Post on 15-Dec-2015
Integration and Involvement in Speaking, Writing, and Oral Literature
1. Speakers interact with their audiences, writers do not Detachment – the passives, nominalizations Involvement – First Person References, Speaker’s Mental processes, Monitoring of Information Flow, Emphatic Particles, Fuzziness, Direct Quotes
2. Oral Literature
英語語言學理論與研究 Instructor: 黃淑鴻教授Presenter: 胡美英 20978L020
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do Not
Share knowledge concerning the environment of the conversation
Signal understanding
and ask for clarification
Monitor the effect
Has face to face contact
Is aware of an obligation to communicate what he or she has in mind in a way that reflects the richness of his or
her thoughts – not to present logical coherent but experiential stark skeleton
a speaker a listener
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do Not
Readers
Are displaced in time
and space
results
1. The writer is less concerned with experiential richness.
2. The writer is more concerned with producing something that will be consistent and defensible when read by different people at different times in different places, something that will stand the rest of time.
Writers
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do Not
Chafe will speak of
‘involvement’ with the audience as typical for a speaker, and
‘detachment’ from the audience as typical for a writer.
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do Not
INVOLVEMENTDETACHMENT
The detached quality of written language is manifested in devices which serve to distance the language from
specific concrete states and events.
Suppressing the directive involvement of an agent in an action
A Device in English The Passive Voice
INVOLVEMENTDETACHMENT
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do Not
Examples of the passive
1. Its use was observed on only a single occasion.
2. The resonance complex has been studied through experiments with an electronic violin.
From the written data, we don’t know who performed the action – i.e. the agent is unknown.
INVOLVEMENTDETACHMENT
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do Not
1. Allowing predications to be integrated within larger sentences
2. Suppressing the directive involvement of an agent in an action
Another Device Nominalization
Nominalization pp. 39-40
INVOLVEMENTDETACHMENT
Spoken Written
The Passive 5.0 25.4
Nominalization 4.8 55.5
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do Not
1. There were about five times as many occurrences of the passive in our written sample as in our spoken.
2. There were about eleven and a half times as many occurrences of nominalizations in our written data.
INVOLVEMENTDETACHMENT
First Person References
Speaking Written
A speaker is more frequent reference to him
or herself.
First person reference is much less frequent in
formal written language.
Typical examples of reference in our spoken data were
(25a) I have a friend who’s …. About six foot and blond.
(25b) I was reading some of his stuff recently.
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do Not
First Person References
Occurrences per thousand words of first person references, including I, we, me, and us were:
Spoken Written
61.5 4.6
Second person reference would seem to be also a symptom of involvement, but there were too few examples
in our data to demonstrate anything of interest.
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do NotINVOLVEMENTDETACHMENT
Speaker’s mental processes
References to a writer’s own mental processes were conspicuously absent in our written data; some examples from spoken language follow:
(26a) and I had no idea how I had gotten there.
(26b) but … I can recall … uh… a big undergraduate class that I had.
(26c) and I thought … am I alive?
The occurrences of such references in our data were as above:
Spoken Written
7.5 0.0
INVOLVEMENTDETACHMENT
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do Not
INVOLVEMENTDETACHMENT
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do Not
Monitoring of Information Flow
A speaker monitors the communication channel which exists with listener and attempts to make sure that the channel is functioning well. Colloquial expressions like well, I mean, and you know perform one or another of these functions:
(27a) Well I .. I took off four weeks.
(27b) But .. But as it is still I mean .. Everybody knows everybody.
(26c) So we..so we..you know, we have this confrontation.
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do NotINVOLVEMENTDETACHMENT
Monitoring of Information Flow
These expressions were significantly present in our spoken sample, and entirely absent in the written:
Spoken Written
well 7.0 0.0
I mean 2.5 0.0
You know 13.6 0.0
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do NotINVOLVEMENTDETACHMENT
Emphatic Particles
Particles expressing enthusiastic involvement in what is being said, like just and really, are also diagnostic:
(28a) I just don’t understand.
(28b) And he got..really furious.
The occurrences were: Spoken Written
just 7.5 0.4
really 5.1 0.0
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do NotINVOLVEMENTDETACHMENT
Fuzziness
Vagueness and hedges are also more prevalent in speaking, and may also express a desire for experiential involvement as opposed to the less human kind of precision which is fostered by writing.
