Status and role structure of interpersonal communication

Speaking about the nature of the understanding of speech, we found out the importance for the successful communication of knowledge by the addressee of the statement of reality to which the addresser is talking, i.e. speaking. In general, this knowledge is determined by the social experience of the linguistic personality. The degree of mutual understanding between the interlocutors depends on how much the social experience of the participants of communication coincides. Once again, we turn to illustrate the speech situation depicted in the joke.

The six-year-old son eats an apple and thoughtfully asks his father:

- Dad, why, when you bite an apple, is it brown?

“The fact is,” the father replies, “that there are different chemicals in the apple.” Including - iron. So, when iron enters with oxygen, which is in the air, in a chemical reaction, oxidation is obtained. The result is a substance that turns the apple brown.

Silence reigns for some time. Then the child timidly asks:

- Dad, are you talking to anyone now?

The anecdote demonstrates a typical communicative failure, which arose due to the difference in social experience of the speakers. For our further reasoning, let us turn to the examples described in the most interesting book by B. Yu. Norman “Language: a familiar stranger”. Suppose we observe the communication of two linguistic personalities. One interviewer says friend

Mu: “What is the significance of the paleoanthropological discoveries in Hadar for the evolutionary theory of hominids?” If the addressee of the statement is an anthropologist, then there is no misunderstanding about the above phrase. And if the source is an eight-year-old child, the grandson of the questioner? It is clear that the statement will not be understood. And the point here is not only that the senior member of communication is more educated than the younger one. The above proposal is also baffled by the adult "techie". And if, for example, the grandson in turn turns to his grandfather, the scientist with the question “Is it worth changing the smoke hood to gum?”, He will not receive an answer either.

The closer the social experience, the easier it is for people to understand each other. Usually, perfect mutual understanding can be found in good comrades who have known each other for a long time, in spouses with many years of experience of living together. In twin children, such an instant understanding without words can cause a delay in speech development: they simply do not need to say anything to each other. The commonality of social experience of speakers is not the only characteristic of interpersonal communication. The peculiarity of the speech behavior of the participants of communication reflects the relations that arise between the speakers in the framework of social interaction. Language forms vary depending on who the statement is addressed to. In real communication, we are constantly forced to play different roles. Indeed, even for one day, a person performs in various forms. In the family he is a son, husband, father, etc., in the service is a slave, a boss or an employee, in a store is a seller or buyer, in the audience is a lecturer or a listener. In a strange house, he is a guest, and in his own - the owner, at the doctor's office - the patient, in court - the witness.

A social role is a pattern of behavior approved by society, which corresponds to the specific situation of communication and social position (status) of an individual. Social position , or status , is a formally established or tacitly recognized place of an individual in the hierarchy of a social group. The concepts of role and status are interrelated. Status characterizes the place of a person on the vertical axis: a person occupies a high or low position in a society. Status as if answers the question “who is a person?”, And the role - “what does it do?” Like any other behavior, speech behavior in the framework of interpersonal communication is subject to the laws of status-role interaction.

The social role may be due to permanent or long-term characteristics of a person: gender, age, family situation, profession (such are the roles of a husband, father, son, mechanic, student, etc.). In addition, the role may be imposed by the situation in which the person finds himself (the role of passenger, customer, patient, etc.). Role behavior is subject to certain social norms, in most cases unwritten, but rather strict and generally binding. The existence of these norms manifests itself in the case when they are violated. We intuitively feel these violations and sometimes violently react to them. It jars on us when, for example, a young lab technician severely declares a gray-haired professor who didn’t pass the list: “I must give you a reprimand!” And a reply from the teenage son “Leave me alone, goat!” repression.

Status-role communication is based on the expectation that the linguistic person will abide by the speech norms inherent in his position in society and determined by the nature of the relationship with the interlocutor. Obedience is expected from a child, wise judgments from an old man, knowledge in the field of teaching from a teacher, desires to receive this knowledge from a student. Each role consists of a specific set of rights and obligations. Ideas about the typical performance of a particular role are formed into stereotypes of role-playing behavior. They are formed on the basis of experience, frequent repetition of role signs characterizing behavior, manner of speaking, moving, etc. Thus, in the minds of members of society, the idea of ​​what should be the execution of a particular role crystallizes.

