirically observable from everyday conversation. He argued that since socialization shapes the social actor’s competencies, conversation maintains moral codes and institutional order. In other words, sequential ordering of actions in social interaction reflects the macro social institution (e.g., politics, business, legal systems, etc.).

Goffman’s works were viewed as a paradigm shift in the social sciences. He called attention to the orderliness that is observable in ordinary conversation—an area of investigation that other scientists neglected. Furthermore, unlike the early works in language study, Goffman’s theoretical framework no longer focused solely on the performance of speakers in conversations. Instead, meaning making—that is, the examination of the participants’ understanding of one another’s conduct—took precedence. Goffman did not test his ideas, nor did he develop any set of empirical methods that allowed the testing of his ideas.

In search of an empirical analysis of conversation, Harold Garfinkel, another sociologist, expanded on Goffman’s ideas. Garfinkel ( 1967 ) proposed that ethno-methods (i.e., the study of people’s practices or methods) inform the production of culturally meaningful symbols and actions. He noted that social actors use multiple tacit methods (e.g., presuppositions, assumptions, and methods of inference) to make shared sense of their interaction. Thus, conversation is a place where participants engage in mundane reason analysis, and conversational sequential structure—the organization of social interaction—reveals membership categorization.

The subdiscipline of conversation analysis (CA) was further expanded when Harvey Sacks and Emanuel Schegloff, who were later joined by Gail Jefferson, studied suicide calls made to the Center for the Scientific Study of Suicide, Los Angeles (Sacks, 1984 ). They investigated how sequential structure is managed in institutional talk. Conversation analysts study conversation sequence organization, turn design, turn taking, lexical choices, the repair of difficulties in speech, and the overall conversational structure. They analyze linguistic mechanisms (e.g., grammar and syntax, lexis, intonation, prosody, etc.) in naturally occurring conversations.

Institutional talk, as examined in later CA studies, focused on those that have fewer formal constraints as institutional practices (e.g., phone calls, doctor–patient interaction, and classroom instructions), but not those that have rigid structures within formalized rituals (e.g., a religious wedding ceremony, a sermon, etc.). Institutional CA studies accelerated in the past few decades, allowing the identification of macro-level societal shifts through the management of social interaction in talk (Gee & Handford, 2012 ).

In general, CA theory postulates that talk is conducted in context. Participants’ talk and actions evoke context, and context is invoked and constructed by participants. Sequencing position in conversations reflects the participants’ understanding of the immediate preceding talk. As such, sequential structure reveals socially shared and structured procedures (Garfinkel, 1967 ). Thus, CA is the study of action, meaning, context management, and intersubjectivity.

CA is qualitative in methodology, even though later scholarship involved statistical analysis. The method is criticized for several weaknesses, among them: (a) the analysis and presentation of select segments of conversation lack rationale; (b) most CA studies are restricted to studying conversations in North America and Europe; (c) since multiple identities are at play in conversations, those that are consequential for social interaction remain ambiguous and debatable in analyses; and (d) the boundaries between pleasantries (e.g., small talk) and institutional talk are at times fuzzy in institutional CA (Have, 1990 ). Nevertheless, with a range of sub-areas quite well developed, CA is said to form its own discipline.

Discourse Analysis

Discourse Analysis (DA) is a broad term for different analytical approaches used to examine text and talk. Discourse is considered language use in general, and language is viewed as a form of action. The distinctions between the different approaches used in DA are based on the influences of the early works or traditions in conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis and critical linguistics, Bakhtinian research, Foucauldian research, and even interactional sociolinguistics (Gee & Handford, 2012 ). However, the very different approaches and practices in DA have sparked disagreements among researchers about their applications and distinctions.

Data used in DA range from written to spoken, such as recorded spontaneous conversation, news articles, historical documents, transcripts from counseling sessions, clinical talk, interviews, blogs, and the like. Socio-historical contexts are often included in DA. As a tool for analyzing text and talk, DA has significantly influenced the study of language and culture. Two of the most popular DA approaches used in communication studies are Discursive Psychology (DP) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).

Discursive Psychology

DP evolved in the early 1990s from Derek Edwards and Jonathan Potter’s works, in which they expressed dissatisfaction with the ways psychologists treated discourse. In psychology, utterances are treated as a reflection of the speaker’s mental state. Hence, talk is considered reflective (Edwards & Potter, 2005 ). However, in DP talk is considered constructive; language use is thus viewed as a social action or function. This means that people use language to make sense of what they do in a socially meaningful world. Therefore, language is treated as a tool to get things done.

