An Analysis Of Tenor On Some World’s Influencing Women Speeches

  CHAPTER II REVIEW LITERATURE

  2.1 Text and Social Context In terms of utterances, “text” is the linguistic content: the stable semantic meanings of words, expressions, and sentences, but not the inferences available to hearers depending upon the contexts in which words, expressions, and sentences are used. So in other words, context is always being together with text. Text in use can be written or spoken. When it is written text, it is signaled by punctuations; however, spoken text involves a number of speakers whom takes turn everything that said or written form in context is referred to as social context. Social context consists of : a. Context of Situation (Register)

  b. Context of Culture (Genre)

  c. Ideology

  2.1.1 Context of Situation (Register) Context of situation or register refers to a variety of language that varies according to the using of language in different situations.

  Halliday and Hasan (1975) identifying three variables, or contextual dimensions that impact on language use: field, tenor and mode.

  Register is important in systemic linguistics because it is seen as the linguistic consequence of interacting aspects of context. An anthropologist, Branislaw Malinowski claimed that language only becomes intelligible when it is placed within its context of situation.

  In coining this term, Malinowski wanted to capture the fact that the situation in which words are uttered ‘can never be passed over as irrelevant to the linguistic expression’, and that ‘the meaning of any single word is to a very high degree dependent on its context’ (Malinowski, 1946 : 307)

  In the following extended quotation, it can be seen that Malinowski was making an important association, between the fact that language only makes sense (only has meaning) when interpreted within its context and the claim that language is a functional resource (i.e. language use is purposeful) :

  It should be clear at once that the conception of meaning as contained in an utterance is false and futile. A statement, spoken in real life, is never detached from the situation in which it has been uttered. For each verbal statement by a human being has the aim and function of expressing some thought or feeling actual at that moment and in that situation, and necessary for some reason or other to be made known to another person or persons – in order either to serve purposes of common action, or to establish ties of purely social communion, or else to deliver the speaker of violent feelings or passions ... utterance and situation are bound up inextricably with each other and the context of situation is indispensable for the understanding of the words ... a word without linguistic context is a mere figment and stands for nothing by itself, so in reality of a spoken living, tongue, the utterance has no meaning except in the context of situation. (Malinowski, 1946 : 307) Malinowski thus considered that, at least in primitive cultures, language was always being used to do something. Language functioned as ‘a mode of action’(Malinowski, 1946 : 312).

  One scholar who developed a more general theory of meaning- in-context, influenced by Malinowski’s work, was the linguist J.R.

  Firth (1935, 1950, 1951). With a life-long interested in the semantics of language, Firth extended the notion of context of situation to the more general issue of linguistic predictability. Firth pointed out that given a description of a context can be predicted what language will be used. Predictability also works in the other direction : given an example of language use (text), it can made prediction about what was going on at the time that it was produced.

  In trying to determine what were the significant variables in the context of situation that can make such predictions, Firth suggested the following dimensions of situations : A. The relevant features of participants : persons, personaloties.

  (i) The verbal action of the participants. (ii) The non-verbal action of the participants.

  B. The relevant objects.

  C. The effect of the verbal action. (Firth, 1950/57 : 182) Following in the functional-semantic tradition pursued by

  Firth, Halliday (1978: 10) points out, “the context of situation is a theoretical construct for explaining how a text relates to the social processes within which it is located”, and consists of three components: the main social activity taking place, the people involved in it (plus the way they relate to one another), and the roles and functions of the text within this social activity

  −known technically in systemic functional linguistics as ‘field’, tenor and mode.

  2.1.1.1 Field Field can be described as the social action : “what is actually taking place” and it refers to what is happening, to the nature of the social action that is taking place : what (activity/topic) is it that the participants are engaged in, in which the language figures as some essential component” (Halliday & Hasan, 1985 :12).

  Martin (1986) defines field as “a set of activity sequences oriented to some global institutional purpose”, and he includes taxonomies, configurations and activity sequences in the discussion of field of discourse. The discussion of field, according to Martin (1992 : 292), can be divided into the following : (1) Taxonomies of actions, people, places, things and qualities, (2) Configurations of actions with people, places, things and qualities and of people, places and things with qualities; and (3) Activity sequences of these configuratioins.

