Dell Hathaway Hymes (June 7, 1927 in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

– November 13, 2009 in

Charlottesville, Virginia Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Queen Ch ...

) was a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

sociolinguist Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of l ...

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

, and

folklorist Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...

who established disciplinary foundations for the comparative, ethnographic study of language use. His research focused upon the languages of the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

. He was one of the first to call the fourth subfield of anthropology "

linguistic anthropology Linguistic anthropology is the Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages and has grown over the past cen ...

" instead of "

anthropological linguistics Anthropological linguistics is the subfield of linguistics and anthropology which deals with the place of language in its wider social and cultural context, and its role in making and maintaining cultural practices and societal structures. Whil ...

". The terminological shift draws attention to the field's grounding in anthropology rather than in what, by that time, had already become an autonomous discipline (linguistics). In 1972 Hymes founded the

journal A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to: *Bullet journal, a method of personal organization *Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period *Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...

Language in Society ''Language in Society'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal of sociolinguistics. It was established in 1972 and is published five times a year by Cambridge University Press. The current editors in chief are Susan Ehrlich (York University) and T ...

'' and served as its editor for 22 years.

Early life and education

He was educated at

Reed College Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...

, studying under David H. French; and after a stint in prewar Korea, he graduated in 1950. His work in the

Army An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...

as a decoder is part of what influenced him to become a

. Hymes earned his PhD in

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

from

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

in 1955, and took a job at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. Even at that young age, Hymes had a reputation as a strong linguist; his dissertation, completed in one year, was a

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

of the

Kathlamet language Kathlamet was a Chinookan language that was spoken around the border of Washington and Oregon by the Kathlamet people. The most extensive records of the language were made by Franz Boas, and a grammar was documented in the dissertation of Dell ...

spoken near the mouth of the Columbia and known primarily from

Franz Boas Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical ...

’s work at the end of the 19th century.

Career

From 1955, Hymes taught at

for five years; leaving in 1960 to join the faculty of the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

; where he spent another five years before joining the Department of

Anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1965 (where he succeeded A. Irving Hallowell). In 1972 he joined the Department of Folklore and Folklife and in 1975 he became

Dean Dean may refer to: People * Dean (given name) * Dean (surname), a surname of Anglo-Saxon English origin * Dean (South Korean singer), a stage name for singer Kwon Hyuk * Dean Delannoit, a Belgian singer most known by the mononym Dean Titles * ...

of the

University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, commonly known as Penn GSE, is an Ivy League top-ranked educational research school in the United States. Formally established as a school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1914, Penn ...

. He served as president of the

American Folklore Society The American Folklore Society (AFS) is the US-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world, which aims to encourage research, aid in disseminating that research, promote the responsible ...

in 1973, the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

in 1982, and the

American Anthropological Association The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, ...

in 1983—the last person to have held all three positions. While at Penn, Hymes was a founder of the

''. Hymes later joined the Departments of Anthropology and English at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...

, where he became the Commonwealth Professor of Anthropology and English, and from which he retired in 2000, continuing as emeritus professor until his death from complications of

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

on November 13, 2009.

Sexual harassment allegations

Hymes was accused of sexual harassment in the later years of his tenure at the University of Pennsylvania.

Influences on his work

Hymes was influenced by a number of linguists, anthropologists and sociologists; notably

Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American Jewish anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States. Sa ...

and

Harry Hoijer Harry Hoijer (September 6, 1904 – March 11, 1976) was a linguist and anthropologist who worked on primarily Athabaskan languages and culture. He additionally documented the Tonkawa language, which is now extinct. Hoijer's few works make up the ...

of the Americanist Tradition;

Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,Prague Linguistic Circle The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis an ...

; sociologist

Erving Goffman Erving Goffman (11 June 1922 – 19 November 1982) was a Canadian-born sociology, sociologist, Social psychology (sociology), social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth ...

and anthropologist Ray L. Birdwhistell, both his colleagues at Penn; and ethnomethodologists

Harold Garfinkel Harold Garfinkel (October 29, 1917 – April 21, 2011) was an American sociologist and ethnomethodologist, who taught at the University of California, Los Angeles. Having developed and established ethnomethodology as a field of inquiry in sociolo ...

