Critique

By:Chasity Montgomery

Philipsen's ethnographical research, for his Speech Code Theory, gives great insight into the importance of communication conduct through the use of shared speech codes. This theory seems to stem from a basis of the humanistic theory, but some of the propositions seem so broad that there needs to be more research to back up his claims. I am going to examine a couple of his propositions that I believe are too ambiguous.

Proposition 1: "Wherever there is a distinctive culture, there is to be found a distinctive speech code."

Not all cultures are cut and dry. This proposition implies that each culture is a seperat entity, when in fact the majority of cultures mirror each other. In the same way cultures can be very distinctive in some aspects, those same cultures can exercise the same rules and meanings for communication conduct. For example, the Amishare considered a sub-culture of society. The people are simplistic and disregard technological advances unlike our primary culture. However, this distinctive culture shares one of the most valuable aspects of their culture with our culture, which is of communication conduct. Their actions and ways of behaving are influenced by the Holy Bible. I had a friend my first year in high school who was Amish. She and I shared thoughts and beliefs about many of the same issues. I never felt I had to adjust my communication styles with her because we were from different cultures. She and I held the same basic rules for how one should communicate, and we held the same meanings for communicating as well as created our own. If Philipsen's proposition was undoubtable correct the two of us would operate within two distict speech codes.

Proposition 5: "The artful use of a shared speech code is a sufficient condition for predicting, explaining, and controlling the form of discourse about intelligibility, prudence, and morality of communication conduct."

This proposition is also ambiguous, and I believe that the individualistic human nature of communicating is not taken into account. It seems to ignore that the human mind is complex and that just because a person shares a speech code does not necessarily mean that person will always react the same way. One must consider the feelings and emotions, the stress levels and the attitudes a person experiences when trying to predict behavior. We are far more spontaneous and complex to be classified as predictable creatures.

However, the ideas and knowledge Philipsen has gathered gives underlying explainations of why different people from different cultures have difficulty communicating. It is not just because they are from a different culture, it is because the culture they are in have different shared speech codes, which in turn effects how they speak to each other and how they interpret others speech.

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