Editing Dell Hymes (section)

==Significance of his work==
As one of the first sociolinguists, Hymes helped to pioneer the connection between [[Speech communication|speech]] and [[social relations]], placing linguistic anthropology at the center of the [[performative turn]] within anthropology and the social sciences more generally.

Hymes formulated a response to [[Noam Chomsky]]'s influential distinction between [[Linguistic competence|competence]] (knowledge of grammatical rules necessary to decoding and producing language) and [[linguistic performance|performance]] (actual language use in context). Hymes objected to the marginalization of performance from the center of linguistic inquiry and proposed the notion of [[communicative competence]], or knowledge necessary to use language in social context, as an object of linguistic inquiry.

Since appropriate language use is conventionally defined, and varies across different communities, much of Hymes early work frames a project for ethnographic investigation into contrasting patterns of language use across [[speech communities]]. Hymes termed this approach "the ethnography of speaking".

The SPEAKING acronym, described below, was presented as a lighthearted heuristic to aid fieldworkers in their attempt to document and analyze instances of language use, which he termed "speech events".{{Clarify|date=November 2022}} Embedded in the acronym is an application and extension of [[Roman Jakobson]]'s arguments concerning the [[Jakobson's functions of language|multifunctionality of language]]. He articulated other, more technical, often typologically oriented approaches to variation in patterns of language use across speech communities in a series of articles.<ref>Hymes, D. (1972). Models of the interaction of language and social life. In J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication (pages 35–71). New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston.</ref><ref>Hymes, D. (1964). Two types of linguistic relativity: Some examples from American Indian ethnography. Sociolinguistics. WilliamBright, ed, pages 114–167.</ref>

As a result of discussions primarily with [[Ray Birdwhistell]] at the [[University of Pennsylvania]], in his later work, Hymes renamed the "ethnography of speaking" the "[[ethnography of communication]]" to reflect the broadening of focus from instances of language production to the ways in which communication (including oral, written, broadcast, acts of receiving/listening) is conventionalized in a given community of users, and to include nonverbal as well as verbal behavior.<ref>Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (1984). On the relationship of the 'ethnography of speaking' to the 'ethnography of communication.' ''Papers in Linguistics: International Journal of Human Communication'', 17(1), pages 7–32.</ref><ref>Leeds-Hurwitz, W., & Sigman, S. J. (2010). The Penn tradition. In W. Leeds-Hurwitz (Ed.), ''The social history of language and social interaction research: People, places, ideas''. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, page 236.</ref>

With [[Erving Goffman]] and [[John Szwed]], he established the Center for Urban Ethnography in 1969. The goal was to fund research by both faculty and students at Penn that used urban ethnography as the primary method, and much innovative research resulted. The first major grant came from the [[National Institute of Mental Health]], funding much research emphasizing different racial and ethnic groups; the second from the [[U.S. National Institute of Education]], funding classroom ethnography.<ref>Leeds-Hurwitz, W., & Sigman, S. J. (2010). The Penn tradition. In W. Leeds-Hurwitz (Ed.), ''The social history of language and social interaction research: People, places, ideas''. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, pages 254-6.</ref> With [[Erving Goffman]] he co-edited the series Conduct and Communication for the [[University of Pennsylvania Press]] as a way to support research they considered most valuable.<ref>Leeds-Hurwitz, W., & Sigman, S. J. (2010). The Penn tradition. In W. Leeds-Hurwitz (Ed.), ''The social history of language and social interaction research: People, places, ideas''. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, pages 256-8.</ref>

Hymes promoted what he and others call "[[ethnopoetics]]", an anthropological method of transcribing and analyzing folklore and oral narrative that pays attention to poetic structures within speech. In reading the transcriptions of Indian [[Mythology|myths]], for example, which were generally recorded as prose by the anthropologists who came before, Hymes noticed that there are commonly poetic structures in the wording and structuring of the tale.<ref>He also had to master the grammars of several Native American languages in the process, and was probably the last person who could recite texts in [[Chinookan languages|Clackamas Chinook]], an extinct language.</ref> Patterns of words and word use follow patterned, artistic forms.

Hymes' goal, in his own mind, is to understand the artistry and "the competence... that underlies and informs such narratives".<ref>Hymes 2003:vii</ref> He created the Dell Hymes Model of Speaking and coined the term [[communicative competence]] within [[language education]].

Narratives can be entertaining stories or important myths about the nature of the world; in addition, narratives can also convey the importance of aboriginal environmental management knowledge such as fish spawning cycles in local rivers or the disappearance of [[grizzly bear]]s from Oregon. Hymes believes that all narratives in the world are organized around implicit principles of [[Substantial form|form]] which convey important knowledge and ways of thinking and of viewing the world. He argues that understanding narratives will lead to a fuller understanding of the language itself and those fields informed by storytelling, in which he includes ethnopoetics, sociolinguistics, [[psycholinguistics]], [[rhetoric]], [[semiotics]], [[pragmatics]], narrative inquiry and [[literary criticism]].

Hymes clearly considers [[folklore]] and narrative a vital part of the fields of linguistics, anthropology and literature; and has bemoaned the fact that so few scholars in those fields are willing and able to adequately include folklore in its original language in their considerations.<ref>Hymes 1981:6–7</ref> He feels that the translated versions of the stories are inadequate for understanding the stories' roles in the social or mental system in which they existed. He provides an example that in [[Navajo language|Navajo]], the [[grammatical particle|particles]] (utterances such as "uh," "so," "well," etc. that have linguistic if not [[semantic]] meaning) omitted in the English translation are essential to understanding how the story is shaped and how repetition defines the structure that the text embodies.

Hymes was the founding editor for the journal ''Language in Society'', which he edited for 22 years.<ref name=":0">Dell Hymes. 1997. Language in Society. ''In The Early Days of Sociolinguistics: Memories and Reflections'', ed. by Christina Bratt Paulston and G. Richard Tucker, pages 243–245. Dallas: SIL International.</ref>