Communicative Repertoire Research Articles

Uses and Gratifications of Social Media: A Comparison of Facebook and Instant Messaging

Users have adopted a wide range of digital technologies into their communication repertoire. It remains unclear why they adopt multiple forms of communication instead of substituting one medium for another. It also raises the question: What type of need does each of these media fulfill? In the present article, the authors conduct comparative work that examines the gratifications obtained from Facebook with those from instant messaging. This comparison between media allows one to draw conclusions about how different social media fulfill user needs. Data were collected from undergraduate students through a multimethod study based on 77 surveys and 21 interviews. A factor analysis of gratifications obtained from Facebook revealed six key dimensions: pastime, affection, fashion, share problems, sociability, and social information. Comparative analysis showed that Facebook is about having fun and knowing about the social activities occurring in one’s social network, whereas instant messaging is geared more toward relationship maintenance and development. The authors discuss differences in the two technologies and outline a framework based on uses and gratifications theory as to why young people integrate numerous media into their communication habits.

Evaluation of Psycho-social Training for Speech Therapists in Oncology. Impact on General Communication Skills and Empathy. A Qualitative Pilot Study

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of a psychosocial training programme for speech therapists on their performance skills in patient-therapist communication in general and empathy in particular. Twenty-three speech therapists were interviewed in a pseudo-randomised controlled trial. Communication skills were tested using questionnaires with open questions. Respondents were asked to find adequate replies to clinical vignettes. The vignettes briefly described a patient's physical state and contained a statement from the patient expressing some distress. Answers were coded with qualitative content analysis. Communication skills improved considerably in terms of frequency of conducive communication (especially empathy) and width of conducive communicative repertoire. Negative communication preferences were reduced. Psychosocial training for speech therapists can improve communication skills manifestly and is therefore recommended for further use.

Social relationships and shifting languages in Northern Thailand1

This paper explores how speakers’ understandings of the conduct of social relationships mediate changing and socially distinctive syncretic language practices in a Northern Thai community. Although a shift away from vernacular (Kam Muang) speech styles to Standard Thai was emblematically tied to young and urban speakers in nostalgic discourses, syncretic speech styles and metalinguistic discourses also reflected local and socially positioned understandings of institutional roles and social relationships. I argue that scholars of language change and shift should foreground the mediating role of social relationships in speakers’ uses and understandings of their communicative repertoires across multiple timescales.

The Folklore of the Orange Revolution

The Orange Revolution, which took place in Kyiv between November and December of 2004, shows clearly that folklore is alive and well. The folk tradition is as vital today as it was a century ago, and the bearers of folk tradition react to important social and political events promptly and creatively by producing new folklore. The tumult following the second round of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election revealed not only a mass political movement but also the enormous creative potential of the folk. Oral folklore is immune to censorship and thus accurately reflects the moods, sympathies and antipathies that the bearers of folk tradition experienced during the Orange Revolution. The rich Ukrainian folk tradition was stimulated by the fact that events of great significance were taking place and responded with a flowering of new folk items. The new folklore of the Orange Revolution took a number of forms. In many cases, traditional texts were revived and some were given new meanings in the revival process. Time will tell whether these newly revived texts survive to become part of oral tradition. The essence of the functioning of folk tradition is the close connection between teller and audience. Texts which do not receive a response from listeners will be forgotten quickly, while adjustments to suit the audiences’ interests and mood can change a particular folk community's repertoire. For this reason, studying the folklore created in response to the Orange Revolution and tracking the fate of the various newly-produced items will permit us to make generalizations about folk process: how folklore is born and how it lives, grows, and develops – or dies. Folklore forms played an important role in the artistic consciousness of the people participating in the Orange Revolution. Because the participants in the Orange Revolution sought to put down the regime in power, the genres they most commonly produced were satirical ones. Ukrainian researchers in a variety of fields immediately noted the carnival nature of the Orange Revolution and historians, folklorists and ethnographers commented to this effect in newspaper articles and conference reports soon after the events took place. A carnivalesque worldview commonly follows social revolution. At such times people become aware of the possibility of freedom from official power, and participate in the temporary illusion of complete liberty and celebration, equality and brotherhood. The lower part of the human body - the sexual organs and the organs of excretion - play a special role in the carnival worldview and receives, in folk texts, the symbolic meaning of an old power's death and a new world's birth [Bakhtin 1990: 5-31]. Understanding the symbolism of carnival culture is necessary to interpret correctly the most brutal and grotesque verbal texts and images associated with Orange folklore. The awakening of a folk spirit, and its accompanying strong emotions, strengthened folklore's function, while political street life enhanced folk fantasies, which found their reflection in short folklore texts.

