Readings 9/8

Jakobson

Any verbal behavior is goal-directed, but the aims are different and the conformity of the means used to the effect aimed at is a problem that evermore preoccupies inquirers into the diverse kinds of verbal communication. 

Distinguish between synchrony and diachrony. 

For any speech community, there exists a unity of language, but this over-all code represents a system of interconnected subcodes; each language encompasses several concurrent patterns which are each characterized by a different function. (ie registers and dialects?) 

Six basic functions of verbal communication:

1. Emotive

2. Poetic

3. Phatic

4. Conative

5.  Referential 

6. Metalingual

Six factors involved in verbal communication:

Addresser --> Context, Message // Contact, Code --> Addressee

(Emotive, expressive function conveying an attitude)

The traditional model of language is confined to three functions: emotive, conative, and referential. 

First person--Addresser

Second person--Addressee

Third person--inanimate or absent object (converted to second person in magic)

Speech is focused on the CODE--it performs a METALINGUAL function. Example: "I'm not following you; what do you mean?" In this case, the addressee checks whether the addresser is using the same speech code. 

Saying "Joan and Margery" versus "Margery and Joan" does not imply you favor Joan over Margery; rather, the former sounds smoother. Thus, VERBAL ART. 

Paronomastic? (definition) 

Epic poetry, focused on the third person, strongly involves the REFERENTIAL function of language. Lyric is oriented toward the first person, and is intimately linked with the EMOTIVE function. Poetry of the second person is imbed with the CONATIVE function. 

Poetry and Metalanguage are in diametrical opposition to each other--metalanguage uses sequence to build an equation, and poetry uses the equation to build a sequence. 

What is the indispensable feature inherent in any piece of poetry? (Recall selection and combination). 

Poetry, in the wider sense of the word, deals with poetic function NOT ONLY in poetry, but also outside of poetry. 

Hymes

Language is a basic science of man because it provides a link between the biological and sociocultural levels. 

Important note: Linguistics will remain the discipline responsible for coordinating knowledge about verbal behavior from the viewpoint of language itself. 

Ethnography of speaking is concerned with the situations and uses, patterns and functions, of speaking as an activity in its own right. 

Syntagmatic vs. Paradigmatic 

Paradigmatic requires discovering a relevant frame or context, identifying the items which contrast within it, and determining the dimensions of contrast for the items within the set so defined. 

The use of a linguistic form identifies a range of meanings. A context can support a range of meanings. When a form is used in a context, it eliminates the meanings possible to that context other than those that form can signal; the context eliminates from consideration the meanings possible to the form other than those that context supports. 

Description of semantic habits depends upon contexts of use to define relevant frames, sets of times, and dimensions of contrast. 

Work on paralinguistics: the heuristic, somewhat intuitive, use of the principle of contrast within a frame. 

Structural analysis means a scientific and moral commitment to the inductive discovery of units, criteria, and patternings that are valid in terms of the system itself. 

-->How many factors and functions are there in a given determinate system?

The delimitation of the speech economy of a group is in relation to a a population or community, however defined, and not in relation to the homogeneity or boundaries of a linguistic code. 

--> If several dialects or languages are in used, all are considered together as part of the speech activity of the group. 

Three aspects of speech economy:

1. Speech events

2. Constituent factors of speech events

3. Functions of speech

SPEECH EVENTS:

1. What are instances of speech events?

2. What classes of speech events are recognized of can be inferred?

3. What are the dimensions of contras,t the distinctive features, which differentiate them? 

FACTORS IN SPEECH EVENTS (which serve as an initial--etic--framework):

1. Sender / Addresser

2. Receiver / Addressee

3. Message form (becomes significant as an aesthetic and stylistic manner)

4. Channel

5. Code (dialect, jargon, vernacular)

6. Topic

7. Setting (Scene, situation)

FUNCTIONS IN SPEECH EVENTS:

What does a personality, society, or culture contribute to the maintenance of a language? 

1. Expressive (Emotive)

2. Directive (Conative, Pragmatic, Rhetorical, Persuasive)

3. Poetic

4. Contact

5. Metalinguistic 

6. Referential

7. Contextual (Situational)

Expressive vs. Referential functions --> Not sure I completely understand the distinction. How can it be applied? What is an actual example in a speech event? 

Directive function of speech depends on maturation--a child, depending on his age, will have different controls of referential function. (IE a child at 1, then 3, then 4)

The three most prominent types of function (referential, expressive, directive) appear to develop in childhood in partial independence of each other and in varying relation to the process of maturation.