1.3 The sociolinguistic approaches

1.3 The sociolinguistic approaches

1.3.1 The major directions in sociolinguistics

Meanwhile, within sociolinguistics there are many directions and approaches that treat language as a socio-cultural component. Among these directions the ethnography of speaking approach and the ethno-methodology approach.

In this stream, let us first investigate the relationship between language and sociolinguistics. According to Gumperz(1986),sociolinguistics views language as a set of rules which makes speakers capable of interpreting knowledge from the environment into sounds ,and for him social categories are part of this environment which comprises physical elements ,cultural artefacts , myths , values , etc…(17)

1.3.2 The ethnography of speaking approach

Now, as we have already mentioned that the ethnography of speaking would represent an independent direction within sociolinguistics; let us see in what manner it describes language. According to Hymes (1964)

The ethnography of speaking is concerned with the situations and uses , patterns and functions , of speaking as an activity in its own right .(18)

Therefore to some extent ; this field is an intermediate stage between what is shown in ethnographies (19).

For Hymes (1968) the effect of social life on language and vice-versa is seen as a “matter of human action” based on conscious or unconscious knowledge (20).Though, since human actions are themselves activities ,the speech events are activities that are restricted by rules and norms for speech performance(21).In other words a certain basis for distinguishing rules and manners , in which speakers combine specific fashions of speaking , subjects or message forms with a particular settings and activities(23) , should be established.
Accordingly, Hymes(1986) suggested seven components of speech which are :Addresser ;addressee ;hearer ( audience );a message form –in what way an utterance is a unit of what is said –setting or context ;code ,the tone or the manner in which something is said ;which refers to the lexical hierarchy and finally ,the channel –being oral or written (24). At last but not the least, these factors are also related to other seven functions of speech: expressive, directive, rhetorical, poetic, contact, meta-linguistic and finally referential (25).

1.3.3 The ethno-methodological approach

Having shown the ethnographic view, let us now get a look at the ethno-methodological approach. For Gumperz (1986) the basis of ethno-methodology is that of an ethnography of speaking (26) as well as of sociolinguistics; all of them share a methodological background in that they give priority to contextual factors (27) (i.e., they start from the data of speech events on the one hand, and they depend on contexts imposed by speakers on the other one). Besides this, ethno-methodology is paralleled to Chomsky’s theory of competence (see Chomsky 1964) in that it puts a certain emphasis on socio-cultural values as interpretative rules (28). What is more, ethno-methodology is described by Garfinkel, who first implemented it, as:

I use the term ethno-methodology to refer to various policies, methods, results, results, risks, and lunacies with which to locate and accomplish the study of the rational properties of practical actions as contingent ongoing accomplishments of organized artful practices of everyday life (29).

In brief taking into consideration that speech events as social activities (30), and that conversation is a moment of an alternative manner of talking, it follows that it is understood by its participants not only for their inner linguistic competence, but on the basis of their agreement on the time, manners of speaking as well as ways of interpretations (31).