In DP, researchers study the details of what people say (e.g., descriptions, terms, lexicons, or grammar). Researchers are concerned with how these features have particular effects or bear functions, such as shifting blame, denying responsibility, and providing counterarguments. DP researchers seek to understand the interests, attitudes, and motives of the speakers, particularly, why people use language the way they do and how they manage and construct identities.

Language use in news media coverage provides a good example for DP analysis. For example, the August 2015 news coverage about corruption in Malaysian government offices supplies rich vocabularies for analyzing the speakers’ motives. Under the leadership of Bersih (an organization whose name literally translates to clean in the Malay language), an estimated half a million street demonstrators peacefully gathered in Kuala Lumpur, the country’s capital, for a public demonstration that lasted two days. The demonstrators demanded transparency in the country’s governance, including fair elections. They urged the Prime Minister, Najib Razak, to resign following a critical exposé published in The Wall Street Journal . The Prime Minister was reported to have transferred the equivalent of US$11 billion from a government development firm into his personal bank account (Wright & Clark, 2015 ). Prior to the Prime Minister’s counterattack, the press labeled the demonstrators rally goers . However, the Prime Minister and his acolytes in government in turn used descriptors such as criminals, crazy, unpatriotic , and shallow-minded culprits to label the demonstrators traitors to their country.

The description above shows the way the speakers used language to construct their reality and their relationship to that reality. In this case, DP researchers would analyze and illustrate how the Prime Minister and his government officials co-construct shared meanings in interaction, such as particular realities, beliefs, identities, or subjectivities. For instance, the government can be seen as attempting to exercise control over the public demonstrators (through discourse) in order to defend governmental power. Thus, by labeling the demonstrators culprits , the government asserted its identity as the authority— the elite power that runs the country and decides what goes.

DP researchers assume that each speaker has multiple identities, and the identities can only be performed successfully with the consent of the listeners (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998 ). The researchers also assert that the productive examination of discourse must be considered within the context of language use, such as the institutional setting and local sequential organization of talk. For example, a proper analysis of the Malaysian public demonstration above must include an understanding of the context of the public demonstrators’ dissatisfaction with governmental corruption and citizen’s demand for transparency in governance—a longstanding issue since the country’s independence from Britain. Thus, indexicality—the understanding that the meaning of a word is dependent on the context of use—is essential in DP analysis (Potter, 1996 ).

Perhaps one of the strongest criticisms of DP is the researchers’ reluctance to interpret macro-social concerns. DP researchers insist that the analysis of text and talk should depend on the context exactly as construed by the language used. This means that extratextual information should not be inserted in the analysis. Therefore, DP cannot be utilized to interrogate broader social concerns, such as politics, ideology, and power (Parker, 2015 ). As such, context is limited to and constituted by the interactional setting and functions of utterances.

DP is also criticized for casting speakers as conscious and agentic—that is, as autonomous subjects who manipulate language to do things. Speakers’ intentionality in attribution is thus considered fixed in their minds. Such an assumption in fact closely resembles that of traditional psychology—the very idea that DP researchers attempted to shift away from (Parker, 2015 ). Moreover, the analyst’s interpretation is crucial in unfolding an understanding of the discourse. The analyst’s knowledge and statuses thus influence his or her interpretation of the language used by speaker and can be a weakness if the analyst may conform to some sort of ideology that impacts data interpretation.

Critical Discourse Analysis

Of all the approaches used to study DA, CDA is one that takes a macrosocietal and political standpoint (Van Dijk, 1993 ). Critical discourse analysts examine how societal power relations are enforced, legitimated, maintained, and dominated through the use of language. The sociohistorical context of the text is emphasized. The examination of social problems requires the analyst to be well versed in multiple disciplines. Commonly, the analysts are motivated by particular political agendas or ideologies, and they seek to challenge certain ideologies (Fairclough, 2005 ). Therefore, based on, say, the motivation to fight social inequality and oppression, an analyst may seek out selected texts or talks for study. It is in CDA studies that the abuse, dominance, and unequal distribution of social goods are called into question.

