Abstract

This contribution argues for a socio-semiotic approach to natural-language communication which focuses on the connectedness between linguistic code and social and sociocultural practice. Section 1 investigates natural language communication with regard to propositional, interpersonal and interactional meaning from both code and inference-model viewpoints. The results of this discussion are accommodated in the redefinition of two of the most important premises of pragmatics, i.e. rationality and intentionality. In section 2, the interdependence of culture, context and communication is analysed in the framework of ethnomethodology, in which the linguistic realization of an utterance and its degree of contextualization are examined with regard to encoding, decoding, inference and implicature. In section 3 the phenomenon of communicative strategy is analysed in a socio-semiotic framework and special attention is given to the speech acts of denial and rejection. Communicative strategies are defined within the framework of preference organization and classified with regard to their preferred and dispreferred modes of linguistic representation and interpretation. In section 4, the results of the investigation of denials and rejections are systematized in the framework of the dialogue act of a plus/minus validity claim, which is based on Habermas' approach to communication (1987) and Halliday's functional interpretation of language (1996). In the conclusion, culture is defined as both a macro and a micro concept, and is created in and through the process of communication. Linguistic code and sociocultural practice are context-dependent by definition: they are anchored to linguistic contexts, which are embedded in sociocultural contexts, which are embedded in social contexts Thus, the macro concept of culture and its context-dependent manifestation as particular cultural values are reflected in particular communicative strategies which are interdependent on the presentation of self in everyday life (Goffman 1971).

Highlights

  • If communication consisted of the transmission of information only, both saying NO and interpreting the communicative meaning of NO would not cause any problems, since the communication act NO would present pure propositional information and could not cause any threat to the participants' face needs and face wants.1 In this setting there would be no indirect speech acts and no linguistic variation since both the encoding and decoding of Linguistik online 14, 2/03 messages would be based on the propositional code only

  • 1 Introduction If communication consisted of the transmission of information only, both saying NO and interpreting the communicative meaning of NO would not cause any problems, since the communication act NO would present pure propositional information and could not cause any threat to the participants' face needs and face wants

  • There would neither be any need for preferred and dispreferred modes for encoding communicative meaning, nor for conversational routine (Coulmas: 1981), and the linguistic code would be independent of a speech community's cultural and subcultural linguistic preferences

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Summary

Introduction

If communication consisted of the transmission of information only, both saying NO and interpreting the communicative meaning of NO would not cause any problems, since the communication act NO would present pure propositional information and could not cause any threat to the participants' face needs and face wants. In this setting there would be no indirect speech acts and no linguistic variation since both the encoding and decoding of. Even though there is no explicit performative in exchange (1), the majority of the speakers of the Anglo-American, respectively German, speech communities would agree on (1) to represent a straight-forward offer, which is inferred from the combination of yes/no question, direct address of hearer and the respective predication modified by the epistemic modality of volition This specific combination has become a conventionalized formula for the linguistic representation of the illocutionary act of an offer. The syntactic format of utterance A is a yes/no question, the propositional content consists of the direct reference to the hearer and a predication modified by the epistemic modality of possibility The interaction of these points triggers an inference process, which results in the attribution of the illocutionary point of a request whose illocutionary force is attenuated by the epistemic modality of possibility, which transforms the direct request for information into a conventionalized indirect speech act of requesting. The socio-semiotics of culture is investigated in the framework of ethnomethodology and its premise of indexicality

Culture: an ethnomethodological approach
Communicative strategies: preferred and dispreferred modes
Conclusion
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