Revisi (Ethnography of Communication)

Hello, in this section, I would like to tell you about  area of discourse analysis and I will explain about the expert of ethnography of communication.

The expert of ethnography of communication that I will discuss is Dell Hymes. Dell Hathaway Hymes, an anthropologist, linguist, and educator, is best known for his studies of the language and culture of Native Americans at the Warm Springs reservation in Central Oregon. He was born in Portland, Oregon on June 7, 1927, the son of Howard Hathaway and Dorothy (Bowman) Hymes.

Hymes had attended military service for two years. Later, he entered in Reed College (1950) for his undergraduate degree and continue to study linguistic anthropology under Carl Voegelin at Indiana University.

With his ability, he could teach at Harvard University (1955-1960) and the University of California, Berkley (1960-1965), joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1965. During twenty-two years tenure at Penn he was a professor of folklore, linguistics, sociology and education. In 1975, he was promoted to Dean of the Graduate School of Education (1975-1987). He won the highest award for a scholar in Linguistics, the Gold Medal of philology (2011).

As a folklorist, Hymes believes that all narratives in the world are organized around implicit principles which convey important knowledge and ways of thinking and of viewing the world. He argues that understanding narratives will lead to a fuller understanding of the language itself and those fields informed by storytelling.

Hymes responded on Noam Chomsky's influential distinction between competence and performance. He proposed the notion of communicative competence and there are language varies in different communities. Hymes refers to this as "the ethnography of speaking." After discussions with Ray Birdwhistell at the University of Pennsylvania, Hymes renamed the "ethnography of speaking" the "ethnography of communication".

Language in Culture and Society (1964) is Hymes' first published work was in historical linguistics. He also edited works in The Use of Computers in Anthropology (1965), Studies in Southwestern Ethnolinguistics (1967), Pidginization and Creolization of Languages (1971), Reinventing Anthropology (1972). Some later published works include Foundations of Sociolinguistics (1974), Language in Education: ethnolinguistic essays (1980), In Vain I Tried to Tell You: essays in Native American ethnopoetics (1981), American Structuralism (with John Fought, 1981), Sociolinguistics: the enthnography of communication (1986) that views speech as a part of a broader cultural system of communication action.

Hymes developed models to identify and label the components of linguistic interaction, in order to speak a language Correctly, one needs not only to learn its vocabulary and grammar, also the context but in the which words are used. It calls "The Speaking Model", in one of his books entitled "Foundations of Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach".

·         Setting and Scene

·         Participants

·         Ends

·         Act Sequence

·         Key

·         Instrumentalities

·         Norms

·         Genre

Hymes died on 13 November 2009 at the age of 82 years in Charlottesville, Virginia. His son said that Hymes died from complications of Alzheimer's disease. Hymes concluded in one poem :

'Now, all allow, even the most dogmatic,

One should be at least a bit "pragmatic."'

References :

http://www.amphilsoc.org/collections/view?docId=ead/Mss.Ms.Coll.55-ead.xml

http://www1.appstate.edu/~mcgowant/hymes.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Hymes