Harvey Sacks Harvey Sacks (July 19, 1935 – November 14, 1975) was an American sociologist influenced by the ethnomethodology tradition. He pioneered extremely detailed studies of the way people use language in everyday life. Despite his early death in ...

Emanuel Schegloff Emanuel Abraham Schegloff (born 1937 in New York) is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles. Along with his collaborators Harvey Sacks and Gail Jefferson, Schegloff is regarded as the creator of the f ...

and

Gail Jefferson Gail Jefferson (22 April 1938 – 21 February 2008) was an American sociologist with an emphasis in sociolinguistics. She was, along with Harvey Sacks and Emanuel Schegloff, one of the founders of the area of research known as conversation analysi ...

. Hymes' career can be divided into at least two phases. In his early career Hymes adapted

Prague School The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and ...

Functionalism to American

Linguistic Anthropology Linguistic anthropology is the Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages and has grown over the past cen ...

, pioneering the study of the relationship between language and social context. Together with

John Gumperz John Joseph Gumperz (January 9, 1922 – March 29, 2013) was an American linguist and academic. Gumperz was, for most of his career, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His research on the languages of India, on code-switching i ...

and

William Labov William Labov ( ; born December 4, 1927) is an American linguist widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of ...

, Hymes defined a broad multidisciplinary concern with language in society. Hymes' later work focuses on poetics, particularly the poetic organization of Native American oral narratives. He and

Dennis Tedlock Dennis Ernest Tedlock (June 19, 1939 – June 3, 2016) was the McNulty Professor of English and Research Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He received his Ph.D. in 1968 from Tulane University. In 1986, he ...

defined

ethnopoetics Ethnopoetics is a method of recording text versions of oral poetry or narrative performances (i.e. verbal lore) that uses poetic lines, verses, and stanzas (instead of prose paragraphs) to capture the formal, poetic performance elements which ...

as a field of study within linguistic anthropology and folkloristics. Hymes considers literary critic

Kenneth Burke Kenneth Duva Burke (May 5, 1897 – November 19, 1993) was an American literary theorist, as well as poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory. As a literary theorist, Burk ...

his biggest influence on this latter work, saying, "My sense of what I do probably owes more to KB than to anyone else." Hymes studied with Burke in the 1950s. Burke's work was theoretically and topically diverse, but the idea that seems most influential on Hymes is the application of rhetorical criticism to poetry. Hymes has included many other literary figures and critics among his influences, including Robert Alter,

C. S. Lewis Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge Univers ...

, A. L. Kroeber, and

Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthro ...

Significance of his work

As one of the first sociolinguists, Hymes helped to pioneer the connection between

speech Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses Phonetics, phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if ...

and

social relations A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...

, placing linguistic anthropology at the center of the

performative turn The performative turn is a paradigmatic shift in the humanities and social sciences that has affected such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, ethnography, history and the relatively young discipline of performance studies. Centr ...

within anthropology and the social sciences more generally. Hymes formulated a response to

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...

's influential distinction between competence (knowledge of grammatical rules necessary to decoding and producing language) and

performance A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Management science In the work place ...

(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 The concept of communicative competence, as developed in linguistics, originated in response to perceived inadequacy of the notion of linguistic competence. That is, communicative competence encompasses a language user's grammatical knowledge of sy ...

, 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". Embedded in the acronym is an application and extension of

Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,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. As a result of discussions primarily with

Ray Birdwhistell Ray L. Birdwhistell (September 29, 1918 – October 19, 1994) was an American anthropologist who founded kinesics as a field of inquiry and research.Danesi, M (2006). Kinesics. ''Encyclopedia of language & linguistics''. 207-213. Birdwhistell c ...

at the

, in his later work, Hymes renamed the "ethnography of speaking" the "

ethnography of communication The ethnography of communication (EOC), originally called the ethnography of speaking, is the analysis of communication within the wider context of the social and cultural practices and beliefs of the members of a particular culture or speech commu ...

" 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. With

and

John Szwed John F. Szwed (born 1936) is the John M. Musser Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, African American Studies and Film Studies at Yale University and an Adjunct Senior Research Scholar in the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University, where he ...

, 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 The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is one of 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH, in turn, is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the prima ...

