Interactional Sociolinguistics

Week 4

Required Reading

Last week we talked about the ways people show their relationship to and feeling about the people they are interacting with (Face and Politeness). This week we will talk about how people manage the activities they perform in interaction. We call the ways which people show 'what they are doing' and interpret what other people are doing 'frames'. 

In order to understand one another, we have to interpret what other people do and say according to some kind of 'framework' of expectations. If you've never been to Hong Kong, you might not know how to interpret it when a police officer stops you and asks for your ID -- you may even think you are being arrested. If a Westerner has never been to a dim-sum restaurant, he or she may not know how to interpret it when old women keep wheeling carts past his table and shouting. If your friend says to you 'Nei yaomo gao tsou!', you need to know if he's angry with you or pleased with you in order to interpret what he means. 

The idea of frames was developed by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson from his observation of monkeys. Sometimes when the monkeys were biting and growling at each other, he wasn't sure whether they were playing or fighting. He realized though that it was extremely important for the monkey's to know!

Broader general ideas about 'what's going on' or 'what we are doing' are called interpretative frames. They are sets of expectations inside of your head about what certain activities are like and how they should be carried out, including what kinds of things should be said and done by whom, when, why and how. Since you know about the interpretative frame a a funeral, you know that when you go to one you should wear your walkman and sing Gigi songs very loudly. Of course, if you go to a different culture, you might be totally lost as far as interpretative frames are concerned and so might not be able to figure out 'what people are doing' or 'what's going on', or you might interpret it wrongly (using your own frameworks rather than theirs). 

Within these broad interpretative frames are smaller frames called 'interactive frames'. These are ways we signal in our interaction what we are doing moment by moment, whether we are joking, arguing, flirting, showing concern, etc. We signal these different frames using the part of our 'expressive equipment' which Gumperz calls 'contextualization cues'. 'Contextualization cues' are signals to the people we are talking to about how they should 'take' what we are saying or doing. For example, if you tell your friend that her new fur jacket makes her look like Rodney's dog, you might smile while you are saying it to show her that you are joking, that you are not trying to insult her.   

The most common kinds of contextualization cues are achieved with our voices. We use things like stress, intonation, loudness, pausing and hesitation, fillers, backchannel and voice quality to signal to people what we mean by what we say. Cantonese speakers can also use final particles to add extra information to their utterances about what kind of utterance it is. 

Another way we can signal a change in frame is by changing the kind of language we use. We might, for example, change registers (from formal to informal), or we might even change from English to Cantonese. One of the most common ways secondary school English teachers signal to their students what they are doing by speaking either English (for the lesson) or Cantonese (for more friendly conversation or for scolding).   

Another way we can signal a change in frame is by using what are called 'discourse markers' (like 'okay...', 'well..' 'now...', etc.) 'Lecturers often use 'discourse markers' as contextualization cues to signal shifts in frame in their lectures (shifting from input to an activity, for example, or from one topic to another). 

A good example of how people use contextualization cues to shift frames can be seen in the excerpt from an interaction in a doctor's office below. It is a conversation between a doctor, a child and the child's mother. As you read through it, ask yourself how the mother knows when the doctor is talking her and when she is talking to the child.   

Doctor:   Let’s see. Can you open up like this, Jody. Look.

                (Doctor opens her own mouth.)
Child:                Aaaaaaaaaaaaah.
Doctor   Good. That’s good.
Child:                Aaaaa//aaaaaah.

Doctor:               //Seeing// from  the palate, //she has a high arched palate,

Child:               //Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Doctor:   but there is no cleft,

                (manipulates child's jaw.)

                what we’d want to look for is to see how she moves her palate. ... Which may be some of the difficulty with breathing that we’re talking about.

                That's my light!

Child:  This goes up there.

Doctor:  It goes up there. That’s right.

Now while we’re examining her head we’re feeling for lymph nodes in her neck . . or for any masses okay .. also you palpate the midline.. for the thyroid.. for goiter..  if there’s any.

Now let us look in your mouth. Okay? With my light. Can you open up real big? . Oh, bigger.  Oh bigger. . Bigger!.                                                                                                   (Tannen and Wallat 1993)

As you can see, when the doctor is in the 'examining the child' frame, she uses one set of contextualization cues--simple language, a playful tone of voice, and when she is in the 'explaining to the mother frame' he uses different contextualization cues -- a more formal register and a more serious tone.  

One of the most important things about frames is that people use them strategically to get what they want. One of the most common things people do is 'frame' one kind of activity as another. You might frame having a date with your boyfriend to you mother as 'doing homework' together, or doctors or dentist who treat small children might 'frame' the examination or treatment as 'playing a game' in order to get the children to cooperate.  

The second important thing about interactive frames is that, like interpretive frames, contextualization cues are different across cultures. People from different groups have different ways of showing that they are joking or serious, flirting, showing concern, acting apologetic, etc. Gumperz calls the set of contextualization cues and their meanings used by a particular 'speech community' contextualization conventions'. If your contextualization conventions are different from the person you are speaking to, it is very easy to have misunderstandings, not because you don't understand their words, but because you don't understand what they are 'doing' when they say them.  . 

Supplementary Readings

John Gumperz, 'Contextualization Conventions (from Discourse Strategies, 1982 Cambridge University Press, pp. 130-152) (e-group)

Erving Goffman, 'Footing' (from Forms of Talk, 1981 University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 124-159) (e-group)

Deborah Tannen, 'What's in a Frame?' (from Framing In Discourse, 1993 Oxford University Press, pp. 14-56) (e-group)

Optional Readings

Deborah Tannen, 'Discourse Analysis' (URL)