Nancy Bonvillain's Language, Culture, And Communication

According to Nancy Bonvillain in her book Language, Culture, and Communication: The Meaning of Messages, the setting of a communitive event “helps define events as particular kinds of occasions invoking certain behaviors and restricting others. Setting for communication can be classified along a continuum of formality and informality (Bonvillain 2014, page 72).” Using Judith Irvine’s four indicators of formality to determine if the event is formal or informal, first is to look at the increased code structure. Bonvillain stated that “increasing structuring of formal events is reflected in rules of etiquette that influences participants’ attire and demeanor as well as their speech. Markers of formality may include features of pronunciation, intonation, …show more content…
Where the participants use terms like “kinda” or “gonna” instead of “kind of” or “going to” which in turns shows informality. Especially since these participants are considered “Lobby Officers” and two of the participants are considered “Senior Officers” which means that the participants are expected to continuously be formal within during their shift, not using slang when speaking. The second part of Judith Irvine’s four indicators of formality is to determine formality is consistency of co-occurrence choices where “people rarely make jokes, tease or use expletives in highly formal situations… (Bonvillain 2014, page 72).” On lines 4, 5, 17, 44, 54, and 56; the participants laugh, while on line 5 a participant teases another participant. These actions according to Irvine’s four indicators of formality shows that the conversation is informal. The third part of Irvine’s four indicators of formality is the emphasis on positional identities of participants; this means that the participants can use titles rather than names. According to the transcript there is no use of titles or names; however, in line 5 a participant is referred to another as “man,” which shows