Exploring a Communicative Event in your own linguaculture

Steps you need to take
There are four main steps you need to do in order to complete this assignment.

You will need to:

1. Record
2. transcribe
3. explore and
4. report on a ‘communicative event’
Dell Hymes’ ethnographic framework
You need to use Dell Hymes’ ethnographic framework which is set out in the Saville-Troike (2008) article which can be accessed via the Reading List and also found in Chapter 14 – Analysing Discourse – of your prescribed text by Holmes & Wilson (2022, p. 516).

Communicative Event – Holmes & Wilson (2023, p.521; pp.516-520)
For this assignment, a communicative event is an exchange with obvious boundaries in a typically occurring situation, where the participants have clear role relationships. You will need to provide a more detailed, referenced definition in your essay and the event you choose should conform to your definition.

Record
Collecting data for your Communicative Events
1. choose a simple spoken communicative event (CE) where the interlocutors are speaking their first language (also your first language). (NB: You can choose to be a participant-observer or just an observer. This is an exercise in self awareness as well as in careful observation, so you must be mindful of your own cultural filters).

2. plan to do an audio recording, and if possible, a visual recording of your specific communicative event. There is a plethora of electronic devices available for this, but choose something that can be turned on without participants’ knowledge. You want an AUTHENTIC, SPONTANEOUS event, not something staged by well-meaning “actors” (See 4. Privacy and confidentiality issues).

3. Keep the recording short so that you can give a detailed description and in-depth analysis of it. (Half a minute is likely to be adequate, but five minutes is definitely too long. If you are only audio-recording it and the interlocutors are face-to-face, take care to try to note and write down all the gestures and facial expressions used as soon as possible after recording the communicative event.)

4. choose an event of a type, which occurs fairly regularly so that your intuitions about social norms and conventions can be explored and validated by reference to similar situations in your experience.

Some examples which have been successful in the past include a short telephone conversation, a short chat with a neighbour over the back fence about the weather, ordering a meal in a restaurant, the beginning of a lesson in your classroom, buying cough medicine at a pharmacy, buying the daily newspaper, and making a withdrawal at a bank.

Privacy and confidentiality
Ideally, the person in your communicative event will not know that they are being recorded. This will ensure that the communicative event is authentic and not staged.

If you feel uncomfortable recording without the participant’s knowledge, choose to use a communicative event with a family member or close friend, who you know will not mind.

After the communicative event has finished, you will need to tell the other person(s) that you recorded the conversation, explain the purpose of the recording, how it will be used, and seek their permission to use it in an assignment. Very rarely people will not give permission, in which case you will need to delete the recording and seek out another situation.

If there is the possibility of a breach of confidentiality, you should get signed written permission from your participant/s and include it as a scanned appendix to your essay.

Sample letter of permission

I, ____________________, give permission to ____________________ (your name) to

use her/his observation of me in her/his assignment for the University of New England.

Signature ______________________________________

Date ______________________________________

Transcribe
According to the Communication Research Net, ‘Transcribing is the process of representing, in written form, some stretch of lived activity. The resulting transcription provides a document that is easily perused and examined, and in a variety of institutional settings it serves as the official record of the actual proceedings’.

Before you begin to record your Communicative Event click on the following link to view the following video to see how the Jefferson Transcription method is used. You should consider how you will adapt this method of transcription to your situation. We don’t expect that you will become proficient in transcribing at this level but this video will provide you with a guide for the basic requirements for transcribing.

When writing up your transcription:

Give participants’ pseudonyms (A, B, C, etc., letters of their first names, or P1, P2, etc.). If you choose to use full names as pseudonyms, then make sure that these are not participants’ real names.
If your data are not in English, provide both a transcription in the language of the data and an English translation.
Although several different transcription methods are used in the readings, you are to use the recommended one in the unit. You will find that the concentration and detail required to transcribe your CE will help you pinpoint some of the intricacies, which you would not otherwise notice.Transcribe
According to the Communication Research Net, ‘Transcribing is the process of representing, in written form, some stretch of lived activity. The resulting transcription provides a document that is easily perused and examined, and in a variety of institutional settings it serves as the official record of the actual proceedings’.

When writing up your transcription:

Explore
Once you have recorded and written up your transcript, you will need to reflect on the main readings for this assignment.

Read
Holmes J. & Wilson, N. (2022). Analysing discourse. An introduction to sociolinguistics (5th ed. pp. 504-567). Routledge.

Saville‐Troike, M. (2008). The analysis of communicative events. The ethnography of communication: An introduction (3rd ed., pp. 88–143). Blackwell.

Report on a communicative event
Model for your written assignment
Under Assignment 1, I have provided a model from a previous year. You should not copy anything from this example, but it does provide a good structure for this assignment. While this model was based on a radio interview. I would recommend that you use a more personal text for your transcript and written report.

How to structure your report
Introduction
Clarify and reference your understanding of what a communicative event is
Give a brief description of your Communicative Event
Explain how the CE was recorded and note any issues of “observer paradox” which may have distorted the data
Provide full details based on Del Hymes’ ethnographic framework (using headings)
Explain why it is useful for language teachers to be aware of the complexity of authentic, everyday discourse.
In your conclusion, draw together the key points about your Communicative Event and briefly discuss the implications for you as a teacher in your particular context.
In the section using Del Hymes’ framework, you need to comment on each of the eleven components identified by SavilleTroike (2008) and Holmes & Wilson (2022, p.516):
Genre or type of event
Topic
Purpose/function
Setting
Key or emotional tone
Participants
Message form
Message content
Act sequence
Rules for interaction
Norms of interpretation.
The following reading is available in the Reading List.
Saville‐Troike, M. (2008). The analysis of communicative events. The ethnography of communication: An introduction (3rd ed., pp. 88–143).Blackwell.

Finally,
Include the transcript in your assignment (either within the body of the assignment or in the appendix.
Attach your audio/video file when submitting your assignment.

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