  Following the Systemic Functional Theory’s hypothesis that the intrinsic functional organisation of language closely interacts with and corresponds to the extrinsic functional organisation of social context. It is argued that field is closely related to the ideational metafunction, tenor to the interpersonal metafunction and mode to the textual metafunction (Halliday, 1978 : 143, Martin, 1993 : 145-146). With this argument, an analysis of field would be associated with an analysis of the experiential and logico-semantic aspects within the transitivity and clause complexity system representation analysis.

  2.1.1.2 Mode Mode can be described as the symbolic organization : “what role language is playing “ and it refers to what part language is playing, what is it that the participants are expecting the language to do for them in the situation : the symbolic organization of the text, the status that the text has, and its function in the context, including the channel (is it spoken or written or some combination of the two). (Halliday and Hasan, 1985 : 12).

  Mode is the kind of role that language is playing in a text-creating social interaction. Hasan specifies mode of discourse-in-text into two dimensions : (1) channel, and (2) medium (Halliday and Hassan, 1985 : 12). The notion of channel relates to the question of whether the text comes to the participants through their eyesor whether the text comes to the participants through their ears, finger tips or other body parts or senses. In the first case, it is visual; in the second case, it is non-visual. On the other hand, the notion of medium relates to the question of whether the text comes to the participants when the text is still being processed or created (not yet finished, still a process), or whether the text comes to the participants when the text has already been processed or created (already finished, already a finished product). In the first case, it is spoken; in the second case, it is written.

  Martin states that mode can be interpreted in terms of distance which can be further divided into (1) experiental distance, and (2) spatial/interpersonal distance. The distance between speaker and listener is known as feedback which can be further divided into immediate feedback and delayed feedback (Martin, 1984 : 26).

  A spatial/interpersonal distance mode of the immediate feedback type maybe represented by an active casual conversation or an active conversing lecture, whereas a spatial/interpersonal distance mode of the delayed feedback type maybe represented by a one-way communication such as that of a radion mode. On the other hand, an experiential distance maybe represented by a distance between language and the social process occuring (Eggins, 1994 : 54).

  With reference to lecture discourse mode, it can be characterised that immediate feedback is the active conversing lecture while the delayed feedback is apt for monologuing lecture. Referring to the experiential distance, for example, in the conversing lecture language is used for asking questions, for checking, explaining and giving tasks so the patterns flow. In such a situation, it is the language as action but where the mode is not spontaneous and monologic, the language is used as reflection.

  2.1.1.3 Tenor Tenor can be described as the role structure : who is taking part and it refers to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, their statues and roles : what kinds of role relationship obtain among the participants, including permanent and temporary relationships of one kind or another, both the types of speech role that they are taking on in the dialogue and the whole cluster of socially significant relationships in which they are involved.. (This notion includes what Halliday (1978 : 33) refers to as the “degree of emotional charge” in the relationship).

  Building on pioneering studies of language variation and role relationship variables such as formality, politeness, and reciprocity (Brown and Gilman in Eggins, 1994 : 100). Poynton in Eggins (1994 : 100) has suggested that tenor can be broken down into three different continua.

  a. Power (status), which positions situations in terms of whether the roles we are playing are those in which we are of equal or unequal power. Power (status) influenced by wealth, ethnicity, social position, age, geographical origin, knowledge, and physical appearance. Examples of roles of equal power are those of friends; examples of roles unequal (non-reciprocal) power would be those of boss/employee.

  A : Shandy, could you bring those books to the office? B : Yes, I could sir

  b. Contact, which positions situations in terms of whether the roles we are playing are those that bring us into frequent or infrequent contact. For example, contrast the frequent contact between spouses, with the occasional contact with distant acquaintances.

