UW-Madison ENGLISH 336 - Communicative Interaction and Discursive Practice

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Communicative Interaction and Discursive Practice1Communicative Interaction and Discursive Practice2Overview• Theories of spoken communication•The role of context• Discursive practice and the framework of interactional competence• How do people learn a new discursive practice?3Communicative Interaction and Discursive Practice24Theories of Spoken Communication•Robert Ladoin Linguistics Across Cultures included …– Knowledge of linguistic levels– Knowledge of the four (five?) skills5Theories of Spoken Communication• Claude E. Shannon & Warren Weaver in The Mathematical Theory of Communication viewed speaking as …– a conduit for the transmission of referential meaning.6Theories of Spoken Communication• In an individual’s communicative competence, Michael Canale and Merrill Swain included …– Discourse competence– Pragmatic competence– Strategic competence• In addition to Lado’s– Linguistic competenceCommunicative Interaction and Discursive Practice37Theories of Spoken Communication• Larry Selinker and Dan Douglas’s discourse domain theory predicted that …– An individual will speak more coherently on a topic on which she has extensive or current knowledge and in which she is emotionally invested.8The Role of Context• We distinguish between an experiencer/agent that we recognize as ourselves and a world that the experiencer/agent inhabits.• We distinguish between a central figure and a peripheral ground.9Communicative Interaction and Discursive Practice4101112The Role of Context• Where is language?• Language is figure andground.• It is both part of our lived experience andpart of the world that we inhabit.• Although language is its own context, when we consider language acquisition our focus is on language as figure — not ground.Communicative Interaction and Discursive Practice513The Role of Context• Three attempts to relate language to context:– Language is correlated with context.– Language shapes context.– Language and context are mutually constitutive.14The Role of Context• Language is correlated with context.• The language of the agent/experiencer is a given. And the world is a given.15The Role of Context• Language is correlated with context.• Some theories that try to correlate the two …– Interlanguage Variation (Elaine Tarone, Richard Young)– Acculturation Theory(John Schumann)– Speech Accommodation Theory(Leslie Beebe & Howard Giles)– Socio-Educational Model(Robert Gardner)Communicative Interaction and Discursive Practice616The Role of Context• Language and context are mutually constitutive.• The language of the agent/experiencer and the world are both shape shifters. The self and the world are mutually constitutive.17The Role of Context• Language shapes context.• Some theories that try to show how the language of an agent/experiencer shapes the world:– Conversational inference (John Gumperz)–Frames(Erving Goffman)– Crossing(Ben Rampton)– Heteroglossia(Mikhail Bakhtin)– Linguistic relativity(Benjamin Lee Whorf, then John Gumperz & Stephen Levinson)18The Role of Context• Language and context are mutually constitutive.• The language of the agent/experiencer and the world are both shape shifters. The self and the world are mutually constitutive.Communicative Interaction and Discursive Practice719The Role of Context• Language and context are mutually constitutive.• Some theories that try to close the gap:– Co-Construction (Sally Jacoby and Elinor Ochs)– Communicative Practice(William Hanks)– Interactional Competence(Claire Kramsch, Joan Kelly Hall, Richard Young)– Situated Learning(Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger)– Language Socialization(Karen Watson-Gegeo)20The Role of Context• Language and context are mutually constitutive.• “Context cannot be treated as the scenery to which language and interactive structures are related once they have been objectively defined on other grounds … Participant roles cannot be treated as merely contextual; they are inherently contextual.” – William Hanks.21Social and cultural context1. Child: Mama ((pause)) I gotta go to thebathroom2. Mother: ((pause))3. Child: Mama ((pause)) Donnie’s gotta go4. Mother: Sh-sh5. Child: But ((pause)) mama6. Mother: ((softly)) Later7. Child: ((whining)) Ma ma8. Mother: ((rasping voice)) Wait9. Child: Oh mama mama mama10.Mother: ((loudly)) Shut up ((softly)) will yuhCommunicative Interaction and Discursive Practice822Social and cultural context• Activity. In line 2 of the conversation between the mother and child, Birdwhistellreports a pause, and he attributed the pause to the mother. In other words, there was silence.• Why not simply ignore the silence and continue with the child’s talk in line 3. Why attribute the silence to the mother? 23Social and cultural context• The conversation took place at about 2:30 p.m., April 14, 1952 on a bus in Arlington, Virginia.• Mother and child spoke with a tidewater Virginia accent. The bus route on which the event was recorded leads to a middle-class neighborhood. The way in which the mother and child were dressed was not consistent with the dress of other riders.24Discursive Practice• Discursive practice is habituated action that is informed by, and serves to reproduce and transform, socially structured resources, values, and ideologies.• Examples of discursive practice:– A pharmacy consultation– A university lecture– An interview between social worker and client– Checkout at a supermarketCommunicative Interaction and Discursive Practice925Interactional Competence (IC)• The discursive practice is a consultation in a pharmacy between a patient and the pharmacy intern.•The pharmacy is located in a store in a rural community in the Midwest.26Interactional Competence (IC)• Interactional competence is a theory of communication that has its roots in linguistic anthropology.• Interactional competence explains the socio-cultural characteristics of discursive practices and the interactional processes by which discursive practicesare co-constructed by participants.27Interactional Competence (IC)• Interactional competence is co-constructed.• Interactional competence is localized in a specific discursive practice.• Participants in a discursive practice draw upon a bundle of interactional resources.• The configuration of these resources constitutes an architecture of the practice.Communicative Interaction and Discursive


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UW-Madison ENGLISH 336 - Communicative Interaction and Discursive Practice

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