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Language and social knowledge: Uncertainty in interpersonal relations
Book reviews
254
References Bereiter, C. and S. Engelmann, 1966. Teaching disadvantaged children in the pre-school. Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bernstein, Basil, 1971. Class, codes, and control, Vol. 1. London: Routledge and Kegan-Paul. Chafe, Wallace, ed.; 1980. The pear stories: Cognitive, cultural, and linguistic aspects of narrative production. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Chaika, Elaine, 1982. Language: The social mirror. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Halliday, M.A.K. and Ruqaiya Hasan, 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman. Jespersen, Otto, 1965. A modern English grammar on historical principes, part V (Syntax (Fourth Volume)). London: George Allen & Unwin. Quirk, Randolph and Sidney Greenbaum, 1973. A concise grammar of contemporary English. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Charles R. Berger and James J. Bradac, Language and social knowledge: Uncertainty in interpersonal relations. (The social psychology of language, ed. by Howard Giles, Vol. 2.) London: Edward Arnold (Publishers), 1982. 151 pp. $14.95 (paperback). Language
and
social
knowledge:
Uncertainty
in
interpersonal
relations
is a thorough, insightful and readable book which will prove valuable to researchers in linguistics, psychology and communications. Berger and Bradac open the book by proposing to “show how language and the way in which we think about ourselves and others influence the ways in which we develop relationships” (p. vii). Throughout the book the authors cite studies from linguistics, sociolinguistics, experimental and social psychology and communications which make claims about human behavior relative to the establishment, maintenance and dissolution of interpersonal relationships. On the basis of this experimental work they propose a preliminary characterization of language use in relationships. In the first chapter, ‘Uncertainty and the nature of interpersonal communication’, Berger and Bradac evaluate various traditional perspectives from which research on interpersonal communication has been conducted. For the purposes of their study, the authors adopt a functional-developmental approach focusing on the role of language in the development of relationships. The authors isolate the reduction of uncertainty concerning oneself, others and the nature of relationships as a primary function of language with respect to relationships. They suggest that in various stages of a relationship, interactants attempt to reduce their uncertainty about others, as well as uncertainty concerning the current standing of a relationship. In the second chapter, ‘Uncertainty reduction and the generation of social knowledge’, in support of their hypothesis, Berger and Bradac outline a series of conditions under which interactants have been demonstrated to attempt to reduce uncertainty concerning some aspect of interaction, and strategies by means of .which these attempts are conducted. The authors cite studies
Book reviews
255
suggesting ways in which interactants process social knowledge once they have received it, and studies addressing the issue of the relative awareness and mindfulness of persons operating in various situations. They conclude that while persons are relatively ‘mindless’ in their performance of familiar or mechanical tasks, they are relatively ‘mindful’ when engaging in interpersonal interaction. In the third chapter, ‘Language and impression formation’, the authors discuss what it is that communicates information in language. In addition to the ‘major language variables’ responsible for conveying information, (intensity of voice, choice of lexemes, and so on), and contextual features to which a hearer relates the input s/he receives, they cite the effectiveness of an utterance and the degree to which an utterance conforms to others’ expectations as primary factors in conveying information to hearers. The authors further distinguish between the ‘naive scientist’, i.e. the interactant attempting to reduce uncertainty about others’ attitudes and motives, and the ‘sophisticated scientist’ i.e. one possessing specialized knowledge concerning behavioral patterns and means for testing hypotheses empirically. They stress that the means of gathering and processing data are different in the two cases. In the fourth chapter, ‘Language and social interaction’, Berger and Bradac address the issue of self-disclosure, i.e. how an individual perceives his or her ‘self as it is realized in various situations, how s/he provides others with information about this self, and how s/he interrogates others to obtain information concerning their selves. They offer a set of regulative strategies for interrogation and rules for self-disclosure. In the fifth chapter, ‘Language and relational development’, Berger and Bradac address the means whereby interactants define existing relationships. They describe labels and parameters used for this purpose and cite studies identifying communication characteristic of cohesive and fractural relationships. In the sixth chapter, ‘Language and social knowledge: conclusion and prospect’, the authors summarize previous points and provide a set of axioms which they consider basic to their conception of language as used to negotiate relationships: (1) persons are sometimes aware and sometimes unaware of self, others, and the behaviors of self and others in social interaction, (2) fluctuations in awareness of self and others influence both communicative competence and performance in social interaction situations, (3) persons see the social world as a product of internal and external forces (i.e. needs and desires versus environmental controls), (4) uncertainty reduction is a powerful drive in the human organism, (5) spoken language is important to persons in their attempts to reduce interpersonal uncertainty, and (6) language is a powerful instrument in the creation of social reality. The authors end the book by addressing issues related to their characterization of language use in relationships, and suggest a number of relevant issues and methods of research for fututre investigation.
256
Book reviews
They call for cooperation among research traditions, and suggest that studies in which subjects are examined in natural contexts will provide important information concerning contextualized behavior. In this final chapter, a list of questions the authors see as central to the eventual characterization of language use in relationships would have provided more direction for future study. The ‘issues’ section addresses only problems concerning the adequate characterization of naive scientists’ methods of gathering and processing data and problems of determining subjects’ cognitive workings. The forecast section contains only very general indications, as in the following excerpt: “A (...) group of researchers, who might be labelled ‘rules scholars’, will explore the details of pragmatic knowledge - the kinds of things which humans have to know in order to construct coherent messages and to coordinate messages in social interaction.” (p. 123)
A statement of more specific deficits would have been valuable for those interested in pursuing this subject. The authors’ position might be summarized in the following way: the reduction of uncertainty in relationships is an important goal of interactants, and language plays a central role in achieving this goal. The reduction of uncertainty about others is carried out through observation and through ruleregulated interrogation and self-disclosure. This behavior is characterized by relatively great awareness on the part of interactants. As linguistic input is received it is evaluated according to socially meaningful features it possesses, and judgments of the speaker are made accordingly. Participants in relationships also seek at times to define the nature of a relationship. They do this relative to a variety of parameters and labels. It is possible to identify linguistic patterns of interaction as typical of cohesive relationships, or as typical of fractural relationships. While the authors call for increased cooperation across related disciplines, the references they cite reflect a clinical bias. Observational and purely theoretical approaches to interactive behavior are given little attention in their book. Work from the field of linguistics on phenomena such as politeness and deference (e.g. Brown and Levinson (1978), and Fraser and Nolan (1981)) addresses important issues relevant to the use of language for social purposes and has its place in a book on uncertainty in interpersonal relationships. Berger and Bradac’s insight into the need for studies of natural interaction is as welcome as it is uncommon among researchers in their field. However great the contributions of theoretical models and clinical studies, it is only in the analysis of contextualized behavior that an interaction’s complexity becomes apparent. For this reason, however, the authors’ suggestion that naive scientists might rely less on stereotypes and first impressions if they knew that randomization and the observation of individuals’ behavior in a variety of contexts yielded more accurate information seems unduly optimistic. Naive
Book reviews
257
scientists are often called upon to interact with others about whom they have almost no information. They must assess others’ behavior immediately and constantly in order for this interaction to be possible. The use of stereotypes and first impressions is a necessity under such conditions. It is only in studies of natural interaction that it becomes obvious just how little theoretical models of behavior really account for behavior. For example, on page 86, the authors propose a set of rules for self-disclosure. These rules include: “Do disclose non-intimate information to new acquaintances”. While this appears perfectly reasonable, one might add the following constraints: Do disclose non-intimate information to new acquaintances, unless there is someone else present to whom you do not wish to reveal this information, or unless you have a mouthful of food, or unless the context of the interaction demands silence, and so on and so on. While generalized rules provide us with information concerning very gross patterns of behavior, these rarely are of much use in the analysis of real data, because of the multitude of contextual features according to which interactants shape their behavior. It is only in grappling with such data that adequate characterizations of complex phenomena such as the reduction of uncertainty in relationships will be developed. In their call for an eclectic approach to research methodology, Berger and Bradac fail to mention the benefits which may be derived from participantobserver field techniques. A knowledgeable researcher can accurately interpret interactants’ goals and motivations through familiarity with interactants as individuals and as members of particular social and cultural communities. This reduces in part the researcher’s dependency on self-report. Ethnographic study, when combined with other methods of analysis, provides information of great value to the characterization of linguistic interaction of all kinds. Researchers may well find that interactive behavior, highly contextualized as it is, is best studied with recourse to this sort of methodology. These criticisms aside, Berger and Bradac’s book is a valuable step towards a coherent account of communicative behavior. It provides an exhaustive inventory of work in several fields relevant to the use of language in relationships. While it is excellent as a source of reference to research on the use of language in relationships, its principal contribution is the unification of this research into a coherent, albeit preliminary, characterization of a single phenomenon. The implications of the studies viewed as facets of a larger whole are considerable. Berger and Bradac provide both an introduction to research on interactive behavior for the novice and a cogent account of the implications of this research for the expert. Future work in this area employing the various methodologies suggested by the authors will have beneficial repercussions for the study of interactive behavior in many fields. Deirdre Mendez 1155 1 Sandy Loam Trail Austin, TX 78750, USA
258
Book reviews
References Brown, P. and S. Levinson, 1978. Universals in language use: Politeness phenomena. In: E. Goody, ed., Questions and politeness: strategies in social interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 56-310. Fraser, B. and W. Nolan, 1981. The association of deference with linguistic form. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 27: 93-109.