Social theorists whose works are commonly cited in CDA include Pierre Bourdieu, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Karl Marx, Jürgen Habermas, and Michel Foucault. Typical vocabulary in CDA studies includes power, dominance, hegemony, class, gender, race, discrimination, institution, reproduction , and ideology . Topics examined include gender inequality, media discourse, political discourse, racism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, and antiSemitism. Critical discourse analysts seek to answer questions such as: How do elite groups control public discourse? How does such discourse control the less powerful group (in terms of mind and action)? What are the social consequences of such discourse control? (Van Dijk, 1993 ). The dominant social groups in politics, media, academics, and corporations are scrutinized in terms of the way they produce and maintain the dominant ideology.

Critical discourse analysts explore three contextual levels of discourse: the macro, meso, and micro (Van Dijk, 1993 ). At the macro level, analysts focus on the understanding of relationship between the text and broader social concerns and ideologies. At the meso level, analysts examine the contexts of production and reception of the text, and the ideologies portrayed. The analysts ask questions such as: Where did the text originate? Who is (are) the author(s) and the intended audience of the text? What perspectives are being promoted? At the micro level, analysts scrutinize the forms and contents of the text through linguistic features and devices in order to reveal the speaker’s perspective or ideology. Linguistic features and components studied include direct and indirect quotations, terms used to refer to individuals or groups, sentence structure and grammar (e.g., active and passive voice), and premodifiers (e.g., non-Muslim citizens or Muslim-Chinese citizens).

While analysts frequently favor institutional texts (e.g., a journalistic report) in their analyses, everyday conversation is also included. In fact, everyday conversation is considered social group discourse that can be used to reveal societal norms and shared beliefs. According to van Dijk’s studies of racism in everyday conversation, he found that the speakers’ utterances of “I am not racist, but …” and “We are not a racist society, but …” are in fact a reproduction of institutional talk. He called this specific type of talk a double strategy of positive self-representation and negative other-denigration.

While the multidisciplinary nature of CDA seems beneficial, it is also one of its biggest criticisms. In particular, critical discourse analysts are often accused of not productively using a combination of multiple approaches. Indeed, the more linguistically-oriented studies of text and talk overlooked theories in sociology and political sciences that focus on social and power inequality issues. On the other hand, those that focus on sociology and political sciences did not rigorously engage in DA. Moreover, the relationship between discourse and action coupled with cognition remains inconclusive (Van Dijk, 1998 ).

The Ethnography of Communication

The ethnography of communication originated from ethnology in the 1800s and found a home in in anthropology. Bronislaw Malinowski, a Polish anthropologist, pioneered the ethnographic methods. He intensively recorded the methods he used in his fieldwork when studying the Trobrian Islanders of Papua New Guinea in 1914 , including intrinsic details about the people, their language, and their daily life (Murdock, 1943 ). Franz Boas, a German anthropologist who lived among the Inuit in the late 1800s, further propounded on the necessity for language training among ethnographers who wished to decode the emic (i.e., native) perspective (Muller-Wille, Gieseking, & Barr, 2011 ).

Ethnographers study social norms, meanings, and patterns of life by examining symbolic activities ranging from speech to social artifacts. By writing on culture, recording people, and natural history, ethnographers describe, analyze, and compare people from different communities. The painstaking work involved in ethnography provides rich data that are highly nuanced. Ethnographic works are said to be the portraits of social life. Oftentimes, interviews are used concurrently, along with other methods (e.g., textual analysis) to obtain community members’ interpretation and explanation of the communicative activities. Data analyses are conducted along with (i.e., not after) data recording in the field.

While an ethnographer may generate questions for investigation before entering the field, he or she must remain flexible and receptive to other important questions that may emerge on site. The focus of investigation might shift because theoretical sensitivity—the review of literature prior to fieldwork—may not sufficiently orient the ethnographer to actual interactions. This is because the behaviors and activities that the ethnographer purports to study may have changed due to cultural shift. The use of such an inductive method allows the study of language and culture without theoretical constraints.

Ethnographers may compare the behaviors cross-culturally when a sufficient number of studies of the cultures of interest become available. Since the voices of community members are given precedence, ethnographic reports rely heavily on and present people’s utterances, as well as fine details of observations. In fact, early ethnographic works in anthropology tend to exhaustively cover many life aspects about a community, though the search for nuances and painstaking details, coupled with the ethnographer’s prolonged engagement in the community, pose constraints of time and resources. However, in the 1960s, ethnography took a new turn with the greater emphasis on the study of language use.

