Language in Use

The following essay was submitted as part of the course work for MA Applied Language Studies, at the University of Westmisnter, London (2003)

Language in Use:

How language Changes in a Waking Day

Introduction

The present study mainly relates to the impact of social conditions on the language of any speaker. It is widely understood that the style of speech changes in the twinkling of an eye, depending on a wide range of variables including setting, the topic of discussion, the relationship between the interlocutors and the purpose of discussion. It has been observed that people speak more clearly and try to pronounce their sounds distinctly when conversing with foreigners, whereas, in front of a baby, people start speaking like a baby. They all change their linguistic behaviour in order to fit in that particular social situation. In other words they accommodate (their linguistic behaviour) in order to achieve certain linguistic as well as social purposes. The present study will attempt to present an analysis of the different manifestations of these “accommodative processes.” It is divided into two parts. Part I relates to the theoretical aspect of it, i.e., a brief analysis of how people may change their language, whereas Part II relates to applying the finding of Part I on a lawyer.

Part I (Introducing Language Change)

The spoken language tells a lot about the social status of the speaker. In this sense language is ‘socially diagnostic.’ (Guiles and Coupland 1991). A different accent or pronunciation of an individual sound, often, leads people to think about the speaker’s non-linguistic characteristics such as status, education, class or intelligence. Different pronunciations only, apart from anything else, have an ‘evaluative repercussions’ for the speaker. As Giles and Clair stated ‘language is not a homogeneous, static system. It is multi-channelled, multi-variable and capable of vast modifications from context to context by the speaker. Slight differences of which are often detected by listeners and afforded social significance.’ Since a slight change in the language can be of crucial importance, there seems no doubt that people consciously or unconsciously try to speak in ways that avoid any such crucial confrontation. Through accommodating their language according to the new environment they seek identification with others.

Everybody changes his language according to the new environment. The reasons mainly are sociological, although individual psychology and treatment of language are also crucial. Socio-linguistically speaking people’s modification of language can be divided into two broad categories: Convergence and Divergence. By convergence we mean that people alter or change his way of speaking, which includes pronunciation, choice of vocabulary, structures, intonation patterns, enunciation and tone, to resemble that of those they are interacting with. Whereas divergence refers to the way people accentuate their verbal or non-verbal differences in order to distinguish themselves from others. According to Guiles and Coupland (1991) convergence at interethnic settings exists everywhere and starts showing at six years of age.

It also establishes that there’s a tendency for people to become more alike in terms of linguistic, prosodic or non-verbal behaviour such as pronunciation, utterance length, pauses, speech rates, vocal intentions as well as facial expressions. Probably these convergence strategies point to people’s perennial need for social approval as well as mutual intelligibility. This leads to the ‘Similarity Attraction Theory’ according to which ‘the more similar our attitudes and beliefs are the more likely it is that we will be attracted by them.’ (Byrne 1961, cited in Giles and Clair 1979)

Now people, in their attempt to show that their attitudes and beliefs are similar to those of the interlocutors, often alter their language. They are no doubt trying to achieve a non-linguistic hidden motive, but by doing so (i.e., speaking the kind of language others speak) they prepare the soil for it. There altered linguistic behaviour is for the purpose of winning their support. Guiles and Coupland 1991 have divided this convergence into two basic categories: Upward Convergence and Downward Convergence. By Upward Convergence they mean changing one’s language to that of a socially upper language variety. Similarly Downward Convergence refers to changing one’s language to that of a socially inferior language variety. For instance, a young employee requesting for a pay rise or promotion may converge upwards towards his boss’s language, which is formal and socially superior. Likewise, consider a situation in which an employer converges downwards towards the informal workers language in order to win their approval for an issue which they are (more) likely to oppose. There’s empirical evidence that people react more favourably to those converging towards them.

Part II (Finding Convergence and Divergence in a Lawyer)

To see how a lawyer changes his language during a waking day, we have selected a typical day from the life of a city lawyer. He is married, have got two children and lives with his family. For the sake of identifying him easily, we call him John.