Speech acts, speakers and hearers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1984. 142 pp. $20.00.
Henk Haverkate,
The topic of the study reviewed here are reference strategies where the reference is to the speaker or to the hearer. Haverkate uses mostly examples from peninsular Spanish, contrasting them with examples from English and Dutch, but his work is of general interest for linguists, since many conclusions of the book are not specific for Spanish. There are six chapters of different length. In addition, there are a short introduction, footnotes, references, and a list of the sources of the examples quoted. Personally, I lacked a register. The first chapter gives an overview of the categories Haverkate works with. The second chapter investigates speaker/hearer reference with respect to Searle’s speech act classification and to illocutionary preconditions. The - despite its shortness - very interesting third chapter gives a general presentation of linguistic strategies. Haverkate distinguishes between global (or argumentative) and local (or rhetorical) strategies. His interest is in those strategies which emphasise the interactional relation between speaker and hearer. Even though chapter three only has the function of defining the framework for the description of strategies in chapter five, the topic of linguistic strategies itself would have been worthy of a lengthier discussion. When Haverkate writes “speakers who decide verbally to communicate with their hearer first choose what to say and second, how to say what they choose to say”, (p. 38) what, then, is the reference of ‘first’, and respectively ‘second’? Is it a psycholinguistic statement about the linear ordering of mental processes, or is it the logic of the description which defines ‘first’ and ‘second’? Such a vagueness is of course not specific to Haverkate, it is a more general phenomenon in post-Searlean speech act analysis. The fourth chapter describes strategies in a speech act model. Haverkate uses the term allocution to define the intention of the speaker which results in a specific perlocution. The allocution defines the strategies for the subacts of the speech act: the phonetic act, the illocutionary, the referring and predicating act. Within this classification, chapter four defines the framework for the empirical analysis in chapter live, which describes referential strategies proper to speakers and hearers. Chapter five is the largest chapter in the book, taking up more than half of the volume. Haverkate discusses three types of strategies:
254
References Bereiter, C. and S. Engelmann, 1966. Teaching disadvantaged children in the pre-school. Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bernstein, Basil, 1971. Class, codes, and control, Vol. 1. London: Routledge and Kegan-Paul. Chafe, Wallace, ed.; 1980. The pear stories: Cognitive, cultural, and linguistic aspects of narrative production. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Chaika, Elaine, 1982. Language: The social mirror. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Halliday, M.A.K. and Ruqaiya Hasan, 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman. Jespersen, Otto, 1965. A modern English grammar on historical principes, part V (Syntax (Fourth Volume)). London: George Allen & Unwin. Quirk, Randolph and Sidney Greenbaum, 1973. A concise grammar of contemporary English. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Charles R. Berger and James J. Bradac, Language and social knowledge: Uncertainty in interpersonal relations. (The social psychology of language, ed. by Howard Giles, Vol. 2.) London: Edward Arnold (Publishers), 1982. 151 pp. $14.95 (paperback). Language
and
social
knowledge:
Uncertainty
in
interpersonal
relations
is a thorough, insightful and readable book which will prove valuable to researchers in linguistics, psychology and communications. Berger and Bradac open the book by proposing to “show how language and the way in which we think about ourselves and others influence the ways in which we develop relationships” (p. vii). Throughout the book the authors cite studies from linguistics, sociolinguistics, experimental and social psychology and communications which make claims about human behavior relative to the establishment, maintenance and dissolution of interpersonal relationships. On the basis of this experimental work they propose a preliminary characterization of language use in relationships. In the first chapter, ‘Uncertainty and the nature of interpersonal communication’, Berger and Bradac evaluate various traditional perspectives from which research on interpersonal communication has been conducted. For the purposes of their study, the authors adopt a functional-developmental approach focusing on the role of language in the development of relationships. The authors isolate the reduction of uncertainty concerning oneself, others and the nature of relationships as a primary function of language with respect to relationships. They suggest that in various stages of a relationship, interactants attempt to reduce their uncertainty about others, as well as uncertainty concerning the current standing of a relationship. In the second chapter, ‘Uncertainty reduction and the generation of social knowledge’, in support of their hypothesis, Berger and Bradac outline a series of conditions under which interactants have been demonstrated to attempt to reduce uncertainty concerning some aspect of interaction, and strategies by means of .which these attempts are conducted. The authors cite studies
Book reviews
255
