Kamis, 11 November 2010

Sociocultural Apropriatness

A native speaker who is thought about fluent in the language might be described by a mate as Hes a who speaks English well, his grammar is excellent, but sometimes they says things in a comic way. Thus, a customer in an expansive restaurant who asks for the menu by saying, Waiter, they would like a menu, has produced a grammatically correct sentence, yet that does not sound appropriate. Or similarly, a visitor in an American home who answers the offer for a cup of coffee by saying, Yes, of work, why do you ask? will probably offend the hostess unintentionally. These examples illustrate the point made by Hymes (1972) that communicative competence consists of both grammatical and socio cultural rules of they target of language.
Speech act theory deals with the description of the functions and makes use of of language, or the acts they perform through speech, thereby providing information concerning the functional parts of a notional syllabus. It provides, therefore, the rules which enable speakers to pick potential linguistic forms which over illocutionary intent. Thus a speaker of English knows that the utterance can you pass me the salt? has the illocutionary intent of a request, although its propositional meaning might relate to questioning the hearers ability to pass the salt. Knowledge of these rules allows the speakers to produce and recognize appropriate utterances in socio cultural contexts.

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