The Functional Diversity of Speech

Human speech assumes a variety of forms. Its diversity manifests itself not only in the existence of innumerable languages, dialects and idioms – including the jargons of different social groups and individuals – but also within any given language, idiom or dialect (even within the idiolect of a single individual), and it is functionally determined by a complex network of factors that must be taken into account in any attempt to study language in its phenomenal immediacy, and to explain its genesis and history.

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Language is coextensive with the diversity of human behavior, which is a psychological or biological fact if viewed as an expression of the human organism, and a sociological fact if viewed in light of its rootedness in the social, interactive life of human organisms. Thus, the factors determining speech will belong either to the psychological or the sociological order.

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The psychological rootedness of speech enjoins us to distinguish between the following basic modalities: speech as a function of normal, pathological and irregular physiological states, respectively, and speech as a function of mind and emotion. Although all of these modalities (possibly with the exception of irregular physiological states) have been widely noted in contemporary linguistics, there is hardly any concrete research on the diverse manifestations of speech and its dependence on one or the other of its determinant factors and states. Linguistics and speech pathology do not share their findings. Speech as a function of emotion has not been studied at all – even the basic data have not yet been collected (with the exception of data concerning the use of words, but even here the results are far from satisfactory). The impact of emotion on pronunciation, too, has hardly been explored. Linguistics is especially ill-prepared to deal with speech as a function of irregular physiological states, such as the state of poetic inspiration, a better understanding of which would allow us to isolate those aspects of lyric poetry that are the products of physiology rather than art.

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The sociological determinants of speech can be broadly and preliminarily categorized as follows: (i) the conditions of interaction, in both familiar and unfamiliar environments; (ii) the forms of interaction (mediated/unmediated, one-/two-sided); (iii) the concrete goals of interaction (practical/artistic, neutral/hortatory).

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The study of language in its dependence on the conditions of interaction constitutes the foundation of contemporary linguistics. The complex diversity of speech (languages, dialects, idioms and so on) – classified, depicted and genetically studied by contemporary linguists – is, first and foremost, the result of specific conditions of interaction and the concomitant formation of different interacting social groups determined by a variety of factors (territorial, national, professional and so on). Much less attention has been paid by linguists to the concrete goals and functions of utterance. I would even go so far as to say that this question has mostly been ignored, especially among traditional neogrammarians. Philosophers of language and students of poetics are a notable exception.

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The functional diversity of speech was already of interest to Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835), who distinguished between "poetry" and "prose" as discrete manifestations of language, without, however, explaining this distinction in any detail or grounding it in linguistic analysis. Although "poetry and prose are subject to the same general requirements" in terms of their respective "orientations" and "means," Humboldt observes, "they can never become one." Referring to lyric poetry in particular, Humboldt contends that while "poetry, in its true essence, is inseverable from music, prose is an exclusively linguistic phenomenon." The difference between poetry and prose is, according to Humboldt, the difference between "art and nature," "artistic form" and "natural simplicity." Introducing yet another functional modality, "ordinary speech," Humboldt surmises that, because prose – including "scientific prose," which "combines strength with utmost clarity" – "can limit itself to representing reality and to purely practical goals at the expense of inspiring ideas and sentiments," it "does not essentially differ from ordinary speech."

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It would be a waste of time to look for a productive engagement with Humboldt in the writings of neogrammarians and dialectologists, who either believe that "for the most part Humboldt exercised a merely moral influence on later linguists," or reduce his significance to the "transposition of issues concerning the general conditions of language into the realm of psychology." Questions pertaining to the functional diversity of speech – already broached by Humboldt - are excluded from the dialectological study of language because they are considered irrelevant. (We disagree emphatically; further development of functional linguistics will undoubtedly correct many of the errors vitiating the dialectological approach).

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More recently, questions concerning the functional diversity of speech have been gaining traction in connection with a growing interest in poetry and an attempt to develop a scientific poetics. However, nothing final or especially noteworthy has yet been presented on the subject. Poetic language has been at the center of the Collections published by the Society for the Study of Poetic Language, and two functional varieties of speech were initially singled out: "practical language" and "poetic language." This classification was accompanied by a fairly superficial psychological characterization of both varieties. The contributors to the Collections have since emphasized the fact that the term "practical language" is too broad and should not be used without reservations. They have also stressed the necessity to distinguish between ordinary spoken language and the language of science and logic. Many pertinent contributions have been provided by the members of the Moscow Linguistic Circle, especially Roman Jakobson and Viktor Zhirmunsky. Unfortunately, however, both critics have merely touched upon these issues, leaving many problems undiscussed. (Interestingly, the functional distinction between the languages of the everyday, poetry, science and logic can already be found in Humboldt.)

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In the following pages, I explore the various forms of utterance and their functions – monologue and dialogue in particular -– with a view to bridging the gap between the actual manifestations of speech and its external conditions, as well as to enhancing our understanding of the diversity of communicative means employed in this or that variety of utterance in a given...