suggesting ways in which interactants process social knowledge once they have received it, and studies addressing the issue of the relative awareness and mindfulness of persons operating in various situations. They conclude that while persons are relatively ‘mindless’ in their performance of familiar or mechanical tasks, they are relatively ‘mindful’ when engaging in interpersonal interaction. In the third chapter, ‘Language and impression formation’, the authors discuss what it is that communicates information in language. In addition to the ‘major language variables’ responsible for conveying information, (intensity of voice, choice of lexemes, and so on), and contextual features to which a hearer relates the input s/he receives, they cite the effectiveness of an utterance and the degree to which an utterance conforms to others’ expectations as primary factors in conveying information to hearers. The authors further distinguish between the ‘naive scientist’, i.e. the interactant attempting to reduce uncertainty about others’ attitudes and motives, and the ‘sophisticated scientist’ i.e. one possessing specialized knowledge concerning behavioral patterns and means for testing hypotheses empirically. They stress that the means of gathering and processing data are different in the two cases. In the fourth chapter, ‘Language and social interaction’, Berger and Bradac address the issue of self-disclosure, i.e. how an individual perceives his or her ‘self as it is realized in various situations, how s/he provides others with information about this self, and how s/he interrogates others to obtain information concerning their selves. They offer a set of regulative strategies for interrogation and rules for self-disclosure. In the fifth chapter, ‘Language and relational development’, Berger and Bradac address the means whereby interactants define existing relationships. They describe labels and parameters used for this purpose and cite studies identifying communication characteristic of cohesive and fractural relationships. In the sixth chapter, ‘Language and social knowledge: conclusion and prospect’, the authors summarize previous points and provide a set of axioms which they consider basic to their conception of language as used to negotiate relationships: (1) persons are sometimes aware and sometimes unaware of self, others, and the behaviors of self and others in social interaction, (2) fluctuations in awareness of self and others influence both communicative competence and performance in social interaction situations, (3) persons see the social world as a product of internal and external forces (i.e. needs and desires versus environmental controls), (4) uncertainty reduction is a powerful drive in the human organism, (5) spoken language is important to persons in their attempts to reduce interpersonal uncertainty, and (6) language is a powerful instrument in the creation of social reality. The authors end the book by addressing issues related to their characterization of language use in relationships, and suggest a number of relevant issues and methods of research for fututre investigation.
256
Book reviews
They call for cooperation among research traditions, and suggest that studies in which subjects are examined in natural contexts will provide important information concerning contextualized behavior. In this final chapter, a list of questions the authors see as central to the eventual characterization of language use in relationships would have provided more direction for future study. The ‘issues’ section addresses only problems concerning the adequate characterization of naive scientists’ methods of gathering and processing data and problems of determining subjects’ cognitive workings. The forecast section contains only very general indications, as in the following excerpt: “A (...) group of researchers, who might be labelled ‘rules scholars’, will explore the details of pragmatic knowledge - the kinds of things which humans have to know in order to construct coherent messages and to coordinate messages in social interaction.” (p. 123)
A statement of more specific deficits would have been valuable for those interested in pursuing this subject. The authors’ position might be summarized in the following way: the reduction of uncertainty in relationships is an important goal of interactants, and language plays a central role in achieving this goal. The reduction of uncertainty about others is carried out through observation and through ruleregulated interrogation and self-disclosure. This behavior is characterized by relatively great awareness on the part of interactants. As linguistic input is received it is evaluated according to socially meaningful features it possesses, and judgments of the speaker are made accordingly. Participants in relationships also seek at times to define the nature of a relationship. They do this relative to a variety of parameters and labels. It is possible to identify linguistic patterns of interaction as typical of cohesive relationships, or as typical of fractural relationships. While the authors call for increased cooperation across related disciplines, the references they cite reflect a clinical bias. Observational and purely theoretical approaches to interactive behavior are given little attention in their book. Work from the field of linguistics on phenomena such as politeness and deference (e.g. Brown and Levinson (1978), and Fraser and Nolan (1981)) addresses important issues relevant to the use of language for social purposes and has its place in a book on uncertainty in interpersonal relationships. Berger and Bradac’s insight into the need for studies of natural interaction is as welcome as it is uncommon among researchers in their field. However great the contributions of theoretical models and clinical studies, it is only in the analysis of contextualized behavior that an interaction’s complexity becomes apparent. For this reason, however, the authors’ suggestion that naive scientists might rely less on stereotypes and first impressions if they knew that randomization and the observation of individuals’ behavior in a variety of contexts yielded more accurate information seems unduly optimistic. Naive
Book reviews
257