The following are examples of spoken fuzziness:
(29a) schemes for striking, lifting, pushing, pulling, and so on.
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do NotINVOLVEMENTDETACHMENT
Fuzziness
(29b) moving the bridge or soundpost a millimeter or two.
(29c) Since this banker is something like forty-seven,
(29d) And he started sort of circling.
Counts of occurrences per thousand words of this kind of language were:
Spoken Written
18.1 5.5
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do NotINVOLVEMENTDETACHMENT
Direct Quotes
Direct quotes also express an involvement in actual events which tends to be lacking in written language.
(30a) And uh..she said, ‘Sally can I have one of your papers?(30b) And I said, ‘Well no I’m afraid I don’t.’
The occurrences of direct quotes in our data were:
Spoken Written
12.1 4.2
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences, Writers Do Not
Written language Spoken language
Detachment
The use of passives
Nominalizations
Involvement
First person references
Speaker’s mental processes
Monitoring of information flow
Emphatic Particles
Fuzziness
Spoken Writtenextremes
Figures from maximally differentiated samples: spontaneous conversational language and formal academic prose
Summary
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Seneca spoken in western New York has no written tradition.
Asher Wright, a missionary
An excellent orthography
Some religious materials
developed published
SenecaRich and varied
oral literatureNow only accessible from written records
Chafe examined features which
differentiate spoken and written language
Features of a similar sort may differentiate colloquial Seneca from the language
used in these rituals
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Distinction between
colloquial and ritualDistinction between colloquial and written
parallel
reasons
????
Chafe thought that ritual language, like written language, has a permanence. The same oral ritual is presented again and again with a content, style and formulaic structure which remain constant from performance to performance.
Reason 1:
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Distinction between
colloquial and ritualDistinction between colloquial and written
parallel
reasons
????
Reason 2:
The performer of a ritual is removed from his audience in a way that parallels the solitude of a writer. What he performs is a monologues with minimal feedback and no verbal interaction. Thus the situation is one which fosters detachment rather than in involvement.
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature - differences
1. Seneca has no nominalizers performing the same function as the English nominalizers discussed above.
2. It has no participles.
3. It has no attributive adjectives either; adjectival meanings are expressed by stative verbs.
4. It has neither prepositions nor postpositions.
5. It has no complementizers like English ‘that’ or ‘to’.
6. It has no constructions which are like English relative clauses. These features arise in a language precisely
because of writing.
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Spoken Seneca – fragmented quality
Three intonationally separate sentences, four syntatically independent clauses or idea units
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature - a Seneca Thanksgiving Ritual
An integrated whole
The only sentence-final intonation occurs at the end of this sequence; the sequence of phrases or clauses is united into a single sentence. The phrases and clauses depend on one another.
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Distinction between involvement and detachment
Evidence of Detachment
Seneca has an impersonal reference marker, a verb prefix which means ‘one’. As with the passive, this prefix allows the omission of
specific reference to the agent of an action.
Colloquial Ritual
‘one’ prefix 2 36
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Distinction between involvement and detachment
Evidence of Involvement
Seneca has a variety of particles – agwas ‘really’ and do:gës ‘for sure'
Colloquial Ritual
agwas ‘really 5 0
do:gës ‘for sure' 4 0
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Distinction between involvement and detachment
Evidence of Involvement
The occurrence of particles expressing fuzziness or evidentiality, whose occurrences per th
ousand words were as follows:
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Chafe gave the suggestion that oral literature may indeed has more like written than spoken language in some way.
Chafe thought that certainly the differences between colloquial language and oral literature do not in all always parallel those between spoken and written language.
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Conclusion
Spoken and written language differ with regard to two sets of features.
fragmentation vs. integration
a consequence of differences in the use of
time in speaking and writing
involvement vs. detachment
The different relations of a speaker or writer
to the audience
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Conclusion
Chafe suggested that some of the same differences may distinguish colloquial language and oral literature, even in a lan
guage that has never been written. The reasons may be that oral literature has a kind of permanence analogous to that of written language, and that the reciter of oral literature is, like a writer, det
ached from direct person interaction.