UNIVERSITY OF BAGHDAD COLLEGE OF ARTS

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

SOCIOLINGUISTICS

The Ethnography of Speaking

BY:
Hiba Dhafer

25th December, 2013

Introduction
According to Hudson (1980: 106), speech is "shorter or longer strings of linguistic items uttered on particular occasions for particular purposes". It is used in different ways among different groups of people and each group has its own norms of linguistic behaviour (Wardhaugh, 2010: 253).

Contrastingly, Ferdinand de Saussure claims that speech is totally individual, in that it depends only on the "will of the speaker" (Hudson, 1980: 106). So, does society affect speech? And if it does, in what way? And how can such effect be investigated? The answer to all these questions lies within the notion of the ethnography of speaking. So, what is meant by the ethnography of speaking? And how did it come to existence? The following section will answer these questions.

The Ethnography of Speaking

Coulthard (1985: 33) states that Chomsky set the goal of linguistic theory as the description of the ideal speaker-hearers competence, his knowledge of

grammaticality rather than appropriateness. Chomsky only focused on the

grammatical relations holding between sentences like "He hit me", "It was me who he hit" and "It was him who hit me" without attempting to explain why one and not another might be appropriate to a particular situation. But Wardhaugh (2010: 264) refers to the fact that there is more to understanding how language is used than only describing the syntactic composition of sentences. When you learn to use a language, you learn how to use it in order to do certain things that people do with that language. Thus, Coulthard (1985: 32) states that Hymes (1971) argues that Chomsky's definition is too narrow as linguistics must concern itself with

communicative competence ( which is defined by Gumperz as the

speaker's ability to select, from the totality of grammatically correct expressions available to him, forms which appropriately reflect the social norms governing behaviour in specific encounters (Wardhaugh, 2010)). Hymes suggested that an adequate approach must distinguish and investigate four aspects of competence (Coulthard, 1985: 33): 1. Systematic potential: which is related to Chomsky's linguistic competence as it is concerned with the grammaticality of utterances. 2. Appropriateness: deals with the suitability and effectiveness of utterances. These two aspects vary independently, as an utterance can be grammatical but inappropriate, like the case in which a doctor asked a schizophrenic patient about his name to which the patient responded: "Well, let's say that you might have thought you had something from before, but you haven't got it any more", or it can be ungrammatical but appropriate. For example, among the Burundi appropriate but ungrammatical utterances occur frequently since they mark

differences in rank. When addressing a prince, a peasant is required to make a "rhetorical fool of himself" even if he is an able speaker producing ungrammatical utterances. 3. Occurrence: is concerned with whether certain features of speech are common, rare or novel. 4. Feasibility: describes whether or not something is possible. For example, the Cochiti of New Mexico was unable to elicit the first person singular possessive form of "wings" on the grounds that the speaker, not being a bird, couldn't say "my wing" only if the person's name is "Robin".

According to theses aspects, Hymes suggests that the bumbling speech of the Burundi peasants is ungrammatical, appropriate, common and awkward. Yet, he feels such an approach would still be too narrow so he suggested a second descriptive science of language, the ethnography of speaking, concerned not simply with language structure, but with language use, with the rules of speaking, the ways in which speakers associate particular modes of speaking, topics, or message forms, with particular settings and activities (Ibid). For Duranti, an ethnography is the written description of the social organization, social activities, symbolic and material resources, and interpretive practices characteristic of a particular group of people. Ethnographers try to provide accounts which show how the behaviour that is being observed makes sense within the community that is being observed (Wardhaugh, 2010: 261). Since the focus of the ethnography of speaking is on how communication is patterned and organized within groups of speakers, there is a need to delimit the group of speakers for whom one is going to produce rules of speaking and such a group is to be named "speech community".

