Socio-linguistic analysis

Paying attention to language and how it is used can be an important part of reflective practice. Not only can you analyse the way language might have been used within a situation you are reviewing, you can also examine how you use language to describe that experience (encoding).

Grice's maxims for cooperative communication

In any situation in which people are attempting to communicate in order to cooperate with each other, the following rules or maxims tend to apply.

• Quantity — Ensure that you provide enough information to make your contribution useful... and not overwhelming.

• Quality — Ensure that the information you provide is truthful and accurate... and not misleading.

• Relation — Ensure  that  the information you provide is relevant to the cooperative goal... and not distracting.

• Manner — Ensure that the information you provide is clear and understandable... and not confusing.

Look for examples of you or other people abiding by or violating these maxims. Was it intentional or accidental?

Communicative intentions

Each communicative act is intended to affect your own or someone else's meaning schemas. There are four possible intentions. You can analyse the communication within a situation and attempt to label the likely intention of each act.

• Modifying extraction (learning) — I want to modify my meaning schema by extracting transformative information from your meaning schema. (I want to agree with you.)

• Reinforcing extraction (checking) — I want to reinforce my meaning schema by extracting confirmatory information from your meaning schema. (I want to make sure we agree.)

• Reinforcing insertion (affirming) — I want to reinforce your meaning schema by inserting confirmatory information from my meaning schema. (I want to assure you we agree.)

• Modifying insertion (persuading) — I want to modify your meaning schema by inserting transformative information from my meaning schema. (I want you to agree with me.)

Beware: the intention of a communicative act may not directly correspond with the sentence type (declarative - making statements,  interrogative  - asking questions, imperative - giving commands, exclamatory - expressing emotions).  For example, an interrogative might be used to insert information rather than extract it by prompting the other person to re-examine their own schema (leading or rhetorical questions). A statement, imperative or exclamation might be used to extract information by provoking a response from the other person which reveals something about the contents of their meaning schema.

Jakobson's functions of communication

Roman Jakobson described six 'functions' of communication. I would argue that they are, in fact, six topics or foci of communication as they signal what the communication is about rather than what the communication is aiming to achieve. In other words, their function is to focus attention on a particular aspect of the communicative system.

In all of these cases, what is actually being communicated is the communicant's perceptions of these topics - how they are represented in one's active meaning schema.

• Referential - focus on the context, the environment in which communication occurs. 

• Conative - focus on one's communicative partner(s). 

• Expressive - focus on oneself. 

• Phatic - focus on the communicative interaction. In other words, this is about perceptions of the degree of communicative exchange or reciprocity - the extent to which responses match expectations. 

• Poetic - focus on the message. In particular, it is a focus on the intended impact of the communicative act. 

• Reflexive (metalingual) - focus on the code (or the language used to communicate). In other words, this is about perceptions of the common ground between communicants which facilitates communication. 

Two important sub-topics of conative, expressive and phatic foci are:

• Teleological - focus on goals (one's, the other's and joint)

• Behavioural - focus on actions (one's, the other's and joint)

Parts of speech

Examining how you or other people use different parts of speech can provide insights into the contents of their meaning schemas. Some useful ones to look out for include:

• Modal verbs (should, ought to, must, cannot, have to, need to, can, don't, could, will, may, might, etc.) — these may indicate causal rules or comparative evaluations.

• Adverbs of frequency (always, never, hardly ever, often, usually, generally, constantly, etc.) — these may represent generalisations, stereotypes and filtering.

• Degree modifiers (totally, completely, absolutely, entirely, utterly, extremely, very, really, etc.) — these may indicate important comparisons that could be being treated as absolutes

• Limiting modifiers (just, only, simply, merely, hardly, almost, etc.) — these may indicate limiting beliefs or simplifications

• Personal adjectives (see an AI generated list) — these may indicate evaluations or categorisations of oneself or other people

More resources

• What socio-cognitive linguistics can do for your career guidance practice by Valerie Rowles. Although focused on career guidance the concepts in this article could be applied to reflection on any communicative interaction.