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SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE :PENCIL2: SPA2 LECTURE 5 - Coggle Diagram
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
:PENCIL2:
SPA2 LECTURE 5
The organisation of speech
Turn-taking:
Conversion characteristically organised in terms of an orderly exchange of turns.
In Anglo-American speech, not in all cultures though.
A turn can be a one word response, or a lengthy monologue.
Situations affecting turn-taking:
Informal conversation
Interviews
Ceremonies and rituals
E.g. the speaker in the House of Commons.
Turns are allocated.
Walker (1982):
Transition pauses less than 200 milliseconds
Completion of speaking turns projectable
Can be anticipated by the other person.
Managing turns in conversation
Duncan & Fiske (1985)
Identified 5 different signals (called
turn-yielding cues
):
Rise / fall in pitch at end of clause
Drawl on final syllable (final syllable longer than the rest)
Termination of hand gestures
Stereotyped expressions, e.g. “you know”
Completion of grammatical clause
Correlation between number of cues displayed and smooth speaker switch = .98
Hand gesture - an
attempt-suppressing signal
E.g. raise hand in an attempt to stop interjections.
De Ruiter, Mitterer & Enfield (2006):
Can participants accurately predict end of speaker turns?
Hearing original recordings: Ps are accurate
Intonation synthesised to produce flat pitch (words & syntax intact): still accurate
When speech content filtered (intonation unchanged):
Performance deteriorates significantly
Speech content & syntax most important
Interruptions and simultaneous speech
Interruptions typically involve simultaneous speech
Silent interruptions
– occur without simultaneous speech
Listener responses
– not all simultaneous speech necessarily interruptive
Back-channeling.
Microanalysis of interruptions
Roger, Bull & Smith (1988)
Typology of interruptions (14 categories)
Two main dimensions:
Single or complex
Complex = suggests repeated attempts
Successful or unsuccessful
Excessive interruptions can result in conversational breakdown.
But interruptions are not always problematic.
Interruptions in medical consultations
Menz & Al-Roubaie (2008)
Common belief amongst doctors:
Patients will spend too long talking if not interrupted by the doctor.
576 medical interviews - 48 selected for qualitative in-depth analysis.
Non-supportive interruptions used significantly more by doctors than patients.
Non-supportive interruptions = interruptions that don’t particularly assist in the flow of the ongoing conversation.
Patients are significantly less likely (than doctors) to succeed in their interruptions.
And failed significantly more in interruptions with senior doctors than with student doctors.
Status effect.
Interviews take longer the more the doctor interrupts.
Contrary to the belief that interrupting gets the patients to focus on the issue, it shows that if the patients have a story to tell, they are going to tell it all.
So interruptions from the doctor to try and hurry up the patients typically lengthen the consultation time.
Communication is a skill that can be taught.
Communication Skills Training (CST) = part of the medical curriculum now thanks to studies such as this one.
Speech content
Equivocation
Definitions:
“The gentle art of saying nothing by saying something.” (Watzalawick et al., 1967)
“...non-straightforward communication; it appears ambiguous, contradictory, tangential, obscure or even evasive.” (Bavelas et al., 1990)
“Intentional use of imprecise language.” (Hamilton & Mineo, 1998)
“Calculated ambivalence.” (Wodak et al., 2009)
Suggests strategic stance.
Equivocation Theory:
Bavelas et al. (1990)
Two aspects:
Situational Theory of Communicative Conflict (STCC)
Equivocation occurs in response to a communicative conflict (CC)
All possible responses to a question may have negative consequences, but a response is still expected.
E.g. Christmas time, receive a gift, you hate it, communicative conflict.
Give a response that doesn’t answer the question.
E.g. QUESTION: “do you like it?” RESPONSE: “It was such a lovely thought”
A response is still expected
Equivocation a result of the communicative situation
Multidimensional - 4 dimensions
(1)
Sender –
speaker’s own opinion?
Not saying what you as an individual think, but reciting the policies of the department / establishment, for example.
E.g. when a politician is asked: “What is your opinion on the legalisation of cannabis” - usually the response is a ‘party’ response, not one's own personal opinion on the matter.
(2)
Content
– clarity?
Sometimes a response can be so unclear that it can’t be understood - sometimes this is done quite deliberately.
(3)
Receiver
– addressed to the other person in the situation?
Relevant in a mass media situation, less so in a dyadic two-person conversation.
(4)
Context
– direct answer to the question?
The extent to which they are a direct answer to the question.
E.g. most commonly seen in political equivocation.
Experiments
Bavelas et al. (1990)
Participants presented with conflictual situations.
Students gave a rubbish presentation and then asked observers: “How was I?” “How did I do?”
3 kinds of equivocal responses:
(1)
Subtle changes in response
Asked the question “How was I?” but responses included things like “It was fine…” ‘It could have been better...”
Receive a response in the third person.
Detached from personal critique.
(2)
Deferred replies
“Let’s meet later over coffee and have a chat about it.”
(3)
Hints
“Well, you could do a bit more preparation…”
Responses to Communicative Conflicts (CCs) rated significantly more equivocal
Criticisms of Equivocation Theory
Role of face and face management
Term 'face' is hard to define.
Prestige, honour or reputation
Other people thinking well of you.
Bello & Edwards (2005):
Poor presentation in a public-speaking class
Protect both their own face & face of others
Bull et al. (1996):
CCs in political interviews created by
threats to face
(Lecture 3)
Threats to face being on three dimensions:
Threats to own face
Threats to face of their party
Threat to the face of 'significant others' - other colleagues?
Conclusions
Equivocation can be seen as a form of communicative skill.
‘’Equivocation is not the deliberately deceitful ‘dirty old man’ of communication. It is subtle, often commendable and highly understandable.”
(Bavelas et al., 1990)
Speech Style
Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT)
Giles et al.
Based on similarity-attraction theory (Byrne, 2015)
Reducing dissimilarities - may lead to a more favourable evaluation.
Tridialectal - ‘linguistic chameleon’?
Convergence / Divergence
Suggests that we like people who are like us, the more they like us, the more we like them.
To make people like us, we try to make ourselves similar and blur our differences (
Accommodation
)
CAT evolved out of an earlier theory -
Speech Accommodation Theory (SAT)
Changed to CAT on the basis that we accommodate in non-verbal behaviour as well.
Accent
SAT initially concerned with accent - affects how people are perceived.
Accent:
Refers to pronunciation
Part of dialect
Dialect:
Distinct manner of speech that differs in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.
Accent prestige
Fuertes et al. (2012)
Meta-analysis of 20 studies comparing standard and non-standard accents:
Status
Evaluation of the speaker’s intelligence, ambition, education, social class.
Solidarity
Whether people have a sense of similarity with the speaker, whether they place more trust in that person.
Dynamism
Activity and liveliness.
Standard accents rated significantly higher on all three dimensions (status, solidarity, dynamism)
Received Pronunciation
Standard American
Parisian French
Castilian Spanish
Accent change
Giles (1973)
Accent change may take one of two directions:
Divergence
Convergence
Convergence may take two directions, given that accents vary in social prestige:
Upward
Downward
Accent convergence
Willemyns et al. (1997)
Study of Australian job interviews (research assistant)
48 female and 48 male applicants
Interviewers (4 male, 4 female)
Had either broad or cultivated accents (divided equally)
Applicants’ accents significantly broader with broader accent interviewers (convergence)
They
disagreed
that their accents had become broader.
Women disagreed significantly more than men.
Accent Divergence
Bourhis & Giles (1977)
Welsh students studying Welsh in a language laboratory.
Around 20% of Welsh population speaks Welsh.
Integrative and instrumental learners
Around 20% of Welsh population speaks Welsh.
Integrative and instrumental learners
Instrumental - for job prospects
Listened to questions in English from English-accented speaker.
Speaker challenged their reasons for studying Welsh:
“Why are you studying a dying language with a dismal future?”
Instrumental language learners – softened Welsh accents (
convergence
)
Integrative learners broadened their Welsh accents (i.e., accent
divergence
)
Three participants also introduced Welsh words and phrases (
content divergence
)
Optimal convergence
Possible to be over-accommodating - may be seen as integrating or patronising.
Optimal level of convergence?
Giles & Smith (1979)
Canadian man describes education system to teachers from England; accommodates in three ways:
Speech rate
Content
Pronunciation
Speaker evaluations:
Most favourable when he converged on speech rate and either content or pronunciation.
Less favourable when he converged on all three dimensions.
Communication with the elderly - an example of over-accommodation.
Elderspeak
Nurse to an elderly lady:
“Where do you think you’re going? That’s not your room silly girl. Goodness honey are you lost? You are lost aren’t you? We can’t have that. Here why don’t you come with me and I‘ll take you back to your room so you’ll feel more comfortable, OK? Come on sweetie. Honey that’s not your room. You want to come with me? I’ll take you to your room, all right? Why don’t you grab my hand and we’ll go to your room? It’s just down the way here, OK?”