Contextulazation Clues
“Languages have a constellation of features through which speakers signal and listeners interpret what the activity is, how semantic content is to be understood, an d how each sentence relates to what precedes or follows. These features are referred to as contextualization cues. For the most part they are habitually used and perceived, but rarely consciously noted and almost never talked about directly.
– Aspects of intonation
– Paralinguistic signs of tempo, pausing and hesitation, conversational
Synchrony (latching, and overlapping turns of talk, tone of voice expressive cues, laughter)
– Choice of code
– Use of certain key words (Philly/Philadelphia, Penn/University of Pennsylvania)
– Particles or adverbs that convey information about the speaker’s
Attitudes and expectations (of course, sort of, actually), backchannel cues and feedback messages (hmmm, really? wow!)
– Peculiar syntactic constructions, like agent-less sentences (“I was told”/“She told me”, “There have been speculations”/“People say”
-Formulaic expressions (dude, chill, qué pasa), which test or affirm membership in a particular group
Primary, Secondary, Tertiary
-primary language is the language used at home
– secondary language is the foreign language used in larger society
– tertiary language is the learning of the secondary language’s “hidden aspects”
“Bilingual education…is a program that seeks to allow non-English-speaking
children (many from lower class homes) to use their ‘family language’ as the
language of school…It is not possible for a child, any child, ever to use his
family’s language in school.”
“I regarded Spanish as a private language. It was a ghetto language that
deepened and strengthened my feeling of public separateness. What I needed to
learn in school was that I had the right, and the obligation, to speak the public
language.”
Further Reading
Bailey, Benjamin (2004) Misunderstanding. In A Companion to Linguistic
Anthropology. A. Duranti, ed. Pp. 395-413
Crystal, David and Derek Davey (1969). Investigating English Style.
Zentella, Ana C. (1997) “Bilingualism en Casa” In Growing Up Bilingual:
Puerto Rican Children in New York, by A. C. Zentella. Malden, MA:
Blackwell, pp. 56-79. (Reprinted in Blum, S. D., Ed. (2009). Making
Sense of Language: Readings in Culture and Communication. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.)
ravenouslanguage 