Custom Writing Service http://HelpWriting.net/ANALYSIS-OF-A-SELECTED-BARGAIN-DISCOURS 👈

1. ANALYSIS OF A SELECTED BARGAIN DISCOURSE USING DELL HYMES’
S.P.E.A.K.I.N.G. MODEL.
BY
UMEZINWA, JENNIFER
NASARAWA STATE UNIVERSITY, KEFFI
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
Abstract
This study evaluates the theory of the Ethnography of Communication by Dell Hymes. It attempts
to prove the viability of Dell Hymes proposition of the S.P.E.A.K.I.N.G. Model in the analysis of
natural and unnatural discourse; it also presents and analyzes samples of spoken discourse in
actual speech event. Data analyzed was recorded and transcribed by the researcher. The
findings are that although Hymes theory is effective for discourse analysis, there are observable
shortcomings in its ability to account for meaning in conversation. Not all aspects of
communicative situations are easily accounted for by the S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G mnemonic.
Nonetheless, S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G is a useful guide to the analysis of the dimensions of
communication.

2. Introduction
Background to the Study
Language is an indelible tool for human communication. No matter how an individual tries, one
cannot not communicate. Language has a structure, without which meaning cannot be created or
interpreted. The syntactic, semantic and phonic representations of sentences contribute to making
meaningful and understandable expressions. That two words share the same semantic senses
does not mean they are substitutable.
Hall asserts that “language is the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with
each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols”. (58) He is of the
opinion that language is a purely human institution; and the term institution makes explicit the
view that language is used by a particular group, culture, society or nationality. This goes to
show that language is made by society, born out of society and dictated by society. Society here
best describes a group of people with shared beliefs, culture, visions, goals, opinions and
ideologies. Hence, the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication provides
humans a wider range of opportunities to manipulate the language properties and resources in
order to convey messages.
The analysis of discourse is primarily the analysis of language in use. Linguists concentrate on
the formal properties of a language while discourse analysts examine the function of language,
which could be written or spoken. Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is a general
term for a number of approaches to the analysis of discourse: written, spoken, sign language use,
or any significant semiotic event. Discourse analysis has been taken up in a variety of disciplines
in the humanities and social sciences, including linguistics, education, sociology, anthropology,
social work, cognitive psychology, social psychology, area studies, cultural studies, international
relations, human geography, communication studies, biblical studies, and translation studies,
each of which is subject to its own assumptions, dimensions of analysis, and methodologies. In
the late 1960s and 1970s, a variety of other approaches to a new cross-discipline of DA began to
develop in most of the humanities and social sciences concurrently with, and related to, other
disciplines, such as semiotics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics. Often, a
distinction is made between 'local' structures of discourse (such as relations among sentences,

3. propositions, and turns) and 'global' structures, such as overall topics and the schematic
organization of discourses and conversations.
Speech is used in many different ways among different groups of people and each group has its
own norms of linguistic behaviour. In order to analyze the language of specific groups, it is
necessary to rely on some clearly defined frameworks for ethnographical study of speech.
Hymes (1974) proposed three levels of analysis, namely, speech situation, speech event and
speech acts, that ‘speech event’ analysis is the most important dealing with particular instances
of speech exchange, like exchange of greetings, enquiry, etc.
Research Problem
Meaning in language is characterizes by duplicity of interpretation, therefore it is important to
use a theory of discourse that can aid in the account of meaning justifiably for an adequate
discourse analysis. It is a problem that most theories of discourse have not provided a theory of
meaning such that Dell Hymes’ S.P.E.A.K.I.N.G. has. It is also a problem that the model may
not be able to suffice for all the aspects of analysis in communication as it claims to, which is
one of the arguments of the researcher. So, this paper sets out to look at the possible
interpretation of language in actual use. It is an attempt to address this linguistic duplicity by
dissecting the recorded data with the aspects of communication provided.
Research Questions
The study intends to answer the following research questions:
(a) Does the speaking grid aid in the analysis of any spoken discourse?
b) Does the grid possess parameters which can account for all aspects of communication?
Aim and Objectives
The aim of this research is to use the Dell Hymes’ S.P.E.A.K.I.N.G. model for the analysis of
discourse. The objectives are therefore:
1) To ascertain the relevance of the speaking grid in the analysis of discourse.

4. 2) To determine the extent of analysis by parameters provided in the mnemonic for the
account of meaning in communication.
Significance of study
The focus of this research work is to analyze discourse using the Dell Hymes S.P.E.A.K.I.N.G.
Model. However, most researches have been carried out using the theory on film excerpts or
dramatic texts. Not much has been done on naturally occurring discourse.
Biography of Dell Hathaway Hymes
Hymes was influenced by a number of linguists, anthropologists and sociologists, notably Franz
Boas, Edward Sapir and Harry Hoijer of the Americanist Tradition; Roman Jakobson and others
of the Prague Linguistic Circle; sociologist Erving Goffman, anthropologist Ray L. Birdwhistell,
and ethnomethodologists Harold Garfinkel, Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff and Gail
Jefferson.
Hymes formulated a response to Noam Chomsky's influential distinction between competence
(knowledge of grammatical rules necessary to decoding and producing language) and
performance (actual language use in context). Hymes objected to the marginalization of
performance from the centre of linguistic inquiry and proposed the notion of communicative
competence, or knowledge necessary to use language in social context, as an object of linguistic
inquiry. Since appropriate language use is conventionally defined, and varies across different
communities, much of Hymes early work frames a project for ethnographic investigation into
contrasting patterns of language use across speech communities. Hymes termed this approach
"the ethnography of speaking." The SPEAKING acronym, described below, was presented as a
lighthearted heuristic to aid fieldworkers in their attempt to document and analyze instances of
language in use, which he termed "speech events." Embedded in the acronym is an application
and extension of Jakobson's arguments concerning the multifunctionality of language. He
articulated other, more technical, often typologically oriented approaches to variation in patterns
of language use across speech communities in a series of articles.
As a result of discussions primarily with Ray Birdwhistell at the University of Pennsylvania, in
his later work, Hymes renamed the "ethnography of speaking", the "ethnography of

5. communication" to reflect the broadening of focus from instances of language production to the
ways in which communication (including oral, written, broadcast, acts of receiving/listening) is
conventionalized in a given community of users, and to include most nonverbal as well as verbal
behaviour.
Hymes' goal, in his own mind, is to understand the artistry and "the competence... that underlies
and informs such narratives" Hymes (vii).
Literature Review
Discourse Analysis
Some scholars claim the first linguist to refer to discourse analysis was Zellig Harris. In 1952, he
investigated the connectedness of sentences, naming his study 'discourse analysis.' Harris
claimed explicitly that discourse is the next level in a hierarchy of morphemes, clauses and
sentences. He viewed discourse analysis procedurally as a formal methodology, derived from
structural methods of linguistic analysis: such a methodology could break a text down into
relationships (such as equivalence, substitution) among its lower-level constituents.
Michael Stubbs opined, 'Any study which is not dealing with (a) single sentences, (b) contrived
by the linguist, (c) out of context, may be called discourse analysis.' Stubbs (131). In other
words, there is a shift of focus from sentences in isolation to utterances in context: to study
language in use is to study it as discourse. This is a fact that 'knowledge of a language is more
than knowledge of individual sentences.'
In the same line, Leech (76) states that ‘The true meaning of a sentence can't be assigned by only
its linguistic construction but it largely depends on reference (meaning in relation to exterior
world), sense (meaning in relation to linguistic system) and force (meaning in relation to
situational context). Let's take an example: ‘I love you’. Clearly the assigned meaning varies in
different situations, if the speaker is one's lover or beloved as opposed to one's parent or child.
As Chomsky states, 'To understand a sentence we must know more than the analysis of the
sentence on each linguistic level. We must also know the reference and meaning of the
morphemes or words of which it is composed; naturally, grammar cannot be expected to be of
much help here.' Chomsky (103-04).

6. Widdowson also criticizes the well familiar definition of discourse analysis that ‘discourse is the
study of language patterns above the sentence by arguing that, if discourse analysis is defined as
the study of language patterns above the sentence, this would seem to imply that discourse is
sentence writ large: quantitatively different but qualitatively the same phenomenon. It would
follow, that you cannot have discourse below the sentence’. Widdowson ( 3).
Discourse cannot be confined to sentential boundaries. It goes beyond the limits of the sentence.
In other words, discourse is 'any coherent succession of sentences, spoken or written' Matthews
(100). The links between sentences in connected discourse are as much important as the links
between clauses in a sentence.
Another definition derived from the functionalist paradigm views discourse as 'language use.'
This definition observes the relationship the discourse has with the context.
Ethnography of Communication
Ethnography refers to the description of people and their culture (Schwartz & Jacobs, 1979).
Ethnography is the practice of anthropological research based on direct observation of and
reportage on a people's way of life. For the ethnographer there are two stages, the first of which
is fieldwork, which is the process of observing and recording data. The second stage is the
production of a written description and analysis of the subject under study.
Agar describes ethnography as ‘an ambiguous term that can refer to a process and a product. As
a process, it involves a set of techniques for the description of a culture from community
members’ point of view. As a product, it is a monograph that takes into account many different
aspects of social life of a particular group’ (53). Borrowing its underlying principles from
anthropology, Ethnography of Communication, an approach from within Linguistic
Anthropology (LA), has typically been concerned with challenging assumptions about cultural
homogeneity through a focus on language use in interaction. The aim of ethnography of
communication is to describe the knowledge that participants in verbal interaction need and
display in order to communicate successfully with one another. Ethnography of speaking focuses
both on cultural practices of the community in which language is directly involved and on
differences of these practices and their meaning among different communities. An important
point is that the work of the analyst does not stop at the level of description, (s)he should seek the

7. answer to the question of why particular events occur and why they have the particular
characteristics Cameron (1). Hymes who is well known for criticizing both linguistics, for not
making ethnography the starting point for the analysis of language use, and anthropology, for
insufficiently drawing upon linguistics to understand and describe culture and context states, he
that: ‘. . . it is not linguistics, but ethnography, not language, but communication, which must
provide the frame of reference within which the place of language in culture and society is to be
assessed . . .’ Hymes (4).
Even the ethnographies that we have, though almost never fully focus on speaking, show us that
communities differ significantly in ways of speaking, in patterns of repertoire and switching, in
the roles and meanings of speech Hymes (33). For Hymes, what was needed was a general
theory and body of knowledge within which diversity of speech, repertoires, and ways of
speaking take primacy as the unit of analysis. Hymes’ argument was that the analysis of speech
over language would enable social scientists to articulate how social behavior and speech interact
in a systematic, ruled and principled way. This view became articulated in the ethnography of
speaking (Hymes, 1962) and later the ethnography of communication (Hymes, 1974) to describe
a new approach to understanding language in use. In doing this, Hymes aimed to move away
from considering speech as an abstract model and toward investigating the diversity of speech as
it is encountered in ethnographic fieldwork. After Chomsky’s (1965) introduction of the concept
of ‘linguistic competence’ which is the native speaker’s underlying knowledge of rules of
grammar, Hymes (1972) proposed the concept of communicative competence’ which is
underlying knowledge of the rules of speaking. They are the rules that allow the native speaker
to speak appropriately. He offered three relevant units to be analyzed in ethnography of speaking
which are hierarchically ordered. The highest-level unit of analysis is the ‘speech situation’, the
social situation in which speaking takes place. It takes into account all the features of the
situation. Some of them may not be linguistic. By speech situations, Hymes means socially-
contextual situations like ‘ceremonies, fights, hunts, meals, lovemaking. In a family meal
situation, in addition to talking other activities such as eating, drinking, and feeding infants are
taken into consideration. Next level is ‘speech event’. Ethnographers of communication hold that
‘the speech event, constituted by the interaction of several components of which language is only
one, is the basic unit of every day communication, not clause or sentence’ Leeds (342). Speech
events are constituted by the use of language and therefore use of language should be crucial to

8. the social practice to be called speech event. Duranti elaborates it as follows: ‘In a class lecture, a
trial, a Ph.D. defense, an interview, or a phone conversation, speech is crucial and the event
would not be said to be taking place without it’ (201). Hymes calls this kind of event, a speech
event. In many other cases, speech has a minor role, subordinate to other codes or forms of
interaction. Hymes refers to the latter type of event as a speech situation. He states that: ‘The
term speech event will be restricted to activities, or aspects of activities, that are directly
governed by rules or norms for the use of speech. An event may consist of a single speech act,
but will often comprise several’ (56).The lowest-level unit of analysis is the ‘speech act’.
‘Speech acts are the constituent parts of speech events. Speech act theory has to do with the
functions and uses of language, so in the broad sense we might say that speech acts are all the
acts we perform through speaking, all the things we do when we speak’ Schmidt & Richards
(129).
To recap, Hymes (1972) offers the example of ‘a party (speech situation), a conversation during
the party (speech event), a joke within the conversation (speech act)’ to illustrate the three terms.
While all the above-mentioned levels are important, the most important one is speech event to
which the rules of speaking apply. Hymes (1974) also proposed that these speech events have
components that should be taken into account to produce a satisfactory description of any
particular speech event. He offers the mnemonic device of SPEAKING grid as a heuristic for the
various factors he deems to be relevant. The set of components is referred to as the ‘speaking
grid’ and its purpose is to help the analysts to put their analysis in some kind of order as follows:
Dell Hymes S.P.E.A.K.I.N.G. Model
According to Hymes, a speech situation can only be understood if not only linguistic, but also
other aspects are taken into consideration, such as: the setting of the communication, its goals,
and the information about the participants. In order to reflect all these factors and help speech act
analysts to make more in-depth analysis, Hymes coined the following acronym: SPEAKING
[model/paradigm]. Below is the discussion of the model.
The model has sixteen components that can be applied to many sorts of discourse: message form;
message content; setting; scene; speaker/sender; addressor; hearer/receiver/audience; addressee;

9. purposes (outcomes); purposes (goals); key; channels; forms of speech; norms of interaction;
norms of interpretation; and genres.
Hymes constructed the acronym SPEAKING, under which he grouped the sixteen components
within eight divisions:
‘S’ for Setting and Scene:
“Setting refers to the time and place of a speech act and, in general, to the physical
circumstances" Hymes (55).The living room in the grandparents' home might be a setting for a
family story. – i.e. where the speech situation is taking place (e.g. a University lecture hall) – this
is the setting; June 15th
, 1998, 10 a.m. in the largest space in the town hall of a small town in
north-west Europe, for example. Setting refers to the time and place which is the concrete
physical circumstances in which speech takes place. Scene refers to the abstract psychological
setting, or the cultural definition of the occasion. A particular bit of speech may actually serve to
define a scene, whereas another bit of speech may be deemed to be quite inappropriate in certain
circumstances. Within a particular setting, of course, participants are free to change scenes as
they change the level of formality, or as they change the kind of activity in which they are
involved. Hymes’ scene subcomponent can be integrated with what Goffman (1974) has called
spatial and temporal boundaries, and the subcomponent setting with what is called ‘boundary
markers’. Such boundaries should be taken to be universal features of social events across
societies, their existence (or psychological realities) being crucial for the participants to conduct
themselves in the interaction and for the analysts to isolate the object of their inquiry” Philips
1977, as cited in Duranti (206-207).
External temporal boundaries refer to the beginning and ending of the event, and internal ones
refer to potential division of the event into parts or episodes. External spatial boundaries
delineate the space within which the event takes place or the way participants perceive or
represent it to themselves with respect to the outside. Spatial boundaries that participants define
with respect to one another are called internal setting.
The overall mood and context (is the conversation serious or funny; what is the cultural
ambiance) this is the scene [aka psychological setting]. Scene is the "psychological setting" or
"cultural definition" of a scene, including characteristics such as range of formality and sense of

10. play or seriousness Hymes (55-56). The family story may be told at a reunion celebrating the
grandparents' anniversary. At times, the family would be festive and playful; at other times,
serious and commemorative. Scene refers to the psychological setting; that is, participants'
understanding of what sort of event is taking place. Thus in that north-western European town
hall there might be some kind of legal proceedings, a neighborhood mediation meeting, an
awards ceremony, a lecture or a party. People's understandings of scene, and what sort of
behavior is appropriate to each type of event, can vary quite widely (especially cross-culturally)
and these divergences can act as triggers for (increased) conflict.
Participants
P’ for Participants: It includes various combinations of speaker-listener, addressor-addressee or
sender-receiver. They generally fill certain socially specified roles. A two-person conversation
involves a speaker and hearer whose roles change. Linguists will make distinctions within these
categories; for example, the audience can be distinguished as addressees and other hearers. At
the family reunion, an aunt might tell a story to young female relatives, but males, although not
addressed, might also hear the narrative, the information about the participants is salient for
proper analysis (e.g. their cultural and sociolinguistic background). Participants include the
speaker and the audience, the latter including the addressee(s) and any others present.
Ends
‘E’ for Ends: It refers to the conventionally recognized and expected outcome(s) of an exchange
as well as to the personal goals that participations seek to accomplish on particular occasions. A
trial in a courtroom has a recognizable social end in view, but the various participants, i.e., the
judge, jury, prosecution, defense, accused, and witnesses, have different personal goals. The aunt
may tell a story about the grandmother to entertain the audience, teach the young women, and
honor the grandmother.– i.e. what are the goals and the actual outcomes of the speech act (e.g.
John wanted to confess his love to Helen, but instead of saying “I love you”, he awkwardly
murmured “It is good to see you”. As a result, his confession was put off). Ends refer to both
outcomes (the assumed purpose of an activity or event) and goals (the purposes of the
individuals involved). Defining what these are in the case of mediation can of course be difficult

11. and generic 'resolution' requires more detailed examination in particular cases to determine what
in fact will be accepted by parties to conflict.
Act Sequence
‘A’ for Act sequence: It refers to the actual form and content of what is said: the precise words
used, how they are used, and the relationship of what is said to the actual topic at hand.
Psychologists and communication theorists concerned with content analysis have shown a
similar interest. Early works in the field concentrated on the study of different ways of saying the
same thing. Lavandera’s (1987) work demonstrated that perfect paraphrases exist under rare
circumstances, and change of form is related to the change of message being communicated that
is directly related to the sociocultural context of speech in a given speech community. Defining
content could be problematic due to the fact that different disciplines may vary very much in
their assessment of the content. It is form and order of the event. The aunt's story might begin as
a response to a toast to the grandmother. The story's 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. The
different parts of a communicative event are referred to as 'act sequence'. They would include,
for example, opening remarks, formal and less formal turns by participants, and closing remarks.
In informal situations (such as arguments leading to conflicts) the sequence may not be agreed
and may not be coherent. This will lead to a lot of overlaps and interruptions and possibly to
unfinished or cut-off communications.
Key
‘K’ for Key: In the course of social interaction, participants offer each other cues as how to
interpret the message content. It refers to the tone, manner, or spirit in which a particular
message is conveyed: light-hearted, serious, precise, pedantic, mocking, sarcastic, pompous, and
so on. The key may also be marked nonverbally by certain kind of behavior, gesture, posture, or
even deportment. When there is a lack of fit between what a person is actually saying and the
key that the person is using, listeners are likely to pay more attention to the key than to the actual
content. The key of an utterance or speech event is determined by cues that indicate its tone or
spirit. This can, of course, be different for different speakers. Thus, one speaker may indicate

12. through choice of words that s/he is going to be aggressive and uncompromising whilst another
may give cues that s/he is behaving light-heartedly or playfully. Mismatches of this kind can of
course cause – or perpetuate – offence. Keys are clues that establish the "tone, manner, or spirit"
of the speech act. The aunt might imitate the grandmother's 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.– i.e. whether the situation is formal or not; whether the participants
are happy or sad (e.g. an informal birthday party or a family reunion).
Instrumentalities
‘I’ for Instrumentalities: It refers to the choice of channel such as oral, written, or telegraphic,
and to the actual form of speech employed, such as the language, dialect, code, or register that is
chosen. Formal, written, legal language is one instrumentality; spoken English is another; code-
switching between English and Italian in Toronto is a third; and the use of Latin is still another.
One may employ different instrumentalities in the course of a single verbal exchange of some
length: first read something, than all a dialect joke, then quote Shakespeare, and then used an
expression form another language, and so on. Instrumentalities are of two aspects. One is the
forms and styles of speech used by participants. Thus, the choice of whether to use a strong or
weak version of a dialect or accent, or whether to use one language rather than another, might
indicate the speaker's view of the interaction that is taking place and demonstrate intimacy,
respect (or disrespect), formality etc. The other aspect of instrumentalities is channel. Obviously,
many of the other aspects of context of situation, and what can and cannot be communicated, are
influenced by whether communication takes place face-to-face, by conventional written
messages or some other means. The aunt might speak in a casual register with many dialect
features or might use a more formal register and careful grammatically "standard" forms.– i.e.
the linguistic and non-linguistic tools used to make the speech act possible (e.g. a phone, English
used by a Spaniard and a Ukrainian who meet in Canada).
Norms
‘N’ for Norms of interaction: Hymes assumed that speech is a rule- governed behaviour and that
the researcher’s task is to infer such rules from systematic observation and recording of
spontaneous verbal interaction. It refers to the specific behaviors and properties that attach to

13. speaking and also to how these may be viewed by someone who does not share them, like
loudness, silence, and gaze return and so on.
Duranti (218) believes that ‘norms of interaction involve different levels of competence, from
the very basic rules of constructing processable sequences of words to the use of appropriate
code or register ‘This refers to any socially accepted conventions regarding when people can
speak, what kinds of things they can say and who they can say it to. Some norms, such as how
soon someone is expected to speak, relate to conversation generally in a community. Others
pertain to specific, relatively formal events such as court proceedings or job interviews. When
participants do not share the same norms, there can be undesirable consequences. As regards the
more general norms, for instance, someone who expects a clear gap after one person has spoken
before s/he starts speaking is never going to get a word in when faced with someone who expects
the next speaker to start talking before s/he has even finished and finds any silence
uncomfortable. Norms for specific events can also raise questions of power and control. Thus, a
victim of war crimes giving evidence in a trial may be at a disadvantage when cross-questioned
by the defense counsel if s/he is not very well briefed about what is and is not acceptable
communicative behavior. So, norms are social rules governing the event and the participants'
actions and reaction. In a playful story by the aunt, the norms might allow many audience
interruptions and collaboration, 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, i.e. the conventions used by the speakers to arrive at their set
communicative goals (e.g. in France, university students use “vous” (you-respectful) when they
address their professor).
Genre
‘G’ for Genre: It refers to clearly demarcated types of utterance; such things as poems, proverbs,
riddles, sermons, prayers, lecture, and editorials. These are all ‘marked’ in specific ways in
contrast to casual speech. Of course, in the middle of a prayer, a casual aside would be ‘marked’
too. While particular genres seem more appropriate on certain occasions than on others, such as
sermons inserted into church services, they can be independent: we can ask someone to stop
‘sermonizing’; that is, we can recognize a genre of sermons when an instance of it, or something
closely resembling an instance, occurs outside its usual setting. Genre is not just used to refer to

14. literary works (poem, novel etc.) but also to the kind of communication that is taking place. This
could include testimony in court (a kind of co-produced story-telling) but also includes
interviews, speeches, joke-telling etc.
Methodology
The data used for this research includes primary and secondary sources: naturally occurring
recorded conversations by the researcher was analyzed. Books, journals and web sources were
used as secondary data.
Data Presentation
The data below is a transcription of a dialogue which was recorded in the course of the
conversation. After the recording, certain features had to be changed in the original script
written. The dialogue featured two characters; a tomato seller and a housewife.
House wife: well done, customer (sprang up from a bench).
Tomato seller: customer, what do I give you?
Housewife: I would like to buy tomatoes and… (Looking into all the baskets on the floor)
Tomato seller: okay… I have as much as you need how many baskets? One or two? (bends
forward as if to pick two baskets)
House wife: ……..How much per basket cost? (Looks at other tomato sellers)
Tomato seller: 1000 each, that’s how we’ve been selling for the past two weeks.
House wife: Its very expensive, yesterday I bought a basket for 400 naira.
Tomato seller: Oh oh, you’re right, I also sold them at the same rate yesterday, but today, hmm,
the rate is very high in the market, even if you go elsewhere, that is how they sell too. Things are
expensive ooo (nodding)
House wife: (sighs) What about pepper? How much?
Tomato seller: It’s 1500 for one basket, it is quite fresh… very fresh.

15. House wife: Everything is expensive.
Tomato seller: Yes oooo. What isn’t expensive nowadays?
House wife: It’s very hard for... a poor man to survive.
Tomato seller: Hmm….. I’ve been on the street since and…… I’ve hardly made 500 today.
House wife: Here is the money.
Tomato seller: Thank you, one basket right?
House wife: Yes, yes.
Tomato seller: Alright here you go, Thank you very much, hope to see you next time (smiling
ecstatically).
House wife: ok.
Data Analysis.
The dialogue is of two people who meet at the roadside just before the main market. A tomato
seller and a housewife who intends to purchase a basket of fresh tomatoes. As Hymes puts it, one
good technique for getting at speech event is through words which name them.
Speech Event:
Along the road in the main market, the tomato seller’s spot where she has been operating for
years.
Setting and scene: the setting of the speech event is a spot by the roadside just by the entrance to
the main market, Keffi, Nasarawa state. The scene is an informal bargain.
Participants: tomato seller and housewife.
Ends: the housewife intends to purchase a basket of fresh tomatoes but she apparently seems
uncomfortable with the price per basket. She tries to bargain with the seller and expresses
discontent about the country’s economic situation. The seller happens to share similar feelings.

16. Acts sequence: first, the housewife declares intent to purchase tomatoes. Then they start
haggling as is typical of Nigerian market discourse. It is completely logical and true to actual
Nigerian market discourse, after they arrive at a consensus price.
Key: the tone is mild and sympathetic, typical of a bargain discourse to attract the sympathy of
the market seller.
Instrument: the instrument for communication is oral or verbal and the register is informal.
Norms of interaction: in this kind of speech event, the interlocutors maintain English language,
gazes, small silent pauses, paralinguistic items, the market woman is louder in order to be
understood and perceived active, the housewife is milder to attract the sympathy from the tomato
seller, it is informal and so no interlocutor tries to be unnecessarily formal.
Genre: bargain oriented, compassionate and friendly. Despite the fact that it entails two
strangers engaged in a financial bargain, there is still some trace of intimacy, compassion and an
urge to establish friendship.
Findings and Conclusion
Having tested the theory on sample discourses, it is the observation that despite the authenticity
and viability of the Dell Hymes theory to discourse analysis in linguistics, there are some aspects
which contribute to meaning in linguistics that is not accounted for. Issues of facial response,
gestures, moves, and non-linguistic but meaningful signs have not been captured in the theory.
Hymes contribution to discourse analysis is indeed remarkable and one all discourse analysts
should employ in the exploration of the field.
Learning and teaching discourse analysis engages students and tutors in the exploration of texts
and talk. Analysis of discourse data encourages students to reflect upon and critically evaluate
knowledge acquired in the study of, for example, syntax and semantics as well as naturally
drawing students to the investigation of socially-situated language use. Such study provides
students with the opportunity to examine how meaning is constructed and negotiated in discourse
and to reflect on the role that language plays in social life. Teaching discourse analysis involves
introducing students to relevant theories and guiding them in the application of these theories to
real life language use. The Dell Hymes speaking model which is an acronym for relevant facts to

17. be considered in discourse analysis: setting/scene, participants, ends, act sequence, key,
instrumentalities, norms and genre, is an interesting theory in the analysis of discourse, not just
in the field of linguistics but in other related subjects.
Works Cited
Bauman, R. & Sherzer, J. Explorations in the Ethnography of Communication. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1974. Print.
Chomsky, Noam. Syntactic Structures. New York: Mouton De Gruyter, 2002. Print.
Gumperz, J. J. & Hymes, D.The Ethnography Of Communication. Special Issue of American
Anthropologist, 1964. Print.
Hymes, D. The Ethnography of Speaking. Washington, DC: Anthropology Washington Society
1962. Print.
Hymes, D. Foundations of Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach: Philadelphia.
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1974. Print.
Hymes, D.H. Functions of Speech: An Evolutionary Approach. Philadelphia. University Of
Pennsylvania, 1961. Print.
Leech, G.N. Language in Literature: Style and Foregrounding. London: Pearson Longman,
2008. Print.
Matthews, P.H. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press,
2004. Print.
Smith, G. & H. Kurthen. Front-Stage and Back-Stage in Hybrid Learning. International Journal
on Learning, 2007. Print.

18. Stubbs, M. Discourse Analysis: The Sociolinguistic Analysis of Natural Language. Chichago:
Chichago University Press, 1983. Print.
Widdowson, H. G. Text, Context, Pretext: Critical Issues in Discourse Analysis, 2004. Print.