Linguocultural analysis of oral discourse: key parameters and methodological cautions

Abstract

The article examines key parameters of the linguocultural analysis of oral discourse and the related methodological cautions. Unlike written text, speech is produced in real time, in a specific situation and within social relations. Its cultural content therefore lies not only in lexical units but also in forms of address, speech genres, turn-taking, prosody, gesture and even silence. The study draws on Hymes’s ethnography of speaking, Gumperz’s interactional sociolinguistics, politeness theory, Wierzbicka and Goddard’s cultural scripts, and Sharifian’s cultural conceptualisations. Based on Uzbek spoken data, ten parameters are identified: communicative situation, participant hierarchy, forms of address, politeness strategies, ritual genres, cultural concepts, implicit meaning, prosody, nonverbal means and code-switching. Typical pitfalls are discussed: treating culture as homogeneous and fixed, losing prosody in transcription, the observer’s paradox, and research ethics. Cultural interpretation is shown to be reliable only when grounded in discourse analysis. The findings can inform the annotation of spoken corpora and the study of intercultural communication.