Elaborating Utterances: a Four Phase Model
Patrick Boylan - University of Rome III


 

1. Pre-communicative elaboration
 



NEEDS

INTENT  (pre-conscious,unconscious)
↓↑
PERCEPTION  (conscious)

[ACTION]











EXERCISES: Ethnolinguistic analysis of videos of real life behavior by "foreigners"; internalizing the Weltanschauung alla Stanislavskij

Patrick Boylan. "What does it mean to 'learn a language' in today's world; what role can present-day computer technology play?". In: G.C. Ceconi & C. Cheselka (eds.). Language and Technology. Florence: Editrice CUSL. 1995. pp 92-114.

Earl Stevick. Memory Meaning and Method. Some psychological perspectives on language learning. Rowley MA: Newbury House Publishers. 1976.
 
 



 
 

2. Adaptation of intent (Form/deformation)
 
 

INTENT                                      
           
                      
SELF    OTHER
 
                                                    ↑                   (not Ego)      (resists Ego)                              
PERCEPTION                                                 
 

Adaptation    ACCOMMODATION (if Other so wishes)












EXERCISES: literary pastiche; translating/adapting/dubbing culturally dense films: guessing a film character's value system.

Erwing Goffman. Frame Analysis. An essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper Colophon Books. 1974.

Harold Garfinkel. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1967.
    "              "         Ethnomethodology's Program: Working Out Durkheim's Aphorism, Lanham (MD): Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002.
 



 

3. Formalization Representation
 
 

 ↓  OTHER  ↔  other   ↓   OTHER  ↔  other

↕   othe   ↔   SELF   ↔    OTHER

↑ othe↔ OTHE ↔  other  ↔  OTHE
 
 

"It's the situation that communicates."












EXERCISES: Participant observation of a social activity among "foreigners"; satirical voice imitations. (1.) Verbal: articulation/intonation/rate, vocabulary size/idioms/slang, morphology/syntax, discourse style. (2.) Non-verbal: kinesic, proxemic, haptic, gaze, appearance. 3. Quid: content, topic, attitude, strategy.

Karol Janicki. "Accommodation in Native Speraker/Foreigner Interaction". In: J. House & S. Blum-Kulka . Interlingua and Intercultural Communication. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 272). 1986. pp. 169-178.
 



 

4. Effective Communication
 

PERCEPTION          Genres      Rhetoric
                              \Stylistics \/
     ACTION                 Effect          Results    



Dialectic:    langue  ≠  parole       logos    polis













EXERCISES: Real-life communicative tasks (TV interview, public speech, etc.); survey of reactions.

N. Prabhu. Second Language Pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1987.

D. Fried-Booth. Project Work. Resource Books for Teachers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1986.

Patrick Boylan. Logos e Polis. Mimeograph, Tuesday Conferences at the Center for Semiotics. Palazzo Caramanico al Chiatamone, Naples, 7 Feb 1995


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CONCLUSIONS

Speech is the manifestation, in a communicative event, of a historical will to mean. The manifestation occurs as a modulation (or as a non-modulation when a modulation is expected) of individual and collective social behavior (parole). The sedimentation in the collective psyche (and, to differing degrees, in each individual's pysche) of such behavioral changes is called language (langue); it produces a Weltanschauung that provides shared rules of interpretation (culture).  Lexis, grammar, propositional content, truth value... are therefore to be considered the props and by-products of speech, not speech itself.