Closing down openings: Pretextuality and misunderstanding in parent–teacher conferences with Mexican immigrant families

This paper examines a video-recorded corpus of kindergarten teachers’ conferences with Mexican-origin families in a peri-urban setting in the Northeastern United States. Examining the pretextual conditions and the communicative repertoires that families and teachers brought to these conferences, we found that the format and conditions of the encounter hindered teachers’ and parents’ flexible mobilization of their full range of communicative resources. In particular, the discourses of parent–teacher conferences, specialist pedagogical terminology, and institutional agendas that teachers deployed led to miscommunication and a lack of rapport building. We argue that teachers and parents could more flexibly deploy their available communicative repertoires to maneuver these encounters.

Indigenous Youth as Language Policy Makers

This article offers a grounded view of language shift as experienced by Native American youth across a range of early- to late-shift settings. Drawing on data from a long-term ethnographic study, we demonstrate that the linguistic ecologies in which youth language choices play out are more complex than a unidirectional notion of shift might suggest. We focus on 3 areas of the research: youth language practices, communicative repertoires, and language attitudes and ideologies. The portraits of language use that emerge show these to be dynamic, heteroglossic environments in which youth deploy diverse sociolinguistic abilities for specific purposes in the context of peer, school, and community cultures. Further, we argue that youth's communicative practices represent de facto manifestations of language policy making. The final sections examine the mechanisms underlying this implicit policy making and the implications for school-community language planning and youth empowerment.

Indigenous Youth and Bilingualism—Theory, Research, Praxis

In this introduction, we situate the theme issue within a growing body of research on Indigenous youth language practices, communicative repertoires, and ideologies, articulating points of intersection in scholarship on Indigenous and immigrant youth bilingualism. Our geographic focus is North America. Ethnographic studies from the Far North to Mexico counter stereotypical assumptions that Indigenous youth simply orient away from local community practices toward “killer languages” in communities experiencing language shift, offering nuanced understandings of the ways in which young people negotiate relationships of power, assumptions about language, and diminishing opportunities for ancestral language learning in rapidly changing sociolinguistic ecologies. Drawing on the contributing authors' longstanding engagements with language planning in the communities represented, we emphasize transformative possibilities as well as the theoretical, methodological, and ethical considerations involved in youth language research in contemporary Indigenous communities.

Mobilizing respect and politeness in classrooms

This introduction to the special issue articulates a linguistic anthropological approach to the study of respect and politeness in classrooms. Ideas about respect and politeness suffuse educational encounters and mediate teachers’ identification of students’ as ready, willing, and able to learn. The ethnographic, discourse analytic studies of classroom interaction included in this volume examine how teachers model and communicate to students what counts as polite or respectful behavior in the classroom and how teachers mobilize models of ‘politeness’ and ‘respect’ to manage their classrooms and to understand student conduct. The authors argue for a semiotic model of politeness that accounts for how the broadly circulating models and stereotypes connecting communicative repertoires to aspects of identity and personhood are instantiated, inhabited, and deployed in sometimes unexpected ways in everyday interactions.

