could someone please tell me how to unsubscribe.
thank you.
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>From: Stanton Wortham <stantonw@gse.upenn.edu>
>To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>Subject: Re: connotations of language register
>Date: Wed, Jan 19, 2000, 4:37 PM
>
> Renee--
>
> Yes, as I understand it the Javanese system is like a really, really
> complicated version of tu/Ud. alternations in Spanish. They have lots
> of pronoun alternants like this -- more than 2 for some categories, I
> think. And they have alternative words for the same objects, with the
> variants indexing the "level" or refinement of the speech being used
> (including the position the speaker is taking relative to the addressee,
> but not limited to this). And they have alternative words for the same
> objects, indexing the deference the speaker is making toward the object
> being referred to with the word (so you would use a different word for
> 'child' when referring to the prince than when referring to your own
> child). All this makes Javanese a very difficult language for
> foreigners to learn, not so much because you can't learn to denote what
> you want but because you can't learn how to position yourself
> interactionally in appropriate ways while you denote it.
>
> I agree with you that particular linguistic forms, despite grammatical
> categories that presuppose something about deference (eg), can in
> practice be used to inhabit many different sorts of identities and enact
> various kinds of relationships. As you say, we can "inflect" our
> utterances to adopt ironic and other sorts of unexpected positions --
> and sometimes others or aspects of the context do this to us against our
> will.
>
> Stanton
>
> --
> Stanton Wortham
> Graduate School of Education
> University of Pennsylvania
> 3700 Walnut Street
> Philadelphia, PA 19104-6216
> (215) 898-6307
> http://www.upenn.edu/gse/fac/wortham/
>
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