Beginning points of E of C

• Language, culture, and social relations come alive in the “speech community”

• Language is a goal-oriented activity (it serves social functions)

“Unit of Analysis”

Communities organize and maintain social life through communicative events

Speech Acts, not linguistic codes

The “communicative event”

(“speech event”)

The Model

• S= Situation (Scene and Setting)

• P= Participants (the people present’ their roles and relationships

• E= Ends (goals)

• A= Act Sequence (speech acts and any communicative action bearing meaning)

• K= Key (tone [paralinguistic])

• I= Instrumentality (channel, e.g. spoken words)

• N= Norms, the rules guiding talk

• G= Genre (culturally specific, e.g. debate, sermon, proverb, storytelling, prayer, random small talk, problem discussion)