Daily Excerpt: Communicative Focus (Shekhtman and Kupchanka) - defining and evaluating communicative focus
Today's excerpt comes from Communicative Focus by Boris Shekhtman and Dina Kupchanka -
The Communicative Focus
We call the correlation between ideational and mechanical planes of speech Communicative Focus (CF). This term was introduced by Betty Lou Leaver and Boris Shekhtman (2002) in the book Developing Professional-Level Language Proficiency. CF convincingly reveals the communicative essence of a person's speech and shows that communicative quality of speech, first of all, depends on how automatic this person is in expressing his or her ideas.
This correlation may have different modes.
The ideational and mechanical planes may coincide with each other, which makes
CF completely automatic, and this coincidence means that ideational plan has
enough controlled mechanical elements to express itself. The ideational plane
and mechanical planes may not coincide with each other to this or that
degree. The ideational plane does not
have enough controlled elements of mechanical plane to express itself or the
developed and controlled mechanical plane correspond to very simple and not a
profound ideational plane.
The two parts of CF manifests itself differently. We may have a highly automatic level of CF and a very poor ideational plane or mechanical one. There is a brilliant example of this in the language of the famous Ellochka the Cannibal from the well-known book, The Twelve Chairs, written by Ilf and Petrov (1928/1961). Unlike an average native speaker whose vocabulary can be estimated to have thousands of words,
Ellochka Shukin managed easily and fluently on thirty. Here are the words, phrases and interjections which she fastidiously picked from the great, rich and expressive Russian language:
1. Don't be rude.
2. Ho-ho (expresses irony, surprise, delight, loathing, joy, contempt
and satisfaction, according to the circumstances).
3. Great!
4. Dismal (applied to everything - for example: "dismal Pete has
arrived," "dismal weather," or a "dismal cat").
5. Gloom.
6. Ghastly (for example: when meeting a close female acquaintance,
"a
ghastly meeting").
7. Kid (applied to all male acquaintances, regardless of age or social
position).
8. Don't tell me how to live!
9. Like a child ("I whacked him like a babe" when playing
cards, or "I
brought him down like a babe," evidently when talking to a legal tenant).
10.Ter-r-rific!
11. Fat and good-looking (used to describe both animate and inanimate
objects).
12. Let's go by horse-cab (said to her husband).
13. Let's go by taxi (said to male acquaintances).
14. You're all white at the back! (joke).
15. Just imagine!
16. Ula (added to a name to denote affection-for example:
Mishula,
Zinula).
17. Oho! (irony, surprise, delight, loathing, joy, contempt and
satisfaction). (p. 206).
Was Ellochka's CF high? Yes, it was. Although her speech is definitely not rich, but it is "managed easily and fluently", it is automatic, that is effortless, unconscious and without awareness and monitoring (Tzelgov, 1999). We can define her CF as a high CF that has poor ideational and mechanical planes. Usually a poor ideational plane is expressed by poor mechanical plane, and a rich ideational plane (in case of a native speaker's speech performance) goes together with rich mechanical plane. Vocabulary, evidently, plays a significant role in making our speech refined and impressive. Grammar literacy allows us to transfer the most difficult and logically sophisticated thoughts to our counterpart. The command of idiomatic and sociolinguistic elements manifests our knowledge of culture, habits and tradition of the country where we grew up in. Nevertheless, all these features of a rich ideational and mechanical plane may become useless and not effective without a high level of the automaticity. Thus, the high CF (HCF) is defined by the high level of automaticity, but the ideational plane or the mechanical plane of the HCF can be either rich and sophisticated or poor and primitive. The automaticity, then, is connected with both planes simultaneously, it does not belong separately to one of them, to either ideational or to mechanical plane. In other words, automaticity does not mean that the mechanical plane is automatic or ideational plane is automatic, it means that their combination is automatic. Namely, because of this we may have HCF with poor ideational or mechanical planes.