, funding much research emphasizing different racial and ethnic groups; the second from the U.S. National Institute of Education, funding classroom ethnography. With

he co-edited the series Conduct and Communication for the

University of Pennsylvania Press The University of Pennsylvania Press (or Penn Press) is a university press affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The press was originally incorporated with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on 26 M ...

as a way to support research they considered most valuable. Hymes promoted what he and others call "

", an anthropological method of transcribing and analyzing folklore and

oral The word oral may refer to: Relating to the mouth * Relating to the mouth, the first portion of the alimentary canal that primarily receives food and liquid **Oral administration of medicines ** Oral examination (also known as an oral exam or or ...

narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller (ge ...

that pays attention to poetic structures within speech. In reading the transcriptions of Indian

myths Myth is a folklore genre consisting of Narrative, narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or Origin myth, origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not Objectivity (philosophy), ...

, for example, which were generally recorded as

prose Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...

by the anthropologists who came before, Hymes noticed that there are commonly

poetic Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in a ...

structures in the wording and structuring of the tale. 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". He created the Dell Hymes Model of Speaking and coined the term

within

language education Language education – the process and practice of teaching a second or foreign language – is primarily a branch of applied linguistics, but can be an interdisciplinary field. There are four main learning categories for 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 The grizzly bear (''Ursus arctos horribilis''), also known as the North American brown bear or simply grizzly, is a population or subspecies of the brown bear inhabiting North America. In addition to the mainland grizzly (''Ursus arctos horri ...

s from Oregon. Hymes believes that all narratives in the world are organized around implicit principles of

form Form is the shape, visual appearance, or configuration of an object. In a wider sense, the form is the way something happens. Form also refers to: *Form (document), a document (printed or electronic) with spaces in which to write or enter data ...

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 Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

semiotics Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...

pragmatics In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...

, narrative inquiry and

literary criticism Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...

. Hymes clearly considers

folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...

and narrative a vital part of the fields of

, anthropology and

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

; 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. 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 The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...

, the

particles In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...

(utterances such as "uh," "so," "well," etc. that have linguistic if not

semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

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.Dell Hymes. 1997. Language in Society. ''In The Early Days of Sociolinguistics: Memories and Reflections'', ed. by Christina Bratt Paulston and G. Richard Tucker, pp. 243–245. Dallas: SIL International.

The "S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G" model

Hymes developed a valuable model to assist the identification and labeling of components of linguistic interaction that was driven by his view that, in order to speak a language correctly, one needs not only to learn its vocabulary and grammar, but also the context in which words are used. The model had sixteen components that can be applied to many sorts of discourse: message form; message content; setting; scene; speaker/sender; addressor; hearer/receiver/audience; addressee; purposes (outcomes); purposes (goals); key; channels; forms of speech; norms of interaction; norms of interpretation; and genres. Hymes constructed the

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

SPEAKING Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...

, under which he grouped the sixteen components within eight divisions:

Setting and scene

"Setting refers to the time and place of a speech act and, in general, to the physical circumstances" - The living room in the grandparents' home might be a setting for a family story. Scene is the "psychological setting" or "cultural definition" of a setting, including characteristics such as range of formality and sense of play or seriousness. The family story may be told at a reunion celebrating the grandparents' anniversary. At times, the family would be festive and playful; at other times, serious and commemorative.

Participants

Speaker and audience - Linguists will make distinctions within these categories; for example, the audience can be distinguished as addressees and other hearers. At the family reunion, an aunt might tell a story to the young female relatives, but males, although not addressed, might also hear the narrative.

Ends

Purposes, goals, and outcomes - The aunt may tell a story about the grandmother to entertain the audience, teach the young women, and honor the grandmother.

Act sequence

Form and order of the event - The aunt's story might begin as a response to a toast to the grandmother. The story's plot and development would have a sequence structured by the aunt. Possibly there would be a collaborative interruption during the telling. Finally, the group might applaud the tale and move onto another subject or activity.

Key

Clues that establish the "tone, manner, or spirit" of the speech act - The aunt might imitate the grandmother's voice and gestures in a playful way, or she might address the group in a serious voice emphasizing the sincerity and respect of the praise the story expresses.