Speech Community
Coulthard (1985: 35) refers to the observation carried out by Blom and Gumperz (1972) in the Norwegian village of Hemnesberget where people use two varieties; the standard language and the local dialect. Blom and Gumperz found out that the local dialect is generally used and the only case when people switch to the standard language is when discussing a matter related to the National Norwegian system. Even in the community administration office, when people step up to the clerk's desk, greetings and

inquiries about family affairs tend to be exchanged in the local dialect and switching to the standard language only occurs when talking about business. Although it sounds an easy task to determine the use of these varieties in the community, Blom and Gumperz proved the opposite by conducting an experiment in which they dealt with two different groups of people. One group consisted of students who spent the last few years away at university returning only in the summer. They claimed to be pure dialect speakers but their speech was topic-dependent as when talking about non-local matters they switched to the standard phonology while preserving some morphological and lexical features of the dialect. The other group consisted of members from families who associate themselves from the local community therefore they used the standard language as their normal speech and the dialect is only used for humor or when adding a local color. So what seemed to be one speech community was now seen to be three distinguished by different selection of rules. Since different linguists suggested different definitions concerning the notion of speech community, and different observations and experiments conducted showed that boundaries between speech communities can never be definite or clear cut, the conclusion Coulthard (1985: 37) arrives at is that the speech community is an idealization, for speakers don't fall neatly into categories just like how isoglosses don't fall neatly one on top of another. Yet, it is a very useful concept which is nevertheless largely used. Any ethnographer of speaking must describe the linguistic options open to the speech community. What kind of linguistic options they are and how they can be used to describe speech are going to be explained in the next section.

Linguistic Options
Different linguistic options are open to different communities, for example, as seen earlier, the residents of Hemnesberget had a choice of two major varieties; the local dialect and the standard language. While speakers of Arabic and Greek have a choice between two standard languages a high form used in sermons, speeches and lectures, and a low form used in conversations and discussions. For Americans, Joos (1967) suggested five degrees of formality (frozen, formal, informal, casual and intimate) within the one standard language. The Javanese is reported to have three major styles (high, mid and low). A townsman would use low with a friend, mid with a non-intimate and high to a high official from whom he would receive low. Halliday suggests a finer distinction in terms of register stating that speech communities within the same language area can be distinguished by the range of registers they have available. The fact that the main distinction between registers is lexical (neckline refers to fashion, spoonful refers to medicine, etc.) yet they overlap considerably (a doctor may use the term

neckline to refer to the place of injury) makes them very difficult to isolate
and define. Therefore, Hymes suggested a more useful approach that sees the speech community as comprising a set of styles "a way or mode of doing something". Styles can be recognized in terms of two relations:

syntagmatic and paradigmatic (Coulthard, 1985: 39)

Lyons (1977: 241) refers to syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations within a syntactic framework as syntagmatic relations hold between elements which have a high possibility for co-occurrence, for example "the old man" consists of (Art + Adj + N) which is an acceptable combination in English that makes

a NP. While paradigmatic relations hold between units that are members of the same word class and therefore can be mutually substitutable, for example "the" in the previous NP can be substituted by "an" and "old" by "young, strong or sick" and "man" by "girl, boy, baby or even dog". It can be said that paradigmatic relation are related to the concept of alteration. After clarifying these concepts, they can now be applied on style. In terms of formality, let's consider formal and informal styles. When writing an email to his/her professor, the student greets his professor by writing: "Dear Dr. Smith" while when writing to a friend he/she types: "Hi Sara". There are syntagmatic relations holding between "Dear" and "Dr. Smith" but it will feel awkward when someone says "Hi Dr. Smith" since "Hi" presupposes an informal style and hence the person's first name is expected to follow it "Sara". Switching from on style to another is a matter of paradigmatic relations which suggests substituting "Hi" by "Dear" when shifting from informal to formal style and similarly substituting a person's first name with his/her last name preceded by an address term like the academic title "Dr.". Coulthard (1985: 40) states that the choice between styles serves a social function and choosing an inappropriate style in certain contexts is sometimes employed for certain purposes such as to make people laugh as in the case of western stand-up comedians who tend to speak informally and even sarcastically about religion which causes the western audience to burst into laughter. While carrying out such a style in the Arab community might result in the comedian's death. Hymes recognized two kinds of stylistic features which constitute organized use of speech: stylistic modes and stylistic structures. The former accompanies and colors what is said and is mostly related to modifications of

the voice in a certain way like in singing, chanting and reciting. While the latter defines the recurrent forms and deals with the organization of sentences and utterances into larger units like greetings, farewells and prayers. An example of both kinds can be seen in the complex genre of church service in which the stylistic modes are shown in singing and chanting while the stylistic structures appear in hymn, psalm, prayer and sermon. Since some genres are more overt than others (a conversation was until recently said to have no identifiable structure), and occur in larger situations, carrying out an ethnography of speaking in terms of style doesn't sound effective. Therefore, a study in terms of speech acts and speech events is introduced.

