Hymes article Speech and Language: On the Origins and Foundations of Inequality Among Speakers does not totally reject Chomsky’s notion of a competence which precedes performance. In fact he even extended it and gave greater emphasis to the sociolinguistic and pragmatic factors governing effective use of language. His focus was not language learning, but language as a social behavior. Nonetheless, his treatment of language as a social behavior forms an essential part of language learning theories. Dell Hymes was especially concerned with the concept of communicative competence, which emphasized using language for meaningful communication, including approximate use of language in social contexts. For example, informal conversation at the dinner table versus formal conversation at the boardroom; colloquial language among students with their peers versus academic language during lectures. Thus, for Hymes “membership in a speech community consists in sharing one or more of its ways of speaking. . .not in knowledge of a speech style alone, but in terms of knowledge of appropriate use as well.”
This statement of Hymes reminds me of the “Speak English” policy of my grade school and high school days. In school there was no other language spoken but English. Even at the market place when we met our teachers then we were compelled to speak in English. Looking back, to my consternation, speaking English at the market is not appropriate. I’m speaking of a provincial public market 15 years back not of an airconditioned supermarket now. What probably some of our basic education teachers missed then is the proper context that would require the use of English. Is the market place the appropriate location and situation that would entail the use of English? Hymes stressed that the socio-cultural context determines the appropriateness of use. Being an English teacher, I don’t require my students to use English other than that of the school setting. I do talk to them in English when I see them outside the campus but I don’t expect them to reply in English the way I would expect them when they are in school.
Hymes emphasized that the learning of culture is an integral part of learning a language because it crucially influences the values of the community, everyday interaction, the norms of speaking and behaving, and the socio-cultural expectations of an individual’s role. He further noted that those who do not follow the norms of appropriateness accepted in a community are often placed in a position that worsens social disparities and inequality. Hymes believed that “every language is an instrument shaped by its history and patterns of use, such that for a given speaker and setting it can do some things well, some clumsily, and others not intelligibly at all.”
Thanks for posting your reflections Abe! I have just a few clarifications to make with regard to some points that you raised:
TumugonBurahin1. Hymes does *not* extend Chomsky. In fact, from the very beginning of the chapter I asked you to read, Hymes is very critical of Chomsky's (and the field's) "principled schizophrenia" and how there is little or no linguistics in his discussions of social reality and vice versa (p.26).
2. I am curious about your statement that Hymes' focus is not on "language learning, but language as a social behavior". If one follows Hymes, wouldn't language learning be social behavior? What did you mean by this statement?
3. I am glad that you brought up Hymes' notion of communicative competence. It is a very central concept, one that is important to his work as well as to ours, as language scholars and teachers. One shortcoming of applied linguistics has been this portrayal of appropriateness as the ability to produce the 'appropriate' (right) language for a defined context i.e. formal language in the boardroom, academic language for the classroom, Bicol for public markets, another language for air-conditioned supermarkets :-), etc. As Cazden (2012) says in a recent article: "Hymes does not define appropriateness as only the ability to respond in a preexisting context; on the contrary, he affirms the importance of human ability to create contexts through language" (p.367). This is a very important point because the tendency in applied linguistics has been to make a one-to-one mechanical correlation between language and situation when Hymes has always emphasized that "appropriateness" is "emergent, creative, non-situationally determined use of language" (Cazden, 2012, p.364). This mean that we need to change how we have usually thought about communicative competence. I have uploaded the Cazden (2012) article into our ELL 312 dropbox for your reference.