Instrumentalities

Forms and styles of speech - The aunt might speak in a casual register with many dialect features or might use a more formal register and careful grammatically "standard" forms.

Norms

Social rules governing the event and the participants' actions and reaction - In a playful story by the aunt, the norms might allow many audience interruptions and collaboration, or possibly those interruptions might be limited to participation by older females. A serious, formal story by the aunt might call for attention to her and no interruptions as norms.

Genre

The kind of speech act or event; for the example used here, the kind of story - The aunt might tell a character anecdote about the grandmother for entertainment, or an

exemplum An exemplum (Latin for "example", pl. exempla, ''exempli gratia'' = "for example", abbr.: ''e.g.'') is a moral anecdote, brief or extended, real or fictitious, used to illustrate a point. The word is also used to express an action performed by an ...

as moral instruction. Different disciplines develop terms for kinds of speech acts, and speech communities sometimes have their own terms for types.

Family and personal life

Hymes' spouse, Virginia Dosch Hymes, was also a sociolinguist and folklorist. They had met at Indiana University and married in 1954.

Religious associations

Hymes was a member of the

Guild of Scholars of The Episcopal Church The Guild of Scholars of the Episcopal Church is a society of lay Episcopal academics, teachers, artists and professional practitioners which for many years met annually at General Theological Seminary in New York in November of each year. Sinc ...

. He was a congregant of St. Paul Memorial Church and Peace Lutheran Church in

Charlottesville Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Queen Ch ...

, Virginia.

Awards

Hymes was awarded the Gold Medal of

Philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

in 2006.

