Group Assignment
ACTING AND CONVERSING
Presented to fulfill assignment of Sociolinguistics
Lecturer : A’am Rivaldi Khunaifi, M.Pd
DisusunOleh : Dewi Munawaroh
THE STATE ISLAMIC COLLEGE OF PALANGKARAYA
THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
THE STUDY PROGRAM OF ENGLISH EDUCATION
2013 M
ACTING AND CONVERSING
As soon as we look closely at conversation in general, we see that it involves much more than using language to state propositions or convey facts. Through conversation we estabilish relationships with others achieve a measure of cooperation, keep channels open for further relationship and so on. The utterances we use in conversation enable us to do these kinds of things because; conversation itself has certain properties which are well worth examining.
Speech Acts (Austin and Searle)
One thing that many utterances do is make propositions: They do this mainly in the form of either statements or questions, but other grammatical forms are also possible. Such as:
[‘ I had busy today]’, ‘[ have you called your mother?’], and [‘ your dinner ‘s ready’]. These utterances connected in some way with events or happening in a possible in world, one that can be experienced or imaginated.
A different kind of propositions is the ‘Ethical’proposition. e.g [ God is love,] [ beethoven is better than brahms]. Just like ordinary proposition, the ethical proposition may be true or false, although not in the same sense. But, truth and falsity are not the real purpose of ethical propositions. This real purpose is to serve as guides to behavior in some world or other.
Another kind of utterance is the ‘phatic’ type for example ;
[ ‘nice day’,] [ ‘how do you do ]‘, ‘[ you are looking smart today’.]
We employ such utterances not for their propositional content but, rather for their affective value as indicators that one person is willing to talk to another and that a channel of communication is either being opened or being kept open.
The philosopher, J.l.L Austin [1962 ], distinguished still another kind of utterance from these , the performative utterance, a person is not just saying something but is actually doing something if certain real-world condition are met.
For example;
a. To say ‘I name this ship ‘,’’ liberty bell’’, in certain circumstances is to name a ship.
b. To say,’’I do’’, in other circumstances is to find oneself is husband or a wife or a bigamist.
Such utterances perform acts: The naming of ship, and marrying. A speech acts changes in some way the conditions that exist in the world. It does something, and it is not something that in itself is either true or false. Truth and falsity may be claims made about its having been done, but they cannot be made about the actual doing.
Austin pointed out that the ’circumtances’mentioned above can be described. He mention certain felicity conditions that performative must meet to be successful.
a. A conventional procedure must exist for doing whatever is to be done and that procedure must specify who must say and do what and in what circumstances.
b. All participants must properly execute this procedure and carry it through to completion.
c. The necessary thoughts, feelings and intentions must be present in all parties.
In general , thespoken part of the total act , the actual speech act.
Austin also acknowledges that there are less explicit performatives. Declaration like ‘ I promise’, ‘ I apologize’, and ‘I warn you’. Have many of the same characteristics as the previously mentioned utterance but lack any associated conventional procedure; for anyone can promise, apologize, and warn.
We can now return to expressions like ‘’ nice day’’, ‘’how do you do’’,and ‘’youare looking smart today’’. A specific kind of speech is the kind we have referred to as phatic communion. According to Malinowski [ 1923, p 315 ] phatic communion is a type of speech in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words. Malinouwski himself uses the word ‘act’ in this explanation.in phatic communion, therefore, we have still another instance of language being used to do something, not just to say something.
According to Searle [ 1969,pp.23-24 ] we can perform at least three different kinds of act when we speak. There are ; Utterances acts, propositional acts, and illocutionary acts.
a. Utterances acts refer to the fact that we must use words and sentences if we are to say anything at all.
b. Propositional acts are those matter having to do with referring and predicting.: We use language to refer to matters in the world and to make predictions about such matters.
c. Illucionary acts : Have to do with the intents of the speakers, such as : Stating, questioning, promising or commanding.
In contrast to Austin , who focused his attention on how speakers realize their intentions in speaking, Searle focused on how listeners respond to utterances, that is, how one person tries to figure out how another is using a request or something else.
Cooperation and Face(Grice and Goffman)
Grice: In any conversation, only certain kinds of moves are possible at any particular time because of the constraints that operate to govern exchanges. These constraints limit speakers as to what they can say and listeners as to what they can infer.The cooperative principle, make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.
Goffman (1955) has called face-work, the work of presenting faces to each other, protecting our own face, and protecting the others face. We will be playing out a little drama together and cooperating to see that nothing mars the performance. That is the norm.Challenging someone about the face he or she is presenting is generally avoided (not in political campaigns any more negative campaigning).The affective state of the speaker and a profile of his identity are much like face here.
Some Features of Conversation
How people manage conversations, how talk proceeds in turns, how one utterance relates to another often in some kind of pair relationship, how topics are introduced, developed, and changed and so on.
· Speech can be planned or unplanned (Ochs, 1979).
Unplanned speech has features such as: repetitions, simple active sentences, speaker and listener combining to construct propositions.
· Conversations are locally managed.
A basic exchange has three parts: initiation, response and feedback (Stubbs, 1983). Tsui (1989) also argues for such a three part exchange in which a following move of some kind closes out the sequence.
To keep the turn, a speaker may avoid eye contact with listeners; string utterances together in a seamless manner; avoid the kinds of adjacency pairings that require others to speak; employ gestures and a posture that inhibit others from speaking, etc. Tannen (1987) identifies a conversational style which she labels as conversational overlap.Conversations must also have ways of getting started, have some recognizable core or substance to them, topic, and be concludable. Each conversation must be recognizable as an instance of the genre.In France, a telephone call is an intrusion; in North America, telephone calls are not regarded as intrusive to the same extent.Brown and Yule (1983) say that it is a feature of a lot of conversation that topics are not fixed beforehand, but are negotiated in the process of conversing.It is very rare indeed that speakers and listeners work systematically through a topic.
· Conversations must also be brought to a close (Aston, 1995).
Pre-closing signals may be regarded as a sub-variety of mitigating expressions used in conversation.Quite often the close itself is ritualistic, e.g. an exchange of Goodbye.
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_act From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Sunday, 19 May, 2013
http://colllectionofthepapers.blogspot.com/2012/10/acting-and-conversing-in.html. Tuesday, 12 October, 2012
http://imoed-forum.blogspot.com/2010/01/acting-and-conversing.html. Sunday, 19 May, 2013
http://faculty.wwu.edu/sngynan/slx12.html. Sunday, 19 May, 2013
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