FUNCTIONS OF COMMUNICATION

Adapted from Dell Hymes, "Introduction: Toward Ethnographies of Communication," in J. J. Gumperez and D. Hymes, The Ethnography of Communication, special issue of The American Anthropologist 66 Part 2 (1964): 1-29.

COMPONENTS

FOCUS ON

FUNCTIONS

senders.......

addressor........

expressive

receivers.....

addressee........

directive

channels......

channels.........

phatic (contact)

codes.........

codes............

metalinguistic

settings......

settings.........

contextual

forms.........

message-forms....

poetic

topics........

topics...........

referential

events........

event............

metacommunicative

 

The purposes, conscious and unconscious, the functions, intended and unintended, perceived and unperceived, of communicative events for their participants are here treated as questions of the states in which they engage in them, and of the norms by which they judge them.

FOCUS ON THE ADDRESSOR entails such expressive or emotive functions as identification of the source, expression of attitude toward one or another component or the situation as a whole, thinking aloud, etc.

FOCUS ON THE ADDRESSEE entails such directive or conative functions as identification of the destination, and the ways in which the events and message may be governed by anticipation of the attitude of the destination. RHETORIC, PERSUASION, APPEAL, and DIRECTION enter here.

FOCUS ON CHANNELS entails such phatic functions as have to do with the maintenance of contact and control of noise, both physical and psychological.

FOCUS ON CODES entails such functions as are involved in learning, analysis, devising of writing systems, checking code in conversation, etc.

FOCUS ON SETTINGS entails all that is considered contextual, apart from the event itself, verbal and nonverbal, etc.

FOCUS ON MESSAGE-FORM entails such functions as proof-reading, mimicry, poetic and stylistic concerns, etc.

FOCUS ON TOPIC entails such functions as having to do with reference to objects in the world, to people, to events, to ideas, etc.--all we usually associate with content.

FOCUS ON THE EVENT ITSELF entails whatever is comprised under metacommunicative types of function.