Publications

* Cazden, C.B., John, V.P., & Hymes, D.H. (Eds.). (1972). ''Functions of language in the classroom''. New York: Teachers College Press. * Gumperz, J. J., & Hymes, D. (Eds.). (1964). The Ethnography of Communication. Special issue of ''American Anthropologist'', 66 (6), Part II: 137–54. * Gumperz, J. J., & Hymes, D. (1972). ''Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication''. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. * Hymes, D.H. (1961). Functions of speech: An evolutionary approach. In F. Gruber (Ed.), ''Anthropology and education''. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. * Hymes, D. (1962). The Ethnography of Speaking. In T. Gladwin & W. C. Sturtevant (Eds.), ''Anthropology and Human Behavior'' (pp. 13–53). Washington, DC: Anthropology Society of Washington. * Hymes, D.H. (1963). Toward a history of linguistic anthropology. ''Anthropological Linguistics'', 5(1), 59–103. * Hymes, D.H. (1964a). Directions in (ethno-)linguistic theory. In A.K. Romney & R.G. D’Andrade (Eds.), Transcultural studies of cognition (pp. 6–56). ''American Anthropologist'', 66(3), part 2. * Hymes, D. (Ed.). (1964) ''Language in Culture and Society: A Reader in Linguistics and Anthropology.'' New York: Harper & Row. * Hymes, D.H. (1967). Models of the interaction of language and social setting. ''Journal of Social Issues'', 23(2), 8–38. * Hymes, D.H. (1967). The anthropology of communication. In F.E. Dance (Ed.), ''Human communication theory: Original essays''. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. * Hymes, D.H. (1970). Linguistic method in ethnography: Its development in the United States. In P. Garvin (Ed.), ''Method and theory in linguistics''. The Hague: Mouton. * Hymes, D. (1971). Sociolinguistics and the ethnography of speaking. In E. Ardener (Ed.), ''Social anthropology and language'' (pp. 47–93). London: Routledge. * Hymes, D. (1971). On linguistic theory, communicative competence, and the education of disadvantaged children. In M.L. Wax, S.A. Diamond & F. Gearing (Eds.), ''Anthropological perspectives on education'' (pp. 51–66). New York: Basic Books. * Hymes, D. (Ed.). (1971). ''Pidginization and Creolization of Languages''. London: Cambridge University Press. * Hymes, D.H. (1972). On communicative competence. In J.B. Pride & J. Holmes (Eds.), ''Sociolinguistics'' (pp. 269–293). London: Penguin. * Hymes, D.H. (1972). Editorial introduction. ''Language in Society'', 1, 1–14. * Hymes, D. (Ed.). (1972). ''Reinventing Anthropology''. New York: Pantheon. * Hymes, D.H. (1972). Toward ethnographies of communication. In P.P. Giglioli (Ed.), ''Language and social context'' (pp. 21–44). Harmondsworth: Penguin. * Hymes, D.H. (1973). Toward linguistic competence. ''Working Papers in Sociolinguistics'', No. 16. * Hymes, D.H. (1974). Ways of speaking. In R. Bauman & J. Sherzer (Eds.), ''Explorations in the ethnography of speaking'' (pp. 433–452). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * Hymes, D.H. (Ed.). (1974). ''Studies in the history of linguistics: Traditions and paradigms''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. * Hymes, D. (1974). ''Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach''. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. * Hymes, D.H. (1974). An ethnographic perspective. ''New Literary History'', 5, 187–201. * Hymes, D.H. (1974). Review of Noam Chomsky. In G. Harman (Ed.), "On Noam Chomsky: Critical essays" (pp. 316–333). Garden City, NY: Anchor. * Hymes, D.H. (1975). Breakthrough into performance. In D. Ben-Amos & K. Goldstein (Eds.), ''Folklore: Performance and communication'' (pp. 11–74). The Hague: Mouton. * Hymes, D.H. (1976). Toward linguistic competence. ''Sociologische Gids'', 4, 217–239. * Hymes, D.H. (1976). Discovering oral performance and measured verse in American Indian narrative. ''New Literary History'', 8, 431–457. * Hymes, D. (1980) In five year patterns. In B. H. Davis & R. K. O'Cain (Eds.), ''First Person Singular'' (pp. 201–213). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. * Hymes, D. (1980). ''Language in Education: Ethnolinguistic Essays''. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. * Hymes, D., & Fought, J. (1981). ''American Structuralism.'' The Hague: Mouton. * Hymes, D. (1981). ''"In Vain I Tried to Tell You": Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics.'' Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. * Hymes, D. (1983). ''Essays in the History of Linguistic Anthropology''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. * Hymes, D.H. (1984). ''Vers la compétence de communication''. (Trans. F. Mugler). Paris: Hatier. * Hymes, D.H. (1985). Toward linguistic competence. ''AILA Review/Revue de l’AILA'' (Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée), 2, 9–23. * Hymes, D.H. (1992). Inequality in language: Taking for granted. ''Working Papers in Educational Linguistics'', 8(1), 1–30. * Hymes, D.H. (1993). Inequality in language: Taking for granted. In J.E. Alatis (Ed.), ''Language, communication, and social meaning'' (pp. 23–40). Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. * Hymes, D. (1996). ''Ethnography, Linguistics, Narrative Inequality: Toward an Understanding of Voice''. London: Taylor & Francis. * Hymes, D.H. (1998). When is oral narrative poetry? Generative form and its pragmatic conditions. ''Pragmatics'', 8(4), 475–500. * Hymes, D.H. (1999). Boas on the threshold of ethnopoetics. In R. Darnell & L. Valentine (Eds.), ''Theorizing the Americanist tradition''. University of Toronto Press. * Hymes, D.H. (2000). The emergence of sociolinguistics: A reply to Samarin. ''Dialogue'', 312–315. * Hymes, D.H. (2001). Poetry. In A. Duranti (Ed.), ''Key terms in language and culture''. Oxford: Blackwell. * Hymes, D.H. (2001). Preface. ''Textus'', 14, 189–192. * Hymes, D. (2003). ''Now I Know Only So Far: Essays in Ethnopoetics''. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

References

External links

Dell H. Hymes Papers at the American Philosophical Society Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hymes, Dell 1927 births 2009 deaths Deaths from Alzheimer's disease Neurological disease deaths in Virginia Linguists from the United States American folklorists Writers from Portland, Oregon Sociolinguists University of Pennsylvania faculty Reed College alumni Indiana University alumni Harvard University faculty University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty University of Virginia faculty United States Army soldiers Linguists of Uto-Aztecan languages Linguists of Penutian languages Linguists of Chinookan languages Linguistic Society of America presidents 20th-century American anthropologists 20th-century linguists 20th-century American Episcopalians Presidents of the American Folklore Society Presidents of the American Association for Applied Linguistics Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America