Patrick Boylan, University of Rome III
patrick @ boylan.it

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"communication"
(Jakobson, 1982: 350-377 [1958])

..

"language"
 
(according to Saussure) has two meanings:

 
Unfortunately, Saussure developed only the linguistics of langue and left aside inquiring into the linguistics of parole.

(His students, Sechehaye and Bally, did however attempt such a study!)
 

A. Sechehaye: "...conflit entre ce qui est vivant et ce qui est formel" – Essai sur la structure logique de la phrase,1950 C. Bally marks "le passage d'une stylistique linguistique à une stylistique expressive" – Sylvie Durrer, Introduction à la linguistique de Charles Bally, 1998.

"language"

Thus there exists a Linguistique de la parole which studies expressive intentionality through precisely those "manifestations... individuelles et momentanées" in which "il n'y a rien de plus que la somme de cas particuliers." –Saussure, Cours, 1916, p. 25, 
 
It studies the formulation of the will to mean that informs every communicative act -- single, unique, yet part of a whole (the individual's personal style and communitarian culture).  This highest level of meaning-making is where communicative intents arise and become finalized and thus pre-conceptually “structured”, the level where

• language as parole consists of highly modulated volitional states – states of “pre-verbal meaning” – and

• language as langue consists of the sedimentation of such states, producing in a given individual a disposition to communicate repeatedly in the same characteristic way.  

How to represent a cultural matrix?

Hofstede, G. (1980), Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Beverly Hills: Sage.

L. Beamer, California State University, www.dialogin.com

Where do these different mentalities come from?
From what do we learn them?

From man-made (“artificial”)
environments:
 
the city centers of Algiers,
Bologna, Kansas City

 From man-interpreted natural
environments:
 
Asian and American children
are taught to see in different
ways the rider and the valley.
In what ways?
 
“Riding the Fence”, a painting by Wanda Coffey
 cited by R. Dooley, “Four cultures, one organization”,
Organization Development Journal, 21:2 (2003)

Words and gestures thus assume, as their “meaning,”
 
the entire alogical sedimentation of perceived behaviors, intents and
 
values characterizing the communicative situations in which they
 
have been perceived and used.
 

Verbal artefacts

Words and gestures thus assume, as their “meaning,”
 
the entire alogical sedimentation of perceived behaviors, intents and
 
values characterizing the communicative situations in which they
 
have been perceived and used.

  
He went West!"        Where?

..   

.   

"Il est parti vers l'ouest!"     Où?

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The study of English
is an inquiry into the peculiar will to mean perceived in the expressive behavior of native speakers of English – and the internalization of the corresponding behavioral matrix which generates it. 

That matrix derives from a peculiar will to be (i.e. from a peculiar culturally-determined existential stance), historically sedimented in each native speaker as an Anglo or Anglo-derived Weltanschauung. 

In turn, that sedimentation creates the affinity for – and the disposition to use – Anglo or Anglo-derived expressive modes which are considered the hallmarks of “native speaker competence”. 

The study of English

has therefore, as its principal aim, the acquisition of the affinity and disposition just described,

• not necessarily with the objective of attaining (near) native-speaker competence (a goal that students should be free to opt for or not),

• but necessarily with the much more fundamental objective of learning to place oneself within the cultural mind set of future native-speaker interlocutors. This will enable one to understand them better and also to render one's own cultural identity and culturally determined mind-set better (i.e. in terms more readily understood and accepted by one's interlocutors).

The study of English

therefore requires, even if the goal is not attaining (near) native-speaker competence, the internalization of an Anglo* “way of being” or “existential stance” (manifesting a peculiar Anglo* will to be). These stances can be described using “cultural dimensions” (see 7-11 above). 

But how to describe the Anglo* modes of expression (verbal, paraverbal, behavioral) that, together with the Anglo* existential stance, create the peculiar will to mean called “English”?

*Anglo or Anglo-derived, in the case of linguistically and culturally distinctive communities of native speakers of English: within Britain (Scots, Geordies, naturalized Pakistanis, Cockneys...) and without (Americans, Australians, Jamaicans, Indians, etc.)

Characteristics of Anglo modes of expression
 

Sample high level modes: the communicative intent manifests itself as
 concrete,
 explicit,
 practical,
confrontational (but gentlemanly so: hedging, understatement),
 eclectic...

Sample low level modes: the intent manifests itself through
phrasal verbs, quasi deictic definite articles – spatial concreteness
stress placement to “telegraph” essential information – explicitness
mostly baton (with few redundant iconic) gestures – practicality
turn taking to avoid silences & limit multiple floors – gentlemanliness
creativity in mixing genres (new situations, fads...) – eclecticism

Code:  verbal,   paraverbal,   behavioral,   interactional,   discoursual...

The typically Anglo expressive modes are shared by increasingly fewer varieties of “English” in the world.

The end of the British Empire weakened the linguistic-cultural domination of the periphery by the center.  As local cultures asserted themselves, the New Englishes of the outer circle started to become "Non" Englishes, i.e. autonomous languages. The Englishes of the expanding circle, having no authoritative norm provider, began to create koinés.

(Kachru, 1985)

A Table of the Varieties of English in the world> 
Ex.: Tok Pisin (New Guinea English – Norm provider?) >                          

The typically Anglo expressive modes are shared by increasingly fewer varieties of “English” in the world.

In these New (and one day Non-) Englishes, the low level Anglo forms have remained, but the higher level Anglo expressive modes are changing radically.

No matter if these languages still appear to be “English” because of their words and syntax, they are in fact ceasing to be “English” – before our very eyes – precisely because languages are not words, but sedimentations of wills to mean molded by a cultural will to be.  When a people's long-suppressed will to be reasserts itself, their will to mean changes and a new language is created out of the debris of the old.  

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English has become a métis family of idioms, with divergent wills to mean masked by the low-level similarities. 
 
(This applies especially to spoken varieties; written varieties still continue to conform, more or less, to once-British and now largely American writing standards.)
 
Will the various Englishes become non-intelligible, as in the shift from Latin to Romance languages?   Not immediately: telecommunications, global transportation (tourism...) will slow the process down.

 But for now, the two most influential varieties of English remain:
 
           

SBE (South-East or Standard British English)                          GA (General American)                         
 
Tim Sebastien & Robert Brown .                               .G.W. Bush & Condaleeza Rice            

Hortensia and her mother                                                  Nashville characters              
  

Asians: "lonely," "unhappy," "depressed"
Americans: "free," "heavenly," "peaceful," “happy."

      .
Tim Sebastian interviews Robert Brown*
*wrongly imprisoned by Manchester police for 25 years (Hardtalk, BBC, 16.01.2003, 11.30 a.m. GMT)

SEBASTIAN; You signed the statement which incriminated you for the murder of the 51-year-old woman. Did you realize the gravity of what you were doing?

BROWN: No, I did not realize the gravity of it at all, I didn't realize the seriousness or the consequences of my actions at that age. I mean, the... the... the statement isielf, it, absolutely no real fact in it,the litt'l bits that were factual the police (m)ade it up themselves

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M. Leigh, Secrets and Lies, Channel Four Films, London, 1996

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