This collection of the writings of Louis Schneider, an exceptionally gifted sociologist of religion the history of ideas, provides a sensitive but rigorous view of the place of ideas in social life. DiÂvided according to the principal areas in which Schneider conÂducted researchâhistory of social thought, principles of social theÂory, sociology of religionâare esÂsays on evolution, styles of reÂsearch, and moral choice in human relations. His knowledge of systems of thoughtâdialecÂtical, functional, and phenomenologicalâwas peerless. The unifying theme in his work is the place of cultural formations in soÂcial structures; as a result, his writings are alive with persons no less than systems.
What was the interrelation between language, power, and socio-economic inequality in England, c. 1550-1750? Early modern England was a hierarchical society that placed considerable emphasis on order; language was bound up with the various structures of authority that made up the polity. Members of the labouring population were expected to accept their place, defer to their superiors, and refrain from 'murmuring' about a host of issues. While some early modern labouring people fulfilled these expectations, others did not; because of their defiance, the latter were more likely to make their way into the historical record, and historians have previously used the evidence that they generated to reconstruct various forms of resistance and negotiation involved in everyday social relations. Hillary Taylor instead considers the limits that class power placed on popular expression, and with what implications. Using a wide variety of sources, Taylor examines how members of the early modern English labouring population could be made to speak in ways that reflected and even seemed to justify their subordinated positions--both in their eyes and those of their social superiors. By reconstructing how class power structured and limited popular expression, this study not only presents a new interpretation of how inequality was normalized over the course of the period, but also sheds new light on the constraints that labouring people overcame when they engaged in individual or collective acts of defiance against their 'betters.' It revives domination and subordination as objects of inquiry and demonstrates the ways in which language--at the levels of ideology and social practice--reflected, reproduced, and naturalized inequality over the course of the early modern period.
"Give me the salt" and "Please pass the salt" make the same request, but in a polite situation the first utterance may give offense, while the second may not. How and why such differences in wording and intonation, in a particular context, produce different effects is the concern of pragmatics, the area of linguistics that deals with how speech is used in interaction. In this innovative study of pragmatics in Brazilian Portuguese, Dale Koike analyzes the politeness phenomenon, specifically in the context of speech acts known as "directives." As acts intended to get someone to do something, directives bring into play a variety of sociocultural factors, depending on the relationship between the participants. Using empirical data obtained through natural language observation and from questionnaires of over one hundred adult native speakers, Koike identifies factors—such as age, education, and gender—that influence the strategies of politeness a given speaker is likely to use in making a directive. This research clarifies the unwritten language rules and assumptions that native speakers intuitively follow in phrasing their directive utterances. Koike also includes important material on the acquisition of strategies for politeness by children and adult second-language learners, as well as on gender differences in politeness forms. Her research proposes important additions to the theory of speech acts as conceived by Austin and Searle, particularly in the application of deictic organization to account for a hierarchy of pragmatic forms. Language and Social Relationship in Brazilian Portuguese will be of interest to a wide audience in diverse fields, including linguistics, anthropology, interaction analysis, communications, semantics, sociology, psychology, and education.
As Ragnar Rommetveit put it forty years ago, dialogue is “the architecture of intersubjectivity”: a tool not only for maintaining yet also constantly transforming our life-worlds. The volume advances and empirically illustrates the role of talk-in-interaction in displaying, ratifying, creating yet also defying the crucial dimensions of the world we live in. This process is particularly noticeable in children’s primary social worlds, i.e. home and school where they are socialized to becoming competent members of the communities they (will) live in. Drawing on fifty years of research on children's socialization through language and social interaction, the volume provides new multidisciplinary insights and updated empirical data on the process through which cultures, identities, and knowledge are brought into being through the everyday dialogues that animate children’s life at home and school. The volume addresses a specialized readership and its interdisciplinary framework ensures that it will be of great interest to scholars from different academic fields, such as social and developmental psychology, anthropology, education, developmental linguistics, sociolinguistics and developmental pragmatics.
This collection offers empirical studies and theoretical essays about human communication in everyday life. The writings come from many of the world's leading researchers and cut across academic boundaries, engaging scholars and teachers from such disciplines as communication, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and education. Chapters emphasize empirical, qualitative studies of people's everyday uses of talk-in-interaction, and they feature work in such areas as sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, discourse analysis, and ethnography. The volume is dedicated to and highlights themes in the work of the late Robert Hopper, an outstanding scholar in communication who pioneered research in Language and Social Interaction (LSI). The contributors examine various features of human interaction (such as laughter, vocal repetition, and hand gestures) occurring naturally within a variety of settings (at a dinner table, a doctor's office, an automotive repair shop, and so forth), whereby interlocutors accomplish aspects of their interpersonal or institutional lives (resolve a disagreement, report bad medical news, negotiate a raise, and more), all of which may relate to larger social issues (including police brutality, human spirituality, death, and optimism). The chapters in this anthology show that social life is largely a communicative accomplishment and that people constitute the social realities experienced every day through small and subtle ways of communicating, carefully orchestrated but commonly taken for granted. In showcasing the diversity of contemporary LSI research, this volume is appropriate for scholars and graduate students in language and social interaction, communication, sociology, research methods, qualitative research methods, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, linguistics, and related areas.
For students of developmental psychology, this book should be a useful reference guide to the main concepts concerned with "motherese", scaffolding, socio-cognitive learning and joint problem solving. It is also a contribution to the debate on the influence of social behaviour on development.