Speech Acts and Speech Events

Since the study of language must go beyond the sentence and bring in the social context, it must deal with the "real" texts that make up human communication and social situations in which they are used. The focus of attention then shifts from sentences to the very act of communication (Spolsky, 1998: 14). As Atkinson (2001: 290) reports, the notion of speech acts the theory that words perform actions in the world (announcing: a priest says in a wedding "I now pronounce you man and wife", or naming: a newly parent says "I shall name my baby Sara") - was borrowed from Austin (1962), but expanded. An ethnography of communication entails a broader notion of context than speech act theory, and broader range of acts than speech, including gestures and paralinguistic communication. Therefore, speech acts are seen as aspects contained within a larger speech situation speech event.

Coulthard (1985: 42) states "An event may consist of a single speech act, but will often comprise several". Saville-Troike (2003: 122) mentions that the opening of Japanese door-to-door sales encounters comprise a sequence of six acts: "greeting"-"acknowledgement"-"identification"-"question about purpose"-"information about purpose"-"expression of interest/disinterest". One ultimate aim of the ethnography of speaking is to provide an exhaustive list of speech acts and speech events of a particular speech community. But such an approach has proved to be unpractical since each linguist provided a list that is different from the others and the analytic categories are not defined therefore a precise description of speech acts and speech events cannot be reached and any attempt will be an "illusion of classification" (Coulthard, 1985: 42).

Components of Speech Events

According to Wardhaugh (2010: 259) Hymes proposed an ethnographic framework providing a description of all the factors relevant in understanding how a particular communicative event achieves its objectives, by using the word SPEAKING as an acronym for the factors he deemed relevant. The components of the SPEAKING model - Setting & scene, Participants, Ends, Act sequence, Key, Instrumentalities, Norms and Genres shall be discussed as follows (Atkinson, 2001: 290):

1- Setting and Scene

According to Coulthard (1985: 44), Setting refers to time and space. All speech events occur in time and space sometimes its one of the defining criteria of an event that it occurs at a specific time (special church service for Easter, The Queen's Christmas message, the American annual union

address) and space (there are very restricted number of places where marriages can be solemnized or litigations occur). When a speech act is not restricted to a particular setting, the setting may affect either the stylistic mode (people tend to speak in a hushed tone in church) or the stylistic structure (the Javanese will be likely to use a higher level to the same individual at a wedding than in the street). The scene refers to the abstract psychological setting, or the cultural definition of the occasion (Wardhaugh, 2010: 259): formal, informal, serious or festive. Coulthard (1985: 45) introduces a comparison between the Yakan and the Subanun which are communities that carry out the event of litigation quite differently. Litigation is a speech event that is concerned with settling disputes by rulings made by neutral judges. The difference does not lie in the event itself but within the structure of the culture. The Yakan litigation is informal since it is performed as groups of people talking together. While the Subanun litigation is considered to be a festive activity accompanied by eating and the legal language is arranged into verses and sung to the tunes of drinking songs (ibid).

2- Participants
Traditionally speech has been described in terms of two participants: a speaker (who transmits the message) and a listener (who receives the message). In the majority of cases, the speaker is the author of the message but in some he may not be. For example, a spokesman is a speaker or a mouthpiece for someone else (the addressor). Similarly, the sentence "the ambassador was summoned to hear the views of" shows that the ambassador is not the actual addressee but he is the hearing for someone

else. Thus, Hymes argues that there are at least 4 participant roles: addressor, speaker, addressee and hearer or audience. A normal conversation is usually carried out between two participants: an addressor and an addressee. While ritual insults require three participants: an addressor, addressee and audience. The event of chanting in Cuna requires four participants: two chiefs (one chants and at the end of the verse the other responds saying "thus, it is so") and the chief's spokesman who addresses the audience after the chiefs finish chanting and interprets for them. Participants can be non-human as in Cuna disease-curing event. The curer addresses his wooden dolls which are supposed to perform the healing process as they are told. Another situation in which the addressor is nonhuman is when an Indian man asked his wife "Did you hear what the thunder said?". Important aspects relating to participants are concerned with: a) Filling the participant roles: Some speech events allow the participant roles to be filled by anyone like the audience of plays. While other events require participants of particular age, gender, status, profession etc. For example, only the chiefs in Cuna can perform the chanting event, puberty rites are sex-specific and in Maori tribes only male elders deliver speeches. b) Taking turns to speak: Turn taking depends on relations and relative status, for instance, among the Burundi the most important person speaks first in debates while the least important speaks last. Contrastingly, among the Wolof, the lower status speaker begins first in greetings. There are two major problems concerning the addressors role:

