Chapter 4: Conversation, Discourse & Media

Conversation, Discourse & Media shifts the anthropological focus from the fixed, internal structures of language, known as langue, to parole, emphasizing how language is utilized as a dynamic, context-sensitive instrument deeply intertwined with social relations. Practical linguistic knowledge is termed communicative competence, a pragmatic understanding that guides linguistic competence during actual usage, ensuring appropriate word choice, style, and register depending on the social situation. The field of Conversational Analysis (CA), prominent since the 1980s, studies naturally occurring dialogue to uncover the systematic "tacit reasoning procedures" and sociolinguistic competencies that structure conversation, revealing that features like turn-taking are systematic, not spontaneous. Within CA, sentences are analyzed not in isolation but as text-governed units, often utilizing devices such as anaphora (referring backward) and cataphora (referring forward) to eliminate repetition and maintain smooth communicative flow. Common conversational devices, or gambits, include hedges (like Uh huh or ummmm), opening gambits, and repair gambits. Sequences of utterances often form adjacency pairs, script-like units where a speaker's utterance expects a specific, appropriate follow-up. Central to pragmatic analysis is the concept of the speech act, which classifies utterances based on their social function, distinguishing between locutionary (the act of saying), illocutionary (the speaker’s purpose, categorized by Searle into types like directives and expressives), and perlocutionary (the effect on the addressee) acts. Analysis of cooperative speech shows markers like building upon comments and using hedges to negotiate differences, contrasting with purely competitive styles. Moving beyond isolated conversations, the term discourse refers to larger social frames of reference, often reflecting group ideologies, shared values, and power relations, a concept anticipated by Bakhtin. Dell Hymes' work highlighted the intersection of langue and parole through the SPEAKING model (Setting, Participants, Ends, etc.) to define the variables constituting communicative competence. Building on Malinowski’s concept of language serving social functions, Jakobson developed a typology based on six necessary communicative constituents, detailing functions such as phatic (making contact) and metalingual (referring to the code itself). Finally, the chapter examines the synergy between language and media, noting how celebrity culture and mass communication introduce slang (like cool or hot) that serves as a "badge of identity". The advent of digital media, especially text messaging (TM), has popularized text speak, a shorthand style relying on abbreviations and acronyms that follows the fundamental principle of compression to maximize speed and efficiency, further affirming the adaptiveness and plasticity of language.