scientists are often called upon to interact with others about whom they have almost no information. They must assess others’ behavior immediately and constantly in order for this interaction to be possible. The use of stereotypes and first impressions is a necessity under such conditions. It is only in studies of natural interaction that it becomes obvious just how little theoretical models of behavior really account for behavior. For example, on page 86, the authors propose a set of rules for self-disclosure. These rules include: “Do disclose non-intimate information to new acquaintances”. While this appears perfectly reasonable, one might add the following constraints: Do disclose non-intimate information to new acquaintances, unless there is someone else present to whom you do not wish to reveal this information, or unless you have a mouthful of food, or unless the context of the interaction demands silence, and so on and so on. While generalized rules provide us with information concerning very gross patterns of behavior, these rarely are of much use in the analysis of real data, because of the multitude of contextual features according to which interactants shape their behavior. It is only in grappling with such data that adequate characterizations of complex phenomena such as the reduction of uncertainty in relationships will be developed. In their call for an eclectic approach to research methodology, Berger and Bradac fail to mention the benefits which may be derived from participantobserver field techniques. A knowledgeable researcher can accurately interpret interactants’ goals and motivations through familiarity with interactants as individuals and as members of particular social and cultural communities. This reduces in part the researcher’s dependency on self-report. Ethnographic study, when combined with other methods of analysis, provides information of great value to the characterization of linguistic interaction of all kinds. Researchers may well find that interactive behavior, highly contextualized as it is, is best studied with recourse to this sort of methodology. These criticisms aside, Berger and Bradac’s book is a valuable step towards a coherent account of communicative behavior. It provides an exhaustive inventory of work in several fields relevant to the use of language in relationships. While it is excellent as a source of reference to research on the use of language in relationships, its principal contribution is the unification of this research into a coherent, albeit preliminary, characterization of a single phenomenon. The implications of the studies viewed as facets of a larger whole are considerable. Berger and Bradac provide both an introduction to research on interactive behavior for the novice and a cogent account of the implications of this research for the expert. Future work in this area employing the various methodologies suggested by the authors will have beneficial repercussions for the study of interactive behavior in many fields. Deirdre Mendez 1155 1 Sandy Loam Trail Austin, TX 78750, USA
258
Book reviews
References Brown, P. and S. Levinson, 1978. Universals in language use: Politeness phenomena. In: E. Goody, ed., Questions and politeness: strategies in social interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 56-310. Fraser, B. and W. Nolan, 1981. The association of deference with linguistic form. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 27: 93-109.
Speech acts, speakers and hearers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1984. 142 pp. $20.00.
Henk Haverkate,
The topic of the study reviewed here are reference strategies where the reference is to the speaker or to the hearer. Haverkate uses mostly examples from peninsular Spanish, contrasting them with examples from English and Dutch, but his work is of general interest for linguists, since many conclusions of the book are not specific for Spanish. There are six chapters of different length. In addition, there are a short introduction, footnotes, references, and a list of the sources of the examples quoted. Personally, I lacked a register. The first chapter gives an overview of the categories Haverkate works with. The second chapter investigates speaker/hearer reference with respect to Searle’s speech act classification and to illocutionary preconditions. The - despite its shortness - very interesting third chapter gives a general presentation of linguistic strategies. Haverkate distinguishes between global (or argumentative) and local (or rhetorical) strategies. His interest is in those strategies which emphasise the interactional relation between speaker and hearer. Even though chapter three only has the function of defining the framework for the description of strategies in chapter five, the topic of linguistic strategies itself would have been worthy of a lengthier discussion. When Haverkate writes “speakers who decide verbally to communicate with their hearer first choose what to say and second, how to say what they choose to say”, (p. 38) what, then, is the reference of ‘first’, and respectively ‘second’? Is it a psycholinguistic statement about the linear ordering of mental processes, or is it the logic of the description which defines ‘first’ and ‘second’? Such a vagueness is of course not specific to Haverkate, it is a more general phenomenon in post-Searlean speech act analysis. The fourth chapter describes strategies in a speech act model. Haverkate uses the term allocution to define the intention of the speaker which results in a specific perlocution. The allocution defines the strategies for the subacts of the speech act: the phonetic act, the illocutionary, the referring and predicating act. Within this classification, chapter four defines the framework for the empirical analysis in chapter live, which describes referential strategies proper to speakers and hearers. Chapter five is the largest chapter in the book, taking up more than half of the volume. Haverkate discusses three types of strategies: