Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T21:34:38.096Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Speech events and natural speech: some implications for sociolinguistic methodology1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Nessa Wolfson
Nessa Wolfson
Affiliation:
The University of Pennsylvania
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Samples of speech suitable for sociolinguistic analysis may be sought in several ways. Interviews (either formal or informal), and tape-recorded group sessions, are the methods most used currently. In research on a specific variable, the historical present tense (HP), none of these methods proved neutral or adequate. Although the historical present tense is very widely used in conversational narratives, its occurrence within interviews is so infrequent as to be striking. An explanation was found in the way in which the interview has a specific known place as a speech event in the culture of those whose speech was being studied. The so-called spontaneous interview does not have such a place, and for that very reason is even less satisfactory a source of data. The notion of natural speech is taken as properly equivalent to that of appropriate speech; as not equivalent to unselfconscious speech; and as observable easily, and often best, by simple techniques of participation. (Sociolinguistic methodology; speech events, interviews, observation, natural speech; United States English).

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , August 1976 , pp. 189 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Brown, R. & Gilman, A. (1960). The pronouns of power and solidarity. In Sebeok, T. A. (ed), Style and Language. Cambridge Mass.: The Technology Press. 253–76.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, R. L. & Carpenter, Susan (1969). Journal of African languages, Vol. VIII. 160–8.Google Scholar
Reprinted (1972) in Fishman, Joshua (ed.), Advances in the sociology of language, Vol. 2. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Hughes, H. Stuart (1958) Consciousness and society. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Hymes, D. H. (1964) Directions in ethne-linguistic theory. American Anthropologist 66 (3), part 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hymes, D. H. (1970), Linguistic method in ethnography. In Paul, L. Garvin (ed.), Method and theory in linguistics. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Hymes, D. H. (1972a). Models of the interaction of language and social life. In Gumperz, J. J. and Hymes, D. (eds), Directions in sociolinguistics. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 35–71.Google Scholar
Hymes, D. H. (1974) Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia; University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1966). The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1970a). The logic of nonstandard English, In James, E. Alatis (ed.), Georgetown Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics, No. 22. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. (1973b). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Shuy, R.W., Wolfram, W. and Riley, W.K. (1968) Field Techniques in an Urban Language Study. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Wolfram, W. and Fasold, R. (1974) The Study of Social Dialects in American English. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar