Unit 4 – La Lengua Oral. Situaciones de Comunicación Oral.

Elementos y
Normas que rigen el Discurso Oral. Estrategias propias de la
Comunicación Oral
1. Introduction
2. Current trends in xxth century: a communicative approach
3. Elements and Rules Governing Oral Discourse
4. Everyday Routines and Formulaic Speech
5. Specific Strategies in Oral Communication
6. Present – Day Directions Regarding Oral Communication
7. Conclusion
8. Bibliography

1. Introduction
In this unit, we shall approach the notion of oral communication. The aim analysis is to examine
briefly the components of communicative competence and to explore the nature and the different
functions of spoken language, with particular reference to components governing oral discourse.
In the second part we shall make a revision of the main oral components including elements and
rules governing oral discourse. The third section deals with general patterns of discourse
regarding elements and rules. Hence, our study starts first with an analysis of the linguistic
and non-linguistic elements taking part in oral discourse.
In next sections, it then turns to routines and formulaic language, regarding rules of usage and
rules of use within the prominent role of conversational studies. Discourse strategies will be
examined in the last part.

2. Current trends in xxth century: a communicative approach

In the field of psychology, in the early to mid-1900s, behaviorism has had a great effect on
language teaching studying animal behaviour first, and moving to human behaviour later. One of
the most famous of these scientists was Skinner who worked on oral skills in language learning.
He theorized that a child repeats words and combination of words and thus learns language.
Behaviorists believed that languages were made of a series of habits, and that if learners could
develop all these habits, they would speak the language well. From these theories arose the
audio-lingual method, which is based on using drills for the formation of good language habits by
means of oral skills such as listening and speaking.
After WWII there were more opportunities for international travel and international social and
cultural exchanges. As a result, renewed attempts were made in the 1950s and 1960s which
constituted the starting point for more communicative approaches in language teaching. Several
factors influenced this further development. First, the use of new technology in language teaching
at the level of oral skills, such as tape recorders, radio, tv and computers. Secondly, research
studies on bilingualism and thirdly, the establishment of methodological innovations, auch as tha
already mentioned audio-lingual method.
It is in this context that the linguist Noam Chomsky proposed a theory called Transformational-
Generative Grammar establishing a distinction between the notions of competence and
performance, being competence the implicit or explicit knowledge of the system of the language
whereas performance addresses to the actual production and comprehension of language.
Chomsky’s distinction served as a basis of work for many other researchers such as the
anthropologist Dell Hymes, , who claimed that native speakers know more than just grammatical
competence, but also sociolinguistic and contextual competences. Therefore he speaks about
competence as the knowledge of rules of grammar, and performance, the way the rules are used.
In the 1980s, the rapid application of a teaching tasks system broken down into units gave
prominence to more interactive views of language teaching, which became to be known as the
Communicative Approach or simply Communicative Language Teaching. Besides, language
was considered as social behaviour, seeing the primary goal of language teaching as the
development of the learner’s communicative competence.
One of the principles of Communicative Language Teaching is the concept of communicative
competence. The term implies the knowledge of language rules, and of how these rules are used
to understand and produce appropriate language in a variety of sociocultural settings.
The verbal part of communicative competence comprises all the so-called four skills: listening,
reading, speaking and writing. So, it is both productive and receptive. Hymes expands the
Chomskyan notions of competence and performance into four parameters under the heading of
communicative competence. The four competences regarding the elements and rules of oral
discourse are as follows: linguistic competence, pragmatic competence, discourse competence,
strategic competence, and fluency.
First, the linguistic competence, as it deals with linguistic and non-linguistic devices in the oral
interaction. It refers to having control over the purely linguistic aspects of the language code.
Second, the pragmatic competence deals with the knowledge the learner has to acquire the
sociocultural rules of language, which is concerned with the social knowledge necessary to select
the language forms that are appropriate in different settings, and with people in different roles and
with different status.
Third, the discourse competence is primarily concerned with the ways in which individual
sentences connect together to form a communicative message. This competence addresses
directly to the mastery of how to combine grammatical forms and meanings to achieve a unified
spoken or written text in different genres by means of cohesion in form and coherence in
meaning.
Finally, the strategic competence consists of using communication strategies which are used by
the learners to compensate for their limited linguistic competence in expressing what they want to
say.
The term fluency relates to language production, and it is normally associated with speech. It is
the ability to link units of speech together with facility and without inappropriate alowness, or
undue hesitation.

- Conversational and Turn-Taking

A main feature of conversations is that they tend to follow the convention of turn-taking. Simply,
this is when one person waits for the other to finish his/her utterance before contributing their own.
The potential for one to reply can be missed, deliberately or not, so that the first person may
contribute once more. Failure to realise this can result in an awkward pause or a cacophony of
competing voices in a large crowd.
Another fundamental feature of conversation is the idea of adjacency pairs. Posited by Goffman
(1976), an example would be found in a question-answer session. Both conversing parties are
aware that a response is required to a question; moreover, a particular response to a given
question. It has been noted that various physical cues, such as gestures or expressions, are in
play during orthodox face-to-face exchanges, and these are obviously lacking in a telephone
conversation, however we must take into account, in this case, the cues one picks up from the
voice – it is quite easy to detect if somebody is confident or nervous on the phone, from the words
they use, the pauses, the tone and the pronunciation of the words.

3. Elements and Rules governing Oral Discourse

This section will be divided into two sections, first, linguistic elements at work and non-linguistic
elements. Secondly, rules of oral discourse, focusing on rules of use, rules of usage and
conversational studies.

- Elements Governing Oral Discourse

Elements governing oral discourse are approached in terms of a communicative event, which is
described as a sociocultural unit where the components of which serve to define salient elements
of context within which the text becomes significant.

- Linguistic Elements
Regarding the linguistic level in oral discourse, the phonological system is involved and is
concerned with the analysis of acoustic signals into a sequence of speech sounds, thus,
consonants, vowels and syllables. At this level we find certain prosodic elements which provide
us with information about the oral interaction. Thus, stress, rhythm and intonation.
Regarding stress, it is present in an oral interaction when we give more emphasis to some parts
of the utterance than to other segments. It is a signaling to make a syllable stand out with respect
to its neighbouring syllables in a word or to the rest of words in a longer utterance.
Foreign language learners must be concerned with the relevant role of primary stress, as a
change of stress within a word may change the whole meaning of it. For instance, a word like
record can be a verb or a noun depending on the right stressed syllable.
Another important element which characterizes oral interaction is rhythm which is determined by
the succession of prominent and non-prominent syllables in an utterance. Rhythm can be
monotonous or inexistent if short or irregular units of time take place in a chaotic way in an speech
act.
Then, we may observe that the term establishes a relationship between accents and pauses,
which, used properly, contribute to keeping attention by allowing voice inflection, change of
intonation and change of meaning. Pauses may be characterized by being predictable or not.
Predictable pauses are those required for the speakers to take a breath between sentences or to
separate grammatical units, and unpredictable pauses are those brought about by false starts and
hesitations.
The third prosodic element is intonation which is characterized by the rising and falling of voice
during speech, depending on the type of utterance we may produce. In case of statements we will
use falling intonation whereas in questions we use rising intonation. Intonation and rhythm play an
important role when expressing attitudes and emotions. Depending on the meaning the speakers
may convey, they will use a different tone is responsible for changes of meaning or for expressing
special attitudes in the speaker such as enthusiasm, sadness, anger, exasperation.

- Non-Linguistic Elements
As they speak, people often gesture, nod their heads, change their postures and facial expessions
and redirect the focus of their gaze. Although these behaviours are not linguistic they are relevant
to an account of language use.
Controversial speech is often accompanied by gesture, for example, the use of hands is usually
regarded as communicative devices whose function is to amplify information in the speech.
Gestures can be classified in different types such as symbolic gestures as hands signs with well
stablished meanings (thumbs up, V for victory, pointing, denial, refusing). Then, we find repetitive
rhythmic hand movements coordinated with speech, using head or shoulders or gesticulations
related to semantic content of speech in order to describe size, strength, speed.
Concerning facial expressions, it deals with an automatic response to an internal state and are
used in social situations to convey a variety of kinds of information (smiling and happiness). Facial
expressions allow to express concern, agreement, confirmation.
In relation to gaze direction, it deals with proximity, body-orientation or touching gazing may
express the communicator’s social distance by means of looking up to or looking down to.
Speech also contains a good deal of information that can be considered non-verbal. A speaker’s
voice transmits information concerning his or her age, gender, region of origin, social class and so
on. Changes in a speaker’s affective states usually are accompanied by changes in the acoustic
properties of his or her voice.

- Rules Governing Oral Discourse

According to the Ministry of Education, the Educational Reform claims for a progressive
development of communicative competence in a specific language.
Linguistic and discursive skills come into force in a given context in order to get specific
communicative goals. A communicative competence theory accounts for rules of usage and rules
of use in order to get a proficiency level in a foreign language within the framework of social
interaction, personal, professional or educational fields.
Then, rules of usage are concerned with the language user’s knowledge of linguistic or
grammatical rules whereas rules of use are concerned with the language user’s ability to use his
knowledge of linguistic rules in order to achieve effectiveness of communication.
To sum up, the learning of a foreign language is intended to broaden the student’s intellectual
knowledge on other ways of life and social organization different to their own.

- Rules of Usage
The ways languages are used are constrained by the way they are constructed, particularly the
linguistic rules that govern the permissible usage forms, for instance, grammatical rules. Thus, the
phonological, the morphological, the syntactic and the semantic levels which, taken together,
constitute its grammar.
Firstly, the phonological system is concerned with the phonological knowledge a speaker has in
order to produce sounds which form meaningful sentences.
Secondly, the morphological system is concerned with the way words and meaningful subwords
are constructed out of these phonological elements. Morphology involves internal structures by
means of which the speakers are able to recognize whether a word belongs to the target language
or not. Therefore, when a non-native word is added to the target language, they do it by means of
morphological rules which belong to that vernacular language, such as, derivation, compounding,
blending or back-formation.
Thirdly, the syntactic system is concerned with that part of grammar which stands for speakers’
knowledge of how to structure phrases and sentences in an appropriate and accurate way.
By means of word sequencing, syntactic rules reveal the relations between the words in a
sentence as they are orderly governed, for instance, subject, verb, and adverbs. To sum up, this
ability to produce utterances in an appropriate and coherent way has to do with the creative aspect
of language as the speaker may produce an unlimited number of sentences, as a main feature of
language usage.
Finally, the semantic system is concerned with the meanings of these higher-level units.
Semantics is concerned with the linguistic competence in terms of a capacity to produce meaning
within an utterance.
However, linguistic rules do not follow a strict pattern in everyday use. We may distinguish mainly
three types of semantic rule violation. Thus, anomaly when a speaker may create a non-
understandable word or utterance because of a non-appropriate use of a semantic rule; a poetic
use of malformations is metaphors connected to an abstract meaning; and finally, idioms, in which
the meaning of an expression may not be related to the individual meaning of its parts, for
instance, phrasal verbs.

- Rules of Use
The notion of use means the realization of the language system as meaningful communication
linked to the aspect of performance. This notion is based on the effectiveness for communication.
Students are intended to apply their linguistic knowledge to how construct discourse within the
textual competence according to three main rules of appropriateness, coherence and cohesion as
main discourse devices.
Appropriateness is concerned with the appropriate register according to the situation, thus, the
issue, channel of communication, purpose and degree of formality.
Coherence deals with the use of information in a speech act regarding the selection of relevant or
irrelevant information and the organization of the communicative structure in a certain way, such
as, introduction, development, and conclusion.
Regarding cohesion, there is a wide range of semantic and syntactic relations within a sentence
in order to relate our speech act forming a cohesive unit by means of reference, ellipsis,
conjunction, and lexical cohesion.

- Conversational Studies
Conversation is the main means by which humans communicate and is thus vital for full and rich
social interaction. An obvious definition of conversation is a process of talking where at least two
participants freely alternate in speaking as they interact with their social environment.
There is potentially a close interrelation between discourse and conversational analysis and
pragmatics, taking into account social and cognitive structures.
There is a tradition on cultural studies which was first introduced in a language teaching theory in
the early 1920s, and improved in the 1970s by the notion of ethnography of communication. It
refers to a methodology based on anthropology and linguistics allowing people to study human
interaction in context.
Within a conversational analysis, we find mainly two features, first, what we understand under the
convention of turn taking, and second is the idea of adjacent pairs where a conversation is
described as a string of at least two turns, and in which the first part of the pair predicts the
occurrence of the second, thus, “How are you?” and “Fine, thanks. And you?”

- 3 Specific Strategies in Oral Communication

Now we address the area of Communicative Competence. This is quite a complex area but in a
simplified way we can describe it as the type of knowledge which we need to sustain
communication with someone. This may be achieved by paraphrase, circumlocution, repetition,
hesitation, avoidance, guessing as well as shifts in register and style.
This approach has been supported by different researchers such as Canale & Swain or Sauvignon
& Tarone. For them strategic competence is useful in various circumstances as for instance, the
early stages of second language learning where communicative competence can be present with
just strategic and socio-linguistic competence.

