week 3- speech events

Speech events are more than a sequence of speech acts, encompassing implicit rules and norms that govern how such an exchange might be culturally-specific. Dissecting a speech act in order to analyse it gives you its components: Genre, Topic, Purpose or Function, Setting, Key, Participants, Message Form, Act Sequence, Rules for Interaction, and Norms of Interpretation. So there's not only the things most of us can think of offhand- purpose, setting, parties involved..there are also other things to take note of, like the tone of the situation(funeral or party). Even the setting, like whether its a phone conversation, face-to-face or online, on MSN, would affect the other components, such as how serious a group meeting is, or the topics permissible.

At first, I was surprised(unbelievably, yet again!) at the intricacies and complexity of events that we take for granted everyday. The difference a subjective and objective perspective makes. Things like having a conversation, buying food from a canteen stall or even accepting or rejecting a marriage proposal..these seem like second-nature to most of us(ok, not the latter) but it's really interesting how we learn these implicit, culturally-specific rules. In Psychology, competing theories say language is either innate or learnt, and so far, it seems like the answer is a mix of both.. things like turn-taking, we are born with, which is why we play with our mothers/caregivers in a relay-fashion. Other aspects of language are socially, culturally built. Japanese are born with, but lose the ability to pronounce the 'l' consonant by the time they are 9 months old, because there isn't such a phoneme in the Japanese language. Rule-wise, etiquette such as who is introduced first at a party (typically the less important/senior person to the more senior) is culturally-driven. Especially if patriarchy means the less important person is always the female.

I'm starting to ramble again. But most important thoughts before I end:

-Is everything scripted- a wedding proposal, a rejection, an interview, a restaurant reservation, a transaction? How free are we?

Answer: Foucault says we are not free at all. Levi-Strauss and Althusser say we are not free, but if we can see that, it must mean we are free to a certain extent. Sounds philosophical, but I agree with them. At least we determine the topics of conversation, and are free to 'exit scene' whenever we wish to.

-Are we over analysing, classifying and compartmentalising things?

Answer: My friend asked this about Psychology, how everything, an emotion, a relationship, problem-solving, is quantified and qualified and reduced to statistics and pathways and components, but it seemed to apply to the study of speech too(ref. opening paragraph). I guess, it seems sad to think about it that way. Reductionism is directly at odds with the human nature to think about ourselves as unique and special, about human abilities as indescribable; it is what makes us different from machines or robots that are programmed to do things, like produce speech. That said, breaking things down, taking things apart is how we learn. Simple as that.