Page 222 - Beyond Methods

210 Contextualizing linguistic input
tions in different contexts. Therefore, a true analysis and under- standing of language communication is possible only if one goes beyond the linguistic and extralinguistic contexts in which it occurs and considers the situational context as well.
Malinowski’s context of situation has been further expanded by several scholars, including John Austin (1962) and Dell Hymes (1970, 1972). Proposing what he called a speech act theory, Austin pointed out that we use language in order to perform speech acts such as requesting, ordering, complaining, and promising. The intended meaning—to use his phrase, the illocutionary force—of a speech act is entirely dependent on the social conventions attached to it. For instance, a statement like “I now pronounce you man and wife” has its intended communicative value only if it is uttered in a proper context (e.g., a church) and by a proper person (e.g., a priest). Ob- viously, the same statement uttered by a clerk in a department store will not render two customers a married couple. The statement gains its illocutionary force only because of the situational context in which it is uttered and not because of its linguistic properties.
The situational context of a communicative event is shaped by a combination of several factors. Hymes (1972) has identified and de- scribed eight of them using the acronym SPEAKING:
Setting: the place and time in which the communicative event takes place.
Participants: speakers and hearers and their role relationships. Ends: the stated or unstated objectives the participants wish to ac-
complish.
Act sequence: the form, content, and sequence of utterances.
Key: the manner and tone (serious, sarcastic, etc.) of the utterances.
Instrumentalities: the channel (oral or written) and the code (for- mal or informal).
Norms: conventions of interaction and interpretation based on shared knowledge.
Genre: categories of communication such as lecture, report, essay, poem, etc.
According to Hymes, these factors, which are essentially nonlin- guistic in nature, constitute a frame of reference for interpreting and understanding a speech event.