Language and Social IdentityJohn J. Gumperz Throughout Western society there are now strong pressures for social and racial integration but, in spite of these, recent experience has shown that greater intergroup contact can actually reinforce social distinctions and ethnic stereotypes. The studies collected here examine, from a broad sociological perspective, the sorts of face-to-face verbal exchange that are characteristic of industrial societies, and the volume as a whole pointedly demonstrates the role played by communicative phenomena in establishing and reinforcing social identity. The method of analysis that has been adopted enables the authors to reveal and examine a centrally important but hitherto little discussed conversational mechanism: the subconscious processes of inference that result from situational factors, social presuppositions and discourse conventions. The theory of conversation and the method of analysis that inform the author's approach are discussed in the first two chapters, and the case studies themselves examine interviews, counselling sessions and similar formal exchanges involving contacts between a wide range of different speakers: South Asians, West Indians and native English speakers in Britain; English natives and Chinese in South-East Asia; Afro-Americans, Asians and native English speakers in the United States; and English and French speakers in Canada. The volume will be of importance to linguists, anthropologists, psychologists, and others with a professional interest in communication, and its findings will have far-reaching applications in industrial and community relations and in educational practice. |
Contents
Introduction language and the communication of social identity | 1 |
Thematic structure and progression in discourse | 22 |
Discovering connections | 57 |
Inscrutability revisited | 72 |
Negotiating interpretations in interethnic settings | 85 |
Strategies and counterstrategies in the use of yesno questions in discourse | 95 |
Negotiations of language choice in Montreal | 108 |
Performance and ethnic style in job interviews | 119 |
Fact and inference in courtroom testimony | 163 |
A cultural approach to malefemale miscommunication | 196 |
Ethnic style in malefemale conversation | 217 |
Language and disadvantage the hidden process | 232 |
Bibliography | 257 |
267 | |
271 | |
Interethnic communication in committee negotiations | 145 |
Common terms and phrases
American American English analysis anaphoric answer argument asked background behavior boys C₁ candidates Chapter child abuse Chinese clause clerk code switching committee communicative contacted context contrast conversation cues cultural Deborah Tannen discussion English speakers ethnic evaluation example expectations fact Filipino French girls grammatical Greek Greek-Americans Gricean maxim Gumperz Hindi Indian English indirect inference intent interac interaction interethnic interpretation intonation involved job interview linguistic listener meaning miscommunication mithai narrative native negotiation paralinguistic participants patient patterns perjury Philippine English phrase pitch register present problem prosodic question refer relations relationships relevant response rhetorical role semantic sentence shared shift signalling situations social sociolinguistic South Asian workers speaking speech strategies stress structure style syntactic Tagalog talk tion tone group topic topic-comment Trent utterance verb verbal Western English women words ye tin lǝrke