  A : Do you like him? B : Yes.

  c. Affective involvement, in which situations can be positioned according to whether the roles we are playing are those in which the affective involvement between us is high or low. This dimension refers to the extent to which we are emotionally involved or committed in a situation. For example, friends or lovers are obviously affective involvement, whereas work associates are typically not? Affect deals with the positive or negative feelings of the author.

  The feelings can be expressed directly or implied. Direct expression of feelings can be done by the exploiting attitudinal lexes the words showing specific emotions feeling can also be indirectly expressed by describing the behaviour that indicate the state of the feelings. Negative feeling of being worried, for example can be shown by describing how the participants recklessly wander from one point of space to another.

  (Eggins, 1994 : 63-64) A : Darl, can you wake me up at 6 o’clock tomorrow morning? B : ok babe.

  Poynton’s study of vocatives in Australian English has suggested that there are correlations between the dimensions of power, contact and affect and the choice of vocatives. It appears that :

  a. When power is equal, vocative use is reciprocal : if I call you by your first name, you will call me by my first name. Or if I use title plus surname, so will you.

  b. Where power is unequal, vocative use will be non-reciprocal : you may call your doctor ‘Dr. Bloggs’, but he may call you ‘Peter’.

  c. Where contact is frequent, we often use nicknames : Johnno, Pete, Shirl, etc.

  d. Where contact is infrequent, we often have no vocatives at all (e.g. the clerk at the post office, or the bus driver). e. Where affective involvement is high, we use diminutive forms of names and terms of endearment : Georgie-Porgie, Darl, Honey, Bro.

  f. Where affective involvement is low, we use formal ‘given’ names : Peter, Suzanne, Anne.

  Aside from vocatives, there are many other significant ways in which these dimensions of tenor impact on language use. For example, in casual conversations (where you are talking not to achieve any clear pragmatic purpose but are just cheating), it can be seen a clear correlation between the tenor variables and both the length and the type of interraction : a. Where both affective involvement and contact are low (e.g. conversation with neighbour), conversations tend to be fairly brief; whereas with high affective involvement and frequent contact (e.g. with friends), conversations can go on for hours.

  b. In addition, where affective involvement and contact are low, the conversation will emphasize consensus and agreement; whereas where contact and affect are high, the conversation is likely to be characterized by controversy and disagreement (Eggins 1994 : 102).

  One of realizations of the tenor of the situation can be seen in the choice of mood and related grammatical areas.

  2.1.1.3 Context of Culture (Genre) Context of culture is termed as genre. According to Martin, genre is a term that is defined to capture the notion of context of culture, which stands as one of the semiotic systems outside language, which is not intrinsically part of his register plane but one level above it. In this respect the relation between genre, register and language is one of realization : genre is realized by register and language, register is realized by language.

  A genre is realized and characterized by a structure characteristic of its own and Martin (1984) refers to that structure in question as schematic structure, which is roughly equivalent to Halliday’s generic structure. A schematic structure of genre represents as overall organizational pattern of the genre-in-text. When speakers/listeners as members of a certain culture use a language, they interact socially and become the procedures of a genre of aparticular kins, and this genre is the speakers/listeners’ product characteristic of the given culture. That is, the speakers/listeners’ genre has certain distinctive properties or features of its own. Genres is classified into many different types as there are recognizable social activity types in our culture. They are : a. literary genres : short stories, autobiographies, ballads, sonnets, etc.

  b. Popular fiction genres : romantic novels, sitcoms c. Popular non-fiction genres : profiles, revioews, recipes, etc.

  d. Educational genres : tutorials, report/essay writing. Lectures, etc.

  (Eggins : 1994)

  2.1.3 Ideology Ideology is "basic systems of fundamental social cognitions and organising the attitudes and other social representations shared by members of groups" (van Dijk in Eggins, 1994). Ideology is rooted in the practices of its society. Ideology is a semiotics; therefore decision can be best understood by applying semiotic procedures. All perception involves theory or ideology and there are no “raw”, uninterrupted or theory free facts. A social construct that says ideally what one should or should not do as a member of the community.

  Ideology functions as a guide to act (potentially) and a filter to react (defend). Community in forms of race or ethnicity, age, sex/gender and aspirations applies ideology and consequently perception of the world varies.