The Ethnography of Speaking

The prominence of ethnographic studies focusing on speech in language and culture began in the 1960s with Dell Hymes’s study of language use. Hymes, who was trained in anthropology and linguistics, sought to understand speech patterns, functions, and speaking in situatedness. He departed from microlinguistics (which focuses on semantics, turn-taking, prosody, and conversational structure) to pursue a more holistic account of interaction in context. Hymes emphasized the examination of nonverbal cues, tone of conversation, evaluation of the interlocutors’ conduct, the setting of the interaction, and so forth.

Speaking is considered fundamental in understanding social reality. Hymes’s ethnography of speaking (later called ethnography of communication) is a method for analyzing communication in different cultural settings. Hymes’s ( 1972 ) SPEAKING mnemonic or schema, developed as an etic framework for the etic understanding of social interaction, provides an inductive tool for examining social and cultural elements through the means and ways of speaking. Each letter in the SPEAKING mnemonic represents a different element of a speech act: S represents the setting or scene; P , the participants and participant identities; E , the ends; A , the act sequence and act topic; K , the key or tone; I , the instrumentalities; N , the norms of interaction and interpretation; and G , the genre.

The SPEAKING mnemonic is one of the most widely used theoretical and analytic frameworks in ethnographic studies. Although Hymes developed it to study spontaneous conversation, recent communication studies has broadened the scope of the data to include textual analysis and computer-mediated communication. Such pluralities are, in fact, inherent in people’s ways of speaking and despite some criticisms (e.g., Hymes proposed using his methods to study muted groups, but researchers who wish to listen to minority voices must also learn to listen to the dominant ones), the ethnography of speaking’s theoretical framework has withstood the test of time. It was the inspiration for Gerry Philipsen’s ( 1992 ) speech codes theory—another important heuristic theory in the ethnographic study of language and culture.

Speech Codes Theory

In addition to Hymes’ ethnography of speaking, Philipsen drew from Bernstein’s coding principle ( 1971 ) to postulate his speech codes theory. Bernstein argued that different social groups manifest different communicative practices and linguistic features. These differences are influenced by and, in turn, reinforce the groups’ coding principles—the rules that govern what to say and how to say it in the right context.

According to Philipsen, people’s ways of speaking are woven with speech codes—the system of symbols, meanings, premises, and rules about communication conduct that are historically situated and socially constructed. Therefore, examining a community’s discourse can tease out people’s understanding of the self, society, and strategic action. Philipsen posited five propositions for studying the relationship between communication and culture:

People in different speech communities exhibit different ways of speaking, with different rules for communicative conduct informed by their socially constructed symbols and meanings.

Each code gives practical knowledge about the ways of being in a speech community.

People attach different cultural meanings to speech practices.

Metacommunication (i.e., talk about talk) reveals important worldviews, norms, and values of the people.

The common speech code reveals the morality of communication conduct. For example, community members’ discourse about should not s reveal the should s that they value.

Using the five propositions, Philipsen argued that the speech codes theory can reveal the ways of speaking and reinforce a group’s speech codes. Indeed, the theory has informed the vibrant scholarship on ways of speaking and meaning-making across different global cultural communities. For example, Lee and Hall’s ( 2012 ) study of Chinese Malaysian discourse of dissatisfaction and complaint-making, with and without a formal goal of resolution—called, respectively, thou soo and aih auan— unearthed previously unexplored cultural values of the speech community. Lee ( 2014 ) developed the study further to understand the assumptions of personhood among Chinese Malaysians.

Cultural Discourse Analysis

The speech codes theory also served as the foundation for the development of Donal Carbaugh’s cultural discourse analysis theory. Carbaugh, a former student of Philipsen’s, proposed the cultural discourse theory (CDT) as a way to understand culturally shaped communication practices. According to CDT, cultural discourses are constituted by cultural communication and codes. Culture is an integral part but also a product of communication practices that are highly nuanced and deeply meaningful and intelligible to cultural participants (Carbaugh, 1996 ). Cultural participants draw on diverse communication practices and thus create diversity within and across cultural communities.

Cultural discourse analysts study key cultural terms that are deeply meaningful to the participants; for example, oplakvane , which is a distinctive way of speaking to assert Bulgarian personhood (Carbaugh, Lie, Locmele, & Sotirova, 2012 ). Such cultural terms are an ongoing metacultural commentary that reveals implicit cultural knowledge, the taken-for-granted knowledge, such as beliefs, values, and assumptions about the self.

