Styles of Communication (Dec 2020)
On the Role of Society and Culture in Speaking: The Analysis of Oral Language Performance in the Light of the Socio-Cultural Perspective
Abstract
Many theoretical discussions on speaking have unanimously pointed to the underlying role of information exchange in every day oral communication. Even though such a tendency to stress the communicative aspect of speech production processes associated with the works of, for instance, Caroll (1953), Byrne (1976), Levelt (1959) or Whorf (1940) could be identified, the objective of the present paper is to focus on the society- and culture-oriented investigations of speaking. On having considered the selected socio-cultural constructs, among others, Hofstede’s (1991) typology of cultural dimensions, Lakoff’s (1975) description of gender-based linguistic differences or Vygotskian (1934/2012) Socio-Cultural Theory, we intend to argue for the adoption of the interdisciplinary approach to the discussion of speaking, whose final product, speech, is a highly socially- and culturally-determined linguistic phenomenon.
