SPEECH AS SOCIAL INTERACTION

A.      The Social Nature of Speech

In this section, we do not talking about written text or various kind of spoken text but concentrate on what is call Face to Face Interaction – in other words, what happens when one person talks to another whom he can see and who is near enough to hear him.

In social interaction, speech does not have just one function, such as communicating proposition which the hearer does not already know.

According Antrophologist Bronislav Malinowski, there are some functions of speech, they are:

1.      As a link in concerted human activity

2.      As a piece of human behaviour

3.      It si a mode of action and not an instrument of reflection

4.      It is simply to estabilish or reinforce social relation. This is called Phatic Communion.

5.      Speech as obtain information (e.g. Where’s the tea-cosy?)

-         Speech for expressing (e.g. What a lovely hat!)

-         Speech for own sake (e.g. She sells sea – shells by the sea – shore)

Speech as skilled work also becauce in any culture, we assume – as an object to be classified and talked about. It’s same is true of other aspect of social interaction in face to face communication (or ‘focused interaction’): it is fruitful to look upon the behaviour of people engaged in focused interaction as an organised, skilled performance, analogous to skills such as car driving ( Argyle & Kendon 1967).

There are things that can not forger in speech that is norms. The norms governing speech is very important because we are in the social interaction where is there are some different type of people. Though the emphasis in the literature is on differences rather than similarities between cultures.  We call such as norms because they define normal behaviour for the society concerned, without being associated with any specific sanctions against those who do not folloe them.

Finally, there are very specific norms which may very from society to society. For example, the way one asks bus-conductors for tickets.

Society control our speech in two ways. Firstly, by providing a set of norms, which we learn to follow (or occasionally to flout) more or less skilfully, but which very from society to society, though some may be more universal than others. Secondly, society provides the motivation for adharing to these norms, and for putting effort into speech (as into social interaction in general). The theory of face-work explains this motivation, and could explain why it is that speech can run as smothly as it usually does, given the possibilities for misunderstanding and other difficulties that exist.

B.       Speech As a Signal of Social Identity

As we know that speakers have linguistic items in every language in reflect social characteristics, of he addressee, or of the relation between them. The simplest cases are linguistics items which reflect the social characteristics of just one person, either speaker or addressee.

As far as speakers are concerned, the commonest characteristic to be reflected by specific linguistic items is sex. For instance,  in the Koasati language spoken there are morphological differences between the verb forms used by males and famales, with males typically adding –s to the end of the female forms (e.g. males say lakaws-where famales say lakaw, both meaning ‘he is lifting it’).

Turning to hearers, there are many more ways a in which people’s speech varies according to who they are addressing. It seems likely, in particular, that in everylanguage there are special linguistic items for use when speaking to a child, like the English gee-gee for ‘house’.

Speech may also reflect the social relations between the speakers an addressee, most particularly the power and solidarity manifested in that relationship. ‘Power’ is self-explanatory, but ‘solidarity’ is harder to define. It concert the social distance between people – how much experience they have shared, how many social characteristics they share, how far they are prepared to share intimacies, and other factor.

For the English speaker, the clearest linguistic markers of social relation are personal names, such as John and Mr. Brown. Each people has a number of different names by which he may be addressee, including first and family names, and may be a title.

One of the adventages of showing power and solidarity in speech is that such problems may  be avoided simply by not using any name to address the person concerned. However, other languages have devices for signalling power and solidarity which in this respect are less accommodating.

Linguistic signalling of power and solidarity is succifiently well stidied for at least two possible linguistics universals to be suggested. Every language might be expected to have some way of signalling differences in either power or solidarity or both, which could be explained by reference to the extreme importance of both power an solidarity in face-to-face relation between individuals, and the need for each individual to make it clear how he sees those relations.

There are three type of linguistics marker of power-solidarity, they are:

1.      Sensitive items refer to the adsressee

2.      Verb-forms used.

3.      Vocabulary level

C.      The Structure of Speech

We can say that behaviour is structured by patterns. There is not difficulty in estabilishing that speech is structured, since grammars and dictionaries are full of current patterns of words, contruction etc. These relative short patterns, contained within the sentences, are obviosly only a part of the total structure of speech since longer patterns can be identified.

Erving Goffman, the originator of ‘face-work’ suggest that a greeting is needed to show that the relation which existed at the end of the last encounter is still unchange, in spite of the separation, an that the ferewell is needed in order to ‘sum up the effect of encounter upon the relationship and show what the participants may expect of one another when they next meet’. We can describe such as:

Greetings                                    Business                    Farewell

Of course, greetings and farewell, as defined functionally in this way, may vary enormously in their sincerity and creativity. Taking sincerity first, there is an interesting distinction to be drawn between greetings which express a proposition (e.g. How nice to see you!) and  this which do not(e.g. Hello).