An example of taking into account role expectations can be found in the story “From the Street” by the remarkable Russian writer A.I. Kuprin. The hero of the story, a fallen semi-intellectual, a beggar, deftly uses the signs of role-playing behavior in order to gain confidence in people of different social situations.

You always count on psychology. I, for example, am an engineer - now I am hitting a technician for the construction part: high boots, wooden folding arshin sticks out of my pocket; with the merchant, I am a former clerk; with the patron of art - the actor; with the publisher - a writer; among the officers, I, as a former officer, arrange clubbing. Encyclopedia!..

It is necessary to shoot quickly so as not to get bored, not to delay, and you are afraid of Pharaoh's mice, therefore you try to combine everything at once: both meekness, and persuasiveness, and flowers of eloquence. You hit an actor, for example: “My dear sir, a minute of attention! Dramatic actor - in the role of a beggar! The contrast is truly awful! Wicked irony of fate! Would you lend a few centimes for lunch? ”To a student I say this:“ Colleague! Help the former worker, administratively deprived of the capital. Three days in the mouth of poppy dewdrops were not! ”If there is a merry company in the drunk, they singed out originality:“ Gentlemen, you are tearing off the roses of life, I also get thorns. You are full, I am hungry. You drink Lafite and Sauternes, and my soul craves for official vodka. Help the former professor of white and black magic, and now the gentleman of the green serpent, with the construction of a half-chink! ”

Notice how skillfully the hero of the story operates with forms of role-playing behavior, how the language content and style of his utterances vary depending on the addressee of speech.

The stereotypes of speech behavior by native speakers are not always realized. Often, in our reactions to the people around us, we unconsciously carry out a typology of their communicative behavior. This is manifested in stable expressions such as: “ Leave the prosecutor’s tone”, “Screaming like a bazaar woman”, “Authoritative shout”, “Baby talk”, “Teacher's intonations”, “Pose of a guilty schoolchild”, “Commanding voice” , etc.

Role signs of speech behavior are manifested only in the communicative interaction of linguistic personalities. There are two types of situations of role communication; symmetric and asymmetrical. The first are characterized by the equality of the social status of the interlocutors. The latter demonstrate the different positions of communication participants on the public ladder.

Different communicative situations are jokingly illustrated by the famous story of P. Chekhov “Fat and Thin”. As you remember, it depicts a meeting of two schoolmates: a fat man who had just dined at a restaurant, and a thin one who had come down from a train loaded with suitcases.

- Porfiry! - Exclaimed fat, when he saw the thin. - Is that you? My darling! How many winters, how many years!

- Batyushki! - marveled thin. - Misha! Childhood friend! Where did you come from?

Communication begins in a symmetrical role situation. But here's the news: the subtle finds out that his friend has become a secret adviser (a rank equal to the general's). And what - the nature of communication is changing: the situation acquires asymmetrical features.

Thin suddenly turned pale, turned to stone, but soon his face twisted in all directions with a widest smile: it seemed that sparks were falling from his face and eyes. He himself cringed, hunched, narrowed ... His suitcases, knots and cartons cringed, frowned ...

- I, Your Excellency ... Very nice, sir! A friend, one might say, of childhood, and suddenly they went out to such grandees, sir! Hee-hee.

- Well, full! - winced fat. - What is this tone for? We are friends of childhood with you - and why is servility here?

- Have mercy ... What are you ... - giggled thin, even more cringing. “Your Excellency’s gracious attention ... as if life-giving moisture ...”

In everyday speech communication, the linguistic personality switches from one stereotype of role-playing behavior to another. Such a switch is of great importance, because the success of communication largely depends on how much the speaker and the listener know the forms of the language that correspond to the given situation.

The psycholinguistic uniqueness of role-playing communication allows for a better understanding of transactional analysis developed by the American psychologist Eric Bern. In his book with the self-titled title “Games that people play. Psychology of human relations; People who play games. Psychology of human destiny ”he proposed his own model of status-role interaction of people.

Each person, says the scientist, is, as it were, a carrier of three hypostases, three components of his personality. This is, relatively speaking, Parent (P), Adult (B), Child (D). At each moment of his life, the individual experiences one of these I-states.

The child is the source of our desires, desires, feelings. Here is joy, intuition, creativity, fantasy, curiosity, fears, whims. The child is the source of the psychic energy of the personality. A person experiences a state of happiness when his Child is safely. The child’s condition is manifested in the corresponding speech-behavior reactions: “Excellent!”, “Wonderful!”, “Great!”, “Oh, interesting!”, “Tired!”, “Tediousness!”, “Damn it all,” “I don't want to live ! "," Leave me alone! "," Go all to hell! "," Oh, how I love you! "," I hate you! " etc.

The parent is the other pole of personality. This is an authoritative, or even authoritarian, beginning, a carrier of unshakable moral rules and etiquette norms that dictate exactly how to act in a particular situation. The parent is our conscience, this is an autopilot, formed as a result of the upbringing and accumulation of social experience. In the behavior of the linguistic personality, this beginning manifests itself in the form of phrases: “To be done immediately!”, “How much you can repeat!”, “You can be disgraced!”, “Shame on you!”, “What a fool did it!” , "Do not meddle in your own business!", "What do you allow yourself!", "You can not ...", "In no case ...", "It is even strange to hear ..." , etc.

Adult - the carrier of the rational beginning. This personality is responsible for the impartial analysis of any vital information. An adult controls the actions of the Parent and Child, acting as an intermediary between them. The speech reactions of this I-state carry calls for common sense: “Let's get down to the essence”, “Let's not be nervous, analyze the situation”, “Let's look at this matter from different points of view”, “Perhaps you are right, but I would like state your thoughts, ”“ Let us drop emotions and consider the problem coolly, ”and so on.

These states of personality can replace each other several times in one day. An alarm clock rings in the morning: you need to go to class. "I want to sleep! Go all to hell! ”The Child screams at us. But then the Parent speaks with reproach: “You are, after all, a student, and a student should not miss lectures!” “There is still time to get together and have breakfast. And if you skip a lecture, you still need to rewrite, and the exam is on the nose: if you fail, you will remain without a scholarship, ”the Adult admonishes.

Three components of our consciousness most clearly manifest themselves in interpersonal communication. Communicating, we unwittingly put on one of the three masks. And what I-state will take the upper hand in us depends to a large extent on the status of our interlocutor and the characteristics of the communicative situation. However, within the framework of the accepted role there is the possibility of choosing one or another speech strategy.

According to Bern, the process of speech interaction can be decomposed into elementary exchanges of "messages", each of which has a communicative stimulus and a communicative reaction (in the form of words, silence, views, turning away from each other, etc.). The scientist called such a minimal unit of communication a transaction. The process of communication itself, from his point of view, can be viewed as a series of transactions. The goal of transactional analysis is to find out which I-state sent the communicative stimulus and which I-state gave the communicative reaction.

In real communication, various combinations of the I-states of the interlocutors are possible. One type of transaction is horizontal interaction. We give examples.

1. Transaction on the model P - R.

An elderly teacher refers to a colleague:

- Well, the students went: they are not interested in anything!

- Yes, we were different at their age: we went to the lecture as if it were a holiday.

2. Transaction on model B— B.

At the scientific conference there is a discussion of the report.

- The ideas expressed by the speaker are close to me, but I would like to make a number of comments ...

- I am grateful to a colleague for valuable comments, however, in turn, I would like to share my thoughts ...

3. Transaction on the model D - D.

Summer. The audience is hot. Two students are talking.

- I was completely baked. Maybe, well, to hell - a lecture! Let's go to the beach!

- Come on, just quiet so that the teacher will not notice.

The depicted transactions are called parallel. The analysis of real communication allowed Bern to formulate an important law of speech interaction: while the transactions are parallel, the communication process proceeds without conflict. There is another type of parallel transaction - psychological inequality (P - D and D - P).

It is the interaction of guardianship, caring, repression or admiration, caprice, helplessness. The father takes care of his son, the supervisor advises a graduate student. A graduate student awaits his beloved teacher.

Of course, interpersonal interaction is not limited to a single transaction. It can take quite a long time, and the nature of transactions may change several times. The long-term social-communicative interaction of linguistic individuals is called interaction . In real communication, the reflection of interaction is discourse - speech work, which is a segment of "live speech". It can be considered as an arena where interaction of communication participants takes place.

Discourse, which can be represented in the form of parallel transactions, as a rule, is not conflicting. However, it is not always social and communicative interaction of people proceeds so rosy. In the space of interpersonal communication a large (if not to say - a huge) place is occupied by communicative conflicts. About them we will talk in the second paragraph of the chapter.