COMMUNICATION

▣ Speaking

▶ THE INTERACTIVE PERSPECTIVE OF ORAL COMMUNICATION 

 

■ Hatch (1992) recognized the similarities between these two skills but identified three parameters that can differentiate between spoken and written discourse production: planning, contextualization, and formality. Although speech production relies on presuppositions, sociocultural rules, and speaker intention, it is usually less planned than writing, contextualized, and informal. Perhaps the main reason for these differences is that speech is produced online and is prototypically reciprocal in nature. The reciprocity develops during the ongoing negotiation of meaning between the speaker and listener, thus creating a joint construction of communication. This is the case in interactions in the first language. However, many second language researchers also see oral production as an opportunity for learners to establish collaborative co-construction of discourse (Swain and Lapkin, 1997) and thus formulate meanings mutually understood while developing their interlanguage interactively. 

 

 

 

■ There is a continuum of oral communication in real-life situations that ranges from the immediate and most familiar environment to more formal and decontextualized situations. Thus, all conversations at home, in cases with close friends, and other standard settings are contextually supported. When we give a formal lecture, a presentation, or an address, oral communication is much more uni-directional, and it relies more heavily on linguistic and conventional rhetorical codes. In these situations, formal speaking shares many features with written communication. We often produce a written draft or outline in preparation for such standard speaking tasks. Planning, decontextualization, and more formal language thus account for the similarity between such spoken discourse and much-written discourse. 

 

 

 

▶ CHOOSING THE LINGUISTIC FEATURES 

 

In producing spoken discourse, speakers use their grammatical competence to make linguistically acceptable utterances in the target language. The ability to choose lexical items and use them in their proper morphological form, arrange the lexical items wrong word order, and pronounce the words in an intelligible fashion all contribute to the linguistic realization of the utterance. For this verbal product to become a meaningful piece of discourse, it must relate to the context in which the interaction is carried out through clues that reflect cohesion and coherence. 

 

 

 

■ Levelt (1978) identified three crucial contextual factors in speech production: demand, arousal, and feedback. Market refers to the amount of processing required by a task. Ideally, the response to the study matches the request of the study, but in many situations, the demand is either too high or too low, creating some malfunction and miscommunication. This is particularly evident in foreign or second language interactions where the speaker may have a hard time adjusting to the task's demands. 

 

 

 

■ Levelt's second contextual factor is arousal, which refers to the speaker's emotional and cognitive response to a task and relates to the individual's importance to the communicative interaction. 

 

 

 

■ Levelt's third factor is feedback, which the speaker receives from the listener(s) or the wider environment affecting the performance. Learners and language users need to be attentive to feedback and back-channeling during a second language context conversation. The speaking and communication strategies of learners need to consider the value of feedback, and when such feedback is lacking, students should be able to elicit it. 

 

 

 

■ The linguistic features, or the code complexity (Skehan, 1996), may seriously impact the successful production of spoken discourse. Mastering question formation, using appropriate word order, placing proper stress on multisyllabic words, and so forth might facilitate conversation greatly or hinder it when these features are lacking. Yet, it seems that sociocultural norms, as noted in Chapter 2, may play an even more significant role in successful interaction. Thus, politeness considerations and ways to save face are often realized through specific choices made by speakers using their linguistic repertoires. In English, for instance, it is usually not considered polite to express disagreement directly. We don't use forms of dispute such as "You're wrong; this is not right/acceptable; you can't do this" unless we are in a position to reproach the hearer, e.g., parent to child, teacher to student. When we prefer to maintain a more harmonious social interaction with a professional colleague or someone in authority, we look for indirect representations of disagreement such as "Well, you could look at it differently." However, to produce such an utterance, the speaker needs to have reached a certain level of language knowledge. In speech production, language ability needs to be combined with sociocultural considerations.

 

 

 

▶ ADHERING TO RULES OF APPROPRIACY 

 

■ The pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic rules of any language are concerned with

1. characteristics of the individuals who take part in the communicative exchange,
2. features of the situation in which this exchange takes place, and
3. the goal of the deal.
4.  Features of the communicative medium through which the discussion is carried out. 

 

 

■ Any language variation that occurs in the utterances produced may be related in one way or another to any of these sets of features. 

 

 

 

■ Individual characteristics related to sex, age, social status, social distance, and the specific roles the participants play within the interaction may significantly affect the realization of any instance of spoken discourse. Learners of a second language have to adjust to the rules of speaking in their new language, practices that may be quite different from the ones functioning in their first language. In some cultures, age may be a significant factor in choosing certain formulaic or politeness features of address; in other cultures, status or social distance may affect spoken discourse. Such sociocultural norms need to become part of the speaker's knowledge. Furthermore, speakers will have to make choices concerning registration. In any language, speakers regularly use more than one register - a more intimate and casual record is used in immediate and familiar contexts. At the same time, a more formal register is used in occupational or everyday situations with interactants that the speaker does not know well (see also Eisenstein, 1983). 

 

 

 

▶ MAXIMS OF ORAL INTERACTION 

 

■ In regular spoken communication, people use talk as a social tool. The cooperative principle proposed by Grice (1975) is decisive in maintaining the flow of exchange between speaker and hearer. 

 

a. the maxim of quantity, which relates to the provision of information by the speaker for the hearer's benefit. In other words, we are concerned here with the speaker's evaluation of what the hearer knows (old information) instead of what the hearer needs to find out (new data) about the content of the communicative interaction to interpret the message. The maxim of a quantity refers to the effective speaker making the right decision concerning the amount of information imparted - not too much and not too little. 

 

b. the maxim of quality refers to the speaker's conviction and belief that s/he is stating the truth. The cooperative assumption between speaker and hearer is such that the hearer accepts the utterances made by the speaker as statements of "the way things are" from the speaker's point of view. 

 

c. the maxim of relevance refers to the fact that the speaker needs to make sure that the hearer sees the relevance of what is being said to what s/he knows about the situation and the goal of the interaction. If, for some reason, the speaker suddenly decides to change the topic or interrupt the normal 

the flow of the conversation, it will be expected that s/he explains the reason for this change. 

 

d. the maxim of manner refers to the delivery of the message. The speaker is expected to produce a coherent, well-presented utterance that does not make it difficult for the hearer to carry out the interpretation process. Therefore, it is the speaker's responsibility in case of a false start or an ambiguous outcome to clarify and adjust the utterance so that it abides by the maxim of manner and is accessible for interpretation. 

 

The cooperative principle assumes that speakers want to be understood and interpreted correctly, and hearers want to be practical decoders of the messages they receive. They are perceived as constructing meaning cooperatively during communicative interaction. In other words, both parties make an effort to cooperate in this exchange of ideas, feelings, beliefs, etc. However, a nonnative speaker does not have full command of the target language, is often very concerned with their linguistic performance, and thus cannot always concern themselves with these maxims.