A_Brife_Disscussion_About_Degreee_of_Formality

A Brife Disscussion about Degreee of Formality several possible relationships between language and society. There are several possible relationships between language and society. One is that social structure may either influence or determine linguistic structure or behavior. Certain evidence may be adduced to support this view: the age-grading phenomenon whereby young children speak differently from older children and, in turn, children speak differently from mature adults; studies which show that the varieties of language that speakers use reflect such matters as their regional, social, or ethnic origin and possibly even their sex (or gender); and other studies which show that particular ways of speaking, choices of words, and even rules for conversing are in fact highly determined by certain social requirements.for example .who we are talking with and what we are talking about . A second possible relationship is directly opposed to the first: linguistic structure or behavior may either influence or determine social structure. This is the view that is behind the Whorfian hypothesis, A third possibility is to assume that there is no relationship at all between linguistic structure and social structure and that each is independent of the other. A variant of this possibility would be to say that, although there might be some such relationship, present attempts to characterize it are essentially premature, given what we know about both language and society. Actually, this variant view appears to be the one that Chomsky himself holds: he prefers to develop an asocial linguistics as a preliminary to any other kind of linguistics, such an asocial approach being, in his view, logically prior. We must therefore be prepared to look into various aspects of the possible relationships between language and society. It will be quite obvious from doing so that correlational studies must form a significant part of sociolinguistic work. Chambers echoes that view: ‘The correlation of dependent linguistic variables with independent social variables... has been the heart of sociolinguistics…’ Social structure itself may be measured by reference to such factors as social class and educational background; we can then attempt to relate verbal behavior and performance to these factors. However, as Gumperz and others have been quick to indicate, such correlational studies do not exhaust sociolinguistic investigation, nor do they always prove to be as enlightening as one might hope. It is a well-known fact that a correlation shows only a relationship between two variables; A worthwhile sociolinguistics, however, must be something more than just a simple mixing of linguistics and sociology which takes concepts and findings from the two disciplines and attempts to relate them in simple ways. Hymes has pointed out that a mechanical amalgamation of standard linguistics and standard sociology is not likely to suffice in that adding a speechless sociology to a sociology-free linguistics may miss entirely what is important in the relationship between language and society. Specific points of connection between language and society must be discovered, and these must be related within theories that throw light on how linguistic and social structures interact. Holmes says that ‘the sociolinguist’s aim is to move towards a theory which provides a motivated account of the way language is used in a community, and of the choices people make when they use language.’ For example, when we observe how varied language use is we mush search for the causes. ‘Upon observing variability, we seek its social correlates. What is the purpose of this variation' What do its variants symbolize'’For Chambers these two questions ‘are the central questions of sociolinguistics.’ We may not agree with him and prefer other questions but questions we must have if we are to interesting work.  Formality of Context-dependence Our provisional characterization of deep formality as avoidance of ambiguity is closely related to the meaning of the word "formal" in mathematics and logic. It is a commonplace that natural languages, like English, are very different from mathematical formalisms, such as propositional calculus, in spite of apparently shared terms or concepts (e.g. "not", "and", "if...then", etc.). However, Grice's (1975) classic paper on "Logic and Conversation" sets out to show that the divide is not as deep as one tends to believe. Much of what in a formal language must be expressed explicitly in order to avoid ambiguity, will be conveyed in natural language by implicature, that is, by implicit reference to a shared framework of knowledge and its implications. For example, if a person entering a room with an open window through which wind is blowing says "It is cold here", the likely implicature is "I would like the window to be closed". Though that message was not uttered literally, it is easily inferred from the background knowledge that heated rooms become warmer when windows are closed, and that people prefer not to feel cold. Grice points out that if one takes into account this shared framework and context (including the general rules or "maxims" of conversation), expressions which appear ambiguous or non-sensical when interpreted separately become quite clear and logical. Grice adds that sometimes people deliberately transgress one specific rule in order to create special, "dramatic" effects, such as irony, hyperbole or metaphor. However, assuming that the person still follows the other rules, the apparent irrationality can be resolved and the expression becomes meaningful again, albeit in a more indirect, second-order way. The conclusion is that natural language will appear much less ambiguous and more logical than it might have seemed if one takes into account different unstated background assumptions. What really sets formal languages apart is the fact that they try to achieve the same clarity without unstated assumptions. In order to analyse this further we will examine the essential role of context in resolving semantic ambiguity and in understanding linguistic structure This role can be illustrated most clearly by considering simple expressions, that must be anchored, or attached, to some part of the spatio-temporal context in order to be meaningful. Such anchoring is called deixis Examples are simple expressions like "I", "his", "them", which must be connected to a particular person, "here", "over there", "upstairs" which must be attached to a particular place, and "before", "now", "tomorrow", which must be linked to a particular time. Deictic words on their own have a variable meaning. "He" might refer to John Smith, to Peter Jones, or to any other member of the humanity. Yet, only one of them will be referred to in any actual expression. Which person that is will be determined by the context. We will use the general term context-dependent or contextual for expressions such as these which are ambiguous when considered on their own, but where the ambiguity can be resolved by taking into account additional information from the context  In philosophy, such expressions are usually called "indexical"The term "context-dependence" The choice between the two ways of formulating the same idea will clearly depend on how much knowledge the persons to whom the message is addressed are presumed to have about the context in which it was uttered. The less they know, the more important it is to avoid context-dependent expressions, replacing them by explicit characterizations. On the other hand, when the audience has a good knowledge of the context, there is a clear advantage in using contextual expressions, such as "I", "him" or "tomorrow", which are shorter and more direct. This can be illustrated by considering the following sequence of increasingly formal descriptions of the same person: "he", "John", "John Smith", "Dr. John K. Smith, assistant director of the neurology unit of St. Swithin's hospital". Each term in this sequence is less dependent on the context for its correct interpretation, but correspondingly longer, than the previous one. Which level of formal specification is chosen will depend on Grice's maxims of quantity: the message should be as informative as is required, but not more ormality as a universal factor In spite of the empirical confirmations, our definition of F may seem to some degree arbitrary, just another one of these many related, but different, dimensions proposed by different authors, which all correlate to some degree with certain variations such as written vs. oral, but whose underlying motivation is debatable. We will now show that a dimension akin to formality appears like an inevitable outcome of any in-depth analysis of linguistic variation. In conclusion, even if we do not compare situations or genres with different external requirements of formality, there appears a stylistic variation between samples that very closely mirrors our definition of the formality variable. This variation is apparently due to the personal preferences of the subjects for more or less formal styles of expression. Moreover, this variation--at least at the level of word categories--is by far the most important one, explaining more than half of the variance between samples. Advantage and Disadvantage of Degree of Formality The concurrent disadvantage of invariance over contexts is that formal speech is more static or rigid, and will less easily accommodate to phenomena that demand expressions with a meaning different from the ones found in dictionary definitions. Informal speech, by definition, is flexible: meanings shift when the context changes. This is particularly useful when phenomena are to be described for which no clear expression is available in the language as yet. By using eminently context-dependent expressions like "it" or "that thing there", it is possible to refer to the most unusual phenomena. The second disadvantage of formal speech is that it is more complex, containing additional details necessary to make tacit understandings explicit. Therefore, they are "heavier" to use: they require more time, attention and cognitive processing in order to be produced and understood. The absence of context, as Givón 1985 observed, forces the language user to code the necessary presuppositions within the message. This type of discourse, belonging to the "syntactic mode" is structurally more complex. It involves a higher use of nouns that require more lexical searching because of their relative infrequent use. Informal speech, on the other hand, can do the job with less, shorter high frequency words which are easily and quickly retrieved, and less need for precision, since the context shared by sender and receiver will provide the additional information lacking in the linguistic expression itself. Non-verbal communication can, moreover, help dissolve ambiguity. Givón 1985 calls this contextually rooted language "the pragmatic mode". By distancing itself from the immediate context, formal speech will also be less direct than informal one, which can make use of the salient features of the context in order to express meanings. Informal speech-styles will also be more interactive or involved, reacting immediately to the interlocutors, events or other elements of the contexts, rather than describing things from a detached, impersonal, "objective" point of view. The conclusion is that the degree of formality of a speech-style will depend on the requirements of the situation, but that there will still be a subjective element, depending on whether the sender prefers explicitness over directness, objectivity over involvement, or fears possible misinterpretation more than additional cognitive load. The most reliable way of establishing these dependencies is by empirical observation, where expressions produced in different situations or by different subjects are compared as to their overall formality, in the hope of finding recurrent relationships This, however, requires an empirical measure for formality.  summary and conclusoin We have extended the linguistic concept of formality, which can be generally characterized as "attention to the form of expressions", by subdividing it into two parts: surface formality, characterized by attention to form for the sake of convention, and deep formality, characterized by attention to form for the sake of clear understanding. We have argued that the deep part is the most important one, and that the surface variant will inherit most of its stylistic features from the deep version. We have elaborated the definition of deep formality by noting that formal language is an attempt to avoid ambiguity by minimizing the context-dependence and fuzziness of expressions. An expression is defined as context-dependent if its meaning is clear, but only to someone aware of the context in which it is produced. An expression is defined as fuzzy if its meaning is imprecise even when the context is known. Since fuzziness basically results from an intrinsic lack of information about the thing being described, a sender will have much more control over the contextuality than over the fuzziness of his or her expressions, so that contextuality may be assumed to be a better indicator of the intended degree of formality. A formal style will be characterized by detachment, precision, and "objectivity", but also rigidity and heaviness; an informal style will be much lighter in form, more flexible, direct, and involved, but correspondingly more subjective, less accurate and less informative. We have proposed an empirical measure for formality based on the average degree of deixis for the most important word classes. Nouns, adjectives, articles and prepositions are used basically for context-independent expression. Pronouns, adverbs, verbs and interjections are used more frequently in context-dependent language. These properties were summarized by introducing an F-score for formality, in which the frequencies of the former word categories are added, the frequencies of the latter categories subtracted, and the result is normalized, so that it would vary between 0 and 100%. It was shown that this measure, though coarse-grained, reliably distinguishes more from less formal genres of language production, for some available corpora in Dutch, French Italian and English. A review of several factor analyses showed that a factor similar to the F-score automatically emerges as the most important one when different genres are compared, and this in the most diverse languages. This confirms our assumption that formality is the most fundamental and most universal dimension of stylistic variation. When the input variables are basic word categories, the resulting factor explains over 50% of the variation. As the formality concept appears both theoretically and empirically to be well-defined, the time seems ripe to test its usefulness in different practical situations, further examining its different features, benefits and limitations. Presently, we will just summarize the main reasons why someone would prefer formal expressions to contextual ones, or vice-versa. The basic advantage of formality, which follows from its definition, is that more formal messages have less chance to be misinterpreted by others who do not share the same context as the sender. This is clearly exemplified by written language, where there is no direct contact between sender and receiver, and hence a much smaller sharing of context than in speech. We should thus expect written language in general to be more formal than spoken language. The definition also implies that validity or comprehensibility of formal messages will extend over wider contexts: more people, longer time spans, more diverse circumstances, etc. This makes it easier for formally expressed knowledge to maintain and spread over many different persons, groups or cultures .