The Right (Write) Start: African American Language and the Discourse of Sounding Right

BackgroundBoth academic research and educational policy have focused on the diverse language resources of young schoolchildren. African American Language (AAL) in particular has a rich history of scholarship that both documents its historical evolution and sociolinguistic complexity and reveals the persistent lack of knowledge about AAL in our schools and the continuing negative stereotypes about its speakers. Currently, federal funds for early schooling target the literacy learning of low-income children, who are disproportionately children of color; these programs, though, assume, as a literacy “basic,” a singular correct way of using language. The stage is set, then, for communicative disconnects between teachers and children during literacy instruction.PurposeIn early literacy studies, such communicative disconnects between teachers and children have been discussed primarily in relation to reading. Our focus is on teacher-student interactions about children's writing, that is, about their efforts to make a voice visible on paper. Writing is a rich context for studying how AAL figures into early literacy teaching and learning. Teachers urge children to listen to how their words sound in order to compose their message. But what sounds “right” to young children will vary for developmental, situational, and, as emphasized herein, sociocultural reasons. We illustrate how, in the course of teacher-student interaction, young children's major resources for learning to write—their very voices—may become a source of problems.Research DesignThe article draws on data collected in an ethnographic project on child writing in a test-monitored and basics-focused elementary school in a midsized urban school district. Most of the school's children were from low-income homes of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. One important pedagogical site for teaching basic literacy skills in the observed first grade was teacher-led editing conferences, in which the classroom teacher focused on written conventions, including standardized usage. These conferences (and all afternoon activities) were documented over the course of an academic year primarily through observation accompanied by audiotaping and collection of children's products. This article features the writing experiences of one focal child, Tionna.RecommendationsWe conclude with a consideration of the goals of language arts programs in contemporary times. Certainly, assisting children in extending their communicative repertoire to include the Language of Wider Communication (LWC) is a worthy curricular goal for the school years. At the same time, we question U.S. monolingualism and monodialectalism in a multilingual world demanding communicative flexibility.

Pachucos, Chicano Homeboys and Gypsy Caló: Transmission of a Speech Style

The term caló is well-known within many Mexican American communities as a bilingual slang that is one of several speech styles in the community repertoire, closely associated with Pachuco groups of the U.S. Southwest that came to prominence in the 1940's. But the term caló predates its introduction to the U.S. by many decades. With roots in a Romany-based germanio of the 16th century, from the speech of immigrant gypsies evolved a new Spanish-based argot, the result of language shift from Romany to Spanish over centuries. By the 19th century, caló referred to a Spanish-based criminal argot called “caló jergal” by a contemporaneous Spanish researcher (Salillas 1896), a mixed code of gypsy Romany and Peninsular Spanish which was used by members of that group as an in-group, secret speech style.

Critical elements of culturally competent communication in the medical encounter: A review and model

Increasing the cultural competence of physicians is one means of responding to demographic changes in the USA, as well as reducing health disparities. However, in spite of the development and implementation of cultural competence training programs, little is known about the ways cultural competence manifests itself in medical encounters. This paper will present a model of culturally competent communication that offers a framework of studying cultural competence ‘in action.’ First, we describe four critical elements of culturally competent communication in the medical encounter – communication repertoire, situational awareness, adaptability, and knowledge about core cultural issues. We present a model of culturally competent physician communication that integrates existing frameworks for cultural competence in patient care with models of effective patient-centered communication. The culturally competent communication model includes five communication skills that are depicted as elements of a set in which acquisition of more skills corresponds to increasing complexity and culturally competent communication. The culturally competent communication model utilizes each of the four critical elements to fully develop each skill and apply increasingly sophisticated, contextually appropriate communication behaviors to engage with culturally different patients in complex interactions. It is designed to foster maximum physician sensitivity to cultural variation in patients as the foundation of physician-communication competence in interacting with patients.

Elephant cognition

Elephant cognition

Learning to Play, Playing to Learn: FL Learners as Multicompetent Language Users

In line with recent critiques of communicative language teaching (Byrnes and Maxim 2004; Byrnes 2006), this paper considers how instances of spontaneous, creative language play can afford access to a range of linguistic practices that are often devalued or ignored in classrooms. To this end, it examines how university students in an advanced Spanish conversation course jointly manipulate linguistic forms, semantic units, and discursive elements for the amusement of themselves and others. The analysis suggests that these humorous moments provide opportunities for new and more varied forms of participation and language use, contributing to the expansion of learners’ overall communicative repertoires. That is, it illustrates how co-constructed episodes of unscripted language play can destabilize institutionally-sanctioned assumptions about what counts as a meaningful or legitimate act of language use, momentarily reconfiguring the definition of linguistic expertise and broadening the possibilities for acceptable language use. Following Hall et al. (2006), the authors advocate a view of learners as multicompetent language users (V. Cook 1991, 1992, 1999), whose language knowledge is grounded in the actual linguistic practices in which they engage.

Changing Communicative Needs, Revised Assessment Objectives: Testing English as an International Language

Postmodern globalization requires that students strive for competence in a repertoire of English varieties as they shuttle between multilingual communities. From this perspective, the current debate becomes irrelevant regarding whether local varieties or dominant varieties (British/American) be used in international proficiency tests. Because it is unwise to define proficiency based on a single variety and because it is impossible to teach or measure proficiency in many varieties simultaneously, we have to consider revising the dominant paradigms of assessment. The changing pedagogical priorities suggest that we have to move away from a reliance on discrete-item tests on formal grammatical competence and develop instruments that are sensitive to performance and pragmatics. In effect, assessment would focus on strategies of negotiation, situated performance, communicative repertoire, and language awareness.

Gestural communication of orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus)

This study represents a systematic investigation of the communicative repertoire of Sumatran orangutans ( Pongo pygmaeus abelii ), with a focus on intentional signals in two groups of captive orangutans. The goal was to analyze the signal repertoire with respect to (1) the number and frequency of signals (gestures, facial expressions, and actions), (2) the variability of individual repertoires as a function of group, age class, and sex, and (3) the flexibility of use in terms of 'means-end dissociation' and 'audience effects' and to interpret the findings in terms of the ecology, social structure and socio-cognitive skills of orangutans. The results show that orangutans use a remarkable number of signals including tactile and visual gestures as well as several more complex actions, though few facial expressions and no auditory gestures were observed. One third of signals were used within a play context, followed by one fourth of interactions in the context of ingestion. Although the repertoire included several visual gestures, most of the signals produced were tactile gestures and they were used particularly in the contexts of affiliation and agonism, whereas visual gestures dominated in the context of grooming, ingestion and sexual behavior. Individual repertoires showed a remarkable degree of variability as a function of age and group affiliation. Orangutans used their signals flexibly in several functional contexts and adjusted the signal they used depending on the attentional state of the recipient, similar to findings of other great ape species and gibbons. Thus, the communicative behavior of orangutans is characterized by a variable and flexible use of signals possibly reflecting their highly variable social structure and their sophisticated socio-cognitive skills, with the dominance of tactile gestures corresponding to the arboreal nature of this species.

Plurilinguismo e atteggiamenti linguistici nella comunità di immigrati ghanesi in provincia di Bergamo

The present paper focuses on the Ghanaian immigrant community in Bergamo, which represents one the largest African groups in the area; the aim is to describe the community’s linguistic repertoire (originating from the combination of the Ghanaian repertoire and the Italian one), as well as the speakers’ attitudes towards the codes at their disposal. The analysis shows that the community repertoire has a complex inner structure, characterised by the presence of more than one code at each level, as well as by the potential extension of single codes on more than one level simultaneously. It is common knowledge that complex repertoires cannot avoid long term mutations; as time passes, their internal structure is likely to become more simplified by the loss of one (or more) of the codes composing it. As I will attempt to show, the Ghanaian repertoire does not to elude this common evolution: the presence of high prestige ‘official’ languages (like English and Italian) combined with the limited prestige presently enjoyed by most Ghanaian languages and vernaculars represent the most serious threat to the repertoire inner complexity.