1. Roles change frequently and rapidly. 2. The definition of role is not entirely clear. For example, when a radio interviewer reads the listeners' questions, he is the spokesman for the listeners who are the addressors. But when he starts asking questions of his own, is he still in the role of a spokesman or is he now the addressor? Another example is of a lecturer who gives a lecture about Marx with extensive reading from the works is he a spokesman for Marx during the whole lecture or only when he is quoting him? Or is he the addressor since he is the one performing the act of teaching about Marx? And if he chooses to read a pre-prepared text, is he a spokesman for himself since the text can be read by someone else in case he is ill? What if he makes spontaneous comments and glosses on his own text, does he then revert to being an addressor since a spokesman cannot add to or interpret the message but only delivers it? Two major problems also arise concerning the addressees role: 1. Not all ratified hearers are being directly addressed. 2. The movement in and out the addressees role is rapid and of short term. Addressees are of three types: a) Ratified Addressees: which are either directly addressed like the audience of a lecture, or not directly addressed like the audience of a play (which can be directly addressed in case the actors choose to face the audience and address them directly).

b) Unratified Addressees (bystanders): who nevertheless hear are either "overhearers", who acknowledge that they are listening, or "eavesdroppers" who don't. c) Pseudo-Addressees: an example of which is when a politician treats his interviewer as hearer and turns to address the voters directly in a political interview. The transmission from eavesdroppers through overhearers to ratified participants is one we are all familiar with, particularly at parties: "I couldn't help (over)hearing what you were just saying" (ibid).

3- Ends
According to Atkinson (2001: 291), "an ethnography of communication includes descriptions of the purposes of the speech event, such as outcomes and goals." Wardhaugh (2010: 260) suggests that ends refer to the conventionally recognized and expected outcome of an exchange as well as to the personal goals that participants seek to accomplish in particular situations. Coulthard (1985: 48) states that Hymes observes that "the purpose of an event from a community standpoint may not be identical to the purpose of those engaged in it." A marriage ceremony serves a certain social end, but each of the participants may have his/her own unique goals in getting married or seeing a particular couple married (Wardhaugh, 2010: 260).

4- Act Sequence
According to Hymes, act sequence refers to the way message form and content interdependently contribute to meaning, or "how something is said is part of what is said" (Atkinson, 2001: 291).

a) Message content: refers to the topic of the message. Topic may have little effect on style or can be strongly marked. It has been observed that the Javanese used lower style when talking about commercial matters while they used higher style when talking about religion. The topic also affects code-switching as the case in the village of Hemnesberget (Coulthard, 1985: 49). b) Message form: is involved in all rules of speaking and affects the concept of face. According to Yule (2010: 287), face is "a person's public self-image". Coulthard (1985: 50) argues that some interactive acts

constitute a "threat" to face and some utterances forms can be explained in terms of speakers attempting to diffuse/ mitigate a face threatening act. Yule (2010, 136) states that if you use a direct speech act to get someone to do something (Give me that paper!), you are behaving as if you have more social power than the other person. If you don't actually have that power (you are not his boss or a military officer), then you are performing a face-threatening act. While an indirect speech act, in the form associated with a question (Could you pass me that paper?), removes the assumption of social power. This makes your request less threatening and saying something that lessens the possible threat to another's face can be described as a face-saving act. Two kinds of face are recognized: a negative face (the need to be independent and free from imposition) and positive face (the need to be connected, to belong, and to be part of a larger group). A face-saving act emphasizing negative face shows concern about imposition "I'm sorry to

bother you but/ I know you are busy but" while a face saving act
emphasizing positive face shows solidarity and draws attention to common goal "Let's do this together/ you and I have the same

problem".