Three types of questions typically guide cultural discourse analysis (CuDA) are: (a) functional accomplishment (What is getting done when people communicate in this specific way?); (b) structure (How is this communicative practice conducted? What key cultural terms are used to give meaning to the participants? What deep meanings do the terms create?); and (c) sequencing or form (What is the act sequence of this communicative practice, in terms of interactional accomplishments, structural features, and sequential organization?).

The analyst approaches a CuDA project with a particular stance or mode of inquiry. Carbaugh identified five modes of inquiry that enable analysts to tease out important cultural ingredients in a topic of investigation: the theoretical, descriptive, interpretive, comparative, and critical. For example, the theoretical mode enables analysts to understand the basic communication phenomena in the speech codes of a community and therefore to refine what and how to listen for culture in their discourse before venturing into the field. The five modes chart a rough linear design; the analyst must accomplish the preceding mode before embarking on the subsequent mode. The first three modes (i.e., theoretical, descriptive, and interpretive) are mandatory in any CuDA project; however, the last two (i.e., comparative and critical) may or may not be accomplished in a single study (e.g., in an exploratory study).

Cultural discourse analysts typically use Hymes’s SPEAKING framework and Philipsen’s speech codes theory as guidelines for their subsequent analyses in the descriptive and interpretive stages. The analysis of implicit cultural meanings in CuDA can be structured using five semantic radiants or hubs: being , acting , relating , feeling , and dwelling . Using CuDA, analysts can tease out people’s understanding of who they are (being); what they are doing together (acting); how they are linked to one another (relating); their feelings about people, actions, and things (feeling); and their relationship to the world around them (dwelling). The cultural discourse analyst’s task, then, is to advance cultural propositions (i.e., statements containing the taken-for-granted knowledge) and premises (i.e., values or beliefs). These are statements that shed light on the importance of a particular communicative practice among members of a speech community (e.g., beliefs about what exists, what is proper, or what is valued).

While the theories in the ethnography of communication have gained a lot of prominence in the LSI discipline, they have also enriched it. For example, Hymes’s SPEAKING framework, Philipsen’s speech codes theory, and Carbaugh’s CDT have all added depth and rigor to LSI data analysis. Evidently, to navigate through the language and social interactions of a community to which the researcher is not an insider, he or she needs to gain communicative competence (Hymes, 1962 ). Specifically, the researcher needs to know how to communicate like the insiders in order to articulate and explain the behaviors and communicative phenomena to other outsiders. The researcher also needs to gain competence particularly in the multidisciplinary methods of LSI.

However, neither reliance on English as lingua franca for LSI research nor the practice of hiring translators are sufficient for undertaking this line of inquiry successfully. Therefore, many LSI studies recruit international scholars to participate in their research projects. While this is a common practice, especially in CuDA, the researchers’ cultural interpretations and the subsequent translation of the data into the English for publications need to be done with utmost care in order to maintain the integrity of cultural nuances. Moreover, while the scholarship has strived to give voice to muted, non-dominant groups internationally, the dearth of cross-comparative studies—a goal and a tradition of ethnography—is a great concern. In that sense the study of intercultural interaction using the ethnography of communication has not yet come of age in this increasingly globalized and complex world.

This essay outlines the history and evolution of the study of language and culture by the main areas of study in the LSI discipline. The four main areas summarized are language pragmatics, conversation analysis, discourse analysis, and the ethnography of communication. Influential methodological and theoretical frameworks reviewed cover the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, speech act theory, Grice’s maxims of implicatures, politeness theory, discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis, the ethnography of speaking, speech codes theory, and cultural discourse analysis. Finally, the essay examines major criticisms of the theories and applications, as well as possible future directions of scholarship, when and where appropriate in the discussion.