Greetings also vary in the degree of personal creativity they reflect, with the non-proposition the least creative. It is imposible. To remember that the function of greeting or farewell may be fulfilled by a wide range of forms outside the list of few dozen fixed greetings.

Other kind of structure in speech is based on the fact that people take turns at speaking in most kinds of interaction, so that speech divided up into separate stretches spoken by different speakers.

A second type of structure in discourse is based on topic, which clearly bears little relation to the the type based on turn-taking, since speakers frequently change topic in the middle their turn. It is tampting to think that topic-based structure is hierarchical, in the sense that a given text should be analysable into successively unit on the basis of topic.  On the other hand, speakers tend to stick to the same topic and may feel obliged to give a special signal if they are changing it. The reason for sticking to a given a topic, or only drifting gradually away from it, it is partly that this increases the chances of other participants being interested in what is said.

A third type of discourse structure is based on what we know about the structure of the world. What we might call encyclopedic structure, which gives form to what we have been referring to as ‘the current topic’. For example, if we were describing a flat we could make use of one of two kinds of encyclopedy knowledge.

No doubt other types of structure could be identified in discourse in addition to those we have discussed – based on turn-taking, Topic and encyclopedic knowledge. It should be clear that there is no chance of reducing all these structure to a single type, and that the structure of discourse are complex mixtures of norms specific to speech and general knowledge of the world. It is hard to see how the study of discourse structure can be anything but interdisciplinary.

D.      Verbal and Non-verbal Behaviour

In this section we will explain about relation between verbal and non-verbal behaviour in social interaction. A linguist said that “we speak with our vocal organs but we converse with our entire body.

Non-verbal behaviour is involved in the two aspectsof speech considered – making relation between speaker and addressee and the structure of discourse; and it is also involved in the communication of ‘content’, that is, proposition and referents.

One very obvious aspect of non-verbal bihaviour which helps to reflect power-solidarity is the distance one person stands from the other. At one end of the scale are courting couples, and at the other and impersonal and formal occasions where speaker may be long distances from their addressee, as in theatres, or unable to see them at all. For instance, arabs generally set the distance lower Americans. Culture differences  such as those between Arabs and Americans can of course lead to considerable misunderstanding on both side.

Non-verbal behaviour also help to mark the structure of the interaction. On of the mind kinds of structure considered above was the patterns behaviour associated with ‘entries’ and ‘exist’, where non-verbal behaviour is just as clearly patterned as verbal behaviour.

Apart from entries and exist, non-verbal cues are important for structuring discourse as far as turn-talking is concerned. One of the questions to be asked about turn-talking is how speaker signal that they are ready to stop and let the other person star. Eyes movement is signal of an approaching change of speaker.

Finally the last section is the use of non-verbal behaviour for making content. Again there is very obvious instance of this in most cultures – the use of head movements to indicate ‘yes’ or ‘no’. There are culture differencees in the particular head movements used for each meaning – for ‘yes’, some cultures (e.g Western Europe and the United States) use a top-to-bottom movement, and still other (e.g. the Indian subcontinent) use a diagonal movement.

Many other gestures also help to mark content. People may count on theur fngures, and it some societies this is a recognised way of displaying number. There are also diferentces between the same tribes in the gestures used to show the height of a children, according to whether or not a hand is put, palm down ward, at the heightof the top of the child’s head. Finally, one should not forget the gesture of pointing where is done with different fingures in different societies.

CONCLUSION

          Based on the explanation above, we can conclude that speech is a tools to interacted with the human, so, it is the reason why we said that speech as social intaraction but we can not forget that speech as social intaraction has rules/ norms according the culture of each country where is we have to undertand it.

According Antrophologist Bronislav Malinowski, there are some speech functions, that are:

a.        As a link in concerted human activity

b.        As a piece of human behaviour

c.        It si a mode of action and not an instrument of reflection

d.        It is simply to estabilish or reinforce social relation. This is called Phatic Communion.

e.        Speech as obtain information (e.g. Where’s the tea-cosy?)

-         Speech for expressing (e.g. What a lovely hat!)

-         Speech for own sake (e.g. She sells sea – shells by the sea – shore)

Another hand, there are also some kinds/ types of structure that we have to know in speech, such as:

a.        Turn-taking

b.        Topic

c.        Encyclopedic

If we want to become a speaker, it’s mean that we have to understand all of this aspect. Absolutly sure that we will the best speaker.