When two people speak with one another, there is always more going on than just conveying a message. The language used by the participants is always influenced by a number of social factors which define the relationship between the participants. Consider, for example, a professor making a simple request of a student to close a classroom door to shut off the noise from the corridor. There are a number of ways this request can be made:
- Politely, in a moderate tone "Could you please close the door?"
- In a confused manner while shaking his/her head "Why aren't you shutting the door?"
- Shouting and pointing, "SHUT THE DOOR!"
The most appropriate utterance for the situation would be a. The most inappropriate would be c. This statement humiliates the student, and provides no effort by the professor to respect him/her. Utterance b is awkward because it implies that the teacher automatically assumes that the student should know better than to leave the door open when there is noise in the hallway. The inappropriateness is a social decision tied to the social factors which shape the relationship between speaker ( the professor), and the listener (the student).
When choosing an appropriate utterance for the situation, there are factors that you must consider in order to effectively convey the message to the other participant.
- Participants- how well do they know each other?
- Social setting- formal or informal
- Who is talking- status relationship/social roles ( student vs. professor)
- Aim or purpose of conversation
- Topic
Do you notice that there is a difference in the way you speak to your friends and the way you speak to your relatives, teachers, or others of professional status?
- When telling your friend that you like his/her shirt, you say:
- "Hey, cool shirt, I like that!"
- When telling the President of the company your parents work for that you like his/her shirt, you say:
- "You look very nice today, I really like that shirt."
This is called choosing your variety or code. This can also be seen on a larger scale, diglossia, where multilingual nations include a variety of accents, language styles, dialects and languages. Each of these factors is a reflection of the region and socio-economics background from which you come from. In monolingual societies, the region and socio-economic factors are determined by dialect and language style.
