Communication in a multilingual society: Some missed opportunities

Abstract

This article critically examines contemporary interactional studies of the cultural specifity of human language, conducted mostly in modern, multiethnic, industrialized societies (e.g., Clyne 1979; Gumperz 1982a, 1982b; Valdés & Pino 1981). What is often presented as the “linguistic evidence” for miscommunication in such contexts is in fact, we argue, the locus of the violations of the cooperative principles of discourse and human interaction, such as the Principle of Charity (Davidson 1974) and the Principle of Humanity (Grandy 1973). The conclusions these studies arrive at are vitiated by the fact, for which considerable empirical evidence exists, that the native speaker's repairability threshold depends crucially on nonlinguistic variables (Hackman 1977). Only a cross-cultural analysis of how or whether these misconstruals entail analogous consequences, regardless of who is being misunderstood by whom, can, we argue, produce the sort of evidence these studies claim to unearth.

The Coconstruction of Cross-Cultural Miscommunication

“…Finally, Singh, Lele, and Martohardjono (1988) point out the need for bidirectional interactional analyses of cross-cultural exchanges that take the perspectives of both interactants into account. They argue that if we want to explicate the nature of cross-cultural miscommunication we must attempt to "locate the sources of misunderstanding not only in the occasional lapses of the foreigner but also in t h e .…”

“…The analysis uses a framework that considers the simultaneous interaction of several dimensions of users' language (Ellis & Roberts, 1987;Gumperz, 1982aGumperz, , 1982bGumperz, , 1992Tyler & Davies, 1990) and that brings into consideration the multiple perspectives embodied in the participants and the analyst.' By focusing on the contributions and ongoing interpretations of both interlocutors, I attempt to provide a bidirectional, interactional analysis which highlights the joint participation involved in constructing the miscommunication (Singh, Lele, & Martohardjono, 1988).…”

The discourse of resistance: Social change and policing in Northern Ireland

“…Similarly, Hymes's original case for ethnography of speaking castigated the obsession with abstraction and lack of engagement with the role language plays in the structural organization of cultures and societies (Hymes 1974). Although in these cases, and most specifically within the research agenda of Gumperz, there has been a sense that although minorities have been freed from a responsibility for their own social situation, there is a still a sense in which this has "been too concerned with language as an instrument for assimilation to the demands of a capitalist bureaucracy" (Singh et al 1988:45, cited in Rampton 1995; see also Roberts et al 1992). This is an issue for CDA, sociolinguistics, and social theory.…”

La sociolinguistique : quelques conclusions, pour commencer

“…Un locuteur natif est un locuteur qui peut violer les règles de sa langue sans avoir à en subir les conséquences, cf. Singh, Lele & Martohardjono (1988); Singh (1990); Singh (sous presse b); Singh (1993).…”

“…Le «transfert linguistique» ne franchit jamais les limites de la tolérance, cf. Singh, Lele & Martohardjono (1988); Singh (1990); Singh, Dasgupta & Lele (sous presse).…”