SPEAKING

1.3 Ends

For the act of speaking, see Speech.

Purposes, goals, and outcomes.[6] The aunt may tell a

story about the grandmother to entertain the audience,
teach the young women, and honor the grandmother.

In sociolinguistics, SPEAKING or the SPEAKING

model, is a model socio-linguistic study (represented as
a mnemonic) developed by Dell Hymes. It is a tool to
assist the identication and labeling of components of interactional linguistics that was driven by his view that, in
order to speak a language correctly, one needs not only to
learn its vocabulary and grammar, but also the context in
which words are used.

1.4 Act Sequence

Form and order of the event. The aunts story might begin
as a response to a toast to the grandmother. The storys
plot and development would have a sequence structured
by the aunt. Possibly there would be a collaborative interruption during the telling. Finally, the group might applaud the tale and move onto another subject or activity.

To facilitate the application of his representation, Hymes

constructed the acronym, S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G (for setting
and scene, participants, ends, acts sequence, key, instrumentalities, norms, & genre) under which he grouped the
sixteen components within eight divisions.[1]
The model had sixteen components that can be applied to many sorts of discourse: message form; message content; setting; scene; speaker/sender; addressor; hearer/receiver/audience; addressee; purposes (outcomes); purposes (goals); key; channels; forms of
speech; norms of interaction; norms of interpretation;
and genres.[2]

1
1.1

1.5 Key
Clues that establish the tone, manner, or spirit of the
speech act.[7] The aunt might imitate the grandmothers
voice and gestures in a playful way, or she might address
the group in a serious voice emphasizing the sincerity and
respect of the praise the story expresses.

Divisions

1.6 Instrumentalities

Setting and Scene

Forms and styles of speech.[8] The aunt might speak in

a casual register with many dialect features or might use
Setting refers to the time and place of a speech act and, a more formal register and careful grammatically stanin general, to the physical circumstances.[3] The living dard forms.
room in the grandparents home might be a setting for a
family story. Scene is the psychological setting or cultural denition of a scene, including characteristics such 1.7 Norms
as range of formality and sense of play or seriousness.[4]
The family story may be told at a reunion celebrating the Social rules governing the event and the participants acgrandparents anniversary. At times, the family would be tions and reactions. In a playful story by the aunt, the
festive and playful; at other times, serious and commem- norms might allow many audience interruptions and colorative.
laboration, or possibly those interruptions might be limited to participation by older females. A serious, formal
story by the aunt might call for attention to her and no
interruptions as norms.
1.2 Participants
Speaker and audience. Linguists will make distinctions
within these categories; for example, the audience can
be distinguished as addresses and other hearers.[5] At the
family reunion, an aunt might tell a story to the young female relatives, but males, although not addressed, might
also hear the narrative.

1.8 Genre
The kind of speech act or event; for the example used
here, the kind of story. The aunt might tell a character
anecdote about the grandmother for entertainment, or an
1

exemplum as moral instruction. Dierent disciplines develop terms for kinds of speech acts, and speech communities sometimes have their own terms for types.[9]

References

[1] Note that the categories are simply listed in the order demanded by the mnemonic, not by importance
[2] Hymes (1974), p.53-62.
[3] Hymes (1974), p.55.
[4] Hymes (1974), pp.55-56.
[5] Hymes (1974), pp.54 and 56.
[6] Hymes (1974), pp.56-57.
[7] Hymes (1974), p.57.
[8] Hymes (1974), pp.58-60.
[9] Anticipating that he might be accused of creating an (English language) ethnocentric mnemonic and, thus,
by implication, an (English language) ethnocentric theory Hymes comments that he could have, for instance,
generated a French language mnemonic of P-A-R-L-AN-T: namely, participants, actes, raison (resultat), locale,
agents (instrumentalities), normes, ton (key), types (genres) (1974, p.62).

REFERENCES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

3.1

Text

SPEAKING Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEAKING?oldid=737073997 Contributors: Stevertigo, Bearcat, Ukexpat, Taragui,

Ketiltrout, Pleiotrop3, Magioladitis, Oshwah, PLA y Grande Covin, MrOllie, Fraggle81, Vrenator, BandBHawks, ClueBot NG, MusikAnimal, Pravincumar pek, Vanischenu, BattyBot, ChrisGualtieri and Anonymous: 22

3.2

Images

File:Ambox_important.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Ambox_important.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work, based o of Image:Ambox scales.svg Original artist: Dsmurat (talk contribs)
File:Question_book-new.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Question_book-new.svg License: Cc-by-sa-3.0
Contributors:
Created from scratch in Adobe Illustrator. Based on Image:Question book.png created by User:Equazcion Original artist:
Tkgd2007

3.3

Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0