Further Reading

• Edwards, D. , & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive psychology . London: SAGE.
• Gee, J. P. (2014). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method (4th ed.). New York: Routledge.
• Erving Goffman Archives in the Intercyberlibrary of the University of Nevada .
• Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public: Micro studies of the public order . New York: Basic Books.
• Hall, E. T. (1976). Beyond culture . New York: Doubleday.
• Hymes, D. (1962). The ethnography of speaking. In T. Gladwin & W. C. Sturtevant (Eds.), Anthropology and human behavior (pp. 13–35). Washington, DC: Anthropology Society of Washington.
• Martin, J. N. , Nakayama, T. K. , & Carbaugh, D. (2012). The history and development of the study of intercultural communication and applied linguistics. In J. Jackson (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and intercultural communication (pp. 17–36). Oxon, England: Routledge.
• Philipsen, G. (1975). Speaking “like a man” in Teamsterville: Culture patterns of role enactment in an urban neighborhood. Quarterly Journal of Speech , 61 , 13–22.
• Wodak, R. , & Chilton, P. (2005). A new agenda in (critical) discourse analysis: Theory, methodology and interdisciplinarity . Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Wooffitt, R. (2005). Conversation analysis and discourse analysis: A comparative and critical introduction . London: SAGE.
• Antaki, C. , & Widdicombe, S. (1998). Identity as an achievement and as a tool. In C. Antaki & S. Widdicombe (Eds.), Identities in talk . London: SAGE.
• Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Bernstein, B. (1971). Class, codes and control: Vol. 1. Theoretical studies towards a sociology of language . London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Brown, P. , & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
• Carbaugh, D. A. (1996). Situating selves: The communication of social identities in American scenes . Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Carbaugh, D. , Lie, S. , Locmele, L. , & Sotirova, N. (2012). Ethnographic studies of intergroup communication. In H. Giles & C. Gallois (Eds.), The handbook of intergroup communication (pp. 44–57). New York: Routledge.
• Chomsky, N. (1972). Language and mind . New York: Harcourt Brace.
• Edwards, D. , & Potter, J. (2005). Discursive psychology, mental states and descriptions. In H. T. Molder & J. Potter (Eds.), Conversation and cognition (pp. 241–259). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
• Fairclough, N. (2005). Peripheral vision: Discourse analysis in organization studies: The case for critical realism. Organization Studies , 26 , 915–939.
• Fitch, K. L. , & Sanders, R. E. (Eds.). (2005). Handbook of language and social interaction . Mahwah, NJ: LEA.
• Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• Gee, J. P. , & Handford, M. (2012). The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis . New York: Taylor & Francis.
• Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays in face-to-face interaction . Chicago: Aldine.
• Grice, H. P. (1989). Studies in the way of words . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Hadi, A. (2013). A critical appraisal of Grice’s cooperative principle. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics , 3 , 69–72.
• Have, P. t. (1990). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide . London: SAGE.
• Hall, E. T. (1966). The hidden dimension . New York: Anchor Books.
• Hymes, D. (1972). Models of the interaction of language and social life. In J. J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication (pp. 35–71). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
• Lee, E. L. (2014). Assumptions of personhood in the discourse about Chinese identity in Malaysia. In M. B. Hinner (Ed.), Chinese culture in a cross-cultural comparison (pp. 77–110). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
• Lee, E. L. , & Hall, B. “J” (2012). Cultural ideals in Chinese Malaysians’ discourse of dissatisfaction. In M. B. Hinner (Ed.), The interface of business and culture (pp. 365–390). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
• Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (1990). Notes in the history of intercultural communication: The Foreign Service Institute and the mandate for intercultural training. Quarterly Journal of Speech , 76 , 262–281.
• Mandelbaum, D. G. (Ed.). (1963). Selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture, and personality . Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
• Muller-Wille, L. , Gieseking, B. , (Eds.) & Barr, W. (Trans.). (2011). Inuit and Whalers on Baffin Island through German eyes: Wilhelm Weike’s Arctic journal and letters (1883–1884) . Montréal, Canada: Baraka Books.
• Murdock, G. P. (1943). Bronislaw Malinowski. American Anthropologist , 45 , 441–451.
• Parker, I. (2015). Critical discursive psychology (2d ed.). Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Philipsen, G. (1992). Speaking culturally: Explorations in social communication . Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Philipsen, G. (1997). Toward a theory of speech codes. In G. Philipsen & T. Albrecht (Eds.), Developing communication theories (pp. 119–156). Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Potter, J. (1996). Representing reality: Discourse, rhetoric, and social constructions . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Sacks, H. (1984). Notes on methodology. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 21–27). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
• Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language . London: Cambridge University Press.
• Ten Have, P. (1999). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide . London: SAGE.
• Van Dijk, T. (1993). Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse and Society , 4 , 249–285.
• Van Dijk, T. A. (1998). Ideology: A multidisciplinary approach . London: SAGE.
• Whorf, B. L. (1952). Collected papers on metalinguistics . Washington, DC: Foreign Service Institute.
• Wright, T. , & Clark, S. (2015, July 2). Investigators believe money flowed to Malaysian leader Najib’s accounts amid 1MDB probe . Wall Street Journal .

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