Week 2 - Speech Acts

One of the things learnt from this week's class that really struck me as surprising was the vast number of ways in which various cultures can differ when it comes to the simple act of giving and receiving compliments.

Beyond just a matter of language differences and conventions, vested in compliment utterances are a host of values, beliefs and customs uniquely shared by each community. The example given during class was that of an exchange that occurred between two members of a Japanese community:

Speaker X inquires about the earrings worn by Speaker Y and asks if they were made of "pure gold". Speaker Y responds with the affirmative and initiates a discussion about gold prices and jewellery.

As an outsider to the community, this would appear to me as merely a regular exchange between two people, where one is trying to elicit information from the other. However, it turns out that Speaker X was actually performing an act of complimenting, which became evident only when we learnt that in Japanese society, pure gold was a symbol for status and wealth.

This and several other examples really impressed upon me the idea that language use and societal values are so closely intertwined. It appears that when surveying the speech practices of communities, particularly those different from your own, the ability to grasp the literal meaning of conversations and utterances is hardly adequate. To fully appreciate and comprehend their nuances, one needs to be in touch with the set of values, beliefs and customs that govern a certain community’s way of not just communicating, but of living as well.

What this means for us as potential researchers is something really crucial: speech acts cannot be divorced from their cultural context. Therefore, sound research on communicative practices must always be accompanied with an understanding of how the group functions on a day-day basis, and way of life as a whole.