According to Coulthard (1985: 53), "indirectness increases the relative politeness of expressions". The following examples become progressively more polite as the utterance is increasingly biased towards the negative choice, thus making it more and easier for the hearer to say no: Answer the phone. I want you to answer the phone. Will you answer the phone? Can you answer the phone? Would you mind answering the phone? Could you possibly answer the phone? Yet, direct speech acts can be face-saving acts in certain situations like invitations "the firmer the invitation, the more polite it is", e.g. "Do come in/ again" and "Have another cake" (Ibid). Ideas about the appropriate language to mark politeness differ substantially from one culture to the next. If you have grown up in a culture that has directness as a valued way of showing solidarity, and you use direct speech acts (Give me that chair!) to people whose culture is more oriented to indirectness and avoiding direct imposition, then you will be considered impolite. You, in turn, may think of the others as vague and unsure of whether they really want something or are just asking about it (Are you using this chair?) (Yule, 2010: 136).

5- Key
Acoording to Coulthard (1985: 48), Key refers to the tone, manner or spirit in which an act or event is performed. Acts may differ in key as between mock, serious, light-hearted, and sarcastic and so on. The signaling of key may be non-verbal, by wink, smile, gesture or posture. Wardhaugh (2010: 260) explains that when there is a lack of fit between what the person is saying and the key used, listeners will pay attention to key rather than the

actual content. Thus, Coulthard (1985: 48) says that when "how marvelous" is uttered with a 'sarcastic' tone it is taken to mean the exact opposite.

6- Instrumentalities
Instrumentalities refer to the choice of channel, e.g. oral, written, telegraphic (Wardhaugh, 2010: 260) or other mediums of transmission of speech. Some genres are associated with one channel. The development of TV and radio created a situation in which some speech events have enormous unseen and unheard audiences, as what seems to be a cosy fireside chat can sway a nation's opinion. The channel itself allowed the creation of new speech events, the sport commentary and quiz show, with their own highly distinctive stylistic mode and structure, prescribed participants, typical setting and key (Coulthard, 1985: 49).

7- Norms
According to Atkinson (2001: 291) the aspect of norms "is divided into norms of interaction and norms of interpretation and concerns shared understanding ... The full description of norms necessitates an analysis of social structure and social relationships". For Coulthard (1985: 55), all communities have an underlying set of non-linguistic rules which governs when, how and how often speech occurs. Wardhaugh (2010: 254) states that norms governing the quantity of speech differ from one community to another. People of some communities are talkative like the !Kung who lead a very harsh life as hunters and gatherers, a life that requires a considerable amount of cooperation and companionship is survival is to be guaranteed. Speech among the !Kung helps to maintain peaceful social relationships, relieves their tensions and prevents pressures from building up. Other people talk for the sheer pleasure of talking like the Roti who consider talk one of the great pleasures

of life so they indulge in various verbal activities like idle chatter, disputing, arguing etc. Silence among these communities is interpreted as a s ign of distress, confusion or dejection. While in other communities, silence is often communicative and its appropriate uses must be learned as it can communicate respect, comfort, support, disagreement or uncertainty. The Apache choose silence when entering new relationships because they are uncertain. Silence is seen as a sign of shyness in new relationships especially for females as talkativeness is regarded as immodest. It is also used as a kind of sympathizing device after someone dies you are silent in the presence of people who are sad. Coulthard (1985: 55) presents a number of comparisons between different communities in terms of the quantity of speech, for example, the Anang value speech very highly and children are trained in the arts of speech, while the Wolof consider speech dangerous and demeaning. French children are expected to be silent when there are visitors while Russian children are encouraged to talk. Among the Arocanian there are different expectation of men and women, men being encouraged to talk on all occasions, women to be silent, indeed a new wife is not permitted to speak for several months. Norms governing the physical distance also varies. Compared with Americans, Arab students confront each other more directly when conversing, sit closer, are more likely to touch each other and speak more loudly, a behaviour that is interpreted by Americans as aggressive and overfriendly. There are also norms governing turn-taking, as overlapping the utterances of others while they are talking is seen as showing enthusiasm and interest in what is said in the Jewish New York style, while it is interpreted by members of other groups as a sign of lack of attention. Other norms govern encoding difficulties. When stopping midway through a grammatical structure, Hymes suggests that for white middleclass Americans the normal hesitation behaviour is to pause and often fill

the pause with "um", "er" and then continue, while for many blacks the normal pattern is to recycle to the beginning of the utterance. Recycling is evident is children speech by may be interpreted as a defect in adults, at least by whites. Hudson (1980: 118) refers to norms governing giving information in conversations. Usually, information flow freely when our aim is to communicate as efficiently as possible, but in certain communities like Nukulaelae Atoll important pieces of information are withheld (identities of individuals are not disclosed) for a number of reasons some of which are people are afraid that identifying an individual may bring the person to the attention of evil forces or get them into trouble in other ways.