- 4 Everyday Routines and Formulaic Speech

These ideas follow a tradition on cultural studies called ethnography of communication. They
deal with the terms coined in the 1960s by the philosopher J.L.Austin in “How to do Things with
words” (1962) to refer to acts performed by utterances which conveyed information, in particular to
those which require questions and answers as a formulaic speech.
According to Seaville and Troike (1982) in his work The Ethnography of Communication, linguistic
routines are fixed utterances or sequences of utterances which must be considered as simple
units. The routine itself, they say, fulfils the communicative function.
According to this model, this type of awareness will lead to a discussion of the differences
between the cultural and social values of a first language learner and foreign language community.
When learners from a different cultural background do not understand certain behaviour rules from
the foreign language culture. Hence, ritual contexts involve formulaic language with great cultural
significance. The meaning of symbols cannot be interpreted in isolation but in context. For
instance, a funeral ritual is different in Europe and in America. Both, routines and formulaic
speech meaning depend on shared beliefs and values within the speech community.

- 5 Present-Day Directions Regarding Oral Communication

According to Hedge (2000), since the introduction of communicative approaches, the ability to
communicate effectively in English has become one of the main goals in European Language
Teaching. The Council of Europe (1998), in response to the need for international co-operation
and professional mobility among European countries, published a document, Moder Languages:
Learning, Teaching, Assessment. A Common European Framework of Reference, in which the
acquisition of communicative and pragmatic competence in a second language is emphasized.
Both contributed strongly to the development of “the communicative classroom”, increasing the
emphasis on teaching the spoken language.
It is important to remark that students tend to be reluctant to expose themselves in the classroom,
making it very difficult to get them to speak at any length. My concern derives from the problem of
how to actually get learners speaking in a meaningful way in the classroom.
The European Council and, in particular, the Spanish Educational System within the framework of
the Educational Reform, establishes a common reference framework for the teaching of foreign
languages, and claims for a progressive development of communicative competence in a specific
language. Students, then, are intended to be able to carry out several communication tasks within
specific contexts.
In order to develop the above mentioned communication tasks in our present educational system,
a communicative competence theory includes the following sub-competences. Firstly, the
linguistic competence (semantic, morphosyntactic and phonological). Secondly, the discourse
competence (language functions, speech acts and conversations). Thirdly, the sociolinguistic
competence (social conventions, routines and formulaic speech, communicative intentions, and
register among others). Fourthly, the strategic competence in order to achieve the effectiveness of
communication through the different communication skills.

- 6 Conclusion
Speaking is a language skill that uses complex and intrincate forms to convey meaning. In many
ways, through its nature, it is the most difficult of all the language skills to study. Speech is where
language is more adaptable and where second language speakers find their confidence
threatened through the diversity of registers, genres and styles.
Students should be encouraged to talk from a very early stage since, from a linguistic point of
view, as spoken language is relatively less demanding than written language.
A review of the literature in this survey revealed that although recent developments in foreign
language education have indicated a trend towards approaching the acquisition of a second
language in terms of communicative competence. Students are expected to learn to function
properly in the target language and culture, both interpreting and producing meaning with
members of the target culture. Limited access to the target culture has forced teachers to rely on
textbooks and other classroom materials in teaching language, and these materials may not
necessarily furnish a sufficient rich environment for the acquisition of communicative competence,
including many aspects of discourse activity, such as paralinguistic and extralinguistic behavior.
Hypermedia and multimedia environments may provide a more appropriate setting for students to
experience the target language in its cultural context.
Pronunciation teaching materials still retain many of the characteristics of traditional audiolingual
texts, though have begun to incorporate more meaningful and communicative practice such as
self-monitoring which reflect the interest in the acquisition of second language phonology .
Finally, it is interesting to remark how conversation has evolved with virtual meetings and chatting
in cyberspace.

- 7 Bibliography
 Crystal, D. (1985) Linguistics
 Canale, M. and Swain, M. (1980) Theoretical Bases of Communicative Approaches to
Second Language Teaching and Testing
 Halliday, M.A.K. (1973) Explorations in the Functions of Language
 Hymes, D. (1972) On Communicative Competence
 Austin, J.L. (1962) How to do things with words
 Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk
 Council of Europe (1998) Modern Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. A
Common European Framework of Reference
 Hedge, Tricia (2000) Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom