Speech Community Organization of Speaking

commit to user 12

2. Speech Community

Some experts give various definitions of speech community. Fishman 1972: 22 states that speech community is one, all whose members share at least single speech variety and the norms for its appropriate use. A speech community may be as small as a single close interaction network, all whose members regard each other in but a single capacity. It means that a speech community is a group of people who employs the same forms of language and the same norms of language. Whereas Hymes in Fasold 1996: 41 defines that all members of a speech community share not only the same rules of speaking but also at least one linguistics variety as well. They share a set of norms and rules for the use of language. It can be said that a speech community is a group of people who are tied with at least one type of language and norms of communication. In short, it can be summarized that a speech community is a group of people who shares at least a single speech variety which has the same rules and norms in conducting and interpreting speech.

3. Organization of Speaking

In studying communicative behavior within a speech community, it is necessary to work with units of interaction. Hymes in Fasold 1996: 42 suggests that a nested hierarchy of units called the speech situation, speech event and speech act would be useful. The speech act is part of speech event and the speech event takes place within speech situation. commit to user 13 The first level in the hierarchy is speech situation. Hymes claims speech situation as situation associated with speech. The situations refer to any constellation of status and settings, which constrain the interaction that should or may occur, for examples are ceremonies, fights or hunts. Speech situations are not purely communicative; they are composed of both communicative and other kinds of events. Thus, it can be said that speech situation refers to where the speech occurs ibid: 42. The second level in the hierarchy is speech event. According to Yule, speech event is an activity in which participants interact via language in some conventional way to arrive at some outcome 1996: 57. Speech events are both communicative and governed by rules for the use of speech. A speech event occurs in a non verbal context. Hymes in Fasold 1996: 42 states that the term of speech event is restricted to activities or aspect of activities that are directly governed by rules or norms for the use of speech. A speech event takes place within speech situation and is composed of one or more speech acts. Several speech events can occur successively or simultaneously in the same situation. For example, a compliment might be a speech act that is part of a conversation speech event, which takes place at a party a speech situation. The third level in the hierarchy is speech act. Speech act is the minimal unit of the set just discussed. Austin in Thomas uses the term speech act to refer to an utterance and the total situation in which the utterance is issued 1995: 51. According to Hymes in Fasold 1996: 43, a speech act is to be distinguished from the sentence and is not identified with any unit at any level of grammar. commit to user 14 Yule states 1996: 47 that in attempting to express something, people not only produce utterances containing grammatical structured words but also perform actions via those utterances. Those actions which are performed via utterances are called speech act. The action performed by producing an utterance will consist of three related acts; they are locutionary act, illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act ibid: 48. a. Locutionary act: the basic act of utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistic expression. According to Thomas, locutionary is the actual words uttered 1995: 49. b. Illocutionary act: is performed via the communicative force of an utterance. Illocutionary act is the act of getting au dience’s recognition from the speaker’s meaning. It is the making of a statement, offer, promise, or for some other communicative purpose. Thomas states that illocutionary is the force or intention behind the words 1995: 49. c. Perlocutionary act: a simple utterance has a function to bring the effect from that utterance. Perlocutionary act is what a person does as the response of what we intend. Based on Searle’s classification in Cutting 2002: 16-17, speech act is divided into five categories as follows:

1. Declarations