Coulthard (1985: 56) argues that Clashes of norms produce personal discomfort, tension and unjustified criticism. Major problems arise when participants assume that they share the same norms. Polgar (1960) discovered that Mesquaki Fox children interpreted the normal loudness of voice and directness of American English teachers as "meanness" and "getting mad". A more serious case is that of the misinterpretation of the behaviour of thousands of Negro children in New York schools. These children were failing in school on all standard tests. They said very little and communicated by gestures, single words and a series of badly connected words and phrases such as "they mine" and "me got juice". Educational psychologists regarded their behaviour as a sign of "linguistic and verbal deprivation" which Labov considers to be a nonsense created by psychologists who know very little about language and even less about Negro children. He argues that to say that these children are linguistically deprived is a complete misunderstanding as these children come from a culture where linguistic ability is highly valued. The truth is that the children do not choose to display their abilities at school because they are not the ones the school values and because the school is a hostile situation.

In a striking demonstration of how wrong the psychologists were in evaluating this situation, Labov took a rabbit into a classroom where young Negro children were learning English. After talking to the children and getting himself familiar with them, he told them that the rabbit was very shy but if a few of them would take it into the next room and talk to it, it would be quite happy once there the children rapidly displayed grammatical sophistication far in excess of the structures being drilled to their fellows next door.

8- Genres
According to Coulthard (1985: 42) genre "is a unique combination of stylistic structure and mode". Wardhaugh (2010: 261) states that genres refer to categories such as poems, proverbs, riddles, sermon, prayer, lecture, editorials ...etc. While particular genres seem more appropriate on certain occasions than others (sermons are inserted into church service) they can be independent as we can ask someone to stop sermonizing as we recognize a genre of sermons when an instance of it or something resembling it occurs outside its usual setting.

Rule Breaking
For Coulthard (1985: 54), a successful ethnography of speaking will describe the norms of speech events in a particular speech community. Yet, these norms are not always adhered to and each speech community has its own rules of interpreting rule-breaking which is either deliberate (for specific effect like insult) or not. When residents of the Hemnesberget heard the students' recorded conversations they refused to believe that they were members of the same community and showed disapproval of their "artificial speech". The students

themselves were not aware of their code-switching and were very surprised. In this case, rules were not broken deliberately, but in many cases they are. At the Maori, a group from a part of the country were women were allowed to speak were visiting another were women were not. When it was time to give a speech, there was a problem since the chief of the visiting group was a woman. After a moment of hesitation, she began to speak. Immediately there was a protest from the hosts but she calmly ignored them and continued her speech till she concluded her speech saying: "You Arawa men, you tell me to sit down because I am a woman, yet none of you would be in the world if it wasn't for your mothers. This is where your learning and your gray hairs come from". In the 16th century, English distinguished two second person singular pronouns, "you" and "thou". It was customary for nobles to use "you" reciprocally, to receive "you" from their inferiors but to address them as "thou". If a speaker breaks the "rules", the rule-breaking was meaningful and thus a noble would insult another by addressing him as "thou". Evrin-Tripp (1972) presents a similar insult": Policeman: whats your name, boy? Doctor: Doctor Poussaint. Im a physician Policeman: Whats your first name, boy? Doctor: Alvin. The policeman insulted the doctor three times. The first time by addressing him as "boy"; secondly, he treated the doctor's reply as a failure to answer, a non-name; thirdly, he repeated the demeaning term "boy" emphasizing the

irrelevance of the name Dr Poussaint. Only because both participants shared the same norms could the policeman's act have its clear impact.

Conclusion
The previous discussion has shown that de Saussure was wrong in seeing speech as the product of the individual's will, unconstrained by society. Society controls our speech, as it provides a set of norms and the motivation to adhere to these norms. Society also takes a great interest in speech, and in particular provides a set of concepts for thinking and talking about it (Hudson, 1980: 119). "As Johnstone (2004: 76) says, ethnography presupposesthat the best explanations of human behaviour are particular and culturally relative" (Wardhaugh, 2010: 262).

References
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Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Spolsky, B (1998) Sociolinguistics. Oxford: OUP. Wardhaugh, R. (2010). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell. Yule, G. (2010). The Study of Language. Cambridge: CUP.