To understand more deeply the concept of HCF let us imagine an American native speaker who does not have higher education and a well-educated non-native speaker, who has a passive control of a lot of English vocabulary and perfect theoretical knowledge of the English grammar. Who has a HCF? Of course, the less-educated native speaker has a HCF. He speaks spontaneously and effortlessly, he does not think what words he needs to use and he does not know the English grammar, he just uses it. The native speaker’s CF is high and the CF of the educated non-native speaker is low. The educated non-native speaker's CF is low, and it is low for one reason: The mechanical plane of his or her CF does not correspond to his or her ideational plane, and as a result he or she is not capable to express effectively his or her ideas.
Let us assume now that instead of the educated non-native speaker we have an educated native speaker. Who now has the HCF? The answer is: both. The CF of the farmer and the CF of the educated American are equal because both of them are native speakers and their levels of automaticity of the language are equivalent. But the HCF does not mean only automatic ability to express ideas. It depends on the nature of the expressed ideas and the level of the sophistication of language used for expression of these ideas. That is why the HCF of an educated native speaker is more impressive than that of a less educated one, but, again, they are still equal to each other namely because the level of the confluence of their what and how is the same. Of course, we also may have a person whose ideational plane is poor but mechanical plane is rich. In this case we may say that this person speaks a lot but the contents of his speech is "empty", does not have any since.
The HCF has nothing to do with the accent of a person. Henry Kissinger is a striking example of this. On one hand, his fluency and effortless expression of his ideas leave no doubt that his CF is equal to the native speakers'. On the other hand, his strong foreign accent makes us wonder whether we can consider his CF as a HCF. Henry Kissinger's accent clearly shows that he was not born in the USA. Can we say that his CF has the same status as the CF of a native speaker? We think that we can. In our opinion, when a person has a high communicative focus his or her accent or the place where he or she was born does not affect the quality of his or her HCF. The fact that the majority of native speakers have a high CF does not mean that a foreigner's accent could get in the way of reaching it. Of course, the accent of a person shows that though he or she has HCF but not Native Communicative Focus (NCF).
As far as CF refers to the relative
automaticity of expressing ideas and thoughts it may provide a means for
identifying levels of a person's communicative effectiveness. The more
automatic the mechanical plane in expressing the ideational plane, the higher
the CF will be. All native speakers have High Communicative Focus. The CF of
non-native speakers will be typically lower than the CF of native speakers.
Evaluating CF
There are many different tests to identify the level of language command. In our opinion the closest one to reveal the level of CF is a language proficiency test. However, this test, in our mind, does not underline enough the importance of CF for communication and in many respects continues to evaluate the language performance on the basis of achievements in language knowledge rather than of the level of proficiency. Meanwhile the core of proficiency is in automaticity of speech, in other words, in CF.
From this point of view let us look at the speaking part of the Interagency Language Roundtable ([ILR], n.d.) scale of language proficiency. This test has five levels of language proficiency and we do not see even once the words "automatic”, “automatically”, or “automaticity" in the description of the levels of proficiency. The word "fluency" is used in the description very often and fluency, without any doubt, reveals the level of automaticity of the examinee but fluency does not always correspond to automaticity, as it also may be a manifestation of a memorized, rehearsed speech. Besides, the phenomenon of automaticity is not identical to fluency, automaticity is a result of other elements of CF that will be analyzed later. The absence of the concept of CF in proficiency exams creates some problems in evaluation of examinee's performance because it, in its turn, causes the absence of the scientific mechanism for measuring the automaticity of the examinee’s performance. Meanwhile there is serious research on the phenomenon of automaticity which can be productively used for proficiency exams.
At the same time the ILR (n.d.) scale of
language proficiency allows us to give approximate levels of CF. In our opinion
levels 0, 0+, (No proficiency) and 1, 1+ (Elementary proficiency) do not
present any automaticity in expressing not- rehearsed language and therefore
they do not contain any CF. Primary automaticity is formed at Level 2, 2+
(Limited Working proficiency. This level presents Limited Communicative Focus
(LCF). Professional Working proficiency (Level 3 and 3+) corresponds to
Professional Communicative Focus (PCF) and Full Professional proficiency (Level
4 and 4+) to Full Communicative Focus (FCF) and, finally, Native or Bilingual
proficiency to High Communicative Focus (HCF) or Native Community Focus (NCF).
For more posts about Boris Shekhtman and his books, click HERE.
For more posts about Dina Kupchanka and her books, click HERE.
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