A cross-cultural comparison of communicative gestures in human infants during the transition to language

The entire bodily gestural repertoire of four different infant groups was coded over the age period of 9 to 15 months. Two small samples of English-Canadian and Parisian-French infants were filmed every two weeks at home. A larger sample of Japanese infants was visited for 7 sessions and of Italian-Canadian infants for 4 sessions at 9 months and 15 months and again at 3 years. Language measures were collected for the last two groups. Increases in Comment gestures, particularly pointing, in Object exchange gestures, and in Agency gestures were found across almost all groups. Decreases in Reach-request and in Emotive gestures were also found for most groups. The increasing group of gestures was positively related to vocabulary acquisition, particularly to receptive vocabulary. Reach-request and Protest gestures at 15 months were negative related to different aspects of language at 3 years. The importance of examining the entire nonverbal communicative repertoire across cultures is discussed in terms of assessing the relationship of gestures to language acquisition. Changes in the gestural repertoire appear to be universal across infants of different cultures, at least those examined.

Expressive Communication Strengths of Adults With Severe to Profound Intellectual Disabilities as Reported by Group Home Staff

This study documents the communication strengths of 14 adults who resided in community group-home settings through the use of staff informant reports. These participants had as many as 12 different communication forms (e.g., reaching gestures, body orientation, facial expression, leading gestures, eye gaze, vocalizations) and 11 different communication functions (e.g., conveying emotional state, making a choice when one was presented, requesting desired objects and people, conveying protest). The author compares his results to an earlier report (McLean, Brady, McLean, & Behrens, 1999) to demonstrate that caregiver report was as clinically useful as structured sampling in identifying the communication repertoires of these individuals. The author also discusses clinical implications with regard to the role of the speech— language pathologist and communication assessment in the adult community group-home setting.

Gesture is at the cutting edge of early language development

Children who produce one word at a time often use gesture to supplement their speech, turning a single word into an utterance that conveys a sentence-like meaning (‘eat’+point at cookie). Interestingly, the age at which children first produce supplementary gesture–speech combinations of this sort reliably predicts the age at which they first produce two-word utterances. Gesture thus serves as a signal that a child will soon be ready to begin producing multi-word sentences. The question is what happens next. Gesture could continue to expand a child's communicative repertoire over development, combining with words to convey increasingly complex ideas. Alternatively, after serving as an opening wedge into language, gesture could cease its role as a forerunner of linguistic change. We addressed this question in a sample of 40 typically developing children, each observed at 14, 18, and 22 months. The number of supplementary gesture–speech combinations the children produced increased significantly from 14 to 22 months. More importantly, the types of supplementary combinations the children produced changed over time and presaged changes in their speech. Children produced three distinct constructions across the two modalities several months before these same constructions appeared entirely within speech. Gesture thus continues to be at the cutting edge of early language development, providing stepping-stones to increasingly complex linguistic constructions.

Influence of Social Context on the Use of Blended and Graded Facial Displays in Chimpanzees

Our understanding of social communication and emotional behavior in nonhuman primates has advanced considerably through research over the past half century. Chimpanzee facial displays have typically been described as highly graded communicative signals, but we propose an additional distinction: blended displays. They appear to be morphologically and acoustically similar to the expressions in ≥2 prototypical/parent categories. We describe the facial and vocal communicative repertoire of chimpanzees and examine how they use graded and blended signals in different social contexts. Data from behavioral observations revealed that they used facial displays differently depending on the social context. Specifically, the variability can be explained by 7 factors representing nervousness and distress, agonism, contact reassurance, excitement, greetings, play, and vigilance. Additionally, the use of blended displays was not simply divided between the contexts that elicited the parent types, nor were they used in totally unique contexts. Instead, the data showed that the contextual use of blended displays is primarily correlated with the social contexts that elicited only one of the parent expressions. Thus, the blended displays appeared to reflect conflicting internal motivational states in the sender, instead of expressing features of the external environment. We proffer several possible explanations for how the blended signals may be interpreted by receivers and why they would be contextually associated with only one parent group.