John gets up at around 7 in the morning, but before coming out of the bed, he mumbles a few utterances that only his wife can understand. Linguistically these may not be complete words or sentences, but serve the purpose of:

- socialising,

- showing concern,

- giving information that I am up,

When he finally comes out of the bed, he moves to the next room where he finds his youngest son in the cradle. Now this Little John is just one and a half years old, and can understand and produce a very limited number of words. But his dad speaks using strange structures with a funny pronunciation and tone that he doesn’t use anywhere else. e.g,

- o cutee cutee, maaai bei---bee

In this case John is converging downwards assuming that this is the kind of talk babies like. Although it is not sure, whether or not babies like baby-talk, but it is certain that John’s act of pretending to speak like a baby is a downward convergence. Another assumption that John may have in his mind would be the idea that babies can not understand the sophisticated and developed talk of adults so one must go down (converge downwards) to be well understood and accepted by the kids.

A few minutes later when John speaks to his elder son, who is around seven, he again converges downwards towards his son’s language. Although, this time, he uses syntactically complete structure, but the choice of topics and the manner of speaking are that of seven years old children. In both these situations John converges downwards for the purpose of

- getting their (children’s) attention

- showing that he is willing to come down to their level

- developing a ‘similarity attraction theory’ scenario

Later in the day, when John is in the courtroom functioning as a prosecuting lawyer, his language changes again. Most of his speech falls in the category of courtroom language, so he converges towards the courtroom language. Although this is not the kind of language John would normally speak, but since this is the language of his profession and he uses it quite frequently, we can not say that he converges downwards or upwards towards courtroom language. But when speaking to a witness who comes from a socially lower class and speaks a different variety of language, John will converge downwards towards his language so that according to ‘similarity attraction theory’ his main motives will be:

- winning the witness’ support

- showing that he (John) is considerate, and understands the position of the witness

- making him (witness) feel that John is also from his class, so he can share certain information which John, as a person from different social or ethnic group, may not be suitable to be given.

On the other hand witness may converge upwards by speaking a socially upper class language, as he is surrounded by such people in the court room. His motives will include

- to be understood properly

- to show his respect for the courtroom

- to be part of a group hence feeling secure and safe

Later that evening John, by misfortune, suffers an accident as a minicab bumps into his Mercedes. When the police arrive, the cab driver tries to converge upwards by speaking a socially important variety of language. He may use Received Pronunciation (RP) as in England they are looked upon as more intelligent, serious and self-confident as compared to regional accents. His hidden motives will be to show police that he is (also) from upper class, is well educated and intelligent (hence knows how to drive well). He is certainly trying to get certain non-linguistic social or legal advantages by indulging in this kind of linguistic behaviour. On the other John, after observing that this cab driver is trying to use RP, might accentuate his RP to emphasise on his social, educational and professional background. His main motive is that of showing that he is different from the cab driver. He me be diverging from the normal speech behaviour of that situation, but this linguistic divergence serves him certain non-linguistic purposes.

Conclusion

People change their language to achieve certain non-linguistic purposes. Sometimes this change is intentional, sometimes not. It is broadly divided into two categories: Convergence and Divergence. Convergence refers to changing one language to that of the interlocutors, whereas Divergence refers to accentuating ones language in order to show that one (or one’s variety of language) is different from the interlocutors. Convergence has been further divided into two categories: Upward and Downward convergence. This is purely on the basis of social importance. Purely linguistically there may not a single seminal point in upward or downward language change. It has bee said that Convergence exists more at personal level, whereas Divergence is more at group level, especially in interacting with different ethnic groups.

References

o Giles, H. & Clair, R. 1979. Language and Social Psychology. Oxford: Blackwell

o Giles, H. & Coupland, N. 1991. Language: Contexts and Consequences. Keynes: Open University Press

o http://www.englishclub.net