  The perception is realized in varies modes; one of which is language and hence is realized in linguistic varieties. Ideology determines culture, which in turn rules out elements of context of situation.

  2.2 Public Speaking

  2.2.1 The Definition of Public Speaking Public speaking is powerful communication tool by which people can share or sell their ideas to others. Because it is a form of human communication that calls for a variety of thinking, language, and behavioral skills, it is often considered the mark of a successful person (Linda and Dick Heun, 1986).

  2.2.2 The Elements of Public Speaking Every communicative event, even those involving the same person, is unique, because people and situations change with time. In spite of this, there are common elements in each communicative situation. Public speaking shares seven elements with other forms of human communication : sender, message, media or channel(s), receiver(s), feedback, barrier(s) or interference and communication situation (Linda and Dick Heun, 1986).

  The sender or speaker is the person who sends the message. The message is developed by the sender and represents the meanings the sender chooses to share with the receiver. Messages consist of verbal and nonverbal symbols. verbal symbols are words that represent the meanings intended; nonverbal symbols are means other than words, such as facial expressions, body movements, and vocal stress, that are used to represent meanings. The channel is the means by which the message is sent. A speech can reach the listeners by using media varieties : radio, television, public-address system or direct voice communication.

  The receiver is the person receiving the sender’s message. The messages are received through five human senses. For example, a television advertisement is received through the eyes(sight) and ears(sound). Feedback is the response message(s) sent by the receiver to the sender during or after the message has been received and understood. Feedback can consists of verbal and nonverbal symbols.

  Barrier(s) or interference include three factors :

  a) External interference, appears from outside of the listener such as baby’s crying, someone’s cough, someone speak loudly outside the room of the speaking, etc.

  b) Internal interference, appears from the listener maybe have an emotional feeling with his/her problem, maybe the listener tired or something else.

  c) Speaker-generated interference, often appears when the sender uses difficult, not familiar or unknown words to the listeners. The speaker- generated interference may also happened when the speaker wears bizarre clothing, some of the listeners maybe just look at the clothes of the speaker than concentrate to the speech itself. And the last element is communication situation. The communication situation includes both the physical aspects of the speecsetting itself (place, time and layout of room and objects) and the relationship between the speaker and listener (roles and attitudes).

  These seven elements function on three levels of human communication- intrapersonal, interpersonal and public communication.

  Intrapersonal communication refers to the communication that the speakers have with themselves. Interpersonal communication refers to communication the speakers have with one person or a group of people in which the roles of sender and receiver change often. And public communication refers to the communication of a continuous message by one person to call up a response within a specific group of people called an audience.

  Public speaking differs from the other levels in two ways: (1) in public speaking, the message is called a speech and is a continuous oral statement from the speaker. (2) In public speaking, the audience’s attention on the speaker.

  Public speaking involeves speaker and audience choice making that is speakers choose appropriate speech content to achieve their speech purpose and audience make choices depending on their listening goals.

  2.2.3 The Purposes of Public Speaking Public speaking can be classified in terms of the desired audience response : a.` Informative speaking

  Informative speaking is one of which the speaker’s general purpose is make the audience understand something new or gain a new perspective on something audience members already know.

  b. Persuasive speaking Persuasive speaking is one of which the speaker’s general purpose is to influence and make the audiences believes of what the spaeker saying.

  c. Entertaining speaking With entertaining speaking, the apeaker’s purpose is to make the audience enjoy of themselves.

  2.2.4 Making Effective Speaking In making effective speaking, it is depend on how well the speaker is able to put the ideas into words. Thus, there are several guidelines for using language effectively in public speaking. First, be accurate in both vocabulary and grammar. Further, use language that is appropriating to the audience, the occasion and the the speaker itself. Define jargon in an effort to be clear. Select concrete words that will allow the listeners to form more precise meanings. Finally, choose words that are interestung, and consider using alliteration, rhyme, repetition, personification, metaphors, similes that draw from shared cultural references. (